September 2006
(From the twenty second Sunday B)
Pope Benedict XVI's
general prayer intention
for the month of September is:
"That those who use the means of social communication may always
do so
consciously and responsibly."
The Pope's missionary
prayer
intention for September
is: "May the People of God in mission lands realize their right and
duty to keep up-to-date with developments in the faith and the Church."
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Twenty-second
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(September 3) St
Gregory the Great, pope and doctor of the Church (540-604). He
was a prefect of Rome and later became a monk. He was papal legate at
Constantinople, and five years after returning to his monastery in Rome
he was elected pope. He greatly influenced the life of the Church. He
unified the liturgy and compiled the Gregorian chant named after him.
One of Gregory’s most far reaching actions was to send missionaries to
England. This was prompted by the sight of fair-haired Anglo-Saxon
youths exposed for sale in the Roman slave market. He wrote many works
on morals and dogma. (Saints)
Deut.
4:1-2,
6-8; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5; James 1:17-18,
21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
Now when the Pharisees
with some
scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they observed
that some of his disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is,
unwashed, hands. (For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews, do not eat
without carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the
elders. And on coming from the marketplace they do not eat without
purifying themselves. And there are many other things that they have
traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and kettles
(and beds).) So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, "Why do your
disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal
with unclean hands?" He responded, "Well did Isaiah prophesy about you
hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me; In vain do they worship me, teaching
as doctrines human precepts.' You disregard God's commandment but cling
to human tradition." He summoned the crowd again and said to them,
"Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from
outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from
within are what defile." From within people, from their hearts, come
evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice,
deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these
evils come from within and they defile." (Mark
7:1-8,14-15,21-23)
There has been a
lot of
mention in the media (August 2006) of embryonic stem cell research,
which involves extracting stem cells for research from the living human
embryo at the cost of its life. This matter has come before Federal
Parliament and the Prime Minister has responded by announcing that
members of his own party will be free to vote according to their
personal conscience. They will be voting on the life and death of
countess future human embryos. It will be a so-called conscience vote,
which is
widely interpreted as offering a very real chance for this legislation
to be passed. If it is, untold numbers of human embryos will be
destroyed in the process. It brings into sharp relief the issue of
personal conscience not only for the conduct of one’s own life, but for
the course of society at large. Nearly five hundred years ago Martin
Luther when formally asked to revoke his teaching which had been
condemned by the Church, replied that his conscience dictated
otherwise. “I cannot revoke anything,” he said, “nor do I wish to;
since to go against one’s conscience is neither safe nor right: here I
stand, I cannot do otherwise.” So on the basis of following his own
conscience he set his face against the Church’s authority and went on
to begin the Protestant reformation which led to the break up of
Christendom. This in turn contributed to the emergence of a Western
culture profoundly marked by relativism in which God and his revealed
Law is regarded as no more than a subjective personal opinion. The
ultimate guide of man’s conscience in matters of religious truth and
various aspects of personal morality is now publicly regarded as being
man’s private judgment, whatever be the values that shape it. This
judgment is deemed to be sacred if sincerely and passionately held.
Therefore the
“truth” to be followed and legalized is the judgment of the greatest
number. Furthermore, what tends to be regarded as of decisive value for
the “conscience” is not an absolute such as the human embryo, but
what can be demonstrated empirically to be useful.
In our
Gospel today St Mark tells us that “the Pharisees and some of the
scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered round Jesus and they
noticed that some of his disciples were eating with unclean hands”. So
they asked our Lord “Why do your disciples not respect the tradition of
the elders but eat their food with unclean hands?”(Mark
7:1-8) They
were insisting that our Lord and his disciples respect the authority of
the elders and govern their behaviour accordingly. The issue was, then,
what authority was to govern the conscience of God’s people. Of course,
the discussion about conscience in our day is different from that
presented in our Gospel passage today. But it does remind us of the
importance of the entire issue, and of how truth is not determined
ultimately by “a conscience vote”, because as with the Pharisees and
the scribes one’s personal and strongly-felt judgment can be very
mistaken. Moreover, a judgment “according to one’s conscience” may
simply mean a judgment that is “strongly felt”. Any strongly felt
opinion may be in error. It may be blind and immensely harmful as we
see in the case of a conscientious Islamic terrorist. The erroneous
conscience may be culpable too. In our Gospel passage today our Lord in
reply to the Pharisees not only points out to them how mistaken they
are but he calls them “hypocrites”. That means that they presented
themselves as standing conscientiously for the right while in
their hearts they were duplicitous. They did not sincerely seek the
truth but rather their own way. They secretly set aside the
commandments of God: “the doctrine they teach are only human
regulations,” our Lord replied. “You put aside the commandment of God
to cling to human traditions.” Whatever be the difference between the
mistaken, duplicitous and harmful conscience in our Lord’s day and that
of our own, our Lord’s words make it very clear that the conscience of
man is to be governed entirely by the Law of God. Man must
conscientiously seek to know the law of God and shape his conscience
and
behaviour by that. He must not just passionately work out his own view
independently of God and perhaps in some defiance of him and of the
institutions he has established. In our day,
God’s Law is not accepted as the objective criterion of conscience and
the truth, largely because the very being of God is not accepted as
objective. Our culture is jealously secular.
The
Christian has a great mission to those around him. It is to bear
witness to the reality of God and his revelation, and to the Church
which makes clear how God’s nature and Law ought shape the conscience
of each individual and the conscience of the society in which he lives.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1776-1794
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From within people, from their hearts, come peace (Mark
7:1-8,14-15,21-23)
Commentary from Vatican
Council II (Gaudium
et Spes, 82)
The problems of peace and of disarmament have already been the
subject
of extensive, strenuous and constant examination. Together with
international meetings dealing with these problems, such studies should
be regarded as the first steps toward solving these serious questions,
and should be promoted with even greater urgency by way of yielding
concrete results in the future. Nevertheless, men should take heed not
to entrust themselves only to the efforts of some, while not caring
about their own attitudes…
It does them no good to work for peace as long as feelings of
hostility, contempt and distrust, as well as racial hatred and
unbending ideologies, continue to divide men and place them in opposing
camps. Consequently there is above all a pressing need for a renewed
education of attitudes and for new inspiration in public opinion. Those
who are dedicated to the work of education, particularly of the young,
or who mold public opinion, should consider it their most weighty task
to instruct all in fresh sentiments of peace. Indeed, we all need a
change of heart as we regard the entire world and those tasks which we
can perform in unison for the betterment of our race.
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The Kingdom of Jesus Christ: that is our task. So, my child, be
generous: do not be anxious to know any of the many reasons he has to
want to reign in you. If you look at him, it will be enough for you to
consider how much he loves you. You will feel a hunger to correspond to
his love, crying aloud that you really love him here and now; and you
will understand that if you don’t leave him, he won’t leave you.
(The Forge,
no.857)
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In
what
way is the
Church a mystery?
The Church is a mystery in as much as in her visible reality there
is
present and active a divine spiritual reality which can only be seen
with the eyes of faith.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.151)
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Monday
of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 4) Today let us think of Saint Rosalia (Saints)
Scripture
today: 1 Corinthians
2:1-5; Psalm 119:97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102;
Luke 4:16-30
When I came to you,
brothers,
proclaiming the mystery of God, I did not come with sublimity of words
or of wisdom. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you
except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and
fear and much trembling, and my message and my proclamation were not
with persuasive (words of) wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit
and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the
power of God. (1
Corinthians
2:1-5)
He came to
Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his
custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and
was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and
found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He
has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to
the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year
acceptable to the Lord." Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to
the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked
intently at him. He said to them, "Today this scripture passage is
fulfilled in your hearing." ........ They rose up, drove him out of the
town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been
built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through their
midst and went away.(Luke
4:16-30)
When
God made man and set him on this earth he gave him various powers.
Those powers were to enable him to fill the earth and to work towards
mastering it. The exercise of man’s God-given power ought lead him to
acknowledge the greatness of the One on whom he depends and from whom
he has received everything. But the history of man from the very
beginning shows that he tends to use his powers to glorify not God but
himself. That is to say, in our efforts to reach our goals we rely on
ourselves and regard our achievements as the fruit of our own efforts
and power alone. We want to be like gods, not dependent on nor subject
to anything higher. This was the temptation of our first parents and we
see it operating throughout the history of man. In our first reading
today from
the first Letter of St Paul to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians
2:1-5) St
Paul states that in
his proclamation of the Gospel he came to them not relying on any power
of his own, not presenting to them a “show of oratory or philosophy”,
but simply to tell them “what God had guaranteed”. That is to say, he
came to announce what almighty God had done and promised to do. He came
to speak of the power of God. The Revelation which the Apostles and
down the ages the Church have handed on has been a revelation of God
and his power, for as St Thomas Aquinas writes, it is in the acts of
his power that God reveals his mercy. It is for good reason then
that we begin our recital of the Creed by proclaiming that we believe
in one God, the Father almighty. It is the power of God that man thinks
of first when he thinks of God, but the Christian knows from revelation
that this power is almighty, infinite. It is not only infinite power,
but it manifests the divine mercy. In this sense as St Paul says, our
faith
“does not depend on human philosophy but on the power of God.”
In our Gospel
today
Saint Luke tells us of the return to Nazareth of our Lord after having
begun his public ministry. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath
day as he usually did, stood up to read, opened the Scriptures and
began reading the prophecy of Isaiah about the future Messiah who would
bring the Lord’s time of favour. This was happening right now, our Lord
told his townspeople (Luke
4:16-30).
The upshot was that our Lord and his message were rejected and, indeed,
his own life was put at risk. He quietly escaped and left his home town
for good,
going on to the rest of Galilee and Judea to preach the Good News of
the Kingdom, to heal, to raise the dead, and to form his disciples for
the commencement of the Church. Our Lord in his ministry displayed the
power of God. He was described in the preaching of the infant Church as
powerful in the teaching, the miracles and signs that he worked.
Nevertheless he,
the Messiah, was crucified. Indeed, St Paul in the first reading tells
the Corinthians that he came to them telling them simply about Jesus
and “only about him as the crucified Christ”. This was because it was
precisely in the crucifixion that the power of God was most at work.
The proclamation of a crucified Messiah was above all the proclamation
of the power of God at work for the redemption of the world, and when
the Christian professes his faith in God the Father almighty, the
greatest evidence of this almighty power is the Incarnation and the
Death and Resurrection of his divine Son. Christ prayed in the Garden
that the Father would take the cup away from him, but no, for our
Lord’s Passion was to be the greatest of all manifestations of the
power of God for the sake of fallen humanity. The Letter to the Hebrews
tells us that during the Passion the Holy Spirit was especially active,
and it was by the power of the Holy Spirit that Christ offered himself
to the Father.
In a world
which
tends markedly to rely on its own power, the Christian has a special
mission to bear witness to the almighty power of God which in its acts
reveals his unlimited mercy.
(E.J.Tyler)
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«The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me» (Luke 4:16-30)
(Commentary from the Roman Liturgy (Ritual of Confirmation: the
laying on of hands)
All-powerful God,
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Look at these baptized on which we lay our hands:
Through baptism, you freed them from sin,
And by water and Holy Spirit you gave them new life (Jn 3,4).
Send your Holy Spirit now upon them,
As you promised.
Give them in fullness
The Spirit that rested upon your Son Jesus:
Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
Spirit of counsel and of strength,
Spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord (Is 11,2).
Fill them with the spirit of wonder and awe in your presence.
We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Savior,
Who lives forever and ever.
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The first step towards bringing others to the ways of Christ is
for
them to see you happy and serene, sure in your advance towards God.
(The Forge,
no.858)
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What
does it
mean to say that the Church is the universal sacrament of salvation?
This means that she is the sign and instrument both of the
reconciliation and communion of all humanity with God and of the unity
of the entire human race.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.152)
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Tuesday
of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 5) Today let us think of Saint Bertin
(Saints)
Scripture: 1 Corinthians
2:10b-16; Psalm 145:8-9, 10-11, 12-13ab,
13cd-14; Luke 4:31-37
Jesus then went down to
Capernaum, a town of Galilee. He taught them on the sabbath, and they
were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority. In the
synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, and he
cried out in a loud voice, Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of
Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One
of God! Jesus rebuked him and said, "Be quiet! Come out of him!" Then
the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him
without doing him any harm. They were all amazed and said to one
another, "What is there about his word? For with authority and power he
commands the unclean spirits, and they come out." And news of him
spread everywhere in the surrounding region.(Luke
4:31-37)
Years ago it was
difficult to study religion at tertiary level in Australia. There was
no school of Studies in Religion at, say, Sydney University nor in
numbers of other universities. Now this discipline has come into its
own. At Secondary School level there is now a thriving Religious
Studies subject at Higher School Certificate level, which was not
thought of forty years ago. One of the many advantages of this
situation from the point of view of one interested in Christianity is
that the distinctive character of the Christian religion can be studied
within the context of many other religions. The Christian religion
centres
around the person of Christ, of course, but what does the Christian
religion offer which is especially distinctive? A question such as that
cannot be answered in a few lines, but let us take our Gospel passage
today and observe the interchange between Christ and the devil whom our
Lord is casting out of the man who is possessed. The demon, in his
childish bravado, attempts to dominate the situation by exposing the
secret of the One who is wielding such power over him. “I know
who you are: the Holy One of God.”
(Luke 4:31-37)
Christ immediately silences him, but the demon has indeed
understood
the distinctive character of the one who is exercising such spiritual
strength. Christ is the Holy One of God, recalling to our minds the
words of God in the Old Testament, “Be holy, for I am holy!” Revealed
religion summons sinful man to holiness, for God who reveals himself is
holy. Christ the
Holy One came to save man from sin and give him a share in the divine
holiness. The Christian religion brings salvation and forgiveness of
sin, together with the gift of God’s life and holiness. To appreciate
Christ
adequately,
then, one must have an appreciation of sin. Without any sense of sin,
Christ may seem irrelevant - and for so many he does seem irrelevant
except when they notice that his followers perform humanitarian
services for the needy.
The danger
before
man is that while he may have a vague sense of personal sin it may
never get much beyond a sense of remorse or regret for past or present
faults and failures. The regret could be present for a variety of
motives, but for there to be a sense of sin some sense of God and his
holiness is surely necessary. This the conscience of man is capable of
providing and prompting, but his conscience usually requires some help
and in any case it can so easily be snuffed out or ignored. While the
great world religions represent man’s implicit and explicit search for
God, this does not necessarily mean that they represent man’s search
for a holy God who will save from sin. Buddhism does not appear to be
inspired by this distinctive search, nor, I think, does Islam. I do not
think Islam is noted for its sense of the sinful predicament of man and
it certainly does not allow for a doctrine of a holy God redeeming man
from his innate inherited sin. In its eclectic reliance on elements of
revealed
religion it missed this fundamental point. I suspect that this lack
subtly impedes its appreciation of God as a God of loving holiness,
however much it stresses the transcendence of God. Whatever be the
value of these passing observations, the point I mean to stress here is
that a very distinctive feature of revealed religion especially as
embodied in Christianity is its teaching about the holy character of
the infinite God. God is all-holy. By this is especially meant that he
is without sin, that he abhors sin, and that he comes to man to take
away the
sin of the world. Speaking more precisely, this holiness of God is a
holy
love, and the Spirit of God which is the gift of Christ is the Spirit
of holy love, a love supremely manifest in the Crucified. The sinful
demon being cast out in the Gospel knew that Christ was the Holy One,
the one without sin, and that he had come to combat sin.
Let us ask the
Holy
Spirit for a deep sense of the evil of sin and for a sense that we are
profoundly afflicted by this very evil. Our religion proclaims that God
has come
to save us and to make us holy.
(E.J.Tyler)
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“What is there about
his
speech? He commands the unclean spirits with authority and power.”
(Luke
4:31-37)
Commentary by Baudoin de Ford
(? – around 1190), Cistercian abbot (Homily 6)
“God’s word is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged
sword.”
(Hebrews 4:12)… It acts in the creation of the world, in the world’s
running and in its redemption. For what is more effective and stronger?
“Who can tell the mighty deeds of the Lord, or proclaim all his
praises?” (Psalm 106:2)
The Word’s effectiveness manifests itself in its works; it also
manifests itself in preaching. The Word does not return to God without
having produced its effect, but all to whom it is sent benefit from it
(Isaiah 55:11). It is “effective and sharper than any two-edged sword”
when it is received with faith and love. What is impossible to the
person who believes, what is difficult to the person who loves? When
the words of God ring out, they pierce the believer’s heart like “sharp
arrows of a warrior.” (Ps 120:4) They enter the heart like spears and
settle in its most intimate depths. Yes, this Word is sharper than a
two-edged sword, for it is more incisive than any other strength or
power, more subtle than every subtlety of the human genius, sharper
than every learned perception by the human word.
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A Catholic man or woman can never forget this key idea: we have to
imitate Jesus Christ in every sphere of society, without rejecting
anyone.
(The Forge,
no.859)
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Why
is
the Church the ‘people of God’?
The Church is the ‘people of God’ because it pleased God to
sanctify
and save men not in isolation but by making them into one people
gathered together by the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.153)
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Wednesday
of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 6) Today let us think of Blessed Bertrand
(Saints)
Scripture
today: 1 Corinthians
3:1-9; Psalm 33:12-13, 14-15,
20-21; Luke 4:38-44
After he left the synagogue, he
entered the house of Simon. Simon's mother-in-law was afflicted with a
severe fever, and they interceded with him about her. He stood over
her, rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up immediately and
waited on them. At sunset, all who had people sick with various
diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them and
cured them. And demons also came out from many, shouting, "You are the
Son of God." But he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak
because they knew that he was the Messiah. At daybreak, Jesus left and
went to a deserted place. The crowds went looking for him, and when
they came to him, they tried to prevent him from leaving them. But he
said to them, "To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of
the kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent." And he
was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.(Luke
4:38-44)
There
is a practice of religion that is faithful in daily prayer, careful
with personal morality, one that keeps the commandments of God and is
in general upright in public and private life. One thinks of the young
man who came to our Lord able to tell him that he had kept God’s
commandments from his earliest days. What was our Lord’s response? Our
Lord asked him to leave all and to follow him. The young man refused,
attached as he was to his possessions. Now, what is it that our Lord
was
inviting the young man to do with him? That question embraces a prior
question - What was our Lord himself doing? He was going everywhere
preaching the Kingdom of God. In fact,
as we see in today’s Gospel (Luke 4:38-44) our Lord made it clear
that this is exactly what he was sent to do: "because this is what I
was sent to do". He was sent to the
House of Israel to announce
the Kingdom that had arrived in him. That is to say, it was of the
essence of Christ’s mission to proclaim the Kingdom of God which was
present in him, which would be established especially by his death and
resurrection, and which comes to everyone who lives in him. Our Lord
spent much of his time in his public ministry training his apostles and
disciples to participate in this mission. The Church which he was
establishing was to be one which shared in his mission, and just before
he ascended into heaven he charged his disciples to go to the whole
world and make disciples of the nations. All this means that being
apostolic is of the essence of Christ’s mission and it is of the
essence of the life and identity of the Church and of all Christ's
faithful.
While the form
of
the apostolate will vary among the disciples of Christ, nevertheless as
the Church has been insisting not only since the Second Vatican Council
forty years ago but well before, and indeed from its very beginnings,
it is of the essence of the Christian life to be apostolic. The
Christian, the one who lives in Christ by baptism and by Confirmation,
is called to be Christ’s envoy to the world around him and beyond his
immediate circle. This is of the essence of his Christian life. And so,
to return to my initial observation, while there is a practice of
religion that is faithful in daily prayer, careful with personal
morality, one that keeps the commandments of God and in general is
upright in public and private life, if this lacks an apostolic spirit,
an essential component of Catholic and Christian life is missing. And
missing it is in the lives of many devout members of Christ’s faithful.
They are not in their professional life, in their family life, nor
among their friends, nor even in their own parish, exercising anything
like an active apostolate. They are not doing anything concrete to
bring the knowledge and the love of Christ to others. They leave that
entirely to others - and many others do this admirably, but many do
not. Consider how great would be the impact on the world
if the entire body of the Church’s lay faithful were exercising this
apostolate of bringing Christ to the world not only by a good and
industrious life, but by the witness of their explicit reference to
Christ, to his message, to the Church’s teaching, whenever this is
possible in their daily life. The entire body of the Church is called
to be apostolic and missionary in everyday life.
Let us take up
the
command of Christ addressed to his disciples as he was about to return
to
his Father, that they go to the whole world and make disciples
of all nations. This we must find a way of doing, in a manner
appropriate to our vocation. It is the calling of all Christ’s faithful.
(E.J.Tyler)
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“The crowds went in
search
of him… But he said to them, ‘I must also go to the other towns.’”
Commentary by Saint Bernard
(1091-1153), Cistercian monk and Doctor of the Church
(Sermon 84 on the Song of Songs, 3)
May every soul searching for God know that he has gone ahead, that
he
first sought her… “On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart
loves.” (Song 3:1) The soul seeks the Word, but the Word first sought
her… Left to herself, our soul would be no more than a breath that goes
out haphazardly and does not come back. Listen to the moanings and
supplications of the one who is roaming and has lost her way: “I have
gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant.” (Ps 119:176) Oh man,
you want to return; but if that depended only on your will, why would
you ask for help? … It is obvious that our soul wants to return but
cannot; she is nothing but a roaming breath, and by herself she will
never return… But whence does this will come to her? From the fact that
the Word has already visited her and sought her. This seeking was not
in vain, since it gave rise to the will, without which no return is
possible.
But it is not enough to have been thus sought only once. The soul
is too feeble, and returning is too difficult… Saint Paul said: “The
desire to do right is there but not the power.” (Rom 7:18) So what is
the soul asking in the Psalm that I quoted? Nothing other than to be
sought; for she would not seek if she were not sought, and she would
not begin again to seek if she had not been sought enough.
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Our Lord Jesus wants it: we have to follow him closely. There is
no
other way. This is the task of the Holy Spirit in each soul, in yours
too. You have to be docile, so as not to put obstacles in the way of
your God.
(The Forge,
no.860)
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What
are the characteristics of the people of God?
One becomes a member of this people through faith in Christ and
Baptism. This people has for its origin God the Father, for its head
Jesus Christ, for its hallmark the dignity and freedom of the sons of
God; for its law the new commandment of love; for its mission to be the
salt of the earth and the light of the world; and for its destiny the
Kingdom of God, already begun on earth.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.154)
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Thursday
of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 7) Today let us think of Saint Regina (Saints)
Scripture
today: 1 Corinthians
3:18-23; Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6;
Luke 5:1-11
While the crowd was pressing in
on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake
of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen
had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the
boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short
distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from
the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out
into deep water and lower your nets for a catch." Simon said in reply,
"Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at
your command I will lower the nets." When they had done this, they
caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They
signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They
came and filled both boats so that they were in danger of sinking. When
Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, "Depart
from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." For astonishment at the catch of
fish they had made seized him and all those with him, and likewise
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon. Jesus
said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching
men." When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything
and followed him.(Luke
5:1-11)
In
our Gospel passage
today we are presented with an interchange between Christ and Simon
Peter. It is surely possible that Luke, writing years after and with
the ministry of Simon as the divinely-appointed rock of the infant
Church well known, chose to throw light on the beginnings of Simon’s
relationship with Christ. That relationship illustrates much of
Christ’s relationship with the entire Church and each of her members.
Let us notice that the scene opens with Christ by the lake and “with
the crowd pressing around him listening to the word of God”. But Christ
chooses not to preach and teach the word alone and in isolation.
Rather, catching “sight of two boats close to the bank”, he “got into
one of the boats - it was Simon’s ... Then he sat down and taught the
crowds from the boat.” (Luke 5:1-11)
It is
surely likely that in presenting this scene to the readership of the
early Church, St Luke was picturing to himself the beginnings of the
fundamental reality at work behind the teaching and preaching Church,
the rock of which was Simon. It is Christ who teaches from the boat
which is the Church, and that boat is the one containing Simon. From
that boat comes the word of God for “the crowd”. Let us imagine
ourselves present with Christ in the company of the Simon of our day
who is his successor, all of us listening to the words which come from
the mouth of the Lord. Now though, Christ is invisible and he speaks by
the mouth of Simon.
Having given
his
teaching Christ turns to Simon to open up before him the mission with
which he will be entrusted. “Put out into deep water and pay out your
nets for a catch.” Those words must have remained with Simon all his
life and through the inspired text of Luke they remain with the Church
till the end of time. Simon alone, and we alone, are incapable of
making the catch God intends, even though we might work “all night
long”. But with the power of Christ a great catch can be made, and here
we might think of the early Church beyond the years of St Luke’s
writing. Cardinal Newman used maintain that one of the great points
that can be made in defence of the divine origin and constitution of
the Church is the victory of the Church during the first few centuries.
The great Cardinal long intended to write a history of the early Church
bringing out this very point. Despite extraordinarily humble beginnings
- such as in our scene today - and numerous overwhelming persecutions,
the Church grew and grew, making catch after catch. Eventually “such a
huge number of fish were hauled in that the nets began to tear”. Within
a little over three centuries of this humble scene, the Roman Empire
was proclaimed officially to be Christian. That itself was by no means
an unmixed blessing but it is a signal of the divine power at work in
the apostolic efforts - the casting out into the deep - of Simon and
his companion disciples. Divine grace accompanies the saving work of
the Church and this should give courage to all of us as we take up
Christ’s call to make disciples of all the nations.
There is a
fundamental thing to be remembered, however, by Christ’s faithful all
of whom have received a share in this mission to be a fisher of men. It
is that we are all sinners and must ever be repenting. “When Simon
Peter” - and let us notice that St Luke at this point gives to Simon
his title of Rock - “saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying,
‘Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man’.” Christ is the Holy One of God who
takes away the sin of the world. Let us strive to live in Christ and in
his grace, aiming every day to bring others into Christ as well.
(E.J.Tyler)
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“Put out into deep
water
and lower your nets” (Luke 5:1-11)
Commentary by St Ambrose
(around 340-397), Bishop of Milan and Doctor of the Church
(Treatise on the Gospel
of Luke, IV, 71-76)
“Put out into deep water,” that is to say, into the high seas of
debate. Is there any depth that is comparable to the abyss of “the
riches and the wisdom and the knowledge” of the Son God, (Rom 11:33),
to the proclamation of his divine filiation? … The Church is led by
Peter to the high seas of the testimony, so as to contemplate the risen
Son of God and the Holy Spirit who is poured forth.
What are those nets of the apostles, which Christ orders them to
lower?
Are they not the linking of words, the twists in discourse, the depth
of arguments, which don’t allow those whom they have caught to escape?
These fishing utensils of the apostles don’t make the ones they have
caught perish; rather, they preserve them, they draw them out of the
abyss towards the light, they lead them from the lowest depths to the
heights…
“Master,” Peter said, “we have been hard at it all night long and
have
caught nothing; but if you say so, I will lower the nets.” I too, Lord,
know that it is night for me when you do not command me. I have not yet
converted anyone through my words; it is still night. I spoke on the
day of the Epiphany: I lowered the net, but I haven’t caught anything
yet. I lowered the net during the day. I am waiting for you to give me
the order. Upon your word, I will lower it again. Self-confidence is
empty, but humility is fertile. Those who had not caught anything until
then, now, at the Lord’s voice, they caught an enormous amount of fish.
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A clear sign that you are seeking holiness is what I might call
‘the
healthy psychological prejudice’ of thinking usually about others
(while forgetting yourself) so as to bring them closer to God.
(The Forge,
no.861)
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How does the people of God share
in
the three functions of Christ as Priest, Prophet and King?
The people of God participates in Christ’s
priestly
office insofar as the baptized are consecrated by the Holy Spirit to
offer spiritual sacrifices. They share in Christ’s prophetic office
when with a supernatural sense of faith they adhere faithfully to that
faith and deepen their understanding and witness to it. The people of
God share in his kingly office by means of service, initiating Jesus
Christ who as King of the universe made himself the servant of all,
especially the poor and suffering.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.155)
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Friday
of the twenty second week of Ordinary Time II
(September 8) Feast
of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Today the
Church celebrates the dawning of the Redemption over the world when the
Mother of the Saviour was born. The Blessed Virgin occupies a unique
place in the history of salvation, and heaven rejoices at her birth.
The Lord commissioned for her the highest mission entrusted to any
creature. (Saints)
Micah
5:1-4a or Romans 8:28-30; Psalm 13:6ab,
6c; Matthew 1:1-16, 18-23 or 1:18-23
Jacob was the father of Joseph,
the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah.
Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother
Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was
found with child through the holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he
was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to
divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of
the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do
not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through
the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will
bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his
people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord
had said through the prophet: Behold, the virgin shall be with child
and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means "God is
with us."(Matthew:
1:18-23)
It is the family which
especially appreciates the value of those who are its members, and
which therefore celebrates with special love a birthday. The
celebration of a birthday is the celebration of the value and
irreplaceable identity of the person whose birthday it is. Today,
though, we the members of God's family the Church celebrate the
birthday of the mother of the Redeemer of
mankind. From the cross this same Redeemer gave her to us to be our
mother also when he entrusted her into the keeping of his beloved
disciple. “Behold your mother” he said to him, and turning to her he
said, “Behold your son”. We were all involved in that gift. So today we
celebrate the birthday of Christ’s mother and our mother too. As
Christ’s mother she was intimately associated with him in his
redemptive work, accompanying him in this to the foot of the Cross
where she remained with him to the very end. In doing that she became
our mother and our model too, showing us the way we are to follow. We
too are called to accompany her in an intimate association with the
Redeemer in the work of man’s salvation. In our life of union with
Jesus and sharing in his mission we remain constantly at the side of
Mary his mother and ours. She is the help of Christians and we who are
her children pray to her constantly that she will help us now and at
the hour of our death to be faithful to our calling. She is our mother
in all of this, and so with good reason we celebrate her birthday.
But more
importantly than her role in the redemption of man, Mary was utterly
sinless. She heard the word of God and put it into practice with utter
perfection. On one occasion hearing our Lord speak, a woman from the
crowd raised her voice in praise of the mother who bore and
nurtured him. Without rejecting that praise, our Lord answered by
saying that praise is due even more to the one who hears the word of
God and puts it into practice. It was in this that the mother of Christ
was so marvellously distinguished. No trace of sin ever touched her.
Sin is so profoundly entrenched in the constitution of man and
consequently in the life of the world that it is almost unimaginable
how a human person could be conceived, born and live her life entirely
sinless. But such is the case, and today we celebrate the birthday of
this person and she is our mother. Many great persons have been born
into this world, persons who went on to have impact on the life of man
for good or for evil. But no human person has begun life and lived it
out utterly sinless other than the Blessed Virgin Mary - the man Christ
did, of course, but he was a divine person with a human nature. Mary
was the only human person who lived an utterly holy life free of sin by
the grace of God won for her by her divine Son. This person is our
mother, and it is her birthday the Church celebrates today.
Let us
celebrate
the nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary today with love and gratitude.
We have a mother who is and always was all-holy. She is our mother and
our model. She tells us what she told the stewards at the wedding feast
of Cana: “Do whatever he tells you.” Let us resolve to live out our
Christian lives with all the fidelity to Christ we can muster - and
doing so with Mary our mother constantly by our side. In our union with
Christ let us keep our hand in the hand of Mary.
(E.J.Tyler)
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The birth of
the new Eve
Comment by Saint Bernard (1091-1153),
Cistercian monk and Doctor of the Church
Praise of the
Virgin Mother; Homily 2, §3
Rejoice, Adam, our father, and above all you, Eve, our mother. You
were
parents to all of us and at the same time our murderers. You who doomed
us to death even before we were born, be comforted now. One of your
daughters – and what a daughter! – will comfort you… So come, Eve, run
to Mary. May the mother run to the daughter. The daughter will answer
for her mother and will wipe away her fault… For the human race will
now be raised up by a woman.
What did Adam say in times past? “The woman whom you put here with
me –
she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.” (Gen 3:12) Those
were nasty words, which increased his fault rather than wiping it away.
But divine Wisdom triumphed over so much malice. After vainly trying to
give birth to the opportunity to forgive by questioning Adam, God now
finds that opportunity in the treasure of his inexhaustible goodness.
He gives the first woman a substitute, a wise woman in the place of the
one who was foolish, a woman who is as humble as the other was proud.
Instead of the fruit of the tree of death, she offers to humankind
the
bread of life. She replaces this bitter and poisonous nourishment with
the sweetness of an eternal food. So Adam, change your unjust
accusation to an expression of gratitude and say: “Lord, this woman
whom you gave me offered me the fruit of the tree of life. I ate of it;
its flavour was sweeter than honey from the comb (Ps 19:11), because by
means of this fruit, you gave me back life.” So that is why the angel
was sent to a virgin. Oh admirable Virgin, worthy of all honours! Woman
whom we must venerate infinitely among all women, you repair the fault
of our first parents, you give life back to all their descendants.
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It should be engraved deeply on your soul that God doesn’t need
you.
His calling is a most loving mercy of his Heart.
(The Forge,
no.862)
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In what way is the Church the body of
Christ?
The risen Christ unites his faithful people to himself in an
intimate
way by means of the Holy Spirit. In this way, those who believe in
Christ, inasmuch as they are close to him especially in the Eucharist,
are united among themselves in charity. They form one body, the Church,
whose unity is experienced in the diversity of its members and its
functions.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.156)
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Saturday
of the twenty second week of Ordinary Time II
(September 9) Let us think today of Saint Peter Claver, priest. (Saints)
Scripture
today: 1 Corinthians
4:6b-15; Psalm 145:17-18, 19-20,
21; Luke 6:1-5
While he was going through a
field of grain on a sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of
grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. Some Pharisees
said, "Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?" Jesus said
to them in reply, "Have you not read what David did when he and those
(who were) with him were hungry? (How) he went into the house of God,
took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat,
ate of it, and shared it with his companions." Then he said to them,
"The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath."(Luke
6:1-5)
Our
Gospel scene opens today with our Lord taking a walk with his disciples
through the cornfields. It is a Sabbath day and quite likely our Lord
had been teaching in the synagogue and perhaps engaged in various other
forms of his public ministry. It had been a very full morning
undoubtedly and our Lord was going apart with his disciples, making of
the remainder of the day a day of religious rest with his heavenly
Father very much in his heart. Perhaps they had had very little to eat,
and our Lord’s disciples were picking ears of corn and eating them (Luke 6:1-5). To begin with, the
scene suggests a gentle familiarity between our Lord and his disciples.
There would surely have been plenty of gentle laughter, gentle
instruction, gentle correction. Somehow the Pharisees must have been
nearby and watching this, because they complained directly to our Lord
about the behaviour of his disciples. They were picking ears of corn on
the Sabbath day and that was forbidden. Clearly the prohibition against
picking ears of corn had gradually developed to prevent the practice of
the servile work of ordinary farming on the Sabbath day. But this had
degenerated into a range of restrictions on activities which were in no
way a continuation of the workaday week. All the disciples were doing
here was helping themselves to a little snack in the presence of the
Master. Our Lord proceeded to point out to the Pharisees how
unscriptural they were.
The point that
comes through in our Gospel passage, though, is the loving and dominant
figure of Jesus. He is the heart and soul of the group of disciples,
and they love him and look to him for their guidance. He easily parries
the objections of the Pharisees, displaying a far greater command of
the Scriptures than they and an ease in applying its teaching to
concrete situations. He is the authentic interpreter of the Scriptures,
in this case the Old Testament. He is the master and the interpreter of
the Sabbath day itself, determining how it should be observed, and
displaying a humanness that is immensely winning. So let us gaze in
spirit on the person of Jesus for he is the centre-stage of our Gospel
scene. How wonderful it would have been to know him! With
good reason on one occasion our Lord said to his disciples that, happy
the eyes that see what you see and the ears that hear what you hear.
Many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see and never saw it!
They were blessed indeed in being called to be his disciples, and it is
so very revealing of the nature of God to see how accessible our Lord,
who is God himself, was
to them. This same Jesus is with each of us who are in the state of
grace. He dwells within us together with the Father and the Holy
Spirit. This same Jesus comes to us in his Sacraments, and especially
in the Holy Eucharist. He is constantly present in the Tabernacle. He
is present to us in so many ways. His immediacy to us is not visible,
but it is as real as it was with his disciples.
Let us rest in
our
Gospel scene today gazing on Christ with the eyes of our heart,
contemplating his goodness and his love. Let us resolve to remain in
his company forever.
(E.J.Tyler)
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"The Son of Man is
lord of
the Sabbath." (Luke 6: 1-5)
Commentary by Pope Benedict XVI (Homily,
XX World Youth Day, Sunday, 21 August 2005)
The Eucharist is an essential part of Sunday… On Easter
morning,
first the women and then the disciples had the grace of seeing the
Lord. From that moment on, they knew that the first day of the week,
Sunday, would be his day, the day of Christ the Lord. The day when
creation began became the day when creation was renewed. Creation and
redemption belong together.
That is why Sunday is so important. It is good that today,
in
many
cultures, Sunday is a free day, and is often combined with Saturday so
as to constitute a "week-end" of free time. Yet this free time is empty
if God is not present.
Dear friends! Sometimes, our initial impression is that
having
to
include time for Mass on a Sunday is rather inconvenient. But if you
make the effort, you will realize that this is what gives a proper
focus to your free time. Do not be deterred from taking part in Sunday
Mass, and help others to discover it too. This is because the Eucharist
releases the joy that we need so much, and we must learn to grasp it
ever more deeply, we must learn to love it. Let us pledge ourselves to
do this - it is worth the effort! Let us discover the intimate riches
of the Church's liturgy and its true greatness: it is not we who
are
celebrating for ourselves, but it is the living God himself who is
preparing a banquet for us.
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Treat those who are in error with loving kindness, with Christian
charity. But do not compromise with anything that goes against our holy
Faith.
(The Forge,
no.863)
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Who
is
the Head of this body, the Church?
Christ “is the Head of the body, the Church” (Colossians 1:18).
The
Church lives from him, in him and for him. Christ and the Church make
up the “whole Christ” (Saint Augustine); “Head and members form, as it
were, one and the same mystical person” (St Thomas Aquinas).
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.157)
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Twenty
third Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(September 10) Today let us think of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino
(Saints)
Scripture
today: Isaiah
35:4-7a; Psalm 146:7, 8-9, 9-10;
James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37
Again he left the district of
Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district
of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech
impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by
himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man's ears and,
spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned,
and said to him, "Ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened!") And (immediately)
the man's ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he
spoke plainly. He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he
ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They were exceedingly
astonished and they said, "He has done all things well. He makes the
deaf hear and (the) mute speak."(Mark 7:31-37)
There
are many things that could be said about our Gospel passage today, and
about how our Lord took aside the deaf man who also had an impediment
in his speech and proceeded to cure him. Our Lord insisted with the man
that he not tell others about it (Mark
7:31-37) probably because he did
not want his true mission to be misunderstood and completely lost sight
of. The man went off and did what our Lord had forbidden him to do and
undoubtedly this impeded our Lord’s work to some extent, just as the
agitation to make him king impeded his work too. His work was to take
away the sin of the world and to confer on us the gift of his holiness.
The pivotal act in this great redemptive project was his death and
resurrection. But people were interested in other things he was doing:
feeding the crowds, curing the sick and raising the dead. This is what
they spoke about when speaking of him. When he gave them something
immensely important such as the doctrine of the coming Eucharist,
telling them that they would have to eat his body and drink his blood
he was rejected. They spoke about him, yes, but in an entirely
unfavourable light. So as we think of our Lord forbidding those he
benefited from speaking about him in what was in effect a misleading
way, let us turn our thoughts to the kind of witness to Jesus our words
ought be giving.
We remember
how
Christ before Pontius Pilate stated that for this he was born and came
into the world, to bear witness to the truth. He called to himself his
Apostles to join him in this great work of bearing witness to the
divinely-revealed truth about him. His disciples were to go to the
whole world and by their words and their lives make disciples of all
the nations. Our whole bearing, our entire life, and all that we say
ought bear witness to the truth, especially the Truth which is the
person of Christ. Let us then resolve to bear witness to the truth just
as Christ did. This we do at home within our family, gently and
respectfully, yet with the greatest firmness when need be. We do this
in our work environment and this can involve tremendous difficulty when
others scorn and ridicule aspects of the Catholic and Christian faith.
We do it among our friends, our acquaintances and daily contacts
whenever the opportunity is favourable or required of us. The main
point is that we come to understand that the work of bearing witness to
Jesus and to his revelation as transmitted to us by the Church is an
absolutely essential aspect of our Christian life. The perennial
situation is that all too few of Christ’s faithful take up the work,
the daily work, of being apostolic. The result of this is that all too
few Australians attain a true knowledge of what God has revealed
because most Australians and most Catholic do not go to Church to hear
the word of God. So it has to be brought to them by their daily
colleagues.
As we think of
our
Lord granting speech and hearing to the man brought to him, let us
consider our use of the speech and the hearing that has been granted to
us. It has been given to us to use in such a way that God will be
glorified. Let us resolve to interact with our neighbour in such a way
that daily God will be honoured the more.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.2464-2474
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"He has done all
things
well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak." (Mark 7:31-37)
Commentary by John Tauler (1300-1361),
Dominican.
Second Sermon for the
Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (Sermon 49)
It is very important to understand what makes men
deaf.
From the
time that the first man opened his ears to the voice of the Enemy, he
became deaf and all of us after him, so that we cannot hear or
understand the sweet voice of the Eternal Word. Yet we know that the
Eternal Word is still so unutterably near to us inwardly, in the very
principle of our being, that not our humanity itself, our own nature,
our own thoughts, nor anything that can be named or said or understood,
is so near or planted so deep within us as the Eternal Word. It is ever
speaking in us; but we do not hear it because of the deep deafness that
has come upon us… Man’s faculties are so benumbed that he has become
dumb, and does not know his own self. If he desired to speak of what is
within him, he could not, for he does not know how it stands with him,
nor can be discern his own ways and works…
What is this deeply hurtful whispering of the Enemy?
It is
every
disordered image or suggestion that starts up in your mind, whether
belonging to your creaturely desires and wishes, or this world and
every thing that belongs to it; whether it be wealth, reputation, even
friends or relations, or your own nature, or whatever lays hold of your
imagination. Through all these things he has his access to your soul…
Now when our Lord comes and puts his finger into
man’s ear
and touches his tongue, how eloquent will he become!
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Have recourse to the sweet Lady Mary, Mother of God and our Mother
also, entrusting to her care the cleanliness of soul and body of all
mankind. Tell her that you want to call upon her, and want others to
call upon her continually. And that you want to conquer always, in the
bad moments - or the good, very good moments - of your struggle against
those who are hostile to our being children of God.
(The Forge, 864)
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Why
is the Church called the “Bride of Christ”?
She is called the “Bride of Christ” because the Lord himself
called
himself her “Spouse” (Mark 2:19). The Lord has loved the Church and has
joined her to himself in an everlasting covenant. He has given himself
up for her in order to purify her with his blood and “sanctify her”
(Ephesians 5:26), making her the fruitful mother of all the children of
God. While the term “body” expresses the unity of the “head” with the
members, the term “bride” emphasises the distinction of the two in
their personal relationship.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.158)
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Monday
of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 11) Today let us think of Saint Adelphus
(Saints)
Scripture today:
1
Corinthians 5:1-8; Psalm 5:5-6, 7,
12; Luke 6:6-11
On another Sabbath he went into
the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand
was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely to see
if he would cure on the Sabbath so that they might discover a reason to
accuse him. But he realized their intentions and said to the man with
the withered hand, "Come up and stand before us." And he rose and stood
there. Then Jesus said to them, "I ask you, is it lawful to do good on
the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy
it?" Looking around at them all, he then said to him, "Stretch out your
hand." He did so and his hand was restored. But they became enraged and
discussed together what they might do to Jesus. (Luke
6:6-11)
Many
things about God
are taught to us in the Scriptures, for the Scriptures are the inspired
word of God himself. His revelation was precisely to reveal himself and
his plan for drawing us into his friendship. But while it is about God,
it is also a revelation about us, about our nature, our condition and
our prospects. One of the very important things that Sacred Scripture
and the entire revelation of God reveals about man is that he is
afflicted with sin. A great deal of information about sin is accessible
to ordinary human reason and reflection, but if we were left simply to
our own devices and resources a great proportion of mankind would (and
does) scarcely advert to the presence and seriousness of sin. So
Scripture teaches us about sin, about the sin that afflicts us and all
mankind, and how serious it is. It is above all the person of Christ
who reveals sin to us. He reveals it in his teaching, and he reveals it
by his passion and death because it was sin - our sin as well as the
sin of those who put him to death - which put him on the cross. As we
look on the Crucified we ought say, this is what sin does. But as well
as this, our Lord’s public ministry contains much that reveals the
nature and the serious of sin to us.
Our Gospel passage
today is a case in point. Our Lord was
teaching in the Sabbath and there were the scribes and Pharisees
watching him hostilely to see if he would cure the man with the ruined
hand. They hoped to have him in their power if he did. Our Lord was
perfectly aware of their hidden hostility, and he
proceeded to challenge them by calling the afflicted man forward. He
then asked them to tell him if it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath
day or to do evil (Luke
6:6-11).
He was inviting them to come out into the open and debate with him on a
point of divine law and be open to the truth that would be immediately
apparent. But of course they refused to take that risk and remained
silent, and so at a word our Lord serenely proceeded to heal the man
before the eyes of all. What was the reaction of the scribes and
Pharisees to this manifest evidence of the presence and action of
Almighty God? Their reaction was one of hatred and hard stubbornness.
It was a devilish reaction, the reaction of one hardened in sin. They
determined to do away with him. In this Gospel scene the power and
nature of sin stands revealed in its hostility to the holy power of
God, for as St Thomas Aquinas points out, in his acts of power God
reveals his mercy. On the one hand we have the holiness, the power, the
mercy of Christ the incarnate Son of God, and on the other we have the
unyielding and unloving sin of the Pharisees.
Let us place
ourselves in today’s Gospel scene and observe the two sides. Let us
make our choice for Christ. We stand by him and go with him all the
way. This means following in his footsteps as he carries his cross to
Calvary. That is the test of one who wishes to follow the Master. So
then, now I begin!
(E.J.Tyler)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A healing on the
Sabbath, a
symbol of the fulfilment of creation
Commentary by Saint
Athanasius (295-373), Bishop of Alexandria, Doctor of the Church
(Against the Pagans)
This world is very good as it was made and as we see it, because
God
wants it thus. No one could doubt this. If creation were in disorder,
if the universe developed haphazardly, one could doubt that
affirmation. But since the world was made with wisdom and knowledge, in
a reasonable way, since it is decorated with every beauty, the one who
presides over it and who organized it is necessarily none other than
the Word of God…
Because this Word is the good word of the God of goodness, it is
the
Word that drew up the order of all things and united contraries with
contraries, making of them one single harmony. It is he, “the power of
God and the wisdom of God,” (1 Cor 1:24), who causes the heavens to
turn and who hangs up the earth without resting it on anything (Heb
1:3). The sun gives light to the earth by means of the light, which it
receives from him, and the moon receives its measure from its light.
Through him, the water is hung in the clouds, rain gives water to the
earth, the sea keeps to its limits, the earth is covered with plants of
every kind (cf. Ps 104)…
The reason why this Word, the Word of God, came to creatures is
truly
admirable… The nature of created beings is transitory, weak, mortal;
but because the God of the universe is good and excellent by nature, he
loves humankind… So seeing that of itself, all of created nature passes
and dissolves, in order to avoid that and so that the universe might
not return to nothingness…, God does not abandon it to the fluctuations
of its nature. In his goodness, by his Word, he governs and maintains
all of creation… Thus it does not suffer the lot that would belong to
it if the Word did not preserve it, that is to say annihilation. “He is
the image of the Invisible God, the first-born of all creatures. In him
everything was created… things visible and invisible… It is he who is
head of … the church.” (Col 1:15-18)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He came on earth because he wants to
redeem the whole world. While you
are at work, shoulder
to shoulder with so many others, never forget that
there
is no soul
that does not matter to Christ!
(The Forge,
no.865)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why is the Church called the temple of
the Holy Spirit?
She is so called because the Holy Spirit resides in the body which
is
the Church, in her Head and in her members. He also builds up the
Church in charity by the Word of God, the sacraments, the virtues, and
charisms.
“What the soul is to the human
body,
the Holy Spirit is to
the members of Christ,
that is, the body of Christ, which is the Church”
(Saint Augustine).
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.159)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday
of the twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 12) Today let us think of Blessed Apollinaris
(Saints)
Scripture today:
1
Corinthians 6:1-11; Psalm 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a and 9b;
Luke 6:12-19
In those days he departed to the
mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. When day
came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose
Twelve, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and
his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas,
James the son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called a Zealot, and Judas the
son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. And he came
down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground. A great crowd of
his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and
Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon came to hear him and
to be healed of their diseases; and even those who were tormented by
unclean spirits were cured. Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him
because power came forth from him and healed them all.
(Luke
6:12-19)
In
my discussions and instructions with young people I have at times been
presented with what is a problem for some of them - and it is a problem
for anyone who thinks. Why does God create a person who eventually gos
to Hell? Of course, all understand that God does not make that person
go to Hell, and that his going to Hell is his own responsibility. But,
after all, if God had not created him and given him life he would not
be in Hell now (supposing him to be there because of his actions) and
he would not have done the harm he did on this earth. Why did God
choose to allow Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot to come into existence?
Look at all the harm they did! We cannot answer such a question. If we
admit that the God of Revelation exists - an infinite God of holiness,
wisdom and power - we cannot allow that he made a mistake, nor can he
be held responsible for the evil of the world. No, we cannot say how
all these conceptual and theoretical difficulties are to be reconciled.
Indeed, we are faced with this very problem in today’s Gospel
passage.
Our Lord “spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called
his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also
named Apostles” (Luke 6:12-19).
Among the Twelve, Luke mentions in
passing, was Judas who became a traitor. Our Lord made no mistakes. He
deliberately chose Judas to be one of the foundation stones of the
Church and a great saint. Yet he turned out so very
badly.
Let us not
bother
lingering on theoretical problems that we cannot solve, including
aspects of the problem of evil. What is clear is the deliberate choice
of each of us to be Christ’s disciples. What a pity if we turn out
badly! Our Lord spent the whole night in prayer to God prior to his
choice of the Twelve, and St Paul tells us in one of his Letters that
before the world began God chose us, chose us in Christ to be holy and
full of love in his sight. God makes no mistakes, and his choice of
each of us is an eternal choice, made from all eternity. Yet we are
given free choice and therefore able to turn out badly should we so
choose. It is the mystery and the marvel of human freedom which makes
us so much like God. Simon had his faults - and he denied Christ when
the crunch came during the Passion - and so did Judas have his. Judas’s
faults grew and grew and he persisted in his sin despite the presence
and the influence of Christ. Finally at the Last Supper when our Lord
extended a sign of his friendship (offering him the morsel) “Satan
entered him.” Let every Christian take note of how sin can grow and
gain the victory despite God’s choice, his love and his gift of grace.
We must therefore every day be on guard, cherishing our life in Christ
as the most inestimable of gifts and steadily rooting out the sin that
is its direct threat. We must choose Christ and renounce sin. Let this
be the thought arising from our Gospel passage today as we think of the
deliberate choice of the Twelve by Christ, including Judas.
The Christian
religion is not a simple matter. It is complex, rich and diverse in its
texture. But there is one very simple issue at the heart of the
Christian life. It is the choice for Christ and the renunciation of
sin. Let us make that choice now and renew it daily. So then, now I
begin!
(E.J.Tyler)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“He spent the night in
communion with God.” (Luke 6:12-19)
Commentary by St
Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo and Doctor of the Church
Letter to Proba on
Prayer, 9-10
When the apostle Paul says: “Present your needs to God,”
(Phil
4:6)
that does not mean that we make them known to God, for he knows them
even before they exist; it means rather that we will know whether our
prayers are good by our patience and perseverance before God and not by
prattling before men… Thus it is not forbidden or useless to pray a
long time when this is possible, that is to say, when it does not
prevent other good and necessary occupations; moreover, in doing these,
we must always pray by desire, as I have said.
For if a person prays for a long time, it is not a rattling
prayer
(Mt 6:7), as some people think. Talking abundantly is one thing, loving
for a long time is another. For it is written that the Lord himself
“spent the night in prayer” and that he “prayed with all the greater
intensity.” (Lk 22:44) He wanted to give us an example by praying for
us in time, he who with his Father hears our prayers in eternity.
It is said that the monks in Egypt say frequent but very
short
prayers that are thrown like arrows, so as to prevent that the vigilant
attention needed by those who pray become relaxed and dissolute by
being prolonged too much… Prayer does not have to include many words,
but much supplication; thus, it can be prolonged with fervent
attention… To pray a lot means to knock for a long time and with all
our heart at the door of him to whom we are praying (Lk 11:5f.). For
prayer consists more in groaning and tears than in discourse and words.
(Courtesy of "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Lord,” you were telling him, “I like to say thank you.
I
want to be
grateful to everyone, always.” Well, look: you aren't a stone or
a
speechless tree, or a mule. You are not one of those created things
whose life is completed here on this earth. This is because God chose
to make you a man or woman, a child of his. And he loves you with an
eternal love. So you like to be grateful? And are you going to make an
exception of your Lord? Make sure that your thanksgiving comes pouring
out from your heart every day.
(The Forge,
no.866)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What are charisms?
Charisms are special gifts of the Holy Spirit which are bestowed
on
individuals for the good of others, the needs of the world, and in
particular for the building up of the Church. The discernment of
charisms is the responsibility of the Magisterium.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.160)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday
of the twenty third week of Ordinary Time II
(September 13) Saint
John Chrysostom, bishop and doctor of the Church (349-407)
Born in Antioch. After a brilliant course of studies he
began to
lead a life of austerity, entering a monastery and being ordained a
priest. He laboured in preaching with great fruit. He was a great
genius, whose powerful eloquence
earned him the name Chrysostom, “the golden-mouthed”. In 397 he became
Archbishop of
Constantinople, he distinguished himself for his preaching, his efforts
to reform both the clergy and the people, and in the process incurred
the enmity of the imperial court. His work was undermined because of
jealousy and twice he was sent into exile. Overcome by exhaustion he
died in exile at Comana in Pontus on 14 September 407. He left a
wonderful legacy in his abundant writings about Catholic doctrine and
Christian life. (Saints)
Scripture today: 1 Corinthians
7:25-31; Psalm 45:11-12, 14-15,
16-17; Luke 6:20-26
Brothers
and sisters: In regard to virgins, I have no commandment from the Lord,
but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. So
this is what I think best because of the present distress: that it is a
good thing for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do
not seek a separation. Are you free of a wife? Then do not look for a
wife. If you marry, however, you do not sin, nor does an unmarried
woman sin if she marries; but such people will experience affliction in
their earthly life, and I would like to spare you that. I tell you, brothers,
the time is running out. From now on, let those having wives act as not
having them, those weeping as not weeping, those rejoicing as not
rejoicing, those buying as not owning, those using the world as not
using it fully. For the world in its present form is passing away.
(1 Corinthians 7:25-31)
Recently there was a
series on ABC Television (NSW) which looked at the Middle Ages. The
first
part was entitled “Monks and Heretics”. Whatever about the quality of
that episode, the commentator made a good passing remark which stressed
that medieval people lived with a vivid belief in the thought of heaven
and hell. The ultimate realities stressed by the Christian religion
were accepted and so had a real effect in the life of individuals and
societies. At times a contrast is made between the power of the Church
during the Middle Ages and its relative lack of power now. We think,
for instance of Pope Gregory in the eleventh century issuing a papal
edict deposing the Holy Roman Emperor, and bringing the German emperor
to heel. But why was all this so? There were a variety of factors
accounting for it, but clearly one was that individuals and European
society accepted the reality of what the Church preached. God was real.
At the end of life there would be death and the judgment of God
conducted on the basis of what God had revealed, and
following this there would be either heaven or hell. The conscience of
European man was profoundly affected by these convictions and this
Christian world view. I am not asserting that the men and women of the
middle ages lived their daily lives faithful to these abiding
assumptions, but it is obvious that it was an epoch in which the
transience of life was accepted and the realities of eternity were more
easily kept in view.
Saint Paul in
the
first reading today (1
Corinthians 7:25-31) gives a few practical
instructions about, among other things, the advisability of celibacy
and marriage and concludes with these important words: “I say this
because the
world as we know it is passing away.” The world as we know it is
passing away. Of course, the flimsy and
transient character of the world is obvious to all who care to observe
and reflect upon it. At a stroke vast destruction can visit a people in
the form of an earthquake, a tsunami, a terrible plague, or whatever.
In the life of an individual there can be a sudden and unforeseen
catastrophe in the form of a loss of all one’s assets (such as having
one’s home repossessed), or the sudden appearance of a terminal health
condition. There is in our time the ever present threat of the nuclear
weapon - and now such weaponry could be acquired by the terrorist. Life
is vulnerable and transient, but in what way do we
live in the light of this? The person who has never accepted by
conviction the Christian message of what transpires beyond this life
will respond in different ways. I have known elderly persons who have
looked on death as simply the end with nothing to follow it. It
involves complete extinction. Other persons accept that beyond death
there is the afterlife, but they simply do not give it much thought,
and so they live in a way little different from that of a person who
has no such belief at all. Then there is the convinced Christian who
lives in the light of what he knows is inevitably coming. He lives in
the awareness of the last things, and in particular of the judgment of
God.
Cardinal
Newman
wrote that the first principle of religion is the thought of a judgment
as contained in the feeling of conscience. If this is so, that thought
of a judgment
needs to be brought out and made very explicit. It needs to be rescued
from its vague form in the natural conscience and informed by
what our Lord has revealed as it is taught by the Church. There is
nothing more important, and there will be nothing more important, than
the judgment of God. Let us live each day with a lively awareness that
“the world as we know it is passing away.”
(E.J.Tyler)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Blest are you who are
weeping, for you will laugh.” (Luke 6:20-26)
Commentary from Isaac of the
Star (? – around 1171), Cistercian monk
Sermon 2
for the Feast of All Saints, 13-20
“Blest are the sorrowing; they shall be consoled.”
(Mt
5:5) With
that word, the Lord wants to let us hear that tears are the path of
joy. By way of desolation, a person goes to consolation; in losing
one’s life, one finds it, in rejecting it, one possesses it, in hating
it, one loves it, in despising it, one keeps it (Mt 16:24f.). If you
want to know yourself and to control yourself, enter into yourself and
do not seek outside… Enter into yourself, sinner, return to where you
are in your heart… The person who enters into himself will discover
himself in the distance, like the prodigal son, in an unfamiliar
region, in a strange land, where he will sit and weep when he remembers
his father and his country (Lk 15:17)?…
“Adam, where are you?” (Gen 3:9). Perhaps still in the
shadow so
as
not to see yourself. You are sewing leaves of vanity together to cover
your shame, looking at what is around you and what belongs to you… Look
inside, look at yourself… Go into yourself, sinner, return to your
soul. See and weep over this soul that is prone to vanity, to
agitation, and that cannot free itself from its captivity… It is
obvious, brothers, we live outside of ourselves, we forget ourselves
every time we become dissipated in fun or distractions, when we enjoy
ourselves with what is futile. And that is why Wisdom is always
concerned with inviting us to the house of repentance rather than to
the house of festivities, that is to say, calling a person who was
outside of himself back to himself by saying: “Blest are you who are
weeping,” and in another passage: “Woe to you who laugh now.”
My brothers, let us groan in the presence of the Lord whose
goodness
leads him to forgive; let us turn towards him “with fasting and weeping
and mourning,” (Joel 2:12) so that one day… his consolation might give
joy to our souls. For blessed are they who weep, not because they weep,
but because they will be consoled. The weeping is the way; the
consolation is the beatitude.
(Courtesy of "The Daily Gospel", New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Understanding is real charity. When you really achieve it, you
will
have a great heart which is open to all without discrimination. Even
with those who have treated you badly you will put into living practice
that advice of Jesus: "Come to me all you that|... are heavy laden, and
I will give you rest."
(The
Forge, no.867)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why is the Church one?
The Church is one because she has as her source and exemplar the
unity
of the Trinity of Persons in one God. As her Founder and Head, Jesus
Christ re-established the unity of all people in one body. As her soul,
the Holy Spirit unites all the faithful in communion with Christ. The
Church has but one faith, one sacramental life, one apostolic
succession, one common hope, and one and the same charity.
(CCC, numbers 813-815, 866)
(Compendium
of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.161)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday
of the twenty third week of Ordinary Time II
(September 14) Feast
of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross The
public veneration of the Holy Cross dates from the fourth century.
Today the Church commemorates the rescue of the true Cross of Christ by
Emperor Heraclius in a victory over the Persians. Our Mother the Church
sings of the triumph of the Holy Cross, the instrument of our
salvation. In order to follow Christ, the Christian must take up his
cross and become obedient with Christ, who was obedient until death,
even death on the Cross. We are identified with Christ on the Cross. We
become co-redeemers, sharing in Christ’s Cross.(Saints)
Scripture: Numbers 21:4b-9; Psalm 78:1bc-2, 34-35,
36-37, 38; Philippians
2:6-11; John 3:13-17
Christ
Jesus, though he
was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to
be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled
himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of
this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of
those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:6-11)
It
is not difficult to
discover by ordinary reflection the presence of sin in the heart of man
and to be aware of its influence on the course of human history. We see
evidence of
this awareness in the many religions of man and in the literature of
the world. Nor is it difficult to realize that sin is evil - something
which in our day, though, is not realized by all. However, there are
things
which God has revealed about sin which probably man would never have
grasped or discovered. For example, God has revealed that sin is the
fundamental problem of man and his world. He has revealed that sin is
absolutely universal and that no man is born beyond its grasp. It is
transmitted to all. Not only does it afflict every man, but it
profoundly affects the core of his spiritual self. From the original
sin against God came death, and because sin is universal so is death.
Man’s characteristic condition is a sinful one, and this condition was
man’s own doing right at the dawn of human history. It is something
which has affected in mysterious ways the entire cosmos. Indeed, it has
been revealed that without God all mankind is helpless under the power
of sin, and this sin of itself leads to the utter death of man. Man is
in profound need of a redeemer from sin.
The amazing thing
is how God redeemed the world. He redeemed the world by becoming man
and in obedience dying on the cross. Who would have thought that in
order to establish his kingdom in the hearts of men and expel root and
branch the sin which had at the beginning driven him out, God would
choose to suffer and to die? Our Lord time and again told his disciples
that the Son of Man had to suffer in order to enter into his glory, the
glory of his kingdom. His kingdom, of course, was his and his Father’s
rule over the heart of man and the world. But why did
the Son of Man have to suffer so indescribably? It was not expected
even though there were strong hints to that effect in the Scriptures,
especially in the extensive prophecies about the Suffering Servant. But
it was not generally expected and even the greatest of the prophets,
the
precursor himself, was puzzled at our Lord’s methods. He sent
some of his disciples to our Lord to seek reassurance as to his being
the Messiah. St John the Baptist told his disciples that Jesus would
take away the sin of the world, but clearly he did not realize that it
would be done by “being as all men are, (and) humbler yet, even to
accepting death, death on a cross”, as St Paul states. (Phil
2:6-11)
The triumph of
the
Messiah over sin was the triumph of the Cross. Suffering and death has
been transformed from being the universal negative leading to nothing
at all to being the most positive thing possible in this life if
informed by
obedience to the divine will. The path to ultimate triumph lies in
carrying the cross together with Christ. Man’s ultimate triumph will
come through obedience to God in the midst of the suffering which is
involved in the imitation of Christ. Let us then pray for the grace so
to love Christ that we embrace the cross of each day with him.
(E.J.Tyler)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And
just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of
Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal
life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that
everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal
life."
(John 3:13-17)
Comment by Saint Theodore the Studite
(759-826), Monk in Constantinople (The cross, tree of life)
How beautiful is the sight of
the cross! Its beauty is not a mingling of evil and good, like in
former times the tree in the Garden of Eden. It is entirely admirable,
“good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining
wisdom.” (Gen 3:6) It is a tree that gives life and not death, light
and not blindness. It makes people enter Eden and not leave it. This
tree upon which Christ went up like a king on his triumphant chariot,
has lost the devil who had power over death, and has rescued the human
race from enslavement to the tyrant. On this tree, like an elite
fighter, the Lord, wounded in his hands, his feet and his divine side,
healed the wounds of sin, that is to say, our nature that was wounded
by Satan.
After being put to death by
means of the wood, we have found life by means of the wood. After being
deceived by means of the wood, we have driven back the deceitful
serpent by means of the wood. What surprising exchanges! Life instead
of death, immortality instead of corruption, glory instead of shame.
Rightly did the apostle Paul exclaim: “May I never boast of anything
but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!” (Gal 6:14)… Beyond all wisdom,
this wisdom, which blossomed on the cross, rendered stupid the
pretences of the wisdom of this world (1 Cor 1:17f.)…
By the cross, death was
killed and Adam was returned to life. By the cross, all the apostles
were glorified, all the martyrs were crowned, all the saints
sanctified. By the cross, we have put on Christ and been stripped of
the old man (Eph 4:22). By the cross, we have been brought back as
Christ’s sheep and have been gathered together in the sheepfold on high.
(Courtesy of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Be loving towards
those who are ignorant of the things of God.
And with
all the more reason treat those who do know him in the same way. If
not, you cannot do the former either.
(The Forge,
no.868)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where
does
the one Church of Christ subsist?
The one Church of Christ, as a society constituted and organized
in the
world, subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church, governed by the
Successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him. Only through
this Church can one obtain the fullness of the means of salvation since
the Lord has entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant to the
apostolic college alone whose head is Peter. (CCC no. 816,870)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.162)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday
of the twenty third week of Ordinary Time II
(September 15) Memorial
of Our Lady of Sorrows. This feast has its origin in that
Christian devotion which associates Mary the mother of Jesus with the
Passion of her Son. Pope Pius VII extended this devotion to the whole
Church, and in 1912 St Pius X fixed te feast on this day, within the
octave of the Nativity of the mother of the Virgin. Our Mother the
Virgin Mary teaches us to live, together with her, beside the Cross of
her Son. In her suffering as co-redeemer, she reminds us of the
tremendous malice of sin and shows us the way of true repentance. (Saints)
Today let us also think of Saint Catherine of Genoa
(Saints)
Scripture:1 Corinthians
9:16-19, 22b-27; Psalm 84:3, 4, 5-6, 12; John
19:25-27 or Luke 2:33-35
In the days when he was
in the
flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears
to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard
because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from
what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of
eternal salvation for all who obey him. (Hebrews 5:7-9)
Standing
by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the
wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the
disciple there whom he loved he said to his mother, “Woman, behold,
your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And
from that hour the disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27)
The
high point in the
history of the world was when Christ hung upon the cross. The
fundamental problem afflicting the course of history was being
addressed at its root. That problem was original sin and its
incalculable manifestations in the life of every man and woman. Sin was
the cause of death and all that is related to death, and the Redeemer
was making up for the sin of the world by his embrace of the will of
his Father amid a terrible death. Time and again our Lord made it clear
to his disciples that the Son of Man had to suffer in order to enter
into his glory. The cross was the path to victory, and for that reason
the Church celebrated the Triumph of the Cross yesterday (September
14). Our Lord taught his disciples time and again that if anyone wished
to be his disciple he had to take up his cross every day and follow in
his footsteps. The word “cross” conjures up the image of a crucifixion,
and so it points in graphic terms to what being a Christian involves.
Today we celebrate the path of the first and foremost Christian, Mary
the mother of the Lord. That path was to accompany her divine Son on
his journey to Calvary and to be with him to the end while a sword, as
it were, pierced her own soul too. By doing this she participated in
the redemption of the world. In this she is our mother and our model.
Where do we fit in,
in all of this? We fit in with Mary our mother at the foot of the
Cross. John the beloved disciple who is also there represents each of
us and the whole Church in company with Mary. All our lives we ought be
in spirit at the foot of the Cross with
Mary and the beloved disciple, learning the lessons of the Cross and
letting the mind of Christ pervade and inform our own. “Let this mind
be in you that was in Christ Jesus” St Paul tells us. This “mind” was
to set aside the glory that was his as God and choose to become as men
are, and humbler still, dying on a cross. Mary is our mother and our
model, and she is the Lady of Sorrows whom we think of today (John 19:25-27). If there is any grace
we ought pray for it is the grace to be like her whose heart and spirit
was such a perfect image of that of her Son. When we ask in the Hail
Mary that Mary our holy mother pray for us sinners now and at the hour
of our
death we ought especially be praying for the grace to follow her Son in
his total acceptance of the will of the Father precisely along the road
of the Cross, and not to shun and hate it. The secret to this
revolutionary change of mind according to the mind of Christ is to grow
in the love of Christ by constantly being with him. Let us today place
ourselves with Mary our mother at the foot of the Crucified, praying
for the grace to love him with all our heart and to follow him closely
and generously together with, and as did, Mary.
Holy Mary
mother of
God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
(E.J.Tyler)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“There is your mother.”
Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” (John
19:25-27)
Commentary by Saint
Bonaventure (1221-1274), Franciscan, Doctor of the Church
(The
seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, Conference VI, 15-21)
The glorious Virgin paid our ransom as a courageous woman who
loved
with the compassionate love of Christ. In Saint John it is said: “When
a woman is in labor she is sad that her time has come.” (Jn 16:21) The
Blessed Virgin did not feel the pain that precedes childbirth because
she did not conceive following the sin of Eve, against whom the curse
was spoken. She felt her pain later: she gave birth under the cross.
The other women know bodily pain, she felt that of the heart. The
others suffer from a physical change; she from compassion and love.
The Blessed Virgin paid our ransom as a courageous woman who loved
the
world and above all the Christian people with merciful love. “Can a
mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her
womb?” (Isa 49:15) This can make us understand that the entire
Christian people has come forth from the womb of the glorious Virgin.
What a loving Mother we have! Let us take our Mother as our model and
let us follow her in her love. She had compassion for souls to such an
extent that she counted all material loss and every physical suffering
as nothing. “(We) have been purchased … at a great price.” (1 Cor 6:20)
(Courtesy of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you really loved God with all your heart, then that
love
for your
neighbour, which you sometimes find so hard to have, would come as a
necessary consequence of your Great Love. You would never feel
hostility towards anyone, nor would you discriminate between people.
(The Forge,
no.869)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How are non-Catholic Christians to be
considered?
In the churches and ecclesial communities which are separated from
full
communion with the Catholic Church, many elements of sanctification and
truth can be found. All of these blessings come from Christ and lead to
Catholic unity. Members of these churches and communities are
incorporated into Christ by Baptism and we so we recognize them as
brothers. (CCC 817-819,
870)
(Compendium
of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.163)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday
of the twenty third week of Ordinary Time II
(September 16) Saint
Cornelius, pope and martyr, and Saint Cyprian, bishop and martyr
Pope Cornelius (3rd century) defended the faith against the
Novatian
heresy and, helped by St Cyprian, confirmed his authority. He died in
exile. Cyprian was born in Carthage and became its bishop. He was a
staunch defender of the Faith and ecclesiastical discipline. He
suffered martyrdom during the persecution of Valerian. Their names are
included in the Roman Canon. (Saints)
Scripture today:
1
Corinthians 10:14-22; Psalm 116:12-13, 17-18;
Luke 6:43-49
Jesus said to
his
disciples: “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten
tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For
people do not pick figs from thornbushes, nor do they gather grapes
from brambles. A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart
produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks. “Why do you call
me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command? I will show you what
someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them.
That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the
foundation on rock; when the flood came, the river burst against that
house but could not shake it because it had been well built. But the
one who listens and does not act is like a person who built a house on
the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, it
collapsed at once and was completely destroyed.” (Luke
6:43-49)
It is fascinating to
notice what appears to be mankind’s view of the moral character of
ultimate reality. Consider, say, the religions of man in history,
whether they be the more highly developed religions of certain
epochs and cultures, or the world religions such as Islam, or even many
primal
religions. I think one could say that the testimony of man’s religion
about the character of the gods, or the powers above, or whatever it is
that constitutes the Ultimate, is generally that the Absolute is
morally good. That is to say
- and I am subject to correction in this because I am making a sweeping
observation - that ultimate reality seems dimly to man to be morally
good and not evil. One could not press this because there are so many
exceptions in the form of evil gods and immoral heavenly powers, but my
hunch and hypothesis is that man thinks and senses that God (in
whatever obscure and tangled way he conceives or imagines him) is good
and not bad. The Ultimate is a good spirit and not a bad one. From the
Above issues forth not only nor even mainly what is bad and evil, but
mainly -
granted all the evil - what is good. It is interesting that - although
such claims are disputed by some anthropologists - along the
South-eastern New South
Wales area the Australian aborigines venerated an All-Father. My point
is that man seems to think that ultimately the tree from which has come
our world is a good tree and not a rotten one. Of course, the problem
is, how come we have so much rotten fruit? That, though, is simply the
problem of evil - it is a problem because it conflicts with man’s basic
intuition.
Whatever about
that
general suggestion as to man’s perception of things, God has intervened
in history to reveal who he is and what he is like. This revelation has
come in the person of Jesus Christ. “He who sees me, sees the Father”,
and “no one can come to the Father except through me.” If we take
seriously what is proclaimed to us by the Church all our dim
expectations and hopes are wondrously fulfilled. God is revealed to be
utterly good and utterly holy. His holiness is love. His power is
manifested in mercy. Reality is ultimately infinitely good without a
trace of evil. The evil of the world is not the fruit of the Ultimate,
but is the fruit of man’s free choice - this power of free choice being
itself a gift from the good God. God is revealed to be goodness and
love.
In our Gospel today (Luke 6:43-49)
our Lord tells his disciples that
“there is no sound tree that produces rotten fruit .... a good man
draws what is good from the store of goodness from his heart”. God is
good, and we are called to be thoroughly good ourselves, good to the
very core of our hearts. We are called to be like God by means of the
power of his grace and our cooperation. St Paul tells us
in one of his Letters that before the world began we were chosen in
Christ to be holy and full of love in God’s sight. We are talking
here of the universal call to holiness. This is the grandeur of man to
be called to holiness, a holiness that is love modelled on the love
that filled the heart of Christ. “For a man’s words flow out from what
fills his heart.” We are called to fill our hearts with the holy love
that filled the
heart of Christ.
Let us resolve
to
be true children of our Father in heaven, and so be a light to the
world around us. Our world expects, hopes, and perhaps knows that God
is good but so much around him belies this perception. Let us by our
lives show that God is indeed good, holy and loving and that in
his goodness he has called all of us to share in his divine life
through the grace of Christ.
(E.J.Tyler)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"That one is like a man
building
a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock"(Luke 6:43-49)
Commentary by St Augustine
(354-430), Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Sermon 179)
Brothers, the apostle Saint James spoke to people who were zealous
for
the word of God, saying: “Act on this word. If all you do is listen to
it, you are deceiving yourselves.” (James 1:22) You would neither be
fooling the Author of the word nor the one announcing it; you would be
fooling yourselves… And it would be very useless if the preacher
announced the word of God outside and didn’t first of all listen to it
within himself in order to put it into practice…
Who puts the word into practice interiorly? The person who keeps
himself from evil desire. Who observes it exteriorly? The one who is
“sharing… (his) bread with the hungry.” (Isa 58:7) Our neighbour sees
what we do, but God alone is witness to why we are doing it. So “act on
this word. If all you do is listen to it, you are deceiving
yourselves.” You will neither deceive God nor his minister. I cannot
read in your heart, but God, who plumbs the heart, sees what human
beings cannot see. He sees your zeal in listening, your thoughts, your
resolutions, the progress you make through his grace, your
attentiveness in prayer, the requests you make of him so as to obtain
what you are lacking, and your thanksgiving so as to thank him for his
blessings…
Think upon this, brothers! If it is praiseworthy to listen to the
word,
how much more is it praiseworthy to put it into practice. If you don’t
listen to it, you are living in negligence and you won’t build
anything. If you listen to it without putting it into practice, you
will build nothing but ruins. Where this is concerned, the Lord gave us
a good comparison: “Anyone who hears my words and puts them into
practice is like the wise man who built his house on rock.” To listen
and to put into practice means building on the rock… To listen without
putting into practice means building on sand. To refuse even to listen
means that nothing is built.
(Courtesy of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you that urge, that divine madness, to bring souls to know
the
Love of God? In your ordinary life, then, offer up mortifications,
pray, carry out your duty, and conquer yourself in all kinds of tiny
details.
(The Forge,
no.870)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How does one commit oneself to work for the
unity of Christians?
The desire to restore the unity of all Christians is a gift from
Christ
and a call of the Spirit. This desire involves the entire Church and it
is pursued by conversion of heart, prayer, fraternal knowledge of each
other and theological dialogue. (CCC 820-822, 866)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.164)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twenty
fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(September 17) St
Robert Bellarmine, bishop and doctor of the Church
(1542-1621). Born in Italy, he was a Jesuit, a bishop and a
cardinal. A
professor of theology in Louvain and Rome, Robert Bellarmine was one of
the ablest and most effective theologians of the Church against
Protestantism.
(Saints)
Scripture today: Isaiah
50:5-9;
Psalm 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9;
James
2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35
He
began to teach them
that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders,
the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three
days. He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to
rebuke him. At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as
God does, but as human beings do.” He summoned the crowd with his
disciples and said to them, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny
himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save
his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that
of the gospel will save it.” (Mark
8:27-35)
Of
all the events in the
public life of our Lord prior to his Passion
the conversation between our Lord and his closest disciples in today’s
Gospel are perhaps the most significant. Our Lord had been preaching,
teaching, working miracles and travelling throughout the towns and
villages of Galilee and Judea. He had been pointed out by John the
Baptist as the one who was to come. People were forming their views of
him and the leaders of the people were coming to the point of rejecting
and doing away with him. At this critical point our Lord puts to his
disciples the question of who people think him to be (Mark
8:27-35), and of course
there are various answers - generally that he is a true prophet, indeed
one of the previous prophets come back to life, such as Elijah or even
John the Baptist himself. But then our Lord asks the Twelve who they
say he is and Simon Peter gives him the true answer, an answer he is
able to give because he has been enlightened by the Father. Jesus is
the Messiah, the one long awaited and promised. Everything hinges on
him.
While
the
disciples believed this they certainly did not
understand how he was going to fulfil the plan of redemption promised
by God. God’s plan had some clear
indications and pointers in the Scriptures but they were not commonly
noticed and perhaps we too may not have noticed them. I
suppose the chosen people looked back to the great saving deeds of
Yahweh such as the deliverance from slavery in Egypt as the paradigm of
the kind of liberation that was coming. They perhaps extrapolated from
one to
the other in a fairly literal way. They thought back to how God struck
the Pharoah and Egypt with plagues and other calamities. They thought
of God leading his chosen ones behind Moses across the sea and closing
the sea over the pursuing Egyptians. They thought of the Israelites
being led by Joshua into the promised land and their victories over the
inhabitants who were there. They would have thought of King David and
his victories. The coming Messiah would free God’s people of their
oppression, and if they thought of their being liberated from sin,
perhaps they thought of sin in a fairly superficial sense.
In
fact there were signs in the Scriptures of what
was coming.
There was the grand figure of the victorious Son of Man in the prophet
Daniel. There was in
the Book of Isaiah the haunting person of the Servant of Yahweh.
Our first reading today presents us with one of the passages describing
this figure (Isaiah
50:5-9). He
would not be a Servant of glorious victories and conquests
but a Suffering Servant. By his sufferings he would save the many. This
great suffering Servant cast light on the value of the sufferings of
God’s people, and especially the sufferings of God’s most obedient
servants among them. But especially did this figure throw light on the
Messiah who was to come. His sufferings precisely as the perfect
Servant of God offered the key to the way God would save his people
from their sins.
God’s
plan
of redemption was a complete surprise, probably most
of all to Satan. Undoubtedly he thought that by engineering the
death of Jesus he was putting a stop to the marvellous work he was
doing. God’s plan was a wondrous fulfilment of the prophecies and
our Lord was at pains to show this. The Son of Man had to suffer in
order to enter into his glory. Obedience in the midst of great
suffering and reversal was the path to redemption, the redemption of
God’s chosen people and of all mankind. And so once he saw that the
Twelve accepted that he was the Messiah our Lord began to teach them
that he
“was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and
the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after
three days to rise again. And he said all these things quite openly”
(Mark
8:27-35). Of course such talk as this was shocking to them, and
so Simon Peter began to insist with our Lord that such a thing could
not and must not happen to him. It was unthinkable that this be the
path for the Messiah. But our Lord sharply reprimanded him in front of
them all. Simon was speaking in a way directly opposed to the plan of
God. The way to glory was not man’s way but through obedient
suffering.
This,
then, is the critical point which we must grasp. It
is one thing to have been granted the grace to know and accept our Lord
for who he is, the Son of God and the Redeemer of man. It is another
thing to accept the
implications of the path which it was necessary for him to follow. If
we wish to be his disciples - and hopefully all of us do wish this - we
must
learn to follow our Lord along that same path of doing and accepting
God’s will precisely and especially when it is immensely difficult. It
could mean giving up one’s life. It is the Cross of Christ, not simply
wealth, power, pleasure and honours, that is so full of fruitfulness.
It is this path of
the Cross that brings sanctity and union with Jesus here and hereafter.
How can we learn this and then act on it? By learning to love Jesus
truly, and by praying for the grace to embrace the cross of every day.
So let us pray for God’s love and his grace. With his love and his
grace we shall follow him to the end.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church,
no.599-605
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“You are not judging by God’s standards but
by man’s.” (Mark 8:27-35)
Commentary by St Augustine
(354-430) Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Sermon 96)
When the Lord commits the person wanting to follow him to
renounce himself, we think his commandment is difficult and hard to
hear. But if the one who commands us helps us to fulfill it, his
commandment is neither difficult nor painful… And that other word that
the Lord spoke is also true: “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Mt
11:30) For love sweetens what might be painful in the precepts. We all
know what marvels love can accomplish… What rigours have people
endured, what unworthy and intolerable living conditions have they
borne so as to be able to possess the object of their love! …Why be
surprised that the person who loves Christ and who wants to follow him
renounces himself in order to love him? For if the human person loses
himself by loving himself, there is no doubt that he will find himself
by renouncing himself…
Who would refuse to follow Christ to the dwelling place of
perfect happiness, of supreme peace and of eternal tranquility? It is
good to follow him there. But we have to know the way in order to
arrive… The path seems to you to be covered with rough patches, it puts
you off, you don’t want to follow Christ. Walk behind him! The path,
which men have laid out is rugged, but it was made level when Christ
walked upon it while returning to heaven. So who would refuse to go
forward towards glory?
Everyone likes to rise up in glory, but humility is the
ladder
that must be climbed in order to get there. Why do you lift up your
foot higher than yourself? Do you want to fall down instead of go up?
Begin with this ladder. It will already make you go up. The two
disciples who said: “Lord, see to it that we sit, one at your right and
the other at your left, when you come into your glory,” paid no
attention to this degree of humility. They aimed for the summit and did
not see the ladder. But the Lord showed them the ladder. So what did he
answer? “Can you drink the cup I shall drink? (Mk 10:38) You who desire
to reach the height of honours, can you drink the chalice of humility?”
That is why he did not limit himself to saying in a general way: “May
he renounce himself and follow me”, but rather, he added: “May he take
up his cross and follow me.”
(Courtesy of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you that urge, that divine madness, to bring souls to know
the
Love of God? In your ordinary life, then, offer up mortifications,
pray, carry out your duty, and conquer yourself in all kinds of tiny
details.
(The Forge,
no.870)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In what way is
the Church holy?
The Church is holy insofar as the Most Holy God is her author.
Christ
has given himself for her to sanctify her and make her a source of
sanctification. The Holy Spirit gives her life with charity. In the
Church one finds the fullness of the means of salvation. Holiness is
the vocation of each of her members and the purpose of all her
activities. The Church counts among her members the Virgin Mary and
numerous Saints who are her models and intercessors. The holiness of
the Church is the fountain of sanctification for her children who here
on earth recognize themselves as sinners ever in need of conversion and
purification. (CCC 823-829, 867)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.165)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday
of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
(September 18) Today let us
think of Saint Joseph of
Cupertino
(Saints)
Scripture today:
1
Corinthians 11:17-26, 33; Psalm 40:7-8a,
8b-9, 10, 17; Luke 7:1-10
When
he had finished all his words to the people, he entered Capernaum. A
centurion there had a slave who was ill and about to die, and he was
valuable to him. When he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews
to him, asking him to come and save the life of his slave. They
approached Jesus and strongly urged him to come, saying, "He deserves
to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the
synagogue for us." And Jesus went with them, but when he was only a
short distance from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him,
"Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter
under my roof. Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to
you; but say the word and let my servant be healed. For I too am a
person subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to
one, 'Go,' and he goes; and to another, 'Come here,' and he comes; and
to my slave, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard this he was
amazed at him and, turning, said to the crowd following him, "I tell
you, not even in Israel have I found such faith." When the messengers
returned to the house, they found the slave in good health. (Luke
7:1-10)
One of the distinctive
teachings of the modern Church, which of course is but a renewed
emphasis on the
Church’s perennial teaching, is that the world is the ambient for the
lay faithful’s participation in the mission of Christ and the Church.
The
world is where they are by the providence of God and by virtue of their
vocation, and it is there, in the world, that they are to make Christ
and the Church
present. Christ is the redeemer of man and by God’s plan the world is
called to be in Christ. Christ is made present in the world especially
by the lay member of the Church. Well then, what ought be the lay
person’s expectations of those in the world who are not yet members of
Christ? As ever, we learn what attitudes to have by contemplating the
person of Jesus. In our Gospel today (Luke 7:1-10)
a centurion sent someone to Jesus with a message asking that he come
and cure his servant. The centurion was not a member of the chosen
people but he was a good man and his request was pressed upon Jesus by
the elders of the Jews. Our Lord immediately went to assist him. We
know the remainder of what happened. The centurion, hearing that our
Lord was on his way, sent a message that he was "not worthy" of a visit
from our Lord and that all our Lord need do is "say the word" and his
servant would be cured. Our Lord was amazed and full of admiration at
this man’s profound humility and his great faith in our Lord’s
power and goodness. He turned to those who were following to say that
nowhere in Israel had he found faith like that. The Church has
incorporated the centurion's words to Christ into the Communion Rite of
Mass.
Let us reflect
on
those words of our Lord, that to that point he had not found faith in
Israel equal
to the faith of the centurion. Presumably our Lord was speaking in
general terms and was referring merely to the generality of Israel. The
centurion was absolutely commendable for his faith in the power and the
goodness of Jesus. Therefore it is possible to find faith and at times
extraordinary faith in those outside the Church. This ought give the
lay faithful great hope when it comes to bearing witness to Christ in
the world. There are people out there who have very excellent
dispositions. The dispositions of the centurion according to the
testimony of our Lord himself prove it. There are other examples in the
Gospels too. Not long before our Lord’s passion some “Greeks” who were
in Jerusalem for the festival approached Philip saying that they
“wanted to see Jesus”. We remember the Canaanite woman who pursued our
Lord asking him to cure her daughter. Our Lord finished by telling her
that she had “great faith”. We remember too the remarkable conversation
between the crucified Jesus and the criminal who was being crucified
with him. Without warning the criminal turned to our Lord and said,
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” What a remarkable
request! What faith it displayed - and our Lord promised him Paradise.
It was one of our Lord’s last joys to see an immediate fruit coming
from his dying on the cross. If I be lifted up, he had said, I
shall draw all men to myself.
Let us always
remember that God may have real surprises for us if we resolve to be
true ambassadors for Christ in the world. The Christian in the world
may never know how his life and his words have nourished the path to
Christ
of those with whom he has lived and worked from day to day.
(E.J.Tyler)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I am not worthy to
have
you enter my house.” (Luke 7:1-10)
Commentary by Saint Francis
of Assisi (First Rule, 17)
In the love that is God, I beg all my brothers – those who preach,
those who pray, those who work manually, clerics and lay brothers – to
make every effort towards being humble in all things; not to glorify
themselves, to find their joy or to become interiorly proud because of
good words and good actions, which God sometimes says or does in them
or through them. According to the Lord’s word: “Do not rejoice… in the
fact that the devils are subject to you.” (Lk 10:20) Let us be firmly
convinced of the fact that of ourselves we have only faults and sins.
Let us rather rejoice in trials when, in our soul and in our body, we
have to bear all kinds of tribulations in this world for eternal life.
Brothers, let us thus beware of all pride and vainglory; let us
beware
of the wisdom of this world and of selfish prudence. The person who is
enslaved by his selfish tendencies puts a great deal of effort into
making speeches, but much less into passing on to action. Instead of
seeking the interior religion and sanctity of the spirit, he desires an
external religion and sanctity that are very visible to the eyes of
human beings. It is of them that the Lord said: “You can be sure of
this much, they are already repaid.” (Mt 6:2) On the contrary, the
person who is docile to the Lord’s spirit wants to humiliate what is
selfish, vile and abject in the flesh. He puts great effort into being
humble and patient, purely simple and in true peace of spirit. What he
always desires above everything is filial fear of God, the wisdom of
God, and the love of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tell him slowly: Good Jesus, if I am to be an apostle, and an
apostle
of apostles, you have to make me very humble. May I know myself. May I
know myself and know you. Then I will never lose sight of my
nothingness.
(The Forge,
no.871)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why
is the
Church called “Catholic”?
The Church is catholic, that is universal, insofar as Christ is
present
in her: “Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church”
(Saint Ignatius of Antioch). The Church proclaims the fullness and the
totality of the faith; she bears and administers the fullness of the
means of salvation; she is sent out by Christ on a mission to the whole
of the human race. (CCC 830-831, 868)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.166)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday
of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
(19 September) St
Januarius, bishop and martyr (4th century). Bishop of Benevento
(Italy). He died a martyr in Naples during the persecution of
Diocletian. His dried blood contained in a phial liquifies several
times each year. (Saints)
Scripture today:
1
Corinthians 12:12-14, 27-31a; Psalm 100:1b-2, 3, 4,
5; Luke 7:11-17
Jesus
journeyed to a
city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him.
As he drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was being
carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large
crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, he was moved
with pity for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” He stepped forward
and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, “Young
man, I tell you, arise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and
Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified
God, exclaiming, “A great prophet has arisen in our midst,” and “God
has visited his people.” This report about him spread through the whole
of Judea and in all the surrounding region. (Luke 7:11-17)
Among
the elements that
form a civilization one has to count a society’s image of God. Even in
a civilization such as our own Western civilization which at this point
tends to discount God
and set him on the margin of life, the image of God (such as it is) is
decisive. A society’s image God will affect it image of man. Islamic
societies, Christian societies, Buddhist societies, will in varying
degrees be shaped by their image of the divine or that which
approximates and substitutes for the divine. The Christian knows that,
as our great theologian Pope Benedict XVI is fond of putting it, Christ
is the face of God. Were we to look on God we would see the face of
Christ, and when men looked on the face of Christ they saw God. As St
Paul puts it in one of his Letters Christ is the image of the invisible
God, and therefore the image of God which all people and all societies
are called by God to make their own is the person of Jesus. The thought
of Jesus ought be the driving thought of each person and ultimately of
all mankind. This is the plan of God for human life, and its
implications for social life is
spelt out by the Church in her extensive social doctrine.
In our Gospel today
we find ourselves in the sorrowful scene of a dead man being brought
out of the gate of the town of Nain accompanied by his widowed mother.
Our Lord “accompanied by his disciples and a great number of
people” drew near and he observed what was happening. We ought take to
heart St Luke’s description of our Lord’s heartfelt response: “When the
Lord saw her he felt sorry for her. ‘Do not cry’ he said.” (Luke 7:11-17) Our Lord was a man
filled with compassion for difficulty and sorrows. The poor and
helpless woman, so powerless and bereft of prospects, immediately
aroused in Christ the exercise of his almighty power. She did not ask
anything of him, he simply responded to her plight. “Then he went up
and put his hand on the bier and the bearers stood still, and he said,
‘Young man, I tell you to get up.’ And the dead man sat up and began to
talk, and Jesus gave him to his mother.” Imagine the overwhelming joy
and gratitude of the mother, and the surprise of the young man! St
Thomas Aquinas writes that God reveals his almighty power in his mercy.
The teaching of Scripture is that God is rich in mercy. When we think
of God we ought call to mind our Lord full of compassion at the village
of Nain.
This thought
of
compassion ought stamp our image of the divine. It is an image which
ought ought influence every aspect of life. This is the message of Pope
John Paul II's magnificent Encyclical Dives in Misericordia
(Rich in Mercy).
Let us trust in the mercy of God as it is revealed in the person and
life of Jesus. Let us ask for the grace to make that mercy the
programme of our own life, for as we read in the twenty fifth chapter
of St Matthew, our judgment will depend on the love and mercy we show
to others.
(E.J.Tyler) .
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“...and he said, 'Young man, I bid you get up'.” (Luke 7:11-17)
Commentary from Saint
Augustine (354-430), Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Sermon 98)
Let no one who is Christian doubt that even now dead people rise.
Certainly, every human being has eyes by which he can see dead people
rising in the way this widow’s son whom we just heard about in the
gospel rose. But not everyone can see people who are spiritually dead
rise. For that, it is necessary to have already risen interiorly. It is
greater to raise someone who is to live forever than to raise someone
who will have to die again.
The young man’s mother, this widow, was transported with joy at
seeing
her son rise. Our mother the Church also rejoices when she sees her
children’s spiritual resurrection every day. The widow’s son was dead
with the death of the body; but these latter are dead with the death of
the soul. People wept tears over the visible death of the former; but
people were not concerned by the invisible death of the latter; they
didn’t even see it. The only one who did not remain indifferent is the
one who knew these deaths; only the one who could give life back to
them knew these deaths. For if the Lord had not come to raise the dead,
the apostle Paul would not have said: “Awake, O sleeper, arise from the
dead, and Christ will give you light.” (Ephesians 5:14)
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum: through Jesus Christ, Our
Lord.
That is the way you should do things: through and for Jesus
Christ! It's good that you have a human heart. But if you act
merely because it's a particular person, that's bad. You should
certainly also do it for that brother of yours, for that friend of
yours: but above all do it for Jesus Christ!
(The Forge,
no.872)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is the
particular Church catholic?
Every particular Church (that is, a diocese or eparchy) is
catholic. It
is formed by a community of Christians who are in communion of faith
and of the sacraments both with their Bishop, who is ordained in
apostolic succession, and with the Church of Rome which “presides in
charity” (Saint Ignatius of Antioch). (CCC 832-835)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.167)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday
of the twenty fourth week of Ordinary Time II
(September 20) Saint
Andrew Kim Taegon, priest and martyr, and Saint Paul Chong
Hasang, martyr, and their companions,
martyrs. The Christian faith was introduced in Korea during the 17th
century through the zeal of a group of lay persons. But from the very
beginning these Christians suffered under terrible persecutions that,
over the course of the nineteenth century, gave the Church many
martyrs. Outstanding among these were the first Korean priest and
devoted Church pastor, Andrew Kim of Taegu, and the lay apostle Paul
Chong of Hasang. Among the Korean martyrs who struggled valiantly for
Christ were bishops and priests, but for the most part they were laity,
men and women, married and single, young and old. (Saints)
Scripture today:
1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Psalm 33:2-3, 4-5,
12 and 22; Luke 7:31-35
Jesus
said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare the people of this
generation? What are they like? They are like children who sit in the
marketplace and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but
you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.’ For John the
Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, ‘He
is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and
you said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax
collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”
(Luke
7:31-35)
In
his analysis of the
evidence of the truth of revealed religion Cardinal Newman often made
the point in his writings that no matter how much objective evidence
there is, the more decisive factor will be the personal dispositions of
the one faced with the evidence. He was referring to the fundamental
presuppositions and starting points of each enquirer. For instance, if
(perhaps
without my realizing it) I am prone to think that
there is no
God, or that if there is a God he would not be almighty, or that he is
not be compassionate and forgiving, or that he transcends the world and
is not immanent in it, then this
will affect my interpretation of the objective data of life. The
question
then is, why am I prone to think this, and ought not I rethink my first
principles? Where am I coming from that gives me this disposition?
Cardinal
Newman also made the point that our fundamental starting points are
usually quite hidden from ourselves, and we ought pray to God that he
will give us the right starting points. The right starting points will
dispose us to accept wholeheartedly in faith what God has revealed.
In our Gospel
today
(Luke
7:31-35) our
Lord surely refers indirectly to the fundamental dispositions of very
many when brought before the revelation of God’s loving plan. “What
description, then, can I find for the men of this generation? What are
they like?” In answer he refers to children in the market place who in
effect shout to one another that nothing will satisfy them. John the
Baptist came exercising one form of ministry, and he was criticised.
Our Lord came revealing the plan of God in a different way, and again
he was criticised. Nothing would satisfy them. They were badly disposed
at a fundamental level. On another occasion our Lord put the point in a
different way. Some of the seed sown by the Son of Man fell on rocky
soil, some on thorns, some on the pathway. The soil could not strike
genuine root, for the ground was not disposed to receive it. Other seed
fell on good soil and struck root. These were those who received the
word and embraced it, grasping it with understanding. It bore fruit in
abundance.
Let us take
for our
model our mother in Christ, Mary the mother of God made man. She, we
are told, pondered and treasured the things of God in her heart. What
God did she received as good soil and produced an abundant harvest of
holiness and contributed incalculably to the redemptive work of her
Son. Let us pray to her asking her to obtain for us the grace to
believe and to obey as she did, for as our Lord said on one occasion
when his own mother was praised, blessed are those who hear the word of
God and keep it.
(E.J.Tyler)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ignorance of those who refuse
to
turn to God (Luke 7:31-35)
Commentary by St Bernard of Clairvaux
(1091-1153), Cistercian monk and doctor of the Church
Commentary on the
Song of Songs, Sermon 38
The apostle Paul says that there are some who have no knowledge of
God
(1 Co 15,34). My opinion is that all those who lack knowledge of God
are those who refuse to turn to him. I am certain that they refuse
because they imagine this kindly disposed God to be harsh and severe,
this merciful God to be callous and inflexible, this lovable God to be
cruel and oppressive. So it is that wickedness plays false to itself,
setting up for itself an image that does not represent God as he truly
is.
What are you afraid of, you men of little faith? That he will not
pardon your sins? But with his own hands he has nailed them to the
cross. That you are used to soft living and your tastes are fastidious?
But he is aware of our weakness. That a prolonged habit of sinning
binds you like a chain? But the Lord loosens the shackles of prisoners.
Or perhaps that angered by the enormity and frequency of your sins he
is slow to extend a helping hand? But where sin abounded, grace became
superabundant (Ro 5,20). Are you worried about clothing and food and
other bodily necessities so that you hesitate to give up your
possessions? But he knows that you need all these things(Mt 6,32). What
more can you wish? What else is there to hold you back from the way of
salvation? This is what I say: you do not know God, yet you will not
believe what we have heard. I should like you to believe those whom
experience has taught.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Church expects a lot from you, as do other people —people of
all
lands, and of all times, present and to come. But you should have it
very firmly fixed in your head and in your heart that you will be
fruitless if you are not a saint or, let me put it better, if you don't
struggle to be a saint.
(The Forge,
no.873)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who belongs to the Catholic Church?
All human beings in various ways belong to or are ordered to the
Catholic unity of the people of God. Fully incorporated into the
Catholic Church are those who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, are
joined to the Church by the bonds of the profession of faith, the
sacraments, ecclesiastical government and communion. The baptized who
do not enjoy full Catholic unity are in a certain, although imperfect,
communion with the Catholic Church.(CCC 836-838)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.168)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday
of the twenty fourth week of Ordinary Time II
(September 21) Feast
of Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist
Also called Levi, he was the
son of Alphaeus. He was a publican, that is, a tax collector for the
Romans. His profession was hateful to the Jews. Nevertheless, our lord
called him to be one of the Twelve. Matthew’s vocation reminds us that
sanctity is not reserved for privileged persons. All states in life,
all professions, all noble tasks may be sanctified, as the Church
teaches. Matthew is one of the Twelve Apostoles. We do not know details
of his evangeliation or of his martyrdom which perhaps took place in
Persia. Tradition unanimously acknowledges him as the author of the
first Gospel, written in Aramaic, the language that our Lord himself
spoke, and translated into Greek afterwards. St Matthew’s name appears
among the other apostles in the Roman Canon.
(Saints)
Scripture today:
Ephesians
4:1-7, 11-13; Psalm 19:2-3,
4-5; Matthew 9:9-13
As
Jesus passed by, he
saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him,
“Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in
his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and
his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, “Why
does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” He heard this
and said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I
did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (Matthew 9:9-13)
Saint Matthew was one of
the Twelve. He was a patriarch of the new people of God which is the
Church
founded by the Lord Jesus. His dignity was very great in the plan and
providence of God. He was one of the twelve foundations stones of the
heavenly city portrayed in the Book of the Apocalypse. He is the author
of the first of the four Gospels, and so the author of one of the
principal writings of the entire Scriptures. Because of his inspired
writing he will draw countless souls closer to
the Lord till the end of time. His vocation was great, though like that
of our Lady herself,
somewhat hidden. But consider his origins and the meaning of his
call. As we read in the Gospel passage for today his feast day, he was
a tax collector and so worked at a profession despised by all those who
were respected among the people. Despite this he was called by the Lord
to follow him and in the same passage we see our Lord associating with
Matthew’s friends and colleagues. The message for us all in this
phenomenon comes to us in our Lord’s words when replying to the
criticisms
of the Pharisees. “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire
mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but
sinners’.” (Matthew
9:9-13) Matthew
was one of those sinners and so his exalted vocation to be an Apostle
was an outpouring of the mercy of God. Matthew’s calling was a sign and
result of the divine mercy.
In fact the
vocation of each of us is the result of God’s mercy. From before the
foundation of the world, St Paul informs us, God chose us in Christ to
be holy and full of love in his sight. Each of us has a vocation from
God from all eternity, and its purpose is that we might live in God for
all eternity. Whence has come this marvel? It has come from the mercy
of the
God whom Scripture describes as “rich in mercy”. So then, let us exult
in the mercy of God. In her most beautiful prayer of praise our Lady
magnifies the greatness of the Lord. She refers to the history of God’s
doings, and what is it above all that she praises and thanks God for?
It is for his mercy which “is from age to age on those who fear
him.” God remembers “his mercy, the mercy promised to our fathers, to
Abraham and to his sons for ever.” It is this divine mercy which our
Lord repeatedly taught in his ministry. The great parables of the Good
Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are stories of the mercy of God. It is
this divine mercy that our Lord reminds the Pharisees of in today’s
Gospel and in reminding them he reminds each of us who read his words.
We are called to practise mercy to all those who are in need or who are
downtrodden in any sense. So then let us take our Lord as our teacher
of God’s mercy and as our model for living in a way that reflects and
bears witness to God who reveals himself as rich in mercy.
Pope Benedict
XVI’s
first Encyclical was a teaching on the nature of God. God is love, his
Letter explains. That love is a love that is attracted to misery,
sin, suffering and its alleviation. Our feast of St Matthew the Apostle
ought be a moment when we celebrate the mercy of God and resolve to see
it manifested in our own lives.
(E.J.Tyler)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saint Matthew, one of the four
evangelists (Matthew 9:9-13)
Commentary from Irenaeus of
Lyons (c.130 – c. 208), bishop and martyr
Against Heresies
c. Book III, 11, 8-9
It is not possible that the Gospels can be
either
more or fewer in number than they are. There are four zones of the
world in which we live, and four principal winds, and the Church is
scattered throughout all the world, and her "pillar and ground" (1 Tm
3, 15) is the Gospel and the Spirit of life; therefore it is fitting
that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every
side, and vivifying men afresh. The Word, the Shaper of all things, who
sits upon the cherubim and upholds all things (Ps 79, 2;He 1,3), who
was manifested to men, has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but
bound together by one Spirit. David says, when entreating his
manifestation, "You that sit between the cherubim, shine forth."(Ps
79,2) For the cherubim, too, were four-faced (Ez 1,6), and their faces
were images of the dispensation of the Son of God.
For, as Scripture says, "The first living
creature was like a lion," (Rev 4,7) symbolizing his effectual working,
his leadership, and royal power; “the second was like a calf”,
signifying his sacrificial and priestly order; but "the third had, as
it were, the face as of a man,"-an evident description of his coming as
a human being; "the fourth was like a flying eagle," pointing out the
gift of the Spirit hovering with its wings over the Church. And
therefore the Gospels of John, Luke, Matthew, and Mark are in accord
with these living things, among which Christ Jesus is seated…
Such was the form of the living creatures, so
was
also the character of the Word of God himself: the Word of God himself
conversed with the patriarchs before Moses in accordance with his
divinity and glory; but for those under the law he instituted a
priestly and liturgical service. Afterwards, being made man for us, he
sent the gift of the Spirit over all the earth, protecting us with his
wings (Ps 16,8)…These things being so, all who reject the form the
Gospel has taken – that is, those who say the Gospels should be more or
fewer in number – are futile, ignorant, and presumptuous.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let yourself be formed by the rough or gentle strokes of grace.
Strive
to be an instrument rather than an obstacle. And, if you are willing,
your most Holy Mother will help you; and you will be a channel for the
waters of God, rather than a boulder which diverts their flow.
(The Forge,
no.874)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is the relationship of the Catholic
Church with the Jewish people?
The Catholic Church recognizes a particular link with the Jewish
people
in the fact that God chose them before all others to receive his Word.
To the Jewish people belong “the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the
giving of the law, the worship, the promises, and the patriarchs; and
of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ” (Romans 9:4, 5).
The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a
response to the revelation of God in the Old Covenant. CCC 839-840
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.169)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday
of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 22) Today let us think of Saint Thomas of Villanova
(Saints)
Scripture today:
1
Corinthians 15:12-20; Psalm 17:1bcd, 6-7, 8b
and 15; Luke 8:1-3
Brothers
and sisters: If
Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say
there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of
the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ has not
been raised, then empty too is our preaching; empty, too, your faith.
Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testified against
God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if in fact the dead
are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been
raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are
still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have
perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the
most pitiable people of all. But now Christ has been raised from the
dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. (1
Corinthians 15:12-20)
In a world in which the
presence of various religions is becoming more and more an issue, the
question of the truth of the religions might continue to be quietly
shelved for the sake of peace and tolerance. Somehow we must
preserve the spirit of tolerance together with a commitment to
attaining certainty as to the truth. One of the fundamental indicators
of the truth of Christianity, according to St Paul in our first reading
today, is the resurrection of Christ. “For if the dead are not raised,
neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your
faith is vain” (1
Corinthians 15:12-20). That is to say, if
Christ did not rise from the dead then Christianity is false. The
Christian faith is empty and worth nothing. Now, Islam in our day has
within a very short time come to occupy the world’s attention not least
because of the threat of violence. One of its central positions is that
Christ was a great prophet and no more, and that he did not rise from
the dead except in a spiritual sense. Indeed many of them assert that
he actually did not even die. This is, the Christian has to say to the
Muslim with due respect, an entirely gratuitous assertion with no
evidence to support it. The point to notice here, though, is that the
resurrection of Christ is a fundamental issue in our own day. It is an
issue for the religious sceptic, and it is an issue dividing religions.
So we Christians ought have a vivid sense of how central to our faith
is the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection.
This doctrine
has
an irremovable place in the Christian Creeds, and any theological
theory which reduces or explains it away must be recognized for what it
is, a great deformation of the Christian faith. Moreover, it is
fundamental not only as proof of the truth of Christian revelation but
it is fundamental to the redemptive plan of God. Christ rose from the
dead not in the way Lazarus rose from the dead - returning to the life
he had been living before his death. Nor did he rise to heaven in
a
spiritual sense as Muslims allow, but he rose in his same body and soul
but
glorified. Christ rose in his body with a new life which he shares
with us at our baptism. It is this new life which is augmented in us
when we approach the Sacraments and especially the Holy Eucharist. It
is this new life of the risen Jesus which is the special gift of God to
believers when they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and which
enables them to attain holiness of life here and heaven with God
hereafter. The resurrection of Christ is “the first fruits” of the life
to come and which we now here on earth enjoy as a pledge of what is to
come hereafter. The resurrection of Christ is absolutely fundamental
and we ought make it our business to appreciate this not only for the
sake of our spiritual life but for the sake of others with whom we live
in the world. We need to know how to explain Christianity to others,
and for this to happen, we must appreciate the doctrine of the
bodily resurrection from the dead - firstly of Christ and then, in him,
of those
who believe.
Years ago a
prominent Australian politician was asked whether he was a Christian.
He replied that inasmuch as he did not accept the resurrection of
Christ he would have to regard himself as a fellow-traveller of
Christianity. He had hit the nail on the head.
(E.J.Tyler)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Accompanying him were the Twelve
and
some women” (Luke 8:1-3)
Commentary from Pope John
Paul II (Mulieris Dignitatem
§ 16)
The fact of being a man or a woman involves no
limitation
here, just as the salvific and sanctifying action of the Spirit in man
is in no way limited by the fact that one is a Jew or a Greek, slave or
free, according to the well-known words of Saint Paul: "For you are all
one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28).
This unity does not cancel out diversity. The Holy
Spirit,
who brings about this unity in the supernatural order of sanctifying
grace, contributes in equal measure to the fact that "your sons will
prophesy"(Jl 3,1) and that "your daughters will prophesy". "To
prophesy" means to express by one's words and one's life "the mighty
works of God" (Acts 2: 11), preserving the truth and originality of
each person, whether woman or man. Gospel "equality", the "equality" of
women and men in regard to the "mighty works of God" - manifested so
clearly in the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth - constitutes the
most obvious basis for the dignity and vocation of women in the Church
and in the world. Every vocation has a profoundly personal and
prophetic meaning. In "vocation" understood in this way, what is
personally feminine reaches a new dimension: the dimension of the
"mighty works of God", of which the woman becomes the living subject
and an irreplaceable witness.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lord, help me to be faithful and docile towards you, like clay in
the
potter's hands. In this way it will not be I that live, but you, my
Love, who will live and work in me.
(The Forge,
no.875)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is the bond
that
exists between the Catholic Church and non-Christian religions?
There is a bond between all peoples which comes especially from
the
common origin and end of the entire human race. The Catholic Church
recognizes that whatever is good or true in other religions comes from
God and is a reflection of his truth. As such it can prepare for the
acceptance of the Gospel and act as a stimulus toward the unity of
humanity in the Church of Christ. (CCC no.841-845
)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.170)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday
of the twenty fourth week of Ordinary Time II
(September 23) Today let us think of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina
(Padre Pio),
priest (Saints)
Today let us also celebrate Saint Constantius (Saints)
Scripture
today:
1
Corinthians 15:35-37, 42-49; Psalm 56:10c-12,
13-14; Luke 8:4-15
“This
is the meaning of
the parable. The seed is the word of God. Those on the path are the
ones who have heard, but the Devil comes and takes away the word from
their hearts that they may not believe and be saved. Those on rocky
ground are the ones who, when they hear, receive the word with joy, but
they have no root; they believe only for a time and fall away in time
of temptation. As for the seed that fell among thorns, they are the
ones who have heard, but as they go along, they are choked by the
anxieties and riches and pleasures of life, and they fail to produce
mature fruit. But as for the seed that fell on rich soil, they are the
ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and
good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.”(Luke 8:4-15)
During his public
ministry our Lord had crowds follow him, undoubtedly for various
reasons and with various levels of commitment. We remember how our Lord
fed the thousands with just a few loaves and a couple of fish, and how
afterwards they hurriedly searched for him. But they did this, Our Lord
told them, simply because they had been fed with earthly food and they
were seeking more of the same. What our Lord wanted of them was that
they seek the true food from heaven, the food he alone could give them.
That food was himself come down from heaven to give life to the world,
not the earthly bread he had given them the day before. The point is
that their dispositions were gravely wanting and this became evident on
certain great occasions. One such was directly associated with and (it
seems) soon after the feeding of the crowds. It was when he taught the
doctrine of the Eucharist in the synagogue of Capernaum. Very many of
his disciples left him when they heard him say that it would be
necessary to eat his flesh and to drink his blood. On another
occasion when the crowds were following our Lord he turned to them and
told them that if anyone wished to be his disciple he would have to
deny himself and take up his cross every day and follow him. Our Lord
was stressing the need for proper dispositions.
In our Gospel
today
(Luke
8:4-15) our
Lord tells the well-known parable of the Sower going out to sow his
seed. It is evident from our Lord’s explanation of the parable that he
gave to his disciples that the focus of the story is on the kind
of ground the seed falls into. It is a parable about the different
kinds of persons who hear the word which our Lord teaches and
proclaims. In broad strokes our Lord describes those from whom the
Devil takes away the word that has come to their hearts. Perhaps
inasmuch as the Gospel of St John associates the Devil with Judas our
Lord may also have been including Judas in this category of person.
Then there are those whose interest in the word is brief without depth.
Once
there is difficulty that is the end of it. Then there are those whose
interest in Christ and his word is choked to death by their other
interests - they are like the seed that fell among thorns. But then
there are those who are like rich soil. They are generous and good and
embrace the word that has come to them and bear fruit through their
perseverence. There immediately comes to mind the figure of our Lady
whose goodness and generosity was all it could possibly be without
defect. She persevered unfailingly and the harvest of holiness in her
heart was immense beyond imagining. In company with her are many
others of Christ's faithful down the ages.
Let us resolve
to
console our Lord with a generous and good response to his word, and be
persevering in the fulfilment of his will. He wants those who will
accompany him to the cross as did his mother. Many others have done
this with her. Let us resolve to be among them.
(E.J.Tyler)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“They are the ones who, when they have heard the word, ..... bear
fruit through perseverance.”
(Luke 8:4-15)
Commentary by St Gregory the
Great (540-604), Pope, Doctor of the Church
Homilies on the Gospel,
1,15
Be watchful so that the word you have received might
resonate in the depth of your heart and dwell there. Take care that the
seed not fall upon the path for fear that the evil spirit might come
and take the word away from your memory. Take care that the rocky soil
does not receive the seed and produce good actions that are lacking the
roots of perseverance. For many rejoice when they hear the word and
prepare to undertake good works. But when trials have hardly begun to
assail them, they give up what they had undertaken. Thus, the rocky
soil lacked water, so much so that the wheat germ could not bear the
fruit of perseverance.
But the good earth gives fruit through patience. Let
us
understand by this that our good works can be of value, if we patiently
bear the trouble caused by our neighbour. Moreover, the more we advance
towards perfection, the more we have to endure trials. Once our soul
has abandoned the love of the present world, the hostility of this
world increases. That is why we see many toiling under a heavy burden
(Mt 11:28) although their works are good… But according to the word of
the Lord, “they bear fruit through their constancy” by bearing these
trials humbly, so much so that after having toiled, they will be
invited to enter into the peace of heaven.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesus will enable you to have a great affection for everybody you
meet,
without taking away any of the affection you have for him. On the
contrary, the more you love Jesus, the more room there will be for
other people in your heart.
(The Forge,
no.876)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is the meaning of
the
affirmation “Outside the Church there is no salvation”?
This means that all salvation comes from Christ, the Head, through
the
Church which is his body. Hence they cannot be saved who, knowing the
Church as founded by Christ and necessary for salvation, would refuse
to enter her or remain in her. At the same time, thanks to Christ and
to his Church, those who through no fault of their own do not know the
Gospel of Christ and his Church but sincerely seek God and moved by
grace, try to do his will as it is known through the dictates of
conscience, can attain eternal salvation.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.171)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twenty-fifth
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(September 24) Today let us think of Saint Pacific of San Severino
and Our Lady of Ransom
(Saints)
Scripture today:
Wisdom 2:12,
17-20; Psalm 54:3-4, 5, 6, 8; James
3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37
Then
he sat down, called
the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall
be the last of all and the servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed
it in the their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and
whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” (Mark 9:30-37)
Years ago I was
told
that the motto of the then Archbishop of New York (Cardinal John
O’Connor) was that “There can be no love without justice.” I have never
checked whether this in fact was his motto, but I have always
considered it to be a very good statement. One of the things it
suggests is that
in talking of Christian love, it is possible to forget to be just. In
general we could describe justice as the granting to another what is
due to him or her by right. Of course, the best support for justice is
love, but love ought focus in the first instance on serving people’s
rights. Often it is precisely this which is lacking between people who
love one another. For instance, spouses who love one another can forget
certain rights the other has. A husband can be unjust to his wife, and
vice versa. A brother can be unjust to another brother or sister, and
vice versa. Children can be unjust to their parents and vice versa.
This can and will gradually lead to the breakdown of love. So there can
be no love without justice, and there can be no Christian love in the
everyday life of the Christian in the world if he does not try to be
just to others.
The
characteristic milieu of the life of the lay member of the Church is
the world, the world of his family, workplace, friends and the secular
community. His vocation in the world as a servant and member of Christ
is therefore to try to make the world around him the kind of milieu God
wants it to be. To do this he ought try to gain an understanding of the
Church’s social justice teaching so as to be able to work for justice
according to the mind of Christ. For instance, if all a Catholic reads
is the newspapers and the media around him he will probably make his
own the notions of social justice championed by the media. Many high
profile people promote causes which they think are a matter of justice
when they are in fact an injustice. Their mistaken views will influence
a Catholic who does not make it his business to know the Church’s
teaching - and there is a great deal of social justice teaching that
has come from the Church. For instance, some in the media have implied
that it is an injustice to those suffering various debilities to
prohibit research and experimentation on the stem cells of human
embryos. If we do not know the Church’s social justice and moral
teaching we might slip into thinking this ourselves. We need to know
that the Church points out that to engage in embryonic stem cell
research would be a grave injustice to the human embryo. This procedure
destroys or gravely harms the embryo. The path to take is to use,
rather, the stem cells of the fully formed human being.
I
mention that example simply to emphasize the importance not only of
practising justice but of a correct notion of what is just. We must
practise justice with a mind formed by Christ and his teaching, coming
to us in the ministry of the Church. Being just in this sense is
a commitment which ought flow from love - just as God is a just God and
his justice flows from his love. Our love ought prompt us to be very
sensitive to justice being done. Another area which affects the human
being at a profound level is his culture. His culture is the shape and
make-up of his mind and heart, including language, educational
background, values, preferences, his history and the history of his
people. In a spirit of justice we ought respect the culture of people
and try to see the good and strong points in that culture. Their
culture may be very different from our own, but if we aspire to live an
authentic and generous Christian life following closely in the
footsteps of our Lord, we should respect the culture of others -
provided it does not include violations of morality. Many cultures
violate natural morality in this or that point, and respect for the
culture of a person does not mean accepting or supporting that which by
the standards of objective morality is wrong. Such matters ought be the
subject of ongoing dialogue and, if necesary, firm prohibition. But it
does mean transcending our mere tastes, just as Christ himself is
accepting and appreciative of all, of whatever culture.
In
our Gospel passage today (Mark 9: 30-37)
our Lord tells his disciples that whoever receives a child in his name
welcomes him. That is to say that whatever we do to the least person
our Lord regards as done to him. This thought ought impel us to show
Christian love to all by being very just. Today
is Social Justice Sunday in Australia. It recalls in a special way the
great address to the Australian Aborigines given by Pope John Paul II
twenty years ago in 1986 at Alice Springs. In it he expressed the
Church’s profound appreciation of all cultures. Today ought be the
opportunity to renew our commitment to be just, and to make Christian
love the driving force behind our justice.
(E.J.Tyler)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Whoever welcomes one
such
child in my name welcomes me” (Mark 9:30-37)
Commentary from St Irenaeus of Lyon (130 to
208), Bishop, Theologian and Martyr
Against the
Heresies, IV, 38, 1-2
Could God not have made the human person perfect right from
the
beginning? For God, who has always been identical with himself and who
is not created, everything is possible. But because the existence of
the created beings began after God’s, they are necessarily inferior to
God who made them… Thus, since they are created, they are not perfect.
When they have just been born, they are small children, and as small
children, they are neither accustomed to nor have they had practice in
perfect conduct… Thus, God could give perfection to the human person
right from the beginning, but the human person was incapable of
receiving this perfection, for he / she was only a small child.
And that is why, in the last times when our Lord gathered up all
things
in him (Eph 1:10), he came to us, not in his power, but in such a way
that we were able to see him. For he could have come to us in his
inexpressible glory, but we were not yet able to bear the greatness of
his glory… Although the Word of God was perfect, with humankind he
became a small child, not for himself, but because of the state of
childhood in which was humankind.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The closer a creature comes to God, the more universal it feels.
Its
heart expands, making room for everything and everybody in its single
great desire to place the whole universe at the feet of Jesus.
(The Forge,
no.877)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why must the Church proclaim the Gospel to the whole world?
The Church must do so because Christ has given the command: “Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
This missionary mandate of the Lord has its origin in the eternal love
of God who has sent his Son and the Holy Spirit because “he desires all
men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy
2:4). (CCC 849-851)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.172)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday
of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 25) Today let us think of Blessed Herman the Cripple
and Saint Finbar
(Saints)
Scripture today:
Proverbs
3:27-34; Psalm 15:2-3a, 3bc-4ab,
5; Luke 8:16-18
Jesus
said to the crowd:
“No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a
bed; rather, he places it on a lampstand so that those who enter may
see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not become
visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.
Take care, then, how you hear. To anyone who has, more will be given,
and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken
away.” (Luke
8:16-18)
The Gospel accounts of
our Lord’s public ministry are clear. Our Lord did many spectacular
things which were all to the service of good. He healed the sick, he
raised the dead, he cast out evil spirits, he fed vast crowds with a
few loaves, he walked across the turbulent waters to reach his
disciples, he calmed the storm at a word. He reduced his opponents to
silence in public debate and by his goodness and personal authority won
the adulation of the crowds. He could
do no wrong. Even the devils addressed him as the Holy One of God. At
the same time he unceasingly taught his exalted doctrine
which was at times totally surprising such as the doctrine of
the Holy Eucharist. But at the end of it all he died on the Cross with
only
a few fervent followers near him. Of course, things changed after his
Resurrection and Ascension, but nevertheless the great crowds did not
become his disciples. What went wrong? The Gospel today gives us at
least an important part of the answer to this question and it is an
answer that we must take to heart. “Take care, then, how you hear. To
anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even
what he seems to have will be taken away” (Luke 8:16-18). The crowds
were not hearing with the dispositions of heart that are necessary, and
as a result in their case little came of the preaching vouchsafed to
them by the Son of God himself. They took no care how they heard the
word of God.
In our daily
living
of the Christian life we must keep alive in our hearts a profound
reverence for the word of God and take it to heart. Our Lady is our
most exalted example of this. She treasured in her heart all that God
did and said, pondering on its meaning and holding fast to it with
perseverence. We remember our Lord’s parable of the Sower going out to
sow. Mary the mother of Jesus is the greatest embodiment of the rich
soil of that parable, and in her a stupendous harvest was produced.
People's gifts vary one from the other, but all of us have some gifts
from God
and by means
of these gifts of nature and grace we are able to give our response to
God and his word. So we must take care how we hear this word as it
comes to us
in the Church’s Tradition and in the Church's great Book, the
Scriptures. We
must hear as those who wish to believe and obey. Our Lord said on
another occasion that “it is not those who say to me Lord, Lord, who
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my
Farther in heaven.” St Thomas Aquinas somewhere says that holiness is
the constant readiness to do God’s will. With this disposition we shall
hear aright and accompany the hearing with a readiness to persevere.
Our Lord warns that it is only the rich who will enter the kingdom of
heaven - that is to say, it is only the truly rich, the rich in God's
sight. For to anyone who
has, more will be given to him. The one who has not, even what he has
will be taken away.
So let us take
care
how we hear Christ as he speaks to us. He speaks to us within the life
and ministry of his Church of which he is the head. Let us hold fast to
this teaching, the teaching of our Catholic Faith and with a spirit of
perseverence, resolve to put its detail into practice.
(E.J.Tyler)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Men do not light a lamp and
then
put it under a bushel basket.” (Luke 8:16-18)
Commentary by St John Chrysostom
(345-407), Bishop and Doctor of the Church
(Homily 15 on St. Matthew)
“Men do not light a lamp and then put it under a bushel
basket.”
Through these words, Jesus again encourages his disciples to lead an
irreproachable life by advising them to constantly watch over
themselves, because they are placed in the sight of all humankind like
athletes in a stadium, who are seen by the whole world (1 Cor 4:9).
He told them: “Don’t tell yourselves: ‘Now we can
stay
sitting here quietly, we are hidden in a little corner of the world,’
for you will be visible to all humankind, like a city on top of a
mountain (Mt 5:14), like a light in the house that has been placed on
the lamp stand… I have lit the light of your torch, but it’s up to you
to see to its upkeep, not just to your personal advantage, but also in
the interest of all who will see it and who through it will be led to
the truth. The worst wickedness won’t put a shadow over your light if
you live with the vigilance of those who are called to bring the whole
world to good. Thus, may you respond to the sanctity of your ministry
by your life so that God’s grace might be announced everywhere.”
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Jesus died on the Cross he was only thirty-three years old.
Youthfulness can be no excuse!
Anyway, with each day that passes you are ceasing to be young...
though
with Him you will possess his eternal youth.
(The
Forge, no.878)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In what sense is the Church missionary?
The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, continues the mission of
Christ
himself in the course of history. Christians must, therefore, proclaim
to everyone the Good News borne by Christ; and, following his path,
they must be ready for self-sacrifice, even unto martyrdom. (CCC
852-856)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.173)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday
of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 26) Saints
Cosmas and Damian, martyrs. From early writings there is
evidence that the tomb of Cosmas and Damian was at Cyrrhus in Syria
where a basilica was built in their honour. They may have been martyred
in the time of Diocletian. Their veneration spread from there to Rome
and then throughout the Church. Their names appear in the Roman
Canon. (Saints)
Scripture today:
Proverbs
21:1-6, 10-13; Psalm 119:1, 27, 30, 34, 35,
44; Luke 8:19-21
The
mother of Jesus and
his brothers came to him but were unable to join him because of the
crowd. He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside
and they wish to see you.” He said to them in reply, “My mother and my
brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.” (Luke 8:19-21)
Our Lord's mother and brethren arrived and wanted to see him. His
response to the news offers us another example of the marvellous
simplicity of our Lord’s teaching. He puts profound teaching - teaching
which is of decisive importance for the entire direction of a person’s
life - into simple and utterly accessible language. "My brother and my
brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it." Surely
his words also set forth and reinforce in a wonderful one-liner what is
uppermost in his mind and at the heart and soul of his teaching. Those
who are closest to him, those who have most claim on his heart,
those who most share his life, are those “who hear the word of God and
act on it.” (Luke 8:19-21) There is nothing more
important than this in the mind of Christ. Perhaps this brief response
of our Lord served as a summary of what he had been teaching just then
and at great length through parables. Certainly in the
Gospel text itself this saying comes but a few sentences after his
great
parable of the Sower sowing his seed. The climax of that parable is the
seed falling on the good soil and bearing a harvest. That soil is the
one who receives the word of God and bears its fruit through
perseverence.
The Christian
formed in the mind of the Church lights on our Lord’s mention of his
“mother” among his brethren. His “mother” and brethren are those who
hear the word of God and keep it. We know that Christ’s mother is the
mother and the model of all who hear the word of God and keep it.
Humanly speaking, it was she who first introduced him to the word of
God in his very infancy, and he had from his earliest days before him
the purest and most perfect instance of the human response to the word
of God. He himself in his human nature far outstriped her in all that
pertained to God, for he was God made man, but we cannot adequately
imagine the loving admiration he had for her. We remember how the rich
young man came before him asking what more he needed to do to gain
eternal life. When in response to our Lord’s answer he said that
he had kept all God’s commandments from his earliest days, our Lord
looked on him with love. Our Lord loved him because he was good and
obeyed God. How much more would Christ have loved and admired his own
mother who from the beginning of her life had been sinless and filled
with grace. She was the embodiment of all that our Lord meant to teach
in his simple response to those who brought him the news of the arrival
of his relatives.
Let us make our
Gospel passage today (Luke 8:19-21) the programme of our
life. Christ is our model,
for he heard the word of his heavenly Father and put it into practice.
He said on another occasion that “I always do what pleases him.” Next
to him, though in holiness far
below him, was his perfectly sinless mother who has been give to us by
him to be our mother and our model. Let us pray to the all-holy Mary to
lead us to be more
and more like her Son.
(E.J.Tyler)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mary, mother of Christ, mother of
the
Church (Luke 8:19-21)
Comment by St Augustine (354-430),
Bishop and Doctor of the Church (On holy virginity,
5)
He who is the fruit of one holy Virgin is the glory and
honour
of all the other holy virgins; for like Mary, they are themselves the
mothers of Christ if they do the will of his Father. The glory and
happiness of Mary in being the mother of Jesus Christ shines forth
above all in the Lord’s words: “Whoever does the will of my heavenly
Father is brother and sister and mother to me.” (Mt 12:50)
Thus he shows the spiritual relationships, which attach him
to
the people whom he redeemed. His brothers and sisters are the holy men
and women who partake with him in the heavenly inheritance. His mother
is the entire Church, because by God’s grace, she brings forth the
members of Jesus Christ, that is to say, those who are faithful to him.
His mother is also every holy soul that does the will of his Father and
whose fruitful charity is made manifest in those whom it brings forth
for him until he himself is formed in them (Gal 4:19)…
Mary is certainly the mother of the members of the Body of Christ,
that
is to say, our mother, because in her charity she cooperated in
bringing forth in the Church the faithful who are the members of this
divine head, whose mother she truly is according to the flesh.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You must reject that form of nationalism which hinders
understanding
and harmony. In many moments of history it has been one of the most
evil of barriers. You must reject it yet more strongly, since it would
be all the more harmful, when it tries to set foot within the Body of
the Church, where the unity of everyone and everything in the love of
Jesus Christ ought to shine out most clearly.
(The Forge,
no.879)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why is the Church apostolic?
The Church is apostolic in her origin because she has been built
on
“the foundation of the Apostles” (Ephesians 2:20). She is apostolic in
her teaching which is the same as that of the Apostles. She is
apostolic by reason of her structure insofar as she is taught,
sanctified, and guided until Christ returns by the Apostles through
their successors who are the bishops in communion with the successor of
Peter.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.174)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday
of the twenty fifth week of Ordinary Time II
(September 27) Saint
Vincent de Paul, priest (1581-1660). Born in France, he was a
priest who dedicated himself to evangelization of the poor, the
unfortunate and the suffering. Together with Louise de Marillac, he
founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity. He also founded
the Congregation of the Priests of the Mission (known here as the
Vincentians). His life remained deeply rooted in humility in spite of
his worldwide fame. (Saints)
Scripture
today: Proverbs
30:5-9; Psalm 119:29, 72, 89, 101, 104,
163; Luke 9:1-6
Jesus
summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons
and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God
and to heal the sick. He said to them, “Take nothing for the journey,
neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one
take a second tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave
from there. And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave
that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.”
Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the Good
News and curing diseases everywhere. (Luke 9:1-6)
There is a certain
mindset which understands the practice of the Christian and Catholic
faith in terms of the fulfilment of a limited set of duties. A “good
Catholic” is understood by many other “good Catholics” as one who
participates in Sunday Mass, approaches the Sacrament of Reconciliation
with some regularity, maintains a life of prayer, and endeavours to
live a moral life as this is normally understood. Now, a “good
Catholic” must indeed do all of these things because these duties are
essential components of the plan and will of God for our redemption and
sanctification. However, such a person should consider his or her life
a little more carefully to see whether other essential duties are
being completely overlooked. Let us take our Gospel of today. What was
our Lord doing, and
what was he drawing the Twelve into doing? They were engaged in
the active apostolic
mission. Our Gospel scene today illustrates the teaching of the
Church that an essential component of the spiritual life of the
Christian is
the participation in the apostolic mission of Christ and his Church. It
describes how “they set out and went from village
to village proclaiming the Good News and curing diseases everywhere” (Luke
9:1-6). That
is the cue for every member of the Church.
The mission of
the
lay member of Christ’s faithful is to serve Christ in the midst of the
world
through his or her work, whether it be at home or in the workplace. In
this milieu of the world he is called to be apostolic - to proclaim the
Good News
in ways that are discreet, effective and respectful. It is done
through word, example and professional work and is essential to the
Church’s presence in
the world. Let each member of the Church ask himself or herself, What
have I done for Christ to this point? What am I doing for him? What
will I do for him? The Carmelite nun, such as St Therese of Lisieux, is
also called to be apostolic but through her life of contemplative
prayer. St Therese is a patroness of the foreign missions. We are all
called to be missionary and apostolic but each according to the
circumstances of his or her vocation. The sad fact is that so very many
members of the Church leave the apostolate to “The Twelve”, we might
say. That is to say, they leave it to the Bishops, the priests, the
religious, to others who have formally dedicated themselves to the
service of the Church and to the apostolate. They leave it to the
"professionals" in
the apostolate of Christ, but part of the role of these "professionals"
is to
bear witness by their apostolic activity to the call that all members
of the Church have received to participate in the mission of Christ and
his Church.
Let us place
ourselves in today’s Gospel scene and hear the call of Christ to join
him in what he is doing. Christ calls us by name to join him in his
work. Having heard it, let us act daily according to
that call.
(E.J.Tyler)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“He sent them to proclaim the
kingdom
of God and to heal the sick.” (Luke 9:1-6)
Commentary by Pope John Paul
II (Redemptoris missio
§ 30)
Our own time, with humanity on the move and in
continual
search, demands a resurgence of the Church's missionary activity. The
horizons and possibilities for mission are growing ever wider, and we
Christians are called to an apostolic courage based upon trust in the
Spirit. He is the principal agent of mission!
The history of humanity has known many major turning
points which have encouraged missionary outreach, and the Church,
guided by the Spirit, has always responded to them with generosity and
farsightedness. Results have not been lacking... We celebrated the
millennium of the evangelization of Russia and the Slav peoples, and...
the five hundredth anniversary of the evangelization of the Americas.
Similarly, there have been recent commemorations of the centenaries of
the first missions in various countries of Asia, Africa and Oceania.
Today the Church must face other challenges and push forward to new
frontiers, both in the initial mission ad gentes and in the new
evangelization of those peoples who have already heard Christ
proclaimed. Today all Christians, the particular churches and the
universal Church, are called to have the same courage that inspired the
missionaries of the past, and the same readiness to listen to the voice
of the Spirit.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Child of God, what have you done up to now to help the souls
around
you? You cannot be content with that passiveness, with that idleness of
yours. He wants to reach others through your example, through your
words, through your friendship, through your service.
(The Forge,
no.880)
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In what does the mission of the Apostles
consist?
The Word “Apostle” means “one who is sent”. Jesus, the One sent by
the
Father, called to himself twelve of his disciples and appointed them as
his Apostles, making them the chosen witnesses of his Resurrection and
the foundation of his Church. He gave them the command to continue his
own mission saying, “As the Father has sent me, so I also send you”
(John 20:21); and he promised to remain with them until the end of the
world. (CCC 858-861)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.175)
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Thursday
of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 28) St
Wenceslaus, martyr (907-930) Duke of
Bohemia. After many trials in governing his people, he suffered
martyrdom at the hands of his brother. (Saints)
St Lorenzo Ruiz and
his companions, martyrs. In the 17th century (1633-1637) Lorenzo
Ruiz and his companions shed their blood for Christ in Nagasaki, Japan.
These martyrs were members of the Order of St Dominic. They were nine
priests, two religious, two sisters, and there laymen. Among the latter
was Lorenzo Ruiz, a family man from the Philippines. They abundantly
lowed the missionary seed of Christianity with the example of their
life and death. (Saints)
Scripture
today:
Ecclesiastes
1:2-11; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and
17bc; Luke 9:7-9
Herod
the tetrarch heard
about all that was happening, and he was greatly perplexed because some
were saying, “John has been raised from the dead”; others were saying,
“Elijah has appeared”; still others, “One of the ancient prophets has
arisen.” But Herod said, “John I beheaded. Who then is this about whom
I hear such things?” And he kept trying to see him. (Luke 9:7-9)
Our Lord’s fame was
spreading, and Herod the tetrarch began to hear about him. Various
opinions were being expressed. He was said to be a prophet, indeed a
great prophet - John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the other
ancient prophets come back to life. We remember the conversation
between our Lord and his closest disciples, the Twelve, and how he
asked them what were people saying of him. The answer they gave was the
much the same as the answer Herod was given. St Luke tells us in
today's passage that
Herod was greatly perplexed, he was curious and wanted to set eyes on
Jesus (Luke 9:7-9). In fact, many were curious and large numbers wanted
to see Jesus. But this was not sufficient for our Lord because he was
looking
for the readiness to repent and accept his word wholeheartedly. When
Herod finally did see Jesus - during our Lord’s Passion - our Lord
would not even speak to him. But we read how certain others did want to
see Jesus
with the right dispositions. At the beginning of his public ministry
John the
Baptist pointed our Lord out to two of his disciples and they
immediately followed Jesus. They wanted to see him, and when our Lord
turned and asked them what they wanted they asked where he lived. He
promptly invited them to come and see. We remember too how when our
Lord was entering Jericho Zacchaeus ran ahead and climbed the tree. He
wanted to see Jesus. Our Lord stopped and looked up at him and
cordially invited him to come down because he was going to dine at his
house that day. Zacchaeus underwent a great conversion. Zacchaeus
wanted “to see” with the right attitude.
Our Lord is,
at the
very least, one of the most prominent figures in world history. He
attracts the attention of historians and students of the religions of
the world. In the broad sense of the word, many people want “to see
Jesus.” But our Lord did not come among us to attract our curiosity and
be the object of a general fascination. He came to invite us to
conversion from sin and to a share in his divine life that comes from
union with him. He asks from us the full gift of our hearts, the love
that is due to God. He asks that we love him with all our mind, all our
heart and all our strength. The test of this total love will be the
readiness we have to follow him along the path of the cross. On one
occasion great crowds were following him and our Lord turned to those
crowds and told them that if anyone wanted to be his disciple that
person would have to take up his cross every day and follow in his
footsteps. To those who have an interest in “seeing” Jesus our Lord
says that “to see” of itself is inadequate. There must also be the
desire to love and to follow to the very end. In our day in secondary
and tertiary institutions in Australia the study of religion has come
into its own. But the danger is that "studies in religion" will be
approached not with the desire to seek and find the truth in religion
and then to live by it but simply to observe, simply “to see” -
including “to
see Jesus” - and be little more than be a detached and analytical
observer. Rather, we must want to see Jesus as one who wishes to be an
ardent disciple. The ultimage joy for Christ's true disciples will be
finally "to see" him face to face in heaven.
Every day let
us in
prayer place ourselves in the presence of Jesus our Lord and
contemplate him especially in the Gospel scenes. Let us place ourselves
in his company “seeing” him with the eyes of our hearts. Let us be
constantly contemplating our Lord, as contemplatives in action. Let us
then yearn to see him when he comes to take us to himself.
(E.J.Tyler)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Herod wanted to see Jesus (Luke 9:7-9)
Comment by St Isaac the
Syrian (7th century), Monk in Nineveh, near Mosul in present-day
Iraq
(Spiritual
discourses) 1st series,
no,20
How can created beings contemplate God? The vision of God
is so
terrible that Moses himself said that he feared and trembled. For when
the glory of God appeared on Mount Sinai (Exodus 20), the mountain
smoked and trembled with fear under the impact of the revelation; the
animals that drew near the slopes died. The children of Israel
prepared; they purified themselves for three days, following the order
of Moses, so as to be worthy to hear God’s voice and to see his
revelation. But when the time came, they could neither take on the
vision of his light nor receive the strength of his thundering voice.
But now that by his coming he has poured forth his grace
onto
the world, he did not come down in an earthquake or in fire or by
announcing himself with a terrible and strong voice, but rather like
the dew on the fleece (Judges 6:37), like a drop falling gently onto
the earth. He came among us in another form. For he covered his
greatness with the veil of the flesh. He made a treasure of this flesh.
He lived among us in that flesh, which his will had formed for himself
in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, so that when we saw
him as belonging to our human race and living among us, we might not be
troubled by fear in contemplating him. That is why those who have
surrounded themselves with the garment in which the Creator appeared,
that is this body with which he covered himself, have put on Christ
himself (Galatians 3:27). For they wanted to carry in their inner
person (Ephesians 3:16) the same humility with which Christ revealed
himself to his creation and lived in it, as he reveals himself now to
his servants. Instead of the garment of external honor and glory, they
have clothed themselves with this humility.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sacrifice yourself, give yourself, and work at souls one by one,
as the
jeweller works on precious stones: one by one. Indeed you should
exercise even more care, because you are dealing with something of
incomparable value. The purpose of that spiritual attention you give is
to prepare good instruments for the service of God: and they, each one
of them, have cost Christ all of his Blood.
(The Forge,
no.881)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is apostolic succession?
Apostolic succession is the transmission by means of the sacrament
of
Holy Orders of the mission and power of the Apostles to their
successors, the bishops. Thanks to this transmission the Church remains
in communion of faith and life with her origin, while through the
centuries she carries on her apostolate for the spread of the Kingdom
of Christ on earth. (CCC 861-865)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.176)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feast
of Saints
Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels
(September 29) The liturgy celebrates the feast of these three
archangels who are venerated in the Church's tradition. Michael ('Who
is like God?') was the archangel who fought against Satan and all his
evil angels, defending all the friends of God. He is the protector of
all humanity and reminds us of the real existence of the devil and of
diabolical activity. To protect us from the snares of the devil, it is
good to have recourse to St Michael. (Saints)
Gabriel
('Strength of God') announced to Zechariah the coming birth of john the
Baptist and to Mary the birth of Jesus. His greeting to the Virgin,
'Hail, full of Grace' is one of the most familiar and frequent prayers
of the Christian people. (Saints)
Raphael ('Medicine
of God') is the archangel who took care of Tobias on his journey.
Every person on his pilgrimage through this life has a guardian angel
with a mission similar to that of Raphael.
Daniel
7:9-10, 13-14 or Revelation
12:7-12ab; Psalm 138:1-2ab,
2cde-3, 4-5; John 1:47-51
Jesus
saw Nathanael
coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true child of Israel.
There is no duplicity in him.” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know
me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw
you under the fig tree.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the
Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to
him, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig
tree? You will see greater things than this.” And he said to him,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of
God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:47-51)
Throughout
the Church’s
Liturgical Year we celebrate very many saints, and on various days we
commemorate the holiness and life of our Lady who is the greatest of
them. They inspire us on our way towards heaven, and intercede for us
in our various needs. But there is a vast world of persons in heaven
other than our brothers and sisters there who have gone before us. I
refer to the angels.
They are holy and no sin touches them. They serve God constantly
by praising and thanking him, and by guarding us on our way to our
heavenly homeland. Today we think of three of them whose names are
known to us from Holy Scripture: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. We are
able to contemplate them because they feature by name in Scripture.
They are shown in Scripture serving God by serving his people, and have
the
title of Archangel because of the exceptionally important work they
were given to do as God’s envoys in the story of our salvation. They
appeared to chosen persons and revealed what God wanted to tell them,
assisting them to know and to do the will of God. They are
exceptionally holy and stand in the very presence of God, seeing him
face to face. When we celebrate these three archangels we celebrate
holiness and the plan of God to grant us a share in the holiness of
which they themselves too have received a share.
In our Gospel today
our Lord tells Nathanael that he will see “heaven opened and the angels
of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1: 47-51)
We are reminded of the wonder of the Incarnation in which God the maker
of the angels became lower than they. The Messiah was expected to be a
man, a man great beyond compare but a man nevertheless. During our
Lord’s public ministry the talk was that he was a great prophet, indeed
perhaps one of the great prophets brought back to life. Imagine,
though, if it had turned out that the Messiah God sent was an archangel
come to earth! Who could lay a hand on him? Who could resist or destroy
him? But no, more than this it was God himself who came on earth. He
came as a true man, the Suffering Servant of Yahweh who would redeem
mankind by his obedience in the midst of sufferings and above all by
his obedient death. God did not cling to his glory as God but became as
we are, and humbler yet, more lowly than the archangels, and more lowly
than so many men are - to death on a cross. As we think today of the
grandeur
of the archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael let us think of the
incomparably greater nobility of Jesus who assumed a
condition lowlier than they. The glory of the holy archangels reminds
us
of the humble condition assumed by the incomparably holier Son of Man.
For a long
time the
Church prayed to Michael the Archangel at the end of every Mass. Many
Catholic churches are named after one or other of the archangels. Let
us learn to love and venerate them, and ask for their constant
intercession.
(E.J.Tyler)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The holiness of the
angels
(Daniel
7:9-10, 13-14 or Revelation
12:7-12ab)
Commentary by St Basil the
Great (330-379), monk, Bishop, Doctor of the Church
(Treatise on the
Holy Spirit, Chapter 16)
"By the Lord's word the heavens were
made; by
the breath of his mouth all their host" (Ps 33:6)… Here we perceive the
Three, the Lord who gives the order, the Word who creates, and the
Spirit who confirms. And what else could this confirmation be than a
perfecting in holiness? This perfecting expresses unchangeableness and
fixity in good, but there is no sanctification without the Holy Spirit.
The powers of the heavens are not holy by nature; otherwise there would
be no difference between them and the Holy Spirit. They receive their
measure of holiness from the Spirit, according to their rank…
Their substance is perhaps an ethereal spirit, or an immaterial
fire,
as it is written, " You make the winds your messengers; flaming fire,
your ministers" (Ps 104:4). They exist in space and can become visible
and appear in a bodily form to those that are worthy. But their
holiness… comes through their communion with the Spirit. They keep
their rank by abiding in the good and true; while they retain their
free will, they never fall away from their patient attendance on Him
who is truly good…
For how are angels to cry "Glory to God in the highest" (Lk 2:14)
without being empowered by the Spirit? For "No one can say that 'Jesus
is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit, and nobody speaking by the Spirit
of God says 'Jesus be accursed,'" (1 Co 12:3) as might be said by
wicked and hostile spirits… in their free will… And how could "thrones,
dominions, principalities and powers"(Col 1:16) live their blessed
life, if they did not "behold the face of the Father in heaven"? (Mt
18:10) But to behold it is impossible without the Spirit! ... How could
the Seraphim cry "Holy, Holy, Holy," (Is 6:3) were they not taught by
the Spirit? If "all His angels" and "all His hosts" praise God, it is
through the co-operation of the Spirit. If "thousands on thousands" of
angels stand before Him, and "ten thousand times ten thousand"
ministering spirits, they are blamelessly doing their proper work by
the power of the Spirit. All the glorious and unspeakable harmony of
the highest heavens both in the service of God, and in the mutual
concord of the celestial powers, can therefore only be preserved by the
direction of the Spirit.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To be a Christian, and in particular to be a priest — bearing in
mind,
too, that all of us who are baptized share in Christ's priesthood — is
to be at all times on the Cross.
(The Forge,
no.882)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who are the
faithful?
The Christian faithful are those who, inasmuch as they have been
incorporated in Christ through Baptism, have been constituted as the
people of God; for this reason, since they have become sharers in
Christ’s priestly, prophetic and royal office in their own manner, they
are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the
Church. There exists a true equality among them in their dignity as
children of God. (CCC 871-872)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.177)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday
of the twenty fifth week of Ordinary Time II
(September 30) Saint
Jerome, priest and doctor of the Church (340-420). Born in
Dalmatia (Yugoslavia) he studied in Rome where he was baptized. He
chose monastic life, went to Syria and was ordained priest. He went
back to Rome as secretary of Pope Damasus, who commissioned him to
revise the Latin text of the Bible. He went to Bethlehem to work on
this project. His work is now known as the Vulgate (superseded in
recent years by the New Vulgate) which the Church adopted as her
official version. He wrote many other works, mostly commentaries on the
books of the Bible. (Saints)
Scripture today:
Ecclesiastes
11:9—12:8; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and
17; Luke 9:43b-45
While
they were all
amazed at his every deed, Jesus said to his disciples, “Pay attention
to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.”
But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from
them so that they should not understand it, and they were afraid to ask
him about this saying. (Luke
9:43b-45)
The
Gospels make it clear that our Lord repeatedly referred to his coming
Passion when instructing his disciples. He asked them to pay great
attention to what he was saying: “Pay attention to what I am telling
you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” (Luke 9: 43b-45)
It was a
very distinctive doctrine. It would be an interesting study to
investigate the place of suffering and death in the thought of the
great originators of ideas, of philosophies and of religions in the
history of the world. I do not think that any great figure could be
found who foresaw and then understood his sufferings and his terrible
death to be the crowning moment of his life, by means of which his
special
mission of renewing the world would be achieved. It was precisely in
and by his suffering and death that the sin of the world was to be
expiated.
Our Lord not only insisted on the divinely arranged place of the Cross
in his life and his mission, but he insisted on it in the life of
anyone who wishes to be his disciple. It goes utterly against all that
man naturally thinks and in itself it is a mystery how suffering and
death could be such a positive thing in the scheme of things. It is a
spectacularly new notion in the history of ideas and religion. With
good reason then do we read how the disciples “did not
understand this saying, its meaning was hidden from them so that they
should not understand it.” But it is essential that the Christian
penetrate into this mystery and embrace the doctrine of the
cross.
So then we who
aspire to follow Jesus closely must pray for the grace to appreciate
this doctrine. Our Lord’s crowning moment in life was when he was
“handed over to men.” It was then that he suffered the most
catastrophic of reversals in a worldly sense, and it was then that his
effectiveness reached its true climax. If Christ went forward along
that path, the Christian who takes Jesus for his Master must regard
this as his path too. He accompanies the Master along the path of the
Cross. It is the hardest of lessons to learn in practice and requires
the action of grace. It means putting on the mind of Christ and putting
away the mind of the world, a mind which Satan is very adept at making
use of. We remember how when Simon Peter urged upon our Lord that he
not
look to terrible sufferings and death as his necessary path, our Lord
openly and sternly rebuked him as speaking according to man’s way, and
in doing that he was taking the path of Satan. So then, let us in
our
prayer accompany our Lord especially into his Passion. Many saints and
holy theologians have pointed out that the Passion of Christ contains
the greatest of Christian lessons, indeed all of them. We must learn to
love our Lord by contemplating him especially in his Passion. We must
learn to be with our Lord to the end by contemplating him especially in
his Passion. It is love and compassion for the Master especially in his
Passion that will gradually enable us too to embrace the Cross together
with him.
Let us spend
much
time with our Lord in all his references to his coming Passion, and
especially contemplating him during his Passion. As we do, let us ask
for the grace to embrace the Cross with something of his mind as well
as the grace to carry this Cross during our everyday life. As with the
Master himself, so too with us will the Cross be full of fruit.
(E.J.Tyler)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our title of glory: the Son of
Man
delivered into the hands of men (Luke 9: 43b-45)
Commentary
by St Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274), Dominican theologian, Doctor of the Church
Saint Paul said: “May I never boast of anything but the cross of
our
Lord Jesus Christ!” (Gal 6:14) See, says Saint Augustine, where the
wise according to the world believed he had found shame, the apostle
Paul discovered a treasure; what to the other seemed folly, for him
became wisdom (1 Cor 1:17f.) and a title of glory.
For each person draws glory from what makes him great in his own
eyes.
If he believes that he is a great person because he is wealthy, he
glories in his goods. The person who sees greatness for himself only in
Jesus Christ, places his glory in Jesus alone. That is the case for the
apostle Paul: “The life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in
me.” (Gal 2:20) Also, he glories only in Christ, and above all in the
cross of Christ. That is because all the motives for glory that a
person might have are gathered together in the cross.
There are people who glory in the friendship of the great and
powerful.
Paul needed only the cross of Christ to discover there the most obvious
sign of God’s friendship. “It is precisely in this that God proves his
love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
(Rom 5:8) No, there is nothing that shows better God’s love for us than
the death of Christ. Saint Gregory exclaimed: “Oh inestimable testimony
of love! In order to redeem the slave, you handed over the Son.”
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you were consistent, now that you have seen his light you would
want
to be as great a saint as you were once a sinner: and you would
struggle to make those desires a reality.
(The Forge,
no.883)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How are the people of God formed?
Among the faithful by divine institution there exist sacred
ministers
who have received the sacrament of Holy Orders and who form the
hierarchy of the Church. The other members of the Church are called the
laity. In both the hierarchy and the laity there are certain of the
faithful who are consecrated in a special manner to God by the
profession of the evangelical counsels: chastity or celibacy, poverty,
and obedience. (CCC 873, 934)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.178)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------