Mark 10:45

Tag: faith

  • Servant and Seed

    Servant and Seed

    Saturday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time

    Jeremiah 7:1-11; Matthew 13:24-30

    The parable of the wheat and the weeds may leave us wondering. It certainly baffled the disciples. Next Tuesday we will hear them ask Jesus to explain it and, although he does, he leaves off two things: First, if wheat is always wheat and weeds are always weeds, is repentance even possible? Second, who do the slaves represent? Jesus identifies every other character, but never mentions the slaves. The parable has the answers but we must look more deeply into it to find them, which of course is why Christ told it to begin with.

    As for the wheat and weeds remaining the same, on the surface the parable does say that. But if that was our Lord’s point, it would contradict the first thing he said when he began his ministry: Repent (Matthew 4:17) and if Jesus is anything, he’s consistent. No; repentance isn’t only possible, it is central to the parable. The question is, who repents, and how?

    Enter the servants. Noticing the weeds, they offer to pull them, which seems like a good idea. But the master knows what the servants do not. For one thing, the weed, called darnel, looks a lot like wheat; even today it’s called wheat’s ‘evil twin.’ For another, the weed’s roots intertwine with wheat’s. Thus, by pulling the weeds in their ignorance and haste, the servants would actually cause what they most want to prevent. This is why the master advises the servants to let them grow together (Matthew 13:30).

    We see two things in this. First, it shows God’s love for his children, who he wants to live at all costs. Second, and equally important, it shows his love for his servants, who need to repent, or change their minds, from ignorance to knowledge and impetuousness to patience.

    Being patient doesn’t mean doing nothing; to the contrary, it sharpens their focus. The servants have one job – produce a fruitful harvest – not to judge what is wheat or weed. That will be done by others when God wills and at his direction alone.

    This is where we must take the parable to heart, for Christ is speaking to us. We are the servants. We look at the field – the Church, the world, and ourselves – and see the same thing they saw: wheat and weeds. Perhaps our reaction is like theirs; purge the evil quickly, that the good may thrive. But also like them, we may be ignorant and impetuous. Ask yourself: Have I ever been mistaken in my first impressions of people? Have I ever changed my opinion once I got to know them? Have I ever wanted others to be patient with me, despite the wrong things I have done or said?

    Even if we have made these kinds of mistakes, does that mean that we are never to judge our own actions or those of others and try to correct them? Certainly not; to be silent or impassive in the face of evil is exactly the kind of complacency our Lord condemns in the first reading. Earlier in this same gospel, Jesus urged us to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). But that is a perfection in love; therefore, our judgment and proclamation of the truth must be tempered by the same kind of mercy, compassion, and patience that God exalted in the first reading through the prophet Jeremiah, and that Christ himself has so perfectly shown us.

    This is why repentance is central to the parable. The effort we make to do these things, to be perfected in love, is the repentance, the change of mind, that our Master is calling for. It isn’t that we are either servants asked to produce a fruitful harvest or the wheat or weeds growing in the field. The parable teaches us that we are both servant and seed. For both, the watchwords are faithfulness, patience and perseverance; faith that God is working through us even when we cannot see it, patience with our own growth and that of others, and perseverance, that we may overcome every obstacle to become the good seed that makes the finest wheat, in the image of Christ, the Bread of Life.

  • Change in His Native Place: Friday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time

    Matthew 13:54-58

    For me, social media is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it’s been the best way to find out what my kids are doing; you know, things they hadn’t gotten around to telling me yet, like if they were pregnant or had a new job. Dads really are last to know. But social media can also be problematic. I decided to reconnect with people I knew over 50 years ago at St. Peter’s school. I found one of the kids I hung out with and sent him a note saying, “Hey, it’s me! Do you remember me?” He responded, “Yeah, I remember you. Those poor nuns and priests.” And that was that.

    I wanted to write back and say, “No, no, I’ve changed! I’m not the same kid,” but I let it go. I’ve done the same thing he was doing, maybe we all do – tending to paint people with a broad brush, stereotype them, see them as unchanging. I don’t like it when people do that to me, but I do it to them all the time. Maybe it’s human nature.

    This is similar to what I think happened to Jesus when he went back home. To them, he was just the carpenter’s kid, Mary’s son, who they remembered from the neighborhood. They couldn’t believe that he is or was anything else. And we know the result; Matthew tells us that Jesus did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith.

    Of course, the irony is that Jesus hadn’t changed. As Scripture says, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). We can’t blame the people for not seeing that; his years in Nazareth are called “hidden” for a reason. The problem was not the peoples’ failure to learn about Jesus in the past but their failure to learn from him in the present. They were right to believe he hadn’t changed; they were wrong to believe that their knowledge of him didn’t need to change, either. Like my old classmate, like me, they failed to realize they didn’t know everything they needed to know about him. As Jesus showed them, for the sake of their own salvation they needed to change their minds.

    Change of mind and its relationship to faith is clearly important to Christ. It was among the first words he spoke in Mark’s gospel: Repent, and believe (Mark 1:15). Repent is a translation of a Greek compound word that means “change your mind.” As I’ve said before, it’s one thing to hear Jesus tell tax collectors or prostitutes to change their mind; we expect that. What we don’t expect, whether it’s people in ancient Nazareth or us in the modern day, is for him to tell us to change our mind when we think we’re already doing exactly what God wants!

    But he does say that to every one of us, and I think I know why. Remember the reaction Jesus got after the Sermon on the Mount; Matthew tells us the crowds were astonished at his teaching (Matthew 7:28). In both cases, astonishment. But at the Mount he was the new sensation; here in Nazareth, just the same, familiar Jesus. We must ask ourselves which Jesus we follow. Is his teaching still challenging us, or have his words become too familiar to us? Do we find new ways to apply them, or have they acquired a sameness? Are we continuing to grow in our knowledge and love of God, or do we think we know and love him as well as we need to?

    Regardless how well we think we know him or his message, Jesus challenges us because he’s looking for a reaction. He wants us to challenge him and to challenge ourselves. Although the questions he got in Nazareth were tinged in irony, they lie at the heart of all the gospels and the heart of our faith: Is he not the carpenter’s son? Where did this man get all this? These are just another way of asking the question that also appears in every gospel, Who do you say that I am?

    One final point. Matthew tells us that when Jesus heard these questions, he was in his native place (Matthew 13:54). We could say that the Church is our Lord’s native place, but it is also true that his native place is within each of us, where God has written his image. Certainly as we receive Jesus in Holy Communion he takes up residence in the most special way inside us. That is where he meets us, counsels us, urges us constantly to change our mind, to know him more deeply, and to contemplate that crucial question, Is he not the carpenter’s son? We do well to remember that every one of us, every day of our life, is challenged to answer those questions, and that everything we do from the time we wake up until the time we go to bed is our answer to them. Let us make it our most fervent hope and prayer that Christ is most truly honored there, in his native place.

  • Happy Shall You Be, and Favored: Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

    Happy Shall You Be, and Favored: Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

    2 Thessalonians 3:6-10,16-18; Psalm 128:1-2; Matthew 23:27-32

    When I was a child, learning came quickly and easily to me. I was the type of student who excelled without much effort. I expected that to continue when I got to graduate school but it didn’t; I quickly found myself struggling. Although the other students seemed to have no trouble, the nebulous concepts and abstract theories baffled me. I was lost.

    All that changed one semester when I took a class from a professor who had turned to teaching after a long career in the business world. He taught concepts and theories too but not as vague abstractions; he applied them to real-life situations that he had actually experienced. Under that kind of teaching I again excelled and this taught me something about myself: I did much better when concepts were modeled for me than when I was left to figure them out on my own.

    Perhaps that’s why the first reading resonates with me. It is taken from St. Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. His first letter years earlier talked at some length about the end times and it may be that over time these people had focused on that and not on the gospel. In any event St. Paul and his companions visited them, as he says, to present ourselves as a model for you, so that you might imitate us (2 Thessalonians 3:9). In so doing, he must have thought that modeling would serve as a concrete, practical example of how to more fully live out the gospel as Christ intended.

    Of course, no matter how well the Thessalonians learned about the Christian life, their imitation of it had to come from a sincere and genuine faith. Otherwise it was merely an act, an outward show, and they were no more than hypocrites, the name Jesus called the scribes and Pharisees in the gospel. In those days the Greek word “hypocrite” referred to actors on stage who hid behind large masks and in exaggerated motions pretended to be who they were not.

    Although we have long since lost that particular meaning, we all know that hypocrisy is hardly limited to the ancient world and that the words of Christ indict us as well. In our own ways each of us knows what it means to hide behind a mask, pretend to be who we are not, and speaks from a divided heart. We may have many reasons – the pain of rejection, reluctance to stand out from the crowd, etc. – nevertheless we know deep down that these are rationalizations based on fear.

    But like the Thessalonians we have spent too much time on the wrong thing. We should not be focused on servile fear – a fear of punishment – but on holy fear, the fear of the Lord as in today’s psalm. Pope Francis has reminded us that holy fear is “the joyful awareness of God’s grandeur and a grateful realization that only in him do our hearts find true peace.”1

    That is the peace prayed for by St. Paul at all times and in every way (2 Thessalonians 3:16) who knew that true peace only comes when we have conquered our servile fear and live in imitation of Christ as the people we were created to be. We can only do this by the Spirit’s gift of holy fear which, again to quote Pope Francis, “allows us to imitate the Lord in humility and obedience, not with a resigned and passive attitude, but with courage and joy.”2

    Therefore, let us pray for the virtues that help us overcome hypocrisy: humility, obedience and fortitude, and especially for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit’s gift of fear of the Lord, that we may taste the wonderful fruits of his handiwork: Love, joy, and peace. As the psalmist has so beautifully sung, Happy shall you be, and favored (Psalm 128:2).

    1https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-fear-of-the-lord-an-alarm-reminding-us-of-whats-right-48609

    2 Ibid.

  • Love Worthy of Suffering: Friday of the 18th Week of Ordinary Time

    Love Worthy of Suffering: Friday of the 18th Week of Ordinary Time

    Matthew 16:24-28

    I recently came across a profoundly moving book entitled Man’s Search for Meaning by the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Dr. Viktor Frankl. In it he recounts many of the horrors of his internment in the Nazi death camps. What sets this book apart from other such accounts is that his perspective as a physician and psychiatrist imbues that experience with some remarkable insights that everyone can profit from.

    His greatest insight, hinted at in the title of the book stems from his observation that the prison camps held two distinct types of prisoner. The first and by far the majority were those who competed and struggled against each other to gain even the smallest amount of power, control, or possessions. They did so regardless of the cost to others or to their own dignity because they saw it as the way alleviate as much of their own suffering as they could. The second group was different; these prisoners befriended and looked out for others, comforted or consoled them, gave them hope. These people, Frankl realized, did so because they were searching for meaning in their suffering; they recognized in themselves and in others a freedom and dignity that no Nazi could beat, starve, or gas out of them. He went on to write: “The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life.”

    This is exactly why Christ so challenged his disciples with the difficult words in today’s gospel; why he said, Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me (Matthew 16:24). Denying ourselves, bearing the weight of suffering, and following Christ can hurt physically, emotionally, and spiritually. But it hurts more not to, for then we become like the first group of prisoners: Grasping and fighting to reserve power, control, and comfort to ourselves. So often Frankl found that their strategy backfired; prisoners worked hard to preserve their lives but lost them anyway.

    When Christ said whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 16:25) we rightly wonder how we can lose our life by saving it or save our life by losing it. However, the translation of “save our life” in this context is “protect” or “keep safe.” Thus, Jesus is counseling us not to keep safe but to risk being hurt, for only when we do that can we enjoy eternal life with God in heaven.

    Although that might help us understand his words, it doesn’t make living it out any easier. It seems as if Jesus is teaching that the way to avoid suffering in the afterlife is to endure suffering in this life. That seems cruel! Does Jesus really want us to suffer? What does suffering gain us?

    If we take the attitude of the first group of prisoners, the answer is “nothing.” Suffering exists only to be eliminated; it is not something to endure – for its own sake or anyone else’s.

    That is the attitude of love turned inward and as Frankl saw, the result was little gain and much futility. Love turned outward is in the image of God who is Love itself, and no one modeled that image better than Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). By his Incarnation Jesus taught that true love seeks neither isolation nor safety but entanglement and risk. God could have chosen to save fallen humanity from the safety of pure divinity. He didn’t; he chose to dwell among us, to take on the nature he created and raise it from within; to bind himself to the human condition beyond any untying and restore it to its original capacity for the deepest love possible: Eternal union with him. Jesus spent his life and ministry showing us what it means to love as God loves: He made himself vulnerable in the sight of others, exposed his deepest longings, deepest fears, deepest joys, his deepest self. Of course, he risked rejection and it cost him his life, but that is what love does; it was in the nature of his perfect divinity that from the depths of his infinite love and mercy, he glorified what mankind so quickly crucified.

    This tells us that Jesus doesn’t want us to suffer, he wants us to love; by its very nature, love risks suffering and when perfected will endure any amount of suffering for the sake of the beloved. Like the prisoners in the death camp we are perfectly free to refuse, but refusing to love means that we give nothing, share nothing, resist the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and remain isolated even from God himself. Some may call that safety but Christ calls it loss, for he knows that the only thing we bring to heaven is the love that we have given away.

  • No Reluctant Prophet: Monday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time

    No Reluctant Prophet: Monday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time

    Micah 6:1-4, 6-8; Psalm 50:23; Matthew 12:38-42

    So far in this chapter of Matthew we have seen Jesus being treated by the Pharisees like a man on trial. They have twice accused him of violating the sabbath, once of being in league with demons, and now, joined by the scribes, they confront him with the demand for a sign from God (Matthew 12:38).

    Given their lack of faith in Jesus this may seem reasonable but it betrays at least two problems they have in their relationship with God. First, no scribe or Pharisee, no human being is ever in a position to put God on trial or make Him prove anything. If anyone is on trial it’s us, as the prophet Micah said in the first reading: the LORD has a plea against his people, and he enters into trial with Israel (6:2). What’s more, we don’t get to tell God who He works through or how He does things. As He also said through Micah, I brought you up from the land of Egypt… I released you… I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (6:4). God calls the people, God determines the path. Second, notice how Christ responds to the demand of the scribes and Pharisees by speaking of an “unfaithful” – or “adulterous” – generation (Matthew 12:39). This nuptial language goes to the heart of the real problem, which is the failure of these men to understand that our relationship with God is not a contract, or something we negotiate. It is a covenant, a mutual giving of our entire selves one to the other; a commitment that is total and unto death.

    Jesus drives this point home with true irony by bringing up Jonah for as everyone knew, Jonah was a prophet who was “total” only in his defiance of God’s will and “unto death” only in his effort to avoid doing it. The so-called “reluctant” prophet, Jonah sailed the other way when God called him to preach to pagan Nineveh, tried to drown himself in the sea when he got caught, spoke as little prophecy as possible, angrily complained when Nineveh repented, and worried more about losing the shade from a plant than about the possibility of over a hundred thousand Ninevites dying. Jonah was the perfect example of how not to commit yourself to God.

    Yet Christ took that prophet and made a sign out of him: Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale… so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40). Out of that one point of deep darkness – the disobedient man’s descent into the belly of the beast – Christ brings one point of brilliant light – the obedient Son of Man’s descent into the heart of the earth, or, as we say in the Apostles’ Creed, his descent to the dead. There of course he would preach as Jonah could only wish to, and release those repentant souls who had been awaiting the redemption only He could bring.

    Had the scribes and Pharisees recognized the prophetic truth that Christ had just spoken, they would have known that all they had left was the question from Micah: With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow before God most high (6:6)? Since they did not, we turn to ourselves, for we too are on trial. In our own ways, we are all guilty of being a reluctant prophet: Avoiding various calls to serve, stubbornly resisting God’s will, doing the minimum possible, complaining to God about people whose repentance only He can know, and worrying more about our own comfort than about the suffering of many around us.

    So, with what shall we come? Scripture makes it clear: Prayer and sacrifice. As Micah urges us to do right, love goodness, and walk humbly with God (6:8), we pray for the virtues: Prudence, to know what is right; fortitude, to do it; wisdom, to see and love God’s goodness in all people; humility, to walk with God where He leads; and faith, to trust and praise Him at all times. This is a sacrifice, for like Jonah we are inclined to do what we want, love what we want, and walk where we please. But through the psalmist God reassures us: He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me; and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God (Psalm 50:23). The Salvation of God is Christ, who does only right, is love and goodness itself, and who walked in perfect humility all the way from the heart of his Father to the womb of his Mother, from the height of the cross to the heart of the earth, and from the Sacraments he has given the Church into the hearts of all believers.