Mark 10:45

Tag: Matthew

  • 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.

  • Walking on the Water: Monday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

    Walking on the Water: Monday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

    Jeremiah 28:1-17; Matthew 14:13-21

    Each evangelist has a particular view of the Apostles in his gospel. In Mark, the Apostles never seem to get it right; they constantly misunderstand or respond inappropriately. In Luke the Apostles also misunderstand and make mistakes but there is always an excuse; they were tired or stressed. Matthew is perhaps more realistic. He shows the Apostles struggling; there is tension between faith and doubt. This comes through in his telling of the storm at sea and I think it reflects things true not only of them but all of us.

    Let me point out two things about how Matthew sets the scene. First, Jesus sends the Apostles across the sea without him while he prays to his Father on the mountain. As he remains serenely at prayer a storm rages on the sea, tossing the Apostles’ boat in every direction. Second, Jesus does not come across the sea until the 4th watch of the night – some time between 3 and 6 am. In other words, he lets the Apostles get tossed around in the storm for several hours before going to them.

    We can all identify with this in our own way. Think of a time when you were under great stress, when life seemed to toss you about, when every minute seemed like an hour and the stress was more than you thought you could bear. You prayed and prayed for relief, and… nothing. How did you feel? As for myself, I would say that I felt alone; doubtful that God was ever going to help; vulnerable; tense; above all, afraid.

    Fear is perhaps what we have most in common with the Apostles. It can be paralyzing; we don’t know what to do, who to listen to, how to respond. We want to run away but we’re trapped; we can’t.

    At such times we are most susceptible to the kind of false prophet we hear about in the first reading, in our case someone who either tells us what we most want to hear or what confirms our worst suspicions and deepens our darkest fears: We’re alone; being punished; God has abandoned us, will not help us, or worst of all, is not there. It isn’t surprising that in fear the Apostles chose the worldly explanation on seeing Jesus: It is a ghost (Matthew 13:26).

    But God is truth and as Matthew has made clear from beginning to end in his gospel, Jesus is Emmanuel, God-With-Us (1:23), and will be with us always until the end of the age (28:20). So he comes, but notice how: From within the storm itself. In this we learn that God is with us not above and beyond the storms of life but deep in the midst of them. However we suffer, however we feel, we are not alone; Christ is compassion and speaks to us in that suffering. It may be the grace of long-suffering, patience, or fortitude; he does not tell us but as the Divine Physician he comes, gives us grace, and strengthens us for whatever journey he has in mind.

    Moreover, Christ does not simply appear in the storm – he calls from it:“Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid” (Matthew 14:27). He does this not to criticize or overpower but to give courage and to encourage; not necessarily to calm the storm raging around us but to bring calm and inner peace to the storm that rages within.

    Those who love Jesus as Peter did will do what true love does – cast aside fear and risk everything to be with the Beloved. This is one of Peter’s most endearing qualities – the recklessness of his love for Christ – and we do well to imitate it. Our Lord rewards such love; he bids Peter,“Come” (Matthew 14:29).

    Yet as St. Augustine said in his Confessions, “My weight is my love, and this it is that bears me in whatever direction I am borne” (Confessions XIII 9, 10). Although Peter did love our Lord, fear got the better of him: when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened (Matthew 14:30) and began to sink. The question is, in what direction are we borne? Let us bring that to prayer today, asking for the grace that does not allow fear to bring us down amid the storms of our life but to keep our eyes fixed on Christ, our feet on firmly with his, facing those storms from the top of the water.

  • 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.

  • The Vision of True Faith: Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

    The Vision of True Faith: Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

    Genesis 12:1-9; Matthew 7:1-5

    In the story The Emperor’s New Clothes, author Hans Christian Anderson cleverly lays bare not only the emperor but also the human tendency to go along with the crowd. This becomes most obvious near the end of the story, when a child proclaims the truth that all can see but none are willing to admit: “He hasn’t got anything on!”

    In the England of the 16th century, King Henry VIII was emperor and his new clothes were the pretension that he alone held supreme authority over the Church in England. For reasons related to his marriage annulment from Catherine of Aragon it was convenient for him to believe this, and history is clear that those who surrounded the king were like the crowd in Anderson’s story; they knew it was fantasy but called it reality anyway.

    Jesus had a word for them, and he used it in the reading from Matthew: hypocrites. The meaning of the word hypocrite has changed over the centuries. Nowadays we think of a hypocrite as someone who says one thing and does another, but in those days a hypocrite was someone who pretended, like an actor; a person who got along by going along.

    In the reading from Genesis, Abraham went along with God, but there was no pretense. Although to the naked eye he held a promise as invisible as the emperor’s new clothes or King Henry’s pretensions, Abraham was in reality clothed by God in a seven-fold blessing that made him the father of one nation and a blessing for every other nation on earth. Abraham would never live in the Promised Land but he would build an altar there to worship the one, true, and living God.

    This is the vision of true faith; it is the eyes to see the truth and the courage to live out the destiny that beckons, come what may.

    Born of the same faith, this was the same vision given to St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. When King Henry VIII demanded not a denial of the faith but a redefinition of it, they looked past their earthly king to their heavenly one. Christ was their help and their shield, and it was love for him and his Church that emboldened them to expose the naked ambition of a king who would arrogate to himself the keys of the Kingdom of God. Of course, that kind of courage comes at a cost, but the same courage that compelled them to remain with Christ did not abandon them when their own journey led them up the platform at Tower Hill in London to be executed.

    While we must remember the courage and faith with which these men died, we must never forget that this was same courage and the same faith by which they lived; it is the same faith and courage by which we too must live. In our own time we have heard politicians warn, “Religious beliefs must change.” Henry VIII might have said that. How little things have really changed.

    Like Bishop John Fisher, Sir Thomas More and all holy martyrs, our conscience must choose. Will we be the hypocrite who marvels at the emperor’s new clothes or the child who sees the truth and calls it what it is? The witness of the saints testifies now and for all time that there is only one Emperor; he who shed his vestments at the foot of the cross yet was clothed in the glory to which we all aspire and who comes to us cloaked in a host. Ask him and he will remove the wooden beam from your eye that you may better behold the wooden beam that saved the world.

    St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, pray for us.

  • The Choice to Forgive: The 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18; 1 Corinthians 3:16-23; Matthew 5:38-48

    As a young married woman, Edith Eger emigrated to the United States just after World War II and settled in Texas with her husband and first child. If she didn’t carry much material baggage, she carried a lot inside. A Jew, she and her family had been taken by rail along with hundreds of others to Auschwitz. Her parents were immediately put to death. A gymnast and dancer, she got the attention of a camp physician and was forced to dance for him; this was the notorious war criminal Jozef Mengele. Months later she was forced to march to another death camp and was one of the very few who survived. Her way of dealing with the trauma was to dedicate her life to helping others so in the 1970’s, her children grown, she went to college and became a psychologist. Now Dr. Eger, she began treating soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

    One day Dr. Eger met with two patients, both Viet Nam veterans. They suffered identical injuries; the war left them paraplegics. The first man was angry, bitter, and resentful; all he saw was the world’s evil and his own limitations. His attitude was, “Why me?” The second man was just the opposite. Grateful to have survived, he was determined to focus on the good things in life and on its possibilities. His attitude was, “What next?”

    Both patients deeply affected her. Through the first man she realized two things. First, her wartime experiences had left her like him: Angry, bitter, and resentful inside. More importantly she realized those feelings not only remained unresolved but had taken over, made things worse. Like that patient, she too was defined more by hatred than by love. But the second man showed her that she had a choice. She could choose life over death, to be a victor and not a victim, to celebrate the good and stop mourning the evil; to ask “What next?” and not “Why me?” That is the path she chose and, to coin a phrase, it has made all the difference.

    In her book “The Choice,” Dr. Eger writes, “Maybe to heal isn’t to erase the scar… to heal is to cherish the wound.” May be; we know from the book of Leviticus that we are to cherish no grudge (Leviticus 19:18), for that is the opposite of healing. No wonder the same verse advises us to take no revenge. Although it may seem satisfying for a time, especially when someone has really hurt us, Dr. Eger also said that revenge keeps us revolving, not evolving. Our goal is to get past the pain, not pay it forward, to make a positive change in our lives.

    But when someone has hurt you badly, how do you get past that kind of anger? By acknowledging it and giving it to God. Hiding it or pretending it doesn’t exist aren’t realistic solutions. You must be honest and admit that the anger you feel is the normal response to being badly hurt, but you must also resolve that anger will not win, will not define you, is not who you are. St. Paul told you who you are; you are the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16); don’t let anger defile that temple. Then give it to God in prayer. Be completely honest; tell God that the hurt and anger are too big for you, that you cannot do it alone. Ask him to help you forgive those who hurt you.

    Finally, have a realistic understanding of love in the context of forgiveness. When our Lord says love your enemies he isn’t asking us to forget what happened and be friends; rather he is challenging us to see other people, including our enemies, as God sees them. Therefore, forgiveness doesn’t mean complete reconciliation of all differences with all people; it means freeing ourselves to love as God loves. Edith Eger didn’t reconcile with the Nazis but she did forgive them because she came to see them as they were: People who, although created good by God, learned as children to fear and hate what they could not understand. We come to forgiveness the same way; not by total reconciliation of our differences but by accepting first and foremost that all people, even those who have hurt us, are created and loved by God just as we are and in need of the same salvation we need.

    prodigal-son-3388599_640It’s tempting to dismiss all this as foolishness but remember what St. Paul says: If any one among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool so as to become wise (1 Corinthians 3:18). It may be wisdom in the eyes of the world to hate those who have hurt us and foolishness to forgive them but in Christ’s world it’s just the opposite; his is the world where hatred keeps us bound and love frees us, where judgment takes a back seat to mercy, and where God alone sees the heart, knows the pain, calms the fear, heals the wounds, and breaks the chains.

    As Lent approaches I invite you to find that one person in your life most in need of your forgiveness. Make forgiving that person your Lenten project. It may not take you all of Lent or you may not have succeeded come Christmas; regardless, keep working at it. Pray for them; your prayers are the greatest gift you can give and are truly sacrificial. Forgiving others from the heart may be the one thing we do that God loves the most, for it shows how much we want to be like him. After all, God has forgiven us.

  • Living Stones: The Feast of the Holy Family

    Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Colossians 3:12-17; Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

    Recently on Catholic radio I heard of a church called the basilica of the Holy Family. It stands in downtown Barcelona and, from the images I’ve seen, is as breathtaking as it is hard to describe. I urge you to look up the pictures and videos online and see this majestic, cavernous, awe-inspiring structure for yourself.

    There isn’t time to talk about the brilliant architects, artists, and builders who have contributed their time and energy to the project but a couple of events deserve mention. In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the basilica and in 2015 it was proclaimed nearly complete. What makes these events noteworthy? Three things: First, the planned completion date is 2026; second, the permit to begin construction wasn’t granted until 2019; and third, the building permit was applied for in 1885.

    That’s right, 1885. Actually, ground was broken on the feast of St. Joseph, March 19 1882 and construction has continued – off and on – since then. No one planned for Holy Family to take that long. Various things have gotten in the way – like the Spanish Civil War. Needless to say, the basilica is a work in progress.

    This is important to remember because it says a few things that touch on the idea of family and its holiness.

    First, good things can be a long time in the making. Holy Family basilica has taken over 130 years already and its scheduled completion date may come and go. Clearly, hitting the date is not the priority; the priority is that things are done well. The same is true for the holiness of the family. Parents are charged with the responsibility of seeing that their children grow in holiness; to do that well they must be holy themselves. Pope St. John Paul II called his childhood home his first seminary. His father was not afraid to pray in front of his children or to live a life in service of God and his neighbor; he did so every day. Obviously this is a long, slow process, but like Holy Family basilica a holy family is built bit by bit, stone by stone, day after day.

    Second, things don’t always go according to plan. As the history of Holy Family basilica shows, we make plans but life happens. Few knew this better than St. Joseph. He had plans: Wed Mary of Nazareth, have a family, and work to provide for them. As he came to learn, God had another plan: Be father of the Holy Family. Think of the tremendous responsibility this laid on his shoulders: The very life of the Savior, the Son of the Most High, was in his hands. God was depending on him to keep that child safe from people like Herod. Although fathers and mothers of our own holy families do not have exactly this same responsibility, theirs is still an awesome task. God lays on their shoulders the task of properly raising their children, of keeping them safe from whatever life throws at them and teaching them as Joseph and Mary taught our Lord in his human nature how to get along in the world, what is important and what isn’t, what it means to be married, what happiness is and how and where it is found. As every parent knows, this makes building a basilica seem easy by comparison! But the blueprint for such holiness exists; St. Paul gives it when he urges us to put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another (Colossians 3:12-13).

    gaudi-2419961_640Finally, the basilica of the Holy Family teaches us that joy is not necessarily the destination but the journey. Every year, millions of people take the time to tour the basilica of the Holy Family in Barcelona. Whether they are watching as the builders add to its structure, marveling as artisans craft the artwork that adorns it, or attending the Masses offered there, the faithful are uplifted and sanctified even though the basilica is a work in progress. The same is true for our families, for they too are works in progress. Every day brings the happiness and sorrow, the cataclysms and quiet moments through which families progress either closer to God or further away from him. Let us pray that our families take every moment of life and find the joy in it; for each moment, whatever it holds, is an opportunity given to us by Almighty God to build up our own domestic Church in virtue, crafting ourselves more and more into what we are called to be – living stones built upon the cornerstone that is Christ.

  • How Not to Lean: Thursday of the First Week of Advent

    Isaiah 26:1-6; 55:6; Matthew 7:21, 24-27

    In the 12th century the people of Pisa, Italy could say like Judah in the first reading, A strong city have we (Isaiah 26:1). A military, political, and economic force, they had recently triumphed over Palermo in Sicily and returned home with the fortunes of war – millions in booty and a shipload of soil from Golgotha in the Holy Land. Eager to show off their wealth, the people set aside a large plot of land called the Field of Miracles and in it filled a new cemetery with the sacred soil, built a majestic cathedral and baptistery, and set to work on what was to be the largest bell tower in the world – 200 feet high.

    Unfortunately, Pisa could also say that the Lord humbles those in high places (Isaiah 26:5). Before it had risen 3 floors it was obvious the tower was leaning. Perhaps they forgot that the word Pisa is Greek for marshy land, its ground too soft to support such a structure. Construction stopped and started for centuries as different architects tried different things, all with the same result: Fixed on one side, the tower would lean the other. By 1990 it leaned so badly that it had to be closed to the public. Finally, after millions in repairs it reopened, still leaning. As one expert said, “Sandy and soggy ground is definitely not ideal for tall, heavy towers unless they have rock solid foundations.”

    As we begin a new Church year in these early days of Advent let us consider our own spiritual foundation. Like ancient Pisa we have been given so much. We are a strong city – the City of God. Strong walls and ramparts protect us – the four walls of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We have neither the marshland of Pisa nor the dirt of Golgotha but something infinitely better: The Father, the eternal Rock (Isaiah 26:4), his Only Son who died on Golgotha giving birth to the Church, and the Holy Spirit sent by them to guide her into all truth. And we have every tool needed to build our faith: Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and the teaching authority vested by Christ in his Church.

    But all of that goes for nothing if we build our faith on the sand of ourselves and not on the rock foundation of God. How do we do that? By reading Scripture with our own mind rather than the mind of the Church; failing to give the assent of faith to Church teachings we find difficult; following whatever preaching tickles our ear; taking for granted or ignoring the Sacraments as the means of receiving sanctifying grace; and failing to see all people, especially those we don’t like, as made in the image and likeness of God and loved infinitely by him as we are.

    italy-3577677_1280These and many more are like the soft, marshy soil below the tower of Pisa. Like that tower, a faith built on human weakness will lean and no amount of stopping and starting, tinkering and refining will fix it. It must be torn to the ground and rebuilt on the foundation of Christ and his Church, for we must take the faith as it is, not as we would like it to be.

    This is painful but growth often is; to be fertile and capable of bearing fruit, soil must be dug into, plowed, upturned and weeded. It’s no different in the spiritual life; we must go deep into our minds and hearts, tear them open if need be, do all that we can to prepare them for the foundation of Christ. This will require that we come to him by repenting, admitting our weaknesses and failings, and resolving to amend our lives; trusting in God and all that he has revealed, whether we fully understand it or not.

    These first two weeks of Advent are a time set aside by the Church for exactly this. Now is the time! As the gospel acclamation says, call to him while he is still near (Isaiah 55:6). In the end each of us will stand before him from one of two places: A tower of faith built solidly on the rock of Christ or one built on sand. The Master Builder has already given us his advice; we find it in Proverbs: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).

    In other words, remember the tower of Pisa: When we lean on our own understanding, we simply lean.

  • Mother and Disciple: The Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Zechariah 2:14-17; Matthew 12:46-50

    We may hear today’s gospel and wonder how any son could treat his mother like that, let alone the Son of God. Hearing that his mother is outside he doesn’t stop speaking and invite her in; rather, he uses her appearance to make the point that everyone who does the will of God is his mother. Shouldn’t Mary be insulted?

    No. She is doubly honored.

    First, remember that this is not just any son; this is Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God. Engaged in the mission for which he was sent, the salvation of souls, he was speaking about radical fidelity to the will of God. Faith binds us to Christ and to each other with a love born not in the blood of kinship but in his own precious blood. If his teaching shocked people, so be it. His point was not about Mary’s faithfulness, it was about ours.

    Indeed, faithfulness is her first honor. As St. Augustine said, Mary conceived her Son in faith before she conceived him in her womb. We think of her as his mother and rightly so for it was by her fiat that he came into the world, but we must also remember that she was his first and best disciple. Mary is the only person to appear in the gospels from before his conception until the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

    It may seem ironic that from the faithful dwelling of her motherhood Mary invited him in yet he, her Son, refused to return the favor. But again Mary loved him as both mother and disciple. As mother she might feel the sting of his words as he broadened “family” from the ties of blood to those of faith, but as disciple she knew and lived their truth. Despite whatever personal pain the truth may cause it is always the source of joy, for joy is happiness in pursuit of the good and Mary lived her life in hope of attaining the greatest good: Eternal union in heaven with God who is love.

    Love is the second honor of Mary. Only through love do we live life to the full and this necessarily includes all the joys and sorrows that go with it. We might think that in his mercy Christ would spare his own mother the pain of suffering but actually the opposite is true: He loved her too much to deprive her of it. What kind of love knows no sorrow, feels no pain, and never suffers? Rightly is Mary the Mother of Sorrows for in her great love she suffered many times over, from the mystical sword that pierced her heart to her Son’s burial in the tomb. Yet as Scripture reminds us, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7) and is as deep as death (Song of Songs 8:6); Mary’s love for Jesus could not be broken by any boundary of space or time, but did reach perfection in his love for her: her own glorious Assumption.

    stained-glass-4506616_640The two themes of fidelity and love are interwoven in the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The presentation of oneself to God is an act of great faith and deep love. Whether Mary demonstrated her faith and love in a formal consecration to God in the Temple as described in the ancient non-biblical documents is irrelevant. Every day of Mary’s life was a presentation, a self-offering, an abandonment to the divine will made possible by the movement of grace within her. Long before he dwelled within her womb, indeed from the moment of her immaculate conception, our Lord dwelled within her soul and bestowed upon it the fullness of grace, his very life. By her response to that grace, Mary most truly defines what it means to be a Temple of the Holy Spirit.

    What does all this mean for us? It means that as Mary has done so we are invited to do. St. Paul said, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? … Therefore, glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:20). May we never forget that every time we receive Holy Communion we present ourselves to God in an act of faith and love like Mary his handmaid, that we too may glorify God in our bodies.

    Blessed Mother intercede for us, that like you we may be among those to whom Christ says, “whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:50).

  • The Mystical Encounter: St. Francis of Assisi

    Galatians 6:14-18; Matthew 11:25-30

    In the gospel, Jesus said that no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him (Matthew 11:30).

    Sometimes the Son chooses to make the Father known in a dramatic way. Recall His encounter with St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Other times He is much more subtle; such was His encounter with the man we know and celebrate as Francis of Assisi.

    Francis has born around the year 1181 and baptized as Giovanni di Bernadone. His father Pietro, probably the wealthiest merchant in Assisi, renamed him Francesco in honor of his profitable business dealings with France. He no doubt wanted his son to take after him but by all accounts the boy really did not; except perhaps in his grandiose dreams, for Francesco enjoyed envisioning himself as a great Knight of Assisi: Dashing, popular, the life of every party, full of wine and song, surrounded by friends and, of course, ladies in waiting.

    It was in pursuit of his dreams that God first came to him. When Francesco was about 23, he set out on his quest to fight as a knight for Pope Innocent III. On the way, he fell ill and while recovering heard a strange voice ask, “Francesco, who can do more for you, the lord or the servant?” He answered, “The Lord.” The reply came, “Then why do you leave the lord for the servant, a rich lord for a poor man?” Sensing the voice of God, he asked, “Lord, what would you have me do?” to which the voice said, “Return home and you will be told what to do.” Soon after, Francesco returned home.

    While he did not hear the voice again, God had a much more subtle and unexpected revelation in store.

    The next year Francesco once again found himself on a journey; not as a warrior this time, just a young man on routine business. On the road he saw someone coming toward him. As they neared each other, it became evident that the man was a leper. In the words of Francesco’s first biographer, Thomas of Celano: “So greatly loathsome was the sight of lepers to him at one time, he used to say, that, in the days of his vanity, he would look at their houses only from a distance of two miles and he would hold his nostrils with his hands.” Nevertheless, on this day as this man approached, Thomas wrote that Francesco was somehow “made stronger than himself” and even kissed the man. Francis left that encounter feeling like a changed man.

    There are many versions of that meeting and by now it’s difficult if not impossible to determine exactly what happened. It might have been an embrace; the leper may have kissed Francis in thanks for alms given; there are many possibilities. Regardless, I believe that this was the moment Francis first met Christ – not only in the leper but in himself.

    Only God dwelling and alive within us has the power to make us stronger than ourselves. Only through the eyes of grace can we see as Francis came to see that in fact we are the lepers, sin is the disease; we are that man hobbling along the road of life, suffering, ragged, in need of healing in the hospital of the Church, the refuge and sanctuary for all the afflicted.

    The treatment is penance. Its words are easy to say but as we have all learned, including Francis, its actions require dying to self; in the words of St. Paul, being crucified to the world and the world to us. The wounds of Christ given to Francis later in life are the most perfect outward sign of this inner reality.

    So deeply was Francis affected by that encounter on the road, so great was its impact upon him that even as he lay dying, he dictated this first:

    This is how the Lord gave me, brother Francis, the power to do penance. When I was in sin the sight of lepers was too bitter for me. And the Lord himself led me among them, and I pitied and helped them. And when I left them I discovered that what had seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness in my soul and body. And shortly afterward I rose and left the world.

    cropped-st-francis-1758485_1280.jpgOf all the things he might have chosen to begin with, Francis wanted to teach that the best and most mystical encounter we can have with Christ comes not from a voice on a sickbed or even a leper on the road but from the encounter with our own sinfulness. Only when we allow the Lord to lead us from the pain of penance through the conquest of our fears can we too rise and leave the world; not to abandon it, but that we may be Christ to it.

    St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

  • The Artist: Feast of St. Matthew

    Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-13; Matthew 9:9-13

    Perhaps the most popular way to contemplate a bible story such as the call of St. Matthew is to imagine ourselves actually in the ancient setting as one of the characters. We see Jesus in that time and place and playing a role in the drama, say Matthew, we contemplate our own reaction to the call to follow Him.

    But there is another way, and that was the one chosen by the 16th century Italian artist Caravaggio. Commissioned to paint an interpretation of the call of St. Matthew, the young artist chose not to portray the scene in its biblical setting. Rather, he set the scene in his own time, moving it from a customs post to a Roman pub. If you’ve never seen the painting, imagine: A giant canvas, mostly dark; to the left, five men in modern clothing clustered around a table in a dimly lit, sparsely furnished room. They could be gamblers; it’s hard to tell. To the right, our Lord and St. Peter in ancient garb have just entered. The only light emanates from behind Christ and illuminates the men in the room. Christ beckons toward them with a gesture reminiscent of the famous Sistine Chapel image of God creating Adam. It’s difficult to tell exactly who He beckons toward. The two men closest to Him appear either annoyed or indifferent. The man in the middle, who may be Matthew, appears shocked and points perhaps at himself, perhaps at the man next to him as if to say, “Me or him?” Finally, the two men furthest away pay no attention either to the light or to Christ; their eyes are fixed on the money.

    The painting, which hangs in a chapel of the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, shocked the people of its time who were used to sacred art that showed Jesus in the places and with the people of biblical times. By bringing Him to the modern day, Caravaggio reminded them that Jesus is with all of us; He is not confined to any particular time. Gospel verses such as Jesus passed by (Matthew 9:9) are reminders that Jesus is always passing by: He is the child wasting away in a 3rd world country, the immigrant family at the border, the Alzheimer’s patient in the nursing home; the person next to us in the pew; the one looking at us in the mirror.

    Further, Jesus isn’t calling only Matthew. Where Caravaggio was ambiguous let us be clear; Jesus is calling all of us. No matter who we are or how deeply invested in Him we think we already are, Jesus is always calling us into a deeper, more intimate relationship. We speak of a ‘call’ but in reality it’s a challenge; we must ask ourselves if and how we are like those men in the painting. We may be annoyed, thinking that we’ve done enough; we may be indifferent, we’ve stopped caring. Like the man in the middle, we may be astonished, perhaps hoping that Jesus is asking someone else. Or we may be paying no attention at all, too occupied with what we think is important.

    A detail in Caravaggio’s painting should be pointed out. Although Jesus is beckoning toward the table, His feet are facing the exit. Jesus asks us to follow Him but He doesn’t wait. He is on a mission; there are places to go, people to see. The choice is ours. We can get up and follow as Matthew did or we can put it off, wait for a better time. Keep in mind though, that Jesus Himself chose that moment. He has a purpose, a plan, and it includes us. He may demand much but his generosity is never outdone.

    art-2755500_1920St. Paul reminds us of this when he says that grace is given to each according to the measure of Christ’s gift (Ephesians 4:11). His measure to Matthew was enough to transform him from a mere money-counter into an artist; indeed the artist who gave us the first portrait of Jesus in our New Testament. His medium wasn’t oil on canvas but words on paper, his subject not simply the man named Jesus but the Son of God and Son of Mary, the prophesied Emmanuel, “God is with us.” His palette held the many colors of Christ: teacher, healer, wonder-worker, Shepherd, Savior. He boldly painted all these images against a dark background for Jesus had come not into a roomful of Roman gamblers but into a land whose people were overshadowed by the darkness of sin and death. Where Caravaggio showed the light coming from behind Christ, Matthew knew that for all times and places Christ is the light – not the light who shines but the light who has arisen (Matthew 4:16). The long night of waiting, hoping, and wondering was over; the bright promise of salvation had dawned in Jesus, the Morning Star who never sets. This is why the great artist put the final brushstroke to his masterpiece in the words of our risen, ascending Master: And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).

    St. Matthew, pray for us.