Ordinary Time

14th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday

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In today’s readings we see some subtle but importance differences between the Old Testament reading and the Gospel in how prayer, faith, and expectations interact in our relationship with Our Lord. Jacob sleeps at a shrine in the First Reading and God renews the promise he’d made to Jacob’s father and grandfather: the inheritance of the Promised Land. Jacob’s reply shows an immaturity of faith and expectation that will eventually be resolved just before his confrontation with his older brother Esau (see Genesis 32:22–32): God made him a promise, and Jacob puts conditions on whether he’ll accept the Lord as his God. Only if God accompanies him and cares for him on the remainder of his journey will he accept the Lord as his God; God promised him one thing and he wanted another. God in his mercy did grant the things Jacob had requested, so Jacob accepted him as his God, but just as his grandfather Abraham had a test of faith and detachment regarding Isaac, so Jacob would need his faith to be tested as well.

Today’s Gospel takes place in that very Promised Land the Lord had promised to Jacob. Jacob’s little expectations had been fulfilled, and the people of Israel had proof that God’s big promises were fulfilled as well, and had no reason to doubt that they would be fulfilled in the future. When the official and the hemorrhagic woman approach Our Lord, they know he’ll help them: the official tells Jesus that he knows Jesus “will” heal his daughter from death itself, and the woman knows even something as simple as touching his cloak “shall” cure her. This is not a language of you scratch my back, I scratch yours: they believe firmly that Our Lord can do what they ask. In our prayer we have to pray with the faith that Our Lord is listening and can answer our prayers. Sometimes it doesn’t turn out as we’d expect, but we experience moments of grace where we know we must ask him for something big and he delivers: we experience a moment of inner spiritual conviction where our desire and God’s is the same in some concrete circumstance. The important thing is not to fall into a mentality of “if God does this, only then will I do that”: he’s free to help us or not.

Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us grow in a life of faith where our prayer, faith, and expectations are mature and solid.

Readings: Genesis 28:10–22a; Psalm 91:1–4, 14–15b; Matthew 9:18–26. See also 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

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In today’s Gospel Jesus describes the reception of his message in his home town as like that of a prophet: unwelcome. In Jesus we find the mission of priest, prophet, and king combined. As prophet he is the bearer of God’s message; in fact, he, as the Word, is the message of God himself. In sharing the faith we as Christians also have a mission to bear God’s message and make it known. That happens through sharing our faith, through teaching the faith, but also by the very fact of being Christian. Secularizing trends in modern society try to relegate Christianity to the private sphere, but the only way to really do that would be to lock away Christians, as sadly happens in some cultures today. In other cultures they’re culturally isolated: prophets in their time were seen as crazy, even weird, and definitely counter-cultural, because when God sends a prophet it usually means someone needs to receive a message they don’t want to hear, which is why prophets bore the message all the way to martyrdom, especially in Our Lord’s case. That conviction, combined with the fact that their message was true, ultimately stands the test of time, independently of whether the message is welcomed or not: as the First Reading reminds us, they’ll reject the message, but they’ll know a prophet has been among them.

Christian prophecy bears a cross: the cross that those we love and care about the most often seem the most incredulous when we try to share the faith with them. They might see us as holy rollers, or remember our times together with them before we started taking our faith more seriously and see us now as not really being sincere about what we’re preaching. It’s important to keep in mind something that’s fundamental to being a prophet: God is sending a message that people don’t want to hear. In being a prophet we can sometimes question whether if we’d said something more eloquently, done something better, that message would have been welcomed. Today’s readings remind us that even if we do everything perfectly, as Jesus did in today’s Gospel, because he can’t act any other way, there’ll still be incredulous people. Paul reminds us in the Second Reading that God’s power shines through our weakness: we just have to keep trying and not get discouraged when it seems there are no results.

Let’s ask Our Lord today to be bearers of his message in our words and our example, and to help us not get discouraged in our mission of sharing his Word with everyone we meet, especially the ones we love.

Readings: Ezekiel 2:2–5; Psalm 123:1–4; 2 Corinthians 12:7–10; Mark 6:1–6.

13th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord reminds us that in the Christian life there are Lenten moments and there are Easter moments. The Pharisees and disciples of John the Baptist don’t completely realize that the Messianic time of liberation for which they’d been doing penance for millenia was now at hand, a cause for rejoicing. Jesus makes it clear too that everything is not going to be Easter from that point forward: his disciples would fast and be sad when his Passion was at hand. A Church that is all Lent is not in God’s plan, nor a Church that is all Easter in this life. The important thing is to live the moment as God would have us live it, and to celebrate every mystery of Christ’s life, both suffering and rejoicing.

He also reminds them, and us, of the importance of maintaining traditions and watching over them and adapting them with prayer and prudence as new situations arise. If a tradition seems to no longer completely apply to circumstances, adaptations should be done carefully in order to respect those aspects of its original purpose that are still sound. If we don’t use a tradition for it’s true purpose, instrumentalizing it to force something we want, we’ll ruin the tradition, just like the old wineskins in today’s Gospel. Traditions have history and we have to keep that history in mind in order to understand what they bear for us and how we can transmit them to future generations.

Let’s ask Our Lord today for the wisdom and prudence to live each moment as he would like us to live it, and to understand and use well the traditions he and the Church have handed down to us over the centuries.

Readings: Genesis 27:1–5, 15–29; Psalm 135:1b–6; Matthew 9:14–17.

13th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

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In today’s Gospel we’re reminded that sometimes we get stuck in life, or see our friends stuck, and no one can go it alone. How many times have we helped our friends or been helped by them in one of those moments? In today’s Gospel the paralytic is stuck both physically and spiritually. Sin drains us and paralyzes us to the point that we can’t get out of it alone. One of the saddest things of being a sinner is that sense of being alone and helpless. As believers, following Christ’s example, we try to help everyone who is stuck in life, especially our friends, but also by being a friend to the friendless when they really need someone. Sin also isolates, and sometimes the sinners themselves try to isolate themselves from others, but they can only get so far before they get stuck.

Jesus teaches us today to bring them to him, because he’s the only friend who can help us definitively get unstuck. The scribes and the crowds couldn’t believe that a man could be an instrument of forgiveness, since God alone forgives sins. They didn’t know yet that Jesus was God, but he himself in referring to himself as the Son of Man alludes to what we experience today in priests and bishops as ministers of the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick: God has given them the authority to spiritually heal on his behalf and as his istruments. Through these sacred ministers the sick and sinners are brought to Jesus to receive healing, spiritual, physical, or both, and the grace to face their trials in faith and trust.

If you’re struggling with illness, spiritual or physical, seek out Our Lord in the sacraments and don’t be afraid to ask your friends for help. If you’re blessed with good spiritual health, ask Our Lord to be that friend with the tact, prudence, and wisdom to bring those paralytics in you life to him.

Readings: Genesis 22:1b–19; Psalm 115:1–6, 8–9; Matthew 9:1–8.

13th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday

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In today’s Gospel we see that debasement engenders debasement, that fear engenders fear, and that both are an obstacle in the spiritual life. The demons, fallen angels, already condemned for making a radical choice against God, are “slumming”: amusing themselves by tormenting two poor souls–the men they are possessing–and attacking anyone who draws near. When Our Lord approaches them they know they’re busted, but they don’t care–they’re already convicted. Until the Last Judgement at the end of history they’ll try to get as many kicks as they can without getting caught. When Our Lord permits them to go into the herd of swine–angels lowered to enjoying being pigs–they take one last “joy ride” before being driven off. We have to be on guard as well against “slumming” in the spiritual life, because it will gradually make us indifferent to God’s goodness and mercy and set us on a downward spiral.

The swineherds pass from one fear to another: from keeping their distance from two crazy demoniacs to seeing a Jewish man (if they were Jewish, they wouldn’t be tending pigs, since they’re unclean animals) casting out demons into their swine and seeing their whole flocked wiped out. When they return to town they can only give witness to terror, so it’s no surprise that the locals are also gripped by terror and beg its source–Jesus–to leave. The grace of God has passed them by.

Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us identify any downward spirals we’re on in the spiritual life. For us, it’s not too late to overcome debasement and fear.

Readings: Genesis 21:5, 8–20a; Psalm 34:7–8, 10–13; Matthew 8:28–34.