Mark 10:45

Tag: Word of God

  • Is the King Glad? Saturday of the 1st Week in Ordinary Time

    Is the King Glad? Saturday of the 1st Week in Ordinary Time

    1 Samuel 9:1-4; 17-19; 10:1; Psalm 21:2; Mark 2:13-17


    Guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Church takes great care to choose readings for each day that highlight certain themes, most often represented by the psalm that comes between them. Today we hear a wonderful case in point, Psalm 21. On a purely human level, this is a joyful song of praise that God has endowed authority on an earthly king. On a divine level and as a messianic psalm it speaks of Christ, who indeed is glad and rejoices in the full authority given him by the Father. With good reason we repeat the second verse: Lord, in your strength the king is glad. But that doesn’t answer how the readings highlight that theme. As we will see, they do so in very different ways.


    As the story of Saul begins, it’s hard to know what he would have been glad about. It must have come as such a surprise! One minute he’s out looking for his father’s animals; the next, he is anointed as the first king of Israel. But although we can’t tell his mindset in the beginning, as the story unfolds it becomes clear: This king isn’t glad in the Lord at all. To the contrary, he has little regard for God’s authority; he has his own ideas and doesn’t want anyone, even God, to correct him. Worse, despite Samuel’s warnings, Saul never sees the problem; he remains blind to his own arrogance and self-exaltation until everything ends for him in complete disaster.


    By contrast, the story of Matthew doesn’t end with disaster but it does begin that way. Like Saul, Matthew is a man going about his business; unlike Saul, his business was what most Jews would have called a complete disaster: the customs post. Such men were among the worst of sinners; quislings who took money from their own people, gave it to their conquerors, and even kept some for themselves. Yet this is the kind of darkness where the light of Christ most brightly shines; passing by, the Divine Physician diagnoses Matthew, and in two words prescribes the remedy: Follow me.


    As with Saul, we have no idea what went through Matthew’s mind at that moment, but as always Mark invites us to put ourselves in the scene and contemplate. What would we do? Would we have doubts, fears, or misgivings? Did Matthew? Perhaps. All we know is what Matthew actually did, and here Mark couldn’t be clearer: He got up and followed Jesus. Again, this is only the beginning; the story unfolds in the fullness of time. Mark tells us that Jesus went to his house, ate with him and his friends, and told others that he came to call sinners. Though Mark then goes silent about it, that doesn’t mean we know nothing. We know that Matthew was glad in the strength of the Lord who called him out of his sinful life and offered him another, so glad that he followed Christ to the end and to the point that a gospel account would bear his name for all time.


    Two men, two calls, two responses, two completely different endings, yet the same theme: Lord, in your strength the king is glad. How does this apply to us? In two ways:


    First, we must understand that we, the baptized, are kings. At our baptism we were anointed kings and called as Christ was called – not to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45). And if we are kings, then we are glad in the strength of the Lord from the moment we decide to be a king less like Saul and more like Matthew; when we see every day as a call to live not on our own strength but on God’s, for it is he and he alone who points the way, who leads the way, who makes a way, and who is the way.


    Second, we must remember that good intentions aren’t enough; actions are required. How we act will depend on the gifts God has given us and the circumstances we find ourselves in. Whatever they are, the time is now and we will not be – we cannot be – glad in the Lord’s strength until we take what the Father has given us and, through the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit, put it at the service of the kingdom he gave us through his Son.

  • Of Prophets and Prophecy: The 6th Day of Christmas

    Of Prophets and Prophecy: The 6th Day of Christmas

    1 John 2:12-17; Luke 2:36-40

    When we hear the word “prophet,” we may think of men like Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, and “prophecy” as the word of God given to them concerning things that would happen in times to come. If so, Anna in today’s gospel is a good reminder that we have more thinking to do.

    First, she reminds us that prophets aren’t always men. Indeed, Anna is the first woman referred to in the New Testament as a prophet, but other women follow, namely Philip’s daughters (Acts 21:9) and the women of Acts 2:17-18 and 1 Corinthians 11:4-5. What’s more, she follows in the line of Old Testament prophetesses: Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, Deborah, Huldah, and the mysterious woman in Isaiah (8:3), to name a few.

    These prophetesses, Anna included, also remind us that prophecy isn’t limited to oracles of future events. Miriam is noted for leading a beautiful song of thanksgiving for God’s deliverance of his people (Exodus 15:20), Deborah as one of the great Judges of Israel (Judges 4:4), and Huldah as the wise counselor who king Josiah relied on (2 Kings 22:14-20). Similarly, Anna speaks not of the future but of the here and now, giving thanks and proclaiming God’s long-awaited redemption.

    The Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel once said that the greatness of a prophet “lies not only in the ideas he expressed, but also in the moments he experienced. The prophet is a witness, and his words a testimony – to God’s power, to His justice and mercy.”1 What more sublime moment could any prophet experience than Anna’s encounter with the infant Christ? She, in whom the word of God remained (1 John 2:14) now gazed upon that Living Word; she who had long ago forsaken the world for love of the Father (1 John 2:15) now looked on Him who would offer the world His infinite love and mercy; and she who night and day devoted herself to the will of God (1 John 2:17) now adored Him who would see that same will done, to the Cross and far beyond.

    We don’t have Anna’s words; Luke says only that she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem (2:38). But this is all we need to know, for as Heschel also said, “In speaking, the prophet reveals God. This is the marvel of the prophet’s work; in his words, the invisible God becomes audible. He does not prove or argue. The thought he has to convey is more than language can contain. Divine power bursts in the words.”2 Whatever Anna said on that glorious day in the Temple or any day thereafter, divine power burst from her words; nothing she said could contain the God-Man revealed to her. Still, her job was not to prove or argue; it was to reveal God to those who had not seen; to make Him audible and by so doing reach their hearts with His, in hopes of making them burn as hers surely must have.

    This is our task as well. By our baptism we too are anointed priest, prophet, and king and by His gift of the Holy Eucharist we have him here with us as surely as Anna did in the Temple. So, let us do as she did: Old or young, widowed or not, at every Mass let us come forward, receive him, give thanks to him, and then speak about him to all. Even after two thousand years, we have no better words than Anna did; nevertheless, we have all we need. We too have the testimony of our lives. We must make them speak.

    St. Anna the Prophetess, pray for us.

    1Abraham J. Heschel. The Prophets. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, p 27.

    2Ibid.

  • Minute Meditation: Thank God

    1 Thessalonians 1:1-5, 8b-10

    In the first reading today, St. Paul says,

    We give thanks to God always for all of you,
    remembering you in our prayers,
    unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love
    and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    before our God and Father,
    knowing, brothers and sisters loved by God, how you were chosen.
    For our Gospel did not come to you in word alone,
    but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.

    I don’t. Thank God, I mean. At least, not enough.

    I know the ACTS of prayer – Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, and Supplication – but tend to get stuck on the letter “S,” asking God for things. Of course I need to ask, but if that’s all I do then I risk treating God as little more than a divine vending machine. I also want to show God that I adore him, am sincerely sorry for my sins, and am grateful for all he has given.

    Which is where you come in. For as St. Paul reminded me this morning, God has given me you: People practicing the faith in your daily life, working to love all you meet, and enduring in great hope of the promises of Jesus Christ. I do thank God for you.

    But I can’t properly do that unless I also thank God for how you were chosen. Being self-centered and self-conscious, I get in the habit of behaving as if it all depends on me, that I must be eloquent enough, loving enough, patient enough. Those things are important but your faith doesn’t depend on them. No; as St. Paul reminded us, the Gospel comes to us not in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction. There is a power to the process far beyond any of us, working in ways we cannot understand, reaching us in depths no human being can go, touching and moving us in ways that nothing and no one else can.

    If that’s not worthy of thanksgiving, then what is?

  • The Paradox of Love: Friday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time

    Joshua 24:1-13; Psalm 136:1; Matthew 19:3-12

    Today’s readings remind me of that famous scene in the musical Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye asks Golde, his wife of 25 years, do you love me? She replies, “Do I love you? For 25 years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow, after 25 years, why talk about love right now?” He repeats, do you love me? “I’m your wife.” I know… But do you love me? She thinks out loud, “Do I love him? For 25 years I’ve lived with him, fought him, starved with him, 25 years my bed is his, if that’s not love, what is?” Then you love me? Finally, she replies, “I suppose I do…”

    Why does this scene remind me of the readings? Because today Scripture focuses on what love is in its essence, and that scene highlights three key aspects of it.

    First, love is a verb. We love not in what we say but in what we do. Through Joshua, God speaks to people who, from the time of Abraham, through the oppression in Egypt, the fleeing, struggling, and starving in the desert, might well have asked, “God, do you love us?” Today we hear God reply: “Do I love you? Remember all the things I’ve done for you, and look what lies before you: You’ve made it to the Promised Land!”

    That reply echoes through the ages to today, to every one of us. We each have our own struggles, physical and spiritual. Through all of them, God isn’t sitting silently in the background; he is in every moment, working in ways beyond our understanding. His work may be unknown to us this moment, this month, or this year, but like the Promised Land, its fruit lies waiting. We must never mistake silence for inaction or indifference; God is eternally vigilant, eternally loving, always acting for our good.

    This brings up the second point: Love is timeless. How fitting that we hear Psalm 136 today, especially the antiphon, His mercy endures forever. The Hebrew word translated as “mercy” is hesed, which includes mercy but implies action, things we do when we are motivated by love and loyalty to someone else. In the scene from Fiddler on the Roof, remember that Golde replied, “After 25 years, why talk about love right now?” To her, the amount of time was not the point; she had committed her life to her marriage.

    Jesus speaks of this kind of commitment in the gospel when he quotes the passage from Genesis that a man is joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Again to go back to the ancient language, the word for “joined” literally means, “glued.” Imagine gluing two pieces of paper, allowing them to dry, then trying to tear them apart. We know what will happen; the kind of pain and suffering that only such tearing can bring.

    This leads us to a third aspect of love, which in the words of venerable Fulton Sheen is that love is the soul of sacrifice. Recall how Golde replied when Tevye asked if she loved him: all the sacrifices she had made, the things she had endured, for him. But not just for him, for herself as well. Only those willing to make the greatest sacrifice for love’s sake can know the deepest joys that love brings. When it comes to love, joy and sacrifice can never be separated; in married life, in ministry, in whatever kind of service we are called, only those who are most fully open, who risk the greatest vulnerability, can know the deepest, most fulfilling joy: to know and to be known, to accept and be accepted; to love and to be loved.

    As in all things, the best model for all these aspects of love is our Lord, Jesus Christ. Who performed greater works of love than he? Whose love is more timeless? Who is the soul of sacrifice more than he who was willing to empty himself into his own creation to show us that those who risk the ultimate sacrifice of themselves are given the ultimate joy of resurrection to eternal life? Only Christ could most perfectly show us all this, the great paradox of love: that giving is receiving; that most fully knowing means to be most fully known; and that only by dying to ourselves can we reach the promised land of eternal 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.

  • One of the “Do Nots”: Friday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time

    Exodus 20:1-17; Matthew 13:18-23

    Even though I’ve gone through it countless times over the last 35 years, each time still amazes me. I look at one of my kids, say, “Do NOT do that,” then find myself standing there incredulous, less than 5 minutes later, saying, “Didn’t I just tell you not to do that? Will you ever grow out of this?” But it was just recently, as I was going through it yet again, that I heard a voice in my head say, “You do the same thing.”

    Now, that could have been an echo of my mother or father, for I definitely did the same thing to them. It could also have been any of a number of nuns or priests, for I did it to them, too. Come to think of it, it could have been any of the adults who had to deal with me as a kid. It could have been, but I had the distinct feeling that it wasn’t. No, this was my conscience speaking, and not about past behavior, either. The voice didn’t say, “You did the same thing,” it said, “You do the same thing.”

    It’s true. Day after day, year after year, God has taught me through his word. It couldn’t be clearer than on a day like this when we literally read the 10 Commandments. Yet time after time, year after year, sometimes not 5 minutes later, I do exactly what God just said not to do. Why? If I understood the gospel today, our Lord has wrapped the reason in a parable which teaches me that I have a hearing problem.

    My ears work fine, that’s not the issue. The problem seems to be an inner, spiritual sort of deafness. When Jesus begins his explanation of the parable by saying, Hear the parable of the sower, he clearly wants his disciples to do more than use their ears; he wants their hearing accompanied by an attitude that says, ‘Lord, I am ready to be taught.’ Ask yourself how many times you’ve heard a gospel begin, thought, ‘Oh, I know this one,’ and then tuned out or paid little attention? This is the seed that falls on rocky ground; we hear but lack the docility, the teachable spirit, needed to help the word take root and endure. The gift of docility inclines us to remember that no matter how familiar a passage may seem, there is always something new to be learned.

    Our Lord also relates our hearing problem to a lack of understanding. We hear the word, but like the seed that falls on the path, let it go because we don’t understand it. In and of itself, lack of understanding is nothing to be ashamed of. Scripture can be hard to understand; it refers to cultures, peoples, and times far removed from our own. The problem comes in when we make no effort to learn more; to ask for help; to set time aside for study and contemplation of God’s word. Those who do this will find their time and effort well rewarded.

    Other times we can’t hear God because, as Jesus implies, his voice is drowned out by our own anxieties. We all know what it’s like to come to Mass or prayer with problems weighing us down. They distract us and before we know it the time has slipped by. It helps to begin preparing for our time with the Lord before leaving home, or if we’re praying at home to sit and recollect ourselves in silence before we begin. I find it helpful to repeat one of the old aspirations of the Church: “Let go and let God.” Not to forget or minimize what is on our mind but to make it part of our prayer, our offering to God, laying it on the altar and offering it as our sacrifice to the only One who can bring good out of it. I can’t think of a better way to quiet the inner voices so we can hear what God is saying.

    In years past, I thought of this parable as referring to different kinds of people: Those who hear the word of God and those who do not. That’s fine as far as it goes, but when God reminded me that I am one of the “do nots,” I looked a little deeper and saw the parable referring not to different kinds of people but different states of the spiritual life. That is great news for all of us, for it reminds us that conversion is possible; we can do something about our hearing problem. It is true that in the deafness of our sloth and arrogance, we are in the path; in our ignorance and shame, the rocky ground; in our anxieties and temptations, the thorny ground. But we don’t have to stay there; these grounds aren’t meant to be passively endured but to be grown out of. Christ ends the parable in the place we all want to be, so let us all today resolve that we will show him the humility, docility, and perseverance it takes to be transplanted into the soil that, truly hearing his word, bears fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.

  • I Will Make You Great: Friday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

    Genesis 46:1-7, 28-30

    An important part of getting to know someone is finding out about their background – their childhood, family, whatever details they’d like to share. It gives us a fuller, richer picture of the person, puts what they say and do in context, and helps us come to a better understanding and appreciation of them.

    Of course, we’re much more limited when it comes to getting to know people in the bible, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing to learn. Sometimes, important details lie hidden between the lines, and knowing them helps us not only to learn more about that person but also more about us and God. This is true for one of the most important, indeed foundational, biblical characters we have heard about this week – Jacob, the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham.

    As we study the chapters of Genesis that tell us about his life, one thing is clear: Jacob came from a dysfunctional family. It began from the twin brothers’ birth. The name Jacob means “to supplant” or “replace,” and that is what he did, first duping Esau out of his inheritance, then tricking his father into giving him the blessing intended for his slightly older brother. But their parents, Isaac and Rebecca, are the real problem; they play favorites, Rebecca going so far as to help her favorite (Jacob) steal from his brother and get away, while Isaac sat idly by as his favorite (Esau) plotted murder against Jacob. Not what anyone would call a healthy family dynamic.

    Sadly the problem followed Jacob into adulthood, for he too played favorites. We heard this week how his favoritism of Joseph led to such envy in Jacob’s other sons that like their uncle Esau they too plotted to kill their brother – and nearly succeeded.

    Yet we also saw that things don’t always work out the way we think they will. Where in Jacob’s family revenge would be expected, by the grace of God Joseph took a different tack; just yesterday we heard him say to his brothers, It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you (Genesis 45:5).

    And therein lies the lesson: With God’s help, the unchangeable can change. Like Jacob, we are born with problems, born into problems, problems plague us all our lives. They may be dysfunctional relationships, addictions, abuse, the list is endless. Whatever they are we feel powerless to change them, and on our own we probably are. But the story of Jacob teaches us that we are not alone, that no matter what the problems are God has ways of dealing with them that we do not, and that as St. Paul once said, all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

    Although Jacob may have taken too much pride in himself and his own schemes over the years, he never forgot God’s purpose and to humble himself before it. In today’s reading we find him doing exactly that at Beersheba. He’s been there before; recall on Monday Scripture told of him fleeing from Esau as a frightened young man. Then, God spoke to him in a dream and, although the words are slightly different, the main points are exactly the same today: I am God… do not be afraid… I will make you great… I will be with you… I will bring you home. Through all that had happened to him from that first moment on – the joys, the sorrows, the love, the loss, the bliss, and the agony – Jacob was never alone. God was right there with him, doing what he said he would do.

    So let us resolve to respond as Jacob did. Scripture tells us that he took everything he owned and everyone in his family with him to Egypt (Genesis 46:6-7). That is, he was totally committed to whatever God wanted him to do. This takes great faith but that is ours for the asking. Jacob asked for it at Beersheba; we have the present moment, here in His presence. And let us remember too that God is never outdone in generosity. For his act of faith, Jacob was rewarded not only with the joy of holding his long-lost son in his arms once again but also, through the great prosperity and growth that Israel, the nation named after him, would come to enjoy, he could rest secure in the knowledge that God’s plan is far above any of human schemes and His merciful love infinitely bigger than any of our problems.

    The best news of all is that to those who commit themselves to Him as Jacob did hear the same words that Jacob heard. Keep them with you today and everyday. Here they are again: I am God… do not be afraid… I will make you great… I will be with you… I will bring you home.

  • All Things to One Man: The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

    All Things to One Man: The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

    Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9; Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19; John 19:31-37

    In high school we once did an exercise on self-perception. Sister began by asking us to take out a sheet of paper and write down 3 negative things about ourselves. After a couple of minutes she said, “Alright, now write down 3 positive things about yourself.” I can’t remember what I wrote but I know I didn’t list three; I’m not sure I even wrote two. That was Sister’s point; self-conscious teen-agers aside, people in general tend to be very good when it comes to focusing on their negative qualities but not so good when it comes to the positive.

    The same goes for our relationship with God. If you’re anything like me, it’s probably much easier to come up with reasons why He shouldn’t think very highly of you than reasons why He should. Today, on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, our Lord gives us at least three reasons to focus on the positive.

    First, listen again to his words in the 11th chapter of Hosea: When Israel was a child I loved him… I taught Ephraim to walk… took them in my arms… fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks… stooped to feed my child… I will not let the flames consume you (Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8-9). This isn’t the imagery of a God who loves from a distance, impersonally, or until we leave or hurt him; no, this is a God who loves intimately, with a deeply personal, boundless, and most of all, healing and merciful love.

    Second, as St. Paul makes clear, this is a love that goes beyond all words except the one, Eternal Word – Jesus. We can hear Paul struggling to express the inexpressible as he prays that we may have the strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:18-19). This is the key; divine love surpasses human knowledge and can be known only by faith (Ephesians 3:17), the gift of the Father possible only by the strength that comes from the Holy Spirit (CCC §683). To those who have faith, all the riches of grace are available.

    Finally, every image of the Sacred Heart reminds us with its crown of thorns of the cost of this love. We hear in the gospel of the soldier who thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out (John 19:34). There is no love worthy of the name that is not asked to endure insult, temptation, and suffering. From the dawn of humankind it is written into our nature; it’s in our blood. But it isn’t in the blood of Christ, either from his Heavenly Father or his holy Mother, the Immaculate Conception. He willingly took it on. This is perhaps the greatest and most positive of all – that God, purely out of his infinite and merciful love for us, gave his only Son that we would be raised to life eternal. As Christ himself said, there is no greater love than this.

    St. Pio of Pietrelcina, Padre Pio, understood that very well. While passing through a crowd of people all clamoring to get near him, someone shouted, “Padre, you are all things to all men!” He replied, “No, I am all things to one Man.”

    May we all come to that kind of understanding! May we all see the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a day to set aside the negatives and focus on the overwhelming positive – that we too are all things to one Man. We are loved infinitely, personally, and mercifully; we are given the gift of faith which alone can make this love known to us beyond any human understanding; and finally, that as the ultimate expression of this love the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took human form and allowed his own heart to be pierced that we may not only look upon him in mourning for the sinfulness that put him there but with rejoicing that divine love can take even the passion and death of Christ, the greatest insult of all time, and transform it into the greatest victory the world will ever know – the resurrection to eternal life for all who believe and return to God with their whole heart (Joel 2:12).

    Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

  • Alive Inside: Monday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time

    Alive Inside: Monday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time

    Revelation 14:1-3, 4b-5; Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; Matthew 24:42a, 44; Luke 24:1-5

    Recently I saw a documentary called “Alive Inside.” It briefly follows the career of a social worker who dedicated himself to bringing music to people who suffer from brain disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The effects of the music are startling; people who spent months or years living an almost catatonic existence, isolated from the rest of the world and from their own memories, transform when they hear the music. Some weep, some laugh, some sing, some dance; all to one degree or another and at least for awhile have awakened within a sense of their own identity, reconnecting with long-forgotten memories and the emotions that go with them. As one doctor in the film says, when they listen to certain music, people who appear virtually dead to the world show that they are very much alive inside.

    Of course, no one is more alive than those who dwell in perfect union with God, and as Revelation reminds us, they hear the music of Heaven. They aren’t alone; John says he heard it, too. The reality is that the divine music is and has been all around us. The question is, do we hear it?

    We do if we detect a note of urgency in the Scriptures today, as we should in all the Scriptures given to us by the Church as the year closes. We certainly hear it in the Gospel Acclamation, for Christ says to us, Stay awake! For you do not know when the Son of Man will come (Matthew 24:42,44). He knows that it’s easy for us to “fall asleep” in the spiritual life. Our natural tendency is to allow ourselves to get comfortable; to be willing to go only so far but not farther; to pray this much but not more; to be satisfied with where we are and avoid whatever seems uncomfortably challenging.

    And we hear counterpoint to that comfort when our Lord speaks of the gift offered by the poor widow. Notice that what mattered to him was not the amount she gave but that she held nothing back; for love of God, she allowed the cost to herself to be the highest possible – to give from her own need. This is the kind of person of whom the psalmist sings, the one who truly longs to see the face of God, who wants for themselves and others what God wants for them, and who are willing to show that to Christ and the world by living like those in Revelation: Following the Lamb wherever he goes (Revelation 14:4b).

    If we listen to the Scriptures there is no doubt that we too will hear their music. The question is not if we hear it but whether we will allow it to transform us; to move us out of our self-imposed spiritual isolation; to remind of us our identity as Christians; to re-awaken the perhaps long-forgotten memory of who we were created to be and the love we were given to share; and to show our Lord that we, like all his saints, are not dead to the world but very much alive inside.

  • The Slave of the Slaves: Memorial of St. Peter Claver

    Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible.

    1 Corinthians 9:19

    Imagine being dragged aboard a ship, naked and chained in the darkness below deck, lying helpless for several weeks, through rough seas and stifling heat. There are over 500 of you; males here, females there. You are fed just enough to keep you alive. Starvation, disease, and death are rampant. No one knows where you’re going or what awaits you when the hatch finally opens. Over the centuries of the slave trade, millions of people saw that hatch open only to a lifetime of slavery in a strange New World.

    Yet, like a drop of mercy from heaven, hundreds of thousands of these same people saw that hatch open to reveal the caring, concerned face of a gentle Spanish Jesuit. He would come below and find the newborns who were still alive, pour water over them, make the sign of the Cross and pray. He then ministered to the dying, and the dead he had respectfully removed. To the sick he brought medicine and bandaged their wounds. Those too sick to leave the ship on their own he helped carry above. When he got to you, he would clean you, give you food, clothing, and fresh water. He would speak warmly and gently through an interpreter, although no translation was needed for his touch. This was a man fluent in the language of love and by the time he had finished, he had restored a measure of the dignity so shamefully taken away. Every moment, this man acted as if he was your slave and happy to be nothing more.

    That’s because he was.

    The man was Peter Claver, a 17th century priest and Jesuit who devoted his life to ministering however he could to every slave shackled in the darkness aboard the hundreds of ships landing in the port city of Cartagena. Fr. Claver took to heart the words of St. Paul, who said, Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible (1 Corinthians 9:19).

    Father’s devotion to the service of slaves sprang from his desire to imitate the service of his model, the Blessed Mother, to whom he was devoted. As a young novice he was so moved by a pilgrimage to one her shrines that he wrote, “I must dedicate myself to the service of God until death, on the understanding that I am like a slave, wholly occupied in the service of his master.” He traveled to the New World after hearing that millions of enslaved people died there knowing nothing of Christ. After his first few years serving them, Father signed the document of his final profession to the Society of Jesus with the words, “Peter Claver, slave of the slaves, forever.”

    Before the slaves were sent on, Father took whatever time was given him to teach them about Christ. He used pictures, rosaries, crucifixes, anything he could find. He concluded every session by teaching them to say, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, You are my Father. I am sorry for having offended You. I love You very much. I love You very much.” It is said that he personally baptized over 300,000 slaves.

    Fr. Claver continued his ministry for 40 years. Finally, sick, frail and exhausted, he knelt and kissed the feet of his young Jesuit successor and on the day he predicted – the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 8th, 1654 – he died at the age of 73.

    portsoy-1244572_640Although the slave trade of that era is thankfully no more, slavery still abounds. Who are the people in our own lives, chained in the darkness of sin, feeling helpless, uncertain and fearful of their destiny? Who are those with wounded or even dying spirits, on the brink of losing hope? Who are those starving for affection, for shelter, for safety, for dignity? Will you be the one to open the hatch to descend into their suffering and restore what dignity you can?

    Let us pray that we, like St. Peter Claver, may be the slave of the slaves, forever.

    St. Peter Claver, pray for us.