Saturday

3rd Week of Easter, Saturday

by

Today’s readings provide a great way to take spiritual inventory of how we our living our lives when faced with adversity and difficulty in matters of faith. Today’s First Reading shows the blessed aftermath of the persecution that began with Stephen’s martyrdom and ended with Saul’s conversion. The Church was at peace, growing, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. Peter was performing miracles in Our Lord’s name just like Jesus did. It was a Church full of dynamism and enthusiasm that had weathered difficulties and remained strong in faith.

In contrast, we have today’s Gospel, years earlier. The teaching on the Eucharist was too much, and many disciples abandoned the life Jesus had taught them. Their faith when challenged was anemic, and Our Lord already knew who was welcoming grace into their hearts and who wasn’t. Those who did persevere in faith and in living as Christ taught were blessed in abundance. We can imagine what was going on in Peter’s heart in the First Reading today when he was kneeling before the corpse of  Tabitha and praying for the Lord to restore her to life. Who knows whether they had called him just to pray for their deceased friend or for a miracle, but a miracle is what they got.

Our Lord continues to work miracles through his Church. Just as Our Lord performed wonders, and Peter after him, he has entrusted his Church to continue teaching and breathing new life into believers. Today’s individualism often tempts us to try and work out spiritual matters on our own, a la carte, on our terms, and without anyone else’s “interference,” but as the First Reading reminds us today, the Church has been established so that believers can help believers. Let’s examine our life today and see whether we’ve drifted from what Our Lord has taught or doubted that his teaching now continues through his Church. Many times this results from a teaching difficult to accept. Like Peter in today’s Gospel, let’s believe first, in order to then be convinced through grace that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

Readings: Acts 9:31–42; Psalm 116:12–17; John 6:60–69. See also 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.

2nd Week of Easter, Saturday (2)

by

In today’s First Reading the Church is faced with wonderful problem: too much work and not enough people to do it. The Twelve see a pastoral need that they don’t have time to fulfill, so they ask that seven men full of Spirit and wisdom be chosen to help them in their ministry. In Luke’s Gospel we see, even in Jesus’s earthly ministry, the sending of the Seventy-Two to help the Twelve fulfill their mission. Now the men in today’s First Reading, known as the Seven, are also entrusted with a participation in the mission of the apostles and in tradition are believed to have been the first deacons.

The Church’s mission is not just for the clergy. Everyone is called to help according to their possibilities and state of life. As needs increase, each member of the Church must be dedicated to doing his or her part: bishops shepherding their dioceses, helped by priests and deacons, consecrated persons contributing according to their charism, and laity, ordering the world’s affairs in accordance with the Gospel and helping the Church in matters where they may have more expertise.

Let’s pray today that every member of the Church heads the call to spread the Gospel however and wherever the Lord has led them.

Readings: Acts 6:1–7; Psalm 33:1–2, 4–5, 18–19; John 6:16–21. See also 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday and 2nd Week of Easter, Saturday.

4th Week of Lent, Saturday

by

Today’s First Reading continues to foreshadow the approach of the Passion of Our Lord within just a few weeks. The lamb is an apt image for describing him and his ministry. Usually a public official responsible for law and order is not quick to consider someone completely harmless, but today the Temple guards shock their bosses by saying they couldn’t find any motive for bringing Our Lord in, despite a direct order to do so. They’re left speechless by the Lamb. As Nicodemus’ comment reveals, the religious authorities are not interested in bringing him in for questioning; little do they know that by accusing Nicodemus being a Galilean, a flippant insult, they are foreshadowing the day when Christ’s disciples will be called Christians and suffer for his name (cf. Acts 5:41, 9:36, 11:26).

As we saw yesterday, the rational obstacle to considering Jesus a prophet or the Messiah was the fact that he came from Galilee. The religious authorities have already made up their mind and have no interest in checking their facts: they’ve judged him as a rebellious Galilean and now they just need some way to bring him in and punish him. Popular opinion for them is a fruit of ignorance, and their guards have been deceived too. For them it is a cut and dry case, but as Jeremiah reminds us in today’s First Reading, they’re actually trying to lead a lamb to the slaughter. Even in the framework of their own worship a lamb was valuable to sacrifice because it was pure and without blemish; soon they’ll see how valuable this Lamb is.

Have you judged Our Lord without giving him a fair trial? We are quick to blame the Lord for many things, but the fair thing to do is to speak with him and see where the true blame lies. Guaranteed is it not the Lamb; it is us. Let’s welcome the Lamb in our hearts and learn purity and innocence.

Readings: Jeremiah 11:18–20; Psalm 7:2–3, 9b–12; John 7:40–53.

2nd Week of Lent, Saturday

by

Today’s Gospel is one of the most poignant parables about not only God’s mercy, but the mercy we should show toward sinners as well. Our Lord’s listeners are those who want to condemn sinners, much like the Prodigal Son’s older brother in today’s parable. Our Lord invites them, and us, through the parable to really reflect on whether those things sinners do to us and God are enough to want them to be forever condemned. The short answer is that it is not about what they deserve, but the potentially dire consequences of their actions.

The prodigal son sins against his father; he wants his inheritance even before his father dies, and then shows right away that he wants nothing further to do with him. He tries to liquidate the relationship so that he can face life on his own and enjoy it as he wishes. That desire leads him far from his father not only physically, but spiritually as well. As far as he’s concerned his father is dead in his eyes, past history. Sinners walk the same path; they see the Father, who has lavished so many gifts on them, as cramping their lifestyle. They want the blessings, but they don’t want the obligations and they don’t want anything to do with the source of those blessings. We describe sinners as far from God, but this really means that they try to keep him at a distance, not that he doesn’t want to be close to them.

When things get tough for the prodigal son, and he sees what a cold an uncaring world it is without love, in his own limited way he realizes how stupid he has been. You can’t liquidate a relationship with someone who gave you life itself and a start in the world. He works out in his mind how he expects to be treated, and decides that even if his father treats him like an employee rather than a son he’d be better off. He knows deep down that he must acknowledge his sin to draw close to his father again. The sinner has to be sorry for what he’s done, and this sorrow has to go from just regretting what a mess he’s made of life to being sorry for how he has treated a Father who has loved him unconditionally ever since he dreamed of him in eternity, created him in history, and blessed him throughout his life.

The father keeps an eye on the horizon hoping his son will return. He leaps into action when he sees his son coming. Our Father does the same thing when we are sorry for our sins; he closes that gap we’ve introduced between us and him and is eager to embrace us again. How often we convince ourselves that he’ll treat us like the older brother, considering us brats and ungrateful selfish children who need to be taught a lesson for all we’ve has done? The father himself responds to that attitude when the older brother shows it: “everything I have is yours.” The older brother could have asked for whatever he wished, and the father would have granted it; instead he trapped himself in an outlook on the father that simply reflected his own: resentful, exacting, and merciless. The father tells us the true reason to rejoice when a sinner repents: someone we love returns from death to life.

Lent is a time to ponder the hardness in our hearts regarding those who have wronged us or wronged others and ask ourselves whether we want mercy for them or eternal condemnation. Our Lord teaches us today that mercy toward them is where our hearts should be. Whether they are sorry for their sins or not, we should want mercy for them and pray that they repent and seek it. If, instead of being the older brother, we’re the prodigal son it’s time to come home. The Father awaits us with open arms.

Readings: Micah 7:14–15, 18–20; Psalm 103:1–4, 9–12; Luke 15:1–3, 11–32. See also 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday.

1st Week of Lent, Saturday

by

In yesterday‘s Gospel we considered the need to make an effort to reconcile and forgive anyone with which we’ve been in enmity. So what about when they don’t want to reconcile? What about if they’re hostile to us, or it might even be dangerous to us if we approach them? There are also faceless, anonymous enemies to our society and to our faith, faces we may never meet in this lifetime, but faces who seek some ruin for something we consider important. Despite our best efforts there are people, wittingly or unwittingly, who see the values reflected by the Gospel as a threat and want to respond with their own, often destructive, agenda.

If we live as Our Lord wishes, all the things Moses promises Israel on behalf of the Lord in the First Reading today will be fulfilled, and people who don’t share that joy will be jealous. Our light will shine, and people in darkness will either seek it out or curse it because it blinds them. We can’t know what’s going on entirely in a soul that’s battling darkness and sin, but we do know that the longer they’re exposed to that light, the greater chance their eyes will adapt to it and start to see by it. That light is charity. Charity toward those we love, charity toward those we’ve wronged, and charity toward those who hate us.

The exaltation, praise, and glory that the Lord promises us in today’s First Reading is due to out charity. Lent may be somberly penitential, but it should also be blindingly charitable. Let’s hold high the beacon of our charity so that everyone can see by its light.

Readings: Deuteronomy 26:16–19; Psalm 119:1–2, 4–5, 7–8; Matthew 5:43–48.  See also 11th Week in Ordinary Time, Tuesday and 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday.