Month: September 2015

24th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord laments that the public square in his time had been reduced to two polarized parties whining at each other: the ascetic, traditional types, who saw life as an extended funeral, and the hedonistic, progressive types, who saw life as a party. Each party had some valid points, but each also sought simply to absorb the other into its own way of thinking and feeling and to ignore any merits it may have had. When John the Baptist and Our Lord enter the public square, the parties try to do the same thing to them. Our Lord reminds them that the true goal is to seek wisdom: they are receiving John and him as if they were other children on the same level who should just get with one program or another.

The world today works very similarly: people want us to think, to feel, to act in a certain way, to either spend all our time making waves and partying, or to stay quiet and just suffer through life like everyone else trying to make a living. Wisdom, as Our Lord describes today, is recognized by all as something not worthy of criticism: it goes beyond opinion to the question of a truly fulfilling way of life. There is wisdom in moments of joy and moments of duty, but neither can be excluded. Wisdom keeps the bigger picture always in mind, and based on it we know that there are moments of feast and of famine in life. Jesus is the Wisdom of God, and he seeks to help us to break out of lifestyle stalemates and to embrace life, with its lights and shadows, in all its fullness and truth.

Let’s pray today for the Wisdom that breaks us out of any ruts or stalemates in which our lives are stuck.

Readings: 1 Timothy 3:14–16; Psalm 111:1–6; Luke 7:31–35.

Our Lady of Sorrows

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When this feast first appeared in the Roman Missal, it was called Our Lady of Compassion. Today we remember the triumph of Mary’s compassion. In the classical meaning of the term, “compassion” means suffering with someone; today it means continuing to care. At the foot of the Cross Mary’s compassion triumphed in both senses. When we remember her as Our Lady of Sorrows, we don’t just remember that sad day on Calvary. The Church has traditionally contemplated seven sorrows of Mary. God was preparing Mary with each sorrow and strengthening her for the greatest sorrow to come: the suffering and death of her Son. Our Lady of Sorrows is a feast of the spiritual martyrdom of Mary. She definitively died to herself for the sake of her son, became our mother, and that death to self gave her strength amidst the sorrow.

In the First Sorrow–the prophecy of Simeon–she has to see Jesus bleed for the first time at the circumcision, a foreshadowing of his suffering and death on the cross, and receives a warning from Simeon that a sword would pierce her heart too: she had to be strong for the sorrows to come.

In the Second Sorrow–the flight into Egypt–Herod and his thugs drive the Holy Family from their home, and Mary has to experience for the first time what it means for people to wish the death of her son. She has to live far away from family and friends, and take what poor belongings they have and live far away from Palestine.

In the Third Sorrow–the loss of Jesus in the Temple–she has to face the agony of losing her son and not being able to find him. When she does find him, he tells her it is part of God’s plan, preparing her for the definitive separation of death.

In the Fourth Sorrow–Mary meets Jesus on the way to the cross–she must draw from all the things she had treasured in her heart, and when the moment came of seeing her beloved son bleeding, separated from her, and in the hands of those who wanted his death, she found strength in her sorrow to go on for his sake. Her simple perseverance helps Jesus to see that all his suffering will be worthwhile. He sees the fruits in her of his sacrifice. A mother could be selfish and rob her child of his self-resolve in a moment. But Mary puts others first in her sorrow.

In the Fifth Sorrow–Jesus Dies on the Cross–her worst fears are realized. Her son is dead, but she is not alone. The other holy women are there to mourn with her. John has taken her into his home. But she has to be strong for them. And that is what she wants to teach us on her feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. The secret to strength in sorrow is to turn to helping and consoling others, not falling into self-pity or despair. In this moment she receives the whole Church as her mother, and she becomes our mother–one of the lowest moments, humanly speaking, of her life.

In the Sixth Sorrow–Mary receives the dead body of her son–we contemplate her as she holds her lifeless son in her arms, depicted by many artists in many ways. We can imagine the serene and sad offering of her son depicted in the Pietà, or the penetrating gaze of Maria Morgenstern in Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. In the midst of suffering and pain she offers the thing she loves the most to the heavenly Father.

Finally in the Seventh Sorrow–Jesus is laid in the tomb–the Way of the Cross and the Seven Sorrows converge. As she sees her son laid in the tomb, Mary begins a lonely vigil of faith and hope in the promises made to her by the angel and Simeon so many years before.

The Christian life is a life of crosses. We all have to live moments of sorrow, but we know Mary will be at our side, forged by the compassion she showed in the face of suffering. Like her, let’s show compassion for others, even in life’s most sorrowful moments.

Readings: Hebrews 5:7–9; Psalm 31:2, 3b–6, 15–16, 20; John 19:25–27; Luke 2:33–35.

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

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In today’s liturgy we remember a silent witness and message that accompanies us for our whole life. It hangs in churches, from rosaries, and from our necks. It hangs on classroom walls and in hospital wards, and it stands watch over the tombs of our loved ones waiting for the Resurrection at the end of time. This silent witness says so many things that from ancient times it has brought a simple prayer to Christian lips: “Hail the Cross, Our Only Hope.” It’s not hanging in so many schools or hospitals anymore, but that is because the world cannot ignore the message it sends and the witness it gives.

In today’s Gospel Our Lord says that he must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. He draws a parallel from a moment in the life of Israel and Moses that we remember in today’s First Reading: Christ’s raising up must be like that bronze serpent Moses set up in the desert so that the Israelites could look upon when they received a lethal bite from the little seraph serpents and be saved. We too have received that lethal bite for our sins: the lethal bite of death, and by raising our eyes to Christ on the Cross and entrusting ourselves to Him, we receive life. There’s no other cure for the poison of sin than the grace Christ won for us on the cross.

Let us thank Our Lord for suffering and dying for us on the cross, and promise him that today we’ll gaze upon the crucifix with eyes of love, trusting in him to keep transmitting to us the message of love that the cross gives us.

Readings: Numbers 21:4b–9; Philippians 2:6–11; John 3:13–17.

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

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In today’s First Reading, part of Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant, Our Lord reminds us that sometimes he needs to open our ears, just like he did for Peter in today’s Gospel. Listening and hearing are two different things. Hearing just means something within earshot is buzzing in our ears. Listening means cocking our head, trying to get our ear a little closer, trying to understand what we’re hearing. Hearing is something passive—the noise just pops into your ears. Listening is something active—it requires a decision on our part. We’ve all received our faith as a gift—by revealing himself to us, the Lord has opened our ears to hear and listen to his Word. Sometimes we can take that for granted, and if we don’t put it into action, soon we stop listening to God’s Word in our lives, and instead it is just some more noise in our ears.

In today’s Gospel Our Lord gives the disciples a pop quiz to see how much they’re listening. At first the disciples think he is just asking them about what the crowd thinks about him. But then he turns the tables on them: who do they say that he is? They pass the first part of the quiz: the disciples have taken a step closer to Our Lord, they’ve been active, they’ve been listening. The crowd doesn’t need to do much more than be there; they’ve “heard” things about Jesus, they’re curious, but they haven’t tried to draw closer to him yet. The second part of the quiz doesn’t turn out so well. Peter couldn’t imagine that Jesus could do anything other than become a great military and political ruler. He was hearing, but he still needed to do a little more listening to Our Lord, who was trying to teach them that the Messiah and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah were one and the same. After Our Lord had seen his disciples believe he was the Messiah, he opened his heart to them, and St. Peter spoke a little for all of them and basically said the Messiah shouldn’t act like Jesus said he would. The disciples failed the second part of the quiz. God had opened their ears, like the Suffering Servant in the First Reading, but, unlike the First Reading, they were rebelling about what they were hearing. And Jesus knew that this lesson, the lesson of the cross, was the most important lesson of Christian life.

The disciples learned the lesson eventually, and passed it along to us. Let’s ask Our Lord to help us when that voice whispers in our ears and tells us the cross is not necessary, and cast it out as decisively as he helped St. Peter.

Readings: Isaiah 50:5–9a; Psalm 116:1–6, 8–9; James 2:14–18; Mark 8:27–35.

23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord warns us that being a “bad boy,” despite how culture today paints it, is never a good thing. If someone recognizes something to be evil, they avoid it; that is Ethics 101. That is why evil often tries to masquerade as good, to appear glamorous. God has created everything good, but if we use his creation for the purposes for which it was not intended, we can do evil, and it will surface sooner or later. Our Lord teaches us not to judge people, but he does teach us to judge actions: evil people do evil things, just as good people do good things. Even when someone does evil we recognize it as something good that has been corrupted or turned into something corrupting.

Our Lord teaches us what to do in the second part of today’s Gospel in order to determine what’s truly good and unmask what’s truly evil when it is hard to tell. First, if someone pays lip service to Our Lord and doesn’t truly do his will and seek to follow him, that is hypocrisy, and that is evil. We have to pray for people to know Our Lord and follow him with all their heart. Second, evil people may seem to build their lives on solid ground, but the path of evil is a path to destruction: it is building on a shaky foundation that will not stand the test of time, and is actually abandoning the one path that matters. Our Lord’s victory on the cross showed how solid a foundation his life was based upon. He will show us the  sure path and a solid foundation for our lives if we let him.

Let’s pray today for the conversion of sinners and for the insight to build our lives on Our Lord as a solid foundation.

Readings: 1 Timothy 1:15–17; Psalm 113:1b–7; Luke 6:43–49.