Fifth Week

5th Week in Ordinary Time, Tuesday

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Blessing yourself with holy water is not the same as being baptized, but both are useful. If someone was dying of thirst you wouldn’t take the last water available and say, “sorry, I need to bless some holy water.” Charity to God and charity toward others are the bedrock of every other thing we believe and do as believers. Our Lord in today’s Gospel is criticizing the Pharisees for focusing so much on the secondary and contingent things that they feel justified in neglecting the essential and necessary things. Ritual sprinklings of water outside the Temple were like today’s popular devotions; some people use holy water, and others don’t. The Pharisees were criticizing the disciples for not sprinkling water on themselves while ignoring the fact that as disciples of Jesus they were doing an even greater service to God by studying with a Rabbi.

Our Lord condemns the Pharisees for simply paying lip service to God out of their own interests. Even today when someone is consecrated to God their natural obligations toward family are not suspended–if their parents are in need, they support them. The Pharisees used a pretext of consecrating their wealth (which was not giving it away, but saying it could not be used for non-sacred things) as a reason for not providing the material support for their parents, a practice that flew in the face of one of the Ten Commandments and dishonored their parents.

It is good to have religious practices beyond our religious obligations, but optional practices and obligatory ones should work together to ensure that love for God and love for neighbor are protected. Charity toward God and toward others is the best religious practice we can undertake.

Readings: 1 Kings 8:22–23, 27–30; Psalm 84:3–5, 10–11; Mark 7:1–13. See also 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.

5th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday

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St. Thomas Aquinas said that one of the reasons that it was fitting for man to be saved through sacraments was because just as man fell through material things, so he should be redeemed through material things. In today’s readings we’re reminded of the importance of holy things to bring us closer to God. Our Lord has taken flesh and lived among us; he doesn’t just expect us to reach out to him immaterially. In today’s Gospel the people are straining to just touch the tassel of his cloak to receive healing. In today’s First Reading the Israelites carefully transfer the holy objects that used to be kept in and around the Ark in the Tent of Meeting into the new Temple, and the Lord through the cloud shows he is pleased to have a place where people can come to be with him and to pray.

God is Spirit and therefore has no need of material things or places, but he has shown us through his Word that we can dedicate material things and places to enable us to draw spiritually closer to him. Many of the sacraments show God working through material things, such as bread, wine, and water. Therefore even though he is spirit our devotion to him can be spiritual through the material. We consider certain things holy–churches, rosaries, icons, etc.–but only inasmuch as they help us draw closer to God. We cherish and respect them because, like those tassels the people were straining to touch in today’s Gospel, they help us to reach out to God through them.

Make an inventory of the religious articles in your home today and whether you’re using them to draw closer to God. Visit your parish and draw physically closer to Our Lord himself in the Blessed Sacrament. Every step we take toward a holy thing out of love for God is a step we take closer to him.

Readings: 1 Kings 8:1–7, 9–13; Psalm 132:6–10; Mark 6:53–56.

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

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All three readings today share one common thread: an experience of God’s majesty and power, a call to mission and conversion, and the need for God’s grace and encouragement to change and to accept the invitation. Throughout the Old Testament a basic principle was that anyone who looked upon the Lord would die. Isaiah in today’s First Reading experiences a vision of God’s glory and thinks he’s about to die, and die as a sinner. The Lord sends the angel to purify him and then invites him to be his prophet.

Paul in today’s Second Reading recalls the core of the Gospel: that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. When he recalls his own encounter with the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus he also recalls his unworthiness to be commissioned as an apostle, but by God’s grace he’s made capable of carrying out his mission. Lastly, upon seeing the miraculous catch of fish that makes him go from calling Jesus “Master” to calling him “Lord,” Peter acknowledges his sinfulness and unworthiness for what Our Lord is asking him. Our Lord gives him the grace of expressing his confidence in him, a confidence that we know later was tested, but in end, by Our Lord’s grace, merited.

Not every believer is called to be an apostle or prophet, but every believer can expect a deeper experience of Our Lord if it is sought. Many simple don’t look. It may not involve visions or great miracles or revelations, but it will be a moment of realizing that God is somebody, somebody amazing, and somebody who loves you. You may feel like a tiny speck in his presence, but he will give you the grace to be great in his eyes. Seek him out and you will find him, knowing that he is seeking you as well, just as he sought Isaiah, Peter, and Paul.

Readings: Isaiah 6:1–2a, 3–8; Psalm 138:1–5, 7–8; 1 Corinthians 15:1–11; Luke 5:1–11. See also 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday and 1st Week in Ordinary Time, Monday.

5th Week of Easter, Saturday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord reminds us that Christianity is not a popularity contest, and that comes down all the way from the top: after he’d spent three years preaching, travelling, healing, and working miracles, he was accused, abandoned, unjustly tried, and executed. When John speaks of “the world” in his writings he refers to all the forces that are opposed to Jesus and his saving work: persons, cultures, temptations, circumstances, and situations. Just as God is love and seeks to spread his love out of pure goodness, a sad response on the part of some of his creatures is, almost like a photo negative to the positive of his love, hate. They’re not on equal footing: God’s love will triumph, the only question is whether we let it triumph in us or stay out in the cold.

The shadow of the cross is always present in Christian life: the world wants to nail us up there as a lesson and as a statement as to what it thinks about God and his love. The Christian, following the example of Our Lord, must humbly and lovingly ask the Father to forgive these people, for they know not what they do. Love is ultimately the best response to the hate and scorn of the world, the true love as taught to us by God in His Son: it means truly always having the good of the other in mind, and a willingness to go even up onto the cross for them. Many times that love has to be tough love: giving testimony to an unpopular truth about marriage, family, morality, and so many issues touching the core of human existence. We cannot shy away from that if we truly love those involved.

Let’s examine the comfort level of our Christianity today: is there something in my way of thinking, speaking, and acting that rubs “the world” the wrong way? Does my concern about what others will think or say keep me from sharing the truth in love about the things that really matter? Ask Our Lord for the strength to love and endure whatever misguided response “the world” might have in store and to never be a “worldly” Christian.

Readings: Acts 16:1–10; Psalm 100:1b–3, 5; John 15:18–21.

5th Week of Easter, Friday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord commands us to love one another. Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est asked how it was possible that love could be commanded (n.14). Love is one of the freest acts the human person can perform: someone can be very ingratiating to us, but love always requires that moment where we give our “yes,”that inner movement of our heart and will that seeks the good of the beloved because he or she is beloved. The Holy Father’s answer to the question was simple: “Love can be ‘commanded’ because it has first been given.”

Jesus reminds us today that love for him is connected with love for others. We can’t claim either love if we deny one of them. This is the calling card of every sincere Christian. We have been loved by God, who loves each and every person, past, present, and future, sinner or saint, to the point of dying for them on the Cross. If he is willing to go the distance for every soul, it shouldn’t be hard for us to see the need to show our love for him by trying to love others.

If there’s anyone today you consider “off-limits” to your love, either because they’ve hurt you or because you can’t see a way to love them, contemplate Our Lord on the Cross and ask him to help you see the path to loving that person. If you don’t do it for yourself at first, do it for him.

Readings: Acts 15:22–31; Psalm 57:8–10, 12; John 15:12–17.