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9th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday

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In today’s Gospel the Sadducees believe they’ve encountered a logical proof, based on Mosaic law, that shows there can be no resurrection: family responsibilities toward widows and marriage would continue to be unclear if there were eternal life. Our Lord teaches them that the life to come is to be lived in a different way. All the trials and tribulations of this life–family spats, health issues, work headaches, social angst–will pass away. The marriages will be concluded, but the love that sustained them and grew in them will last forever, which is the true purpose of marriage. All wounds and infirmities will be healed, and we’ll have grown stronger in the crucible of suffering. Our work will be done and we’ll be able to admire the fruits of our labor. Everyone will have what they need and be acknowledged for what they have done and who they are: justice will reign for all. In short, when you reach Heaven, it’s “game over, you win.” Nothing else will matter and everything you underwent to get there will be put into perspective as worth it.

Our Lord teaches us today that we have to live in this world, but we always have to keep the life to come in mind in order to understand why we live in this world and how we should live in it. In the game of life winning is what matters, but that victory doesn’t happen here, even though this is the playing field where we win or lose. Even Tobit and Sarah in today’s First Reading wanted to give up when life seemed impossible, but they knew that wasn’t God’s will and prayed for the only relief they thought possible: death. Their prayers had barely reached Heaven and God was already planning their relief to help them see life as a blessing again, but on the Lord’s time table. We’d always like relief sooner rather than later, but in faith we know it will come, if we keep striving to not let life overwhelm us and persevering in faith as we play the game of life.

Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us put whatever difficulties going on in our life today into perspective. Let’s ask him to show us how we can live today in the light of how we’ll live in eternity.

Readings: Tobit 3:1–11a, 16–17a; Psalm 25:2–5b, 7b–9; Mark 12:18–27.

9th Week in Ordinary Time, Tuesday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord reminds us that God doesn’t play politics: he is the lord of life and history. To consider him a political player is simply beneath him. The Pharisees and Herodians were trying to trap him into expressing a political opinion on paying a census tax to Caesar, which some saw as sacrilegious and others saw as their civic duty (or, at least, something that kept them out of hot water with the Romans). Jesus gets right to the point: if Caesar wants to mint coins and tax his subjects, let him have his coins. God doesn’t need Caesar’s coins: he doesn’t “need” anything, because he already has it all. Everything comes from him.

To be fair, in Our Lord’s time on earth the lines between civic and religious duty were blurred. By giving to Caesar what is his and to God what is God’s, Jesus is reminding us that each of those two things are important on their own level, but they are not on the same level. The real danger comes when civil authority tries to go beyond minting coins and thinks it can mint the truth: within a few decades after Jesus’ death Christians would be martyred for refusing to acknowledge the emperor as a god or to participate in the state religion in opposition to their own beliefs. Declaring the state as all-knowing, just as imposing one expression of religion as the definitive one, ignoring the freedom to believe as you choose, is an attempt to mint the truth, and it is trying to give to Caesar what is really God’s. God is the source of all truth, and he has woven the truth into his creation so that all men of good will, aided by him, can find it and follow it.

Sadly there are still many attempts today to mint the truth: religious fundamentalism imposed by force, attempts to redefine basic natural institutions, such as marriage, etc. Let’s ask for the wisdom and the courage to always see what is due to God, what is due to “Caesar,” and to fulfill our true obligations to both.

Readings: Tobit 2:9–14; Psalm 112:1–2, 7–9; Mark 12:13–17.

9th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday

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grapevine

In today’s Gospel Our Lord invites us to imagine a group of men given the opportunity of a lifetime, both professionally and personally: not only a good place to live, but a great way to make a living. Imagine a business at a good location, with an abundant clientele, a great lease, and the job of making a lot of people happy (the vineyard is for producing wine, with throughout Scripture symbolizes joy). If that weren’t enough, the men running the business also have a wonderful place to live and a great landlord. Any outside observer would say that professionally and personally the owner has been very good to his tenants, even going beyond what a tenant would expect or deserve.

All the owner asks in return is a share of the joy that he hoped the tenants would produce. This is where the mystery of sin enters: mystery in the sense of sin, ultimately, following no logic but its own, a twisted logic that bends everything around it and denies greater truths eventually at its own expense. The tenants start beating up the people coming to collect the owner’s fair share and leaving him empty handed. There’s no remorse: gradually they start killing them too. And the owner shows a kindness that the tenants, to any outside observer, do not deserve. He keeps giving them opportunities until one day he gives them the greatest and most definitive opportunity: he sends the heir himself, a reminder that he is the owner and they are the tenants, and an extension of his very self. In their twisted logic they convince themselves that by eliminating the heir any trace of ownership will die with the owner, and he’ll also stop bothering them (the son was the last one he could send, as the parable narrates). The chief priests, scribes, and elders pronounce judgment on this “theoretical” case and their own words condemn what they themselves are doing.

Our Lord is the cornerstone. You can’t even speak of having a structure, having a building, without a cornerstone–it joins two walls together. Many “tenants” who’ve received so much kindness, personally and professionally, from God want to monopolize the joy they could give to God hand others, and as a result impoverish any joy they could really give. They deny something fundamental, something structural: that the owner and his heir are what make their life possible, whether they acknowledge it or not, and eventually second chances (and third, and fourth, etc.) are exhausted and mercy has to give way to justice. Let’s contemplate today the kindness of God in our lives and ask him to help us to see how we can work with him to bring joy to him, to others, and to ourselves.

Readings: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a–8; Psalm 112:1b–6; Mark 12:1–12.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

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We always start our prayers by making the Sign of the Cross to remind us of the greatest mystery of our faith: the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. It is not a mystery as seen on TV where CSI checks a crime scene, fingerprints and DNA evidence, witnesses: it’s something so big that it doesn’t fit into our head. We couldn’t have ever figured out on our own that God was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God revealed Himself to us as the Holy Trinity. Jesus came and said he was God’s Son, and that meant God was his Father. And Jesus promised to send his Spirit after he ascended into Heaven, so the Holy Spirit was God as well. This is something so mysterious that we believe it because Our Lord taught it to us and we believe in him.

Toward the end of today’s Gospel Our Lord tells the disciples to go out and baptize everyone in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. On the day of our baptism a priest or deacon poured water on our head three times, and each time he poured it he said I baptize you in the name of the Father … and of the Son … and of the Holy Spirit. And in that moment what St. Paul describes in the Second Reading today happened: we received the Holy Spirit who made us into adopted sons and daughters of God. And so whenever we start our prayers, we remember this day of our baptism by making the Sign of the Cross and remembering the Holy Trinity and how God came into our hearts through our baptism.

So when we pray this week, as we make the Sign of the Cross, let’s thank each Person of the Most Holy Trinity for wanting to come and be in our hearts and show us God as He truly is. Thank God the Father for creating us and revealing himself to Israel as the One True God. Thank God the Son for obeying his Heavenly Father and coming down and becoming man to show us that God was Our Father and to enable us to become his adopted children. Thank the Holy Spirit for transforming us into God’s adopted children and for bringing the Holy Trinity into our hearts and helping us to understand and live this great mystery of our faith.

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:32–34, 39–40; Psalm 33:4–6, 9, 18–20, 22; Romans 8:14–17; Matthew 28:16–20.

8th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday, Year I

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In today’s Gospel the chief priests, scribes, and elders try to throw their weight around, but Our Lord asks them a simple question that shows where their real center of gravity lies. They try to corner him with the question akin to “Who do you think you are doing these things?”, and he responds by asking them who they though John was. He’s not intimidated by their position, influence, or even their threats. Even when someone is in authority over us there is a level of dignity that no position or influence can take away, and that dignity is shaped by our conformity to the truth and to the just thing to do. They have a bankrupt position on their side; Jesus has the truth, and the truth is what sets us free.

From their narrow-minded interest in self-preservation they have a dilemma with no good outcome: to acknowledge that John’s work came from God, which would be to acknowledge that’s John’s testimony to Jesus before his death shows from where Jesus’ own work and authority comes, making their question to Our Lord pointless, or to acknowledge that John’s work did not come from God, which in the sphere of public opinion would be political suicide (maybe material suicide too). Although the passage doesn’t spell it out it’s likely that they thought John was just another effective political player. John sacrificed his life in the defense of an uncomfortable truth; the chief priests, scribes, and elders fear the consequences of publicly acknowledging what they believe to be true, and that shows their true center of gravity. As a result they choose to appear ignorant before the crowds in order to ensure their safety, and at the same time show that self-preservation is their greatest truth.

What’s our attitude before uncomfortable truths? Do we play them close to the vest so as not to get burned? Our Lord has promised that the truth will set us free. Let’s not be afraid of seeking the truth or testifying to it, especially when it means our discomfort or the discomfort of others in order to achieve a greater good.

Readings: Sirach 51:12c–20; Psalm 19:8–11; Mark 11:27–33.