Ordinary Time

23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday, Year II

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In today’s First Reading Paul invites us to consider who or what we are idolizing. We only really have one altar in our hearts, and no matter how much we try to crowd onto it, it only has room for one. Anything else will just fill us with restlessness and unhappiness.

The Christians of Corinth faced a polytheistic culture that was woven into the fabric of their society. Banquets and even the meat from the local butcher was food that had been sacrificed to idols, and eating that food gave the impression of worship those false gods. Paul explains the danger by reminding us that when we eat the Bread of life and drink the Precious Blood we enter into communion with Our Lord. Partaking of food in any other context of worship implies desiring communion, and we are only meant for communion with God and with each other.

We may not face this danger in the same way today, but we do often risk putting others or other things on that altar in our hearts that should be reserved for the Lord alone. Let’s take a moment today to withdraw into that shrine of our souls and make sure the Lord alone is worshiped and honored there.

Readings: 1 Corinthians 10:14–22; Psalm 116:12–13, 17–18; Luke 6:43–49. See also 1st Week of Advent, Thursday, 12th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday, and 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday.

23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Friday, Year II

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In today’s First Reading Paul reminds us that, for him, sharing the Gospel is not like handing out flyers for a restaurant on a street corner: a job promoting something that people could take or leave, and nothing more. The Gospel involves a commitment and a lifestyle, often a change of lifestyle for those who have not been born and raised as believers. The more convinced you are of its importance, the more you transmit the message by wanting to share it at all.

Living and sharing the Gospel is not something that gets easier with practice either. Like the athlete, the Gospel requires discipline and hard work in order to have a chance at success. There is a chance of losing the great competition of life, even after many years. Paul didn’t consider victory to be a given; it is a gift from the Lord.

If we let the Gospel shape our lives, we will transmit a formula for success. Let’s not be shy about sharing it.

Readings: 1 Corinthians 9:16–19, 22b–27; Psalm 84:3–6, 12; Luke 6:39–42. See also 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Friday.

23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday, Year II

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Today’s First Reading has something you don’t see very often: Paul giving his opinion instead of a commandment from Christ. The question is regarding celibacy and whether Our Lord commanded it for everyone. Paul’s response is that everyone is called to chastity, just not in the same way. Celibacy is refraining from the intimate relationship between a man and a woman normally done between two people married to each other. Chastity is a virtue for everyone, married or not: it means living your sexuality in accord with God’s plan.

In our highly sexualized culture chastity is a challenge to live today, and it is a challenge both married and unmarried people have to face. For the unmarried it means either awaiting that special someone with whom they’ll marry before living the intimacy that, God willing, will help them become parents as well as strengthen their love, or being sexually continent for love of the Lord. For the married it means fidelity to your spouse and honoring your spouse and the Lord in the way you live your sexuality.

Let’s pray for everyone, whatever their state and condition in life, to live chastely and in so doing to honor themselves, others, and Our Lord.

Readings: 1 Corinthians 7:25–31; Psalm 45:11–12, 14–17; Luke 6:20–26. See also 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday.

23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Tuesday, Year II

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In today’s First Reading Paul is lamenting that the Christians at Corinth are going to civil courts to resolve “domestic” disputes. Christians are called to be witnesses to love, especially with their fellow believers, and when they quarrel before an unevangelized public it makes the Gospel life they have committed to live ring hollow. The civil courts are unqualified to judge these disputes “in house” between believers because they haven’t experience the love they live in Christ.

Paul uses the striking example of the unjust becoming judges to make his point. Would you accept a death row inmate as a judge? Every Christian who has received baptism has become justified, become just, and that gives them an authority the unjust could never have with regard to Christians. This is not a cause for arrogance on the part of Christians, because, as Paul reminds us, before baptism we were all unjust as well and it is only by the Lord’s mercy that we have been rendered just again.

If we’re going to make a spectacle of ourselves with regard to one of our fellow believers, let’s make it a “spectacle” of the charity and mercy we show him, not another legal drama.

Readings: 1 Corinthians 6:1–11; Psalm 149:1b–6a, 9b; Luke 6:12–19. See also 2nd Week in Ordinary Time, Friday, 14th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday and Sts. Simon and Jude, Apostles.

 

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

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At first glance it may seem that in today’s Gospel Jesus is asking his disciples to burn his bridges, but if we look a little more closely we can see he’s inviting us to “do the math.” It seems so illogical that he would ask us to abandon our family, our health, our security, and our comfort to follow him – he tells us to follow him bearing our Cross. In the second part of the Gospel he invites us to do the math: to think about what we’re trying to build in our life, like the tower builder, and what battle we’re ready to wage against the challenges that come in life, like the king

When we read the words of the First Reading, we see the math just breaks down. When we try to find the answers to the big questions – life, death, love, our calling in this life, we see that the cut and dry business or scientific approach doesn’t work. The big questions escape our categories, experience, and observation, and with such big mysteries looming over our heads, mysteries that seem to decide our fate, our hearts yearn for freedom. Christ in today’s Gospel is offering us those answers and that freedom. He asks us to have faith and trust in Him

Onesimus, the slave whom Paul mentions in the Second Reading, sought that escape to freedom from his master, Philemon, to whom Paul was writing, but he found a far greater freedom. In the time of ancient Rome, slaves were a big percentage of the population: due to debts or being on the wrong end of a war, and such a need to Roman society that they were a social class of their own. Rome took escapees very seriously, and Onesimus got caught, but Christ let him get caught so he could experience a true freedom, with the help of St. Paul, whom he met in prison. Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon with the letter we read a part of the second reading to be Christ’s instrument of liberation: a liberation of love. Paul urges Philemon to see Onesimus now as more than a servant, more than a piece of property, to see him as Christ wants him to be seen: as a brother. We can hope that Philemon accepted Onesimus back as a brother.

When we follow Christ, he will do the same thing through us. Our families, our sufferings, our very selves will experience this liberation of love, and when we follow Christ, those we love will seek him as well as the answer to the big questions of life that go byond their math as well. However, we must put Christ first in our lives. That can hurt us and our family a lot, but when we put our calculations aside, when we face the unknown trusting in Christ, we show him we are following him.

Let’s ask Our Lord for the grace to put him first:  to put him first by receiving him frequently in the Eucharist, by telling him we’re sorry in Confession, by helping the spiritually or materially poor around us, and by loving our family as Christ taught us and showed us.

Readings: Wisdom 9:13–18b; Psalm 90:3–6, 12–14, 17; Philemon 9–10, 12–17; Luke 14:25–33. See also 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday and 15th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday.