Saturday

31st Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

by

In yesterday‘s Gospel Our Lord gave the example of the dishonest and shrewd steward as an example not to follow. Today he explains why. As a strategy for gaining the things that really matter it is laughable, and it rarely stops at small infractions. When he challenges them to see if dishonest wealth will get them into Heaven (“eternal dwellings”), he in part is ridiculing the thought that that strategy would even work–God can’t be swindled. If you can’t be trusted in small matters, you can’t be trusted in larger ones either: it’s no coincidence that people who swindle others out of something are called confidence men (or con men): they prey on trust to get something to which they’re not entitled.

The bad example from yesterday was helping your boss defraud people (and then defrauding your boss), but there are many things we’d be dishonest in taking, because they don’t belong to us. Using the company car or phone for personal matters. Surfing the Internet or calling friends when we should be working. Goofing off when we should be studying. Giving the love we’ve promised unconditionally to our spouse to another, either in person or through the Internet. Turning the time you should be dedicating to your spouse and children into “me” time. Trust is a fragile thing, and, once lost, it is not easily restored: suspicion will cast a pall over everything we do after our dishonesty comes to light.

Our Lord warns today of the worst price of dishonesty: not just all the people we alienate, but preventing us from reaching those “eternal dwellings” where our true treasure lies. Let’s ask him today to always deal in the currency that will get us there: honesty, fidelity, and loyalty.

Readings: Romans 16:3–9, 16, 22–27; Psalm 145:2–5, 10–11; Luke 16:9–15.

29th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

by

In today’s Gospel Our Lord is addressing and correcting a common misconception that has plagued the Israelites for a long time: the belief that bad things only happen to bad people, therefore they are always the punishment of God for being bad. This tendency is seen throughout the Old Testament, but the debate comes to a head in the book of Job where a just man is afflicted by misfortune and has to convince his “friends” that he’d done no wrong. Various psalms are those of a just man questioning why it seems the wicked are successful and healthy while the just are poor and afflicted. The question of evil and why God allows it is not just theological, but philosophical: we’re quick to blame God for every bad thing that happens to us and to others, or see evil as a reason for denying God’s existence at all.

The irony of this is that we blame a remote God for inflicting these things on people when God the Son has become flesh, preached mercy and salvation, worked miracles, suffered, and died on the Cross for our sins. God is involved, but he is involved in trying to rescue us from the true peril Our Lord reminds us of today: sin, the consequences of which lead to a result more horrible than being slaughtered by a corrupt leader for your political views or having a tower collapse on you: separation from God forever and eternal failure in life. Our Lord today bursts the bubble of those who think it’ll never happen to them because things seem to be going fine in life: good job, good health, etc. Sin and salvation operate on a different level and are not so easily identified without his help and his grace.

It’s no coincidence that Our Lord includes the parable of tending the fig tree along with this warning: it’s a reminder that God is not waiting for us to fail, but trying to help us to succeed in what really matters. Bad things happen to good people, and it is unpleasant; it stinks. Misfortune helps us to evaluate our life and make the necessary course corrections when we can: that applies to sinners as well as saints. We are that fig tree, Our Lord is the gardener who is willing to keep trying to nurture us in order to produce the fruit that is expected of us, and the master is Our Heavenly Father who comes back over and over again and is not quick to give up and easily convinced to keep giving another chance. Let’s respond today by examining our life and getting it on track, trusting that Our Lord is not waiting to bust us, but is at our side, helping us to succeed in what really matters.

Readings: Romans 8:1–11; Psalm 24:1–4b, 5–6; Luke 13:1–9.

28th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

by

In today’s Gospel Our Lord continues to encourage the disciples and warn them not to fall into the mistakes of the Pharisees and scribes who don’t believe in him, as in yesterday‘s Gospel. Today he speaks of the protagonism of the Holy Spirit in helping us all to be a “Church which goes forth,” as Pope Francis encourages us to be in Evangelii Gaudium. It’s true that we can’t do it on our own, but we’re not on our own. As Our Lord reminds us today, when we’re put on trial for our faith, whether in a court or in the public square, we shouldn’t be afraid of becoming tongue-tied: the Holy Spirit will help us get our message across.

In the first generations of Christianity non-believers were amazed that even Christian children, by repeating the catechism they’d received, showed an amazing solidity in their arguments that reflected a sound philosophy and way of living. The first chronicles of martyrs show them to express conviction and radiate peace in the face of impending torture and death. The Holy Spirit helps the Word take root in our hearts and become virtue and conviction, but only if we are open to what the Spirit invites us to do, even in little things. Jesus warns us today about the fate of those who ignore or insult the Holy Spirit in big things. A Christian under fire will invoke the Holy Spirit for help, but that shouldn’t be the only moment he or she does: the Holy Spirit is always working in our hearts, in little and hidden ways, and by listening to the Spirit and letting the Spirit shape our lives, we’ll become those witnesses to Christ that the world needs.

Let’s thank the Holy Spirit for always being with us and working in our souls, and ask the Spirit to keep helping us to be a “Church which goes forth.”

Readings: Romans 4:13, 16–18; Psalm 105:6–9, 42–43; Luke 12:8–12.

27th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

by

In today’s Gospel the anonymous woman in the crowd is trying to put a finger on why Our Lord is so holy by praising the blessedness of her mother. If only she knew; Mary’s holiness, in addition to her own fidelity throughout her life, was thanks to the grace we know as the Immaculate Conception: it was in view of her son’s merits that she received the grace to be preserved free from all stain of original sin. It is thanks to her son that she is blessed, and, as she says in the Magnificat, she considers herself blessed from the moment she accepted God’s invitation to be her mother. God gets all the credit for her blessedness, which she put to good use in raising Jesus.

Our Lord, therefore, teaches them what the true source of his blessedness and his mother’s blessedness is: hearing the word of God and observing it. The Son came freely among us to save us because it was the will of the heavenly Father; he perfectly accomplished his Father’s will to our benefit. Mary at the Annunciation gave her fiat: that it be done to her according to God’s word. And for this fidelity and attentiveness to the word of God, all generations will call her blessed.

Jesus and Mary both present the path to us today for our blessedness, for a beatific happiness that comes from God alone: to hear and to keep the word of God in our lives. Let’s ask Our Lord to help us to listen to and to heed his Word; let’s ask Mary to help us in this as well through her example and her intercession.

Readings: Joel 4:12–21; Psalm 97:1–2, 5–6, 11–12; Luke 11:27–28.

26th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

by

In the first part of today’s Gospel the Seventy-Two who were sent out by Our Lord return exuberant about the power over demons that comes from invoking Jesus’ name and authority. Our Lord tells them various incredible things are within their power, but all in the context of power over the Evil One and the fallen angels, who have often been associated with serpents for their venomous modus operandi. This spiritual power wielded by the Devil and the fallen angels is a power that is often more pervasive and threatening than the material manifestations of power it may produce in those who are dominated by it. Evil simply cannot harm those who remain united to Christ: his power frees us from the Evil One.

At the same time, Our Lord reminds them that the most important reason to be exuberant is not for reasons of power and protection against dark forces, but because those dark forces cannot conquer them as long as they follow Christ and act in his name. The path to Heaven is open to them if they continue to follow Jesus, who will reopen it with his sacrifice on the cross, a sacrifice more powerful than all the evil that was thrown on him during his Passion and Death. On the cross we see how truly powerless evil is, in the end, over God.

Let’s pray today with a spirit of gratitude that line Our Lord taught us to pray: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Readings: Baruch 4:5–12, 27–29; Psalm 69:33–37; Luke 10:17–24.