Thursday

11th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

by

In today’s Gospel Our Lord puts us on guard against turning our prayer into babble. Babble is a stream of words without any apparent meaning, but when we hear a child babble or a mentally handicapped person babbling we know that we may not understand what they are trying to communicate, but they are trying to communicate. Prayer can become babble because we recite the prayers that were handed along to us, but the words to us lose their meaning and we just recite them out of habit or obligation. Our Lord understands what we’re trying to say as long as we’re trying to communicate: words coming out of our mouths while our lips are on autopilot are borderline babble.

We can console ourselves at least by knowing that when we do pray Our Lord understands what we’re saying, even if we don’t, but that’s not enough. We have to make those words our words, and, if we can’t, we need to pray in our own words as well. Both types of prayer are important: the prayers we’ve received are the prayers of the Church, and we form her voice throughout the centuries. Those words didn’t form in a vacuum: every day in Mass the Church prays the Lord’s Prayer that we remember in today’s Gospel that the prayer Jesus himself taught us. Yet even as he was teaching it he felt the need to explain the last petition. It shouldn’t surprise us that we need the help of others to teach us the meaning of the prayers we say, just as the words of the Gospel would be meaningless to us if no one had translated them for us from their original Greek to a language we could understand.

We also need to be those “translators” into everyday life: by keeping the meaning of our prayers in our hearts, as part of our prayers, not just something somebody gave us to say out loud, we transmit their meaning to others as well. Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us reconnect to the meaning of the words we pray in order to “translate” them into something that others hungering for God can understand.

Readings: 2 Corinthians 11:1–11; Psalm 111:1b–4, 7–8; Matthew 6:7–15.

10th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

by

A common recurring defense today for a watered down life ethic is, “hey, at least I’m not killing anybody.” Our Lord reminds us in today’s Gospel that not killing anybody is good, but we have to go way beyond that if we don’t want to be Pharisaical. When we can say, “hey, at least I don’t hate anybody,” we’re getting closer to the mark. In a violent world maybe sometimes we look the other way at times in the face of a lack of kindness, but Our Lord today reminds us to go the distance and not only not kill anybody, but actually be kind to everybody.

When tempers flair and rash words are said the best thing to do, as Our Lord teaches, is to try to make amends as soon as possible and simply apologize. If we live a life of cruel and cold justice, focusing especially on the justice due to us, we’ll be in for a surprise when the eternal Judge brings us to “court” by the same harsh standards to which we held others. As Our Lord’s prayer reminds us, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us be a little less rash in our thoughts and actions toward others and a lot kinder, especially when we’re mistreated.

Readings: Matthew 5:20–26.

9th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

by

Today’s Gospel reading brings us to the end of a series of debates with the chief priests, scribes, and elders, and it ends on an encouraging note. After various attempts to exploit discussion on God’s word in order to score political points or discredit Our Lord we find a refreshing change of pace: a scribe who is actually interested in seeking the truth and who acknowledges when someone has helped him to find it more fully. The scribes were debating about what the hierarchy of all the precepts were within Mosaic Law. They had already determined 613 precepts of the Law: 248 commands and 365 prohibitions.* Which were the most important?

Our Lord responds with the fundamentals not only for the Jews, but for us. When he tells the scribe that the Lord must loved above all else he is repeating the first words of the Jews’ profession of faith, the Shema, taken from the book of Deuteronomy (cf. Deuteronomy 11:13–21) and prayed by them every day. Their faith, and our faith, revolves entirely around the love of God. But Jesus connects this to another teaching from Leviticus (Leviticus 19:18): to love your neighbor as yourself. Connecting the two may have been a novelty for the Jews, but as Christians we know the two are closely linked: you can’t love God and not love your neighbor, or vice versa (cf. 1 John 4:20–21).

The scribe is also making the connections. In his response he draws not only from the part of Scripture considered the Law by the Jews, but also from the prophets. In the end Jesus tells him he is not far from the Kingdom of God. Could this be an invitation to become Jesus’ disciple?* Right now their conversation is at the level of peers, but the scribe is not far from becoming a disciple of Jesus in order to draw closer to the fullness of truth. Let’s pray today for all of those potential believers out there who are sincerely seeking the truth, so that they receive the grace to make that one last connection that convinces them to close the gap and become a disciple of Our Lord.

Readings: Tobit 6:10–11, 7:1b–e, 9–17, 8:4–9a; Psalm 128:1–5; Mark 12:28–34.

* Cf. J. A. O’Flynn (1953). The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to St Mark in B. Orchard & E. F. Sutcliffe (Eds.), A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture. Toronto;New York;Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson 1953,924.

7th Week of Easter, Thursday

by

In today’s Gospel Our Lord prays for a unity among his disciples that is not just eternal (with God and all the departed believers who have gone before us and persevered in the faith) but also historical (something that lasts through the centuries until the end of time and beyond). Christian unity must be spiritual and visible, which is why we know the sad divisions between Christians today are not what Our Lord wants for his Church, nor that we be bickering like the Pharisees and Sadducees  in today’s First Reading. The world waiting for Christ often looks upon us with the same perplexity as that Roman commander in the First Reading who was trying to get answers and instead got a riot. We can’t hinder the Gospel message through quarreling or agreeing to disagree.

The divisions between Christians at one point in history sadly led to all out war, and Our Lord prayed to the Father that one characteristic of our unity be charity. We are learning that lesson little by little, but charity, truth, and prayer are what will one day enable us once again to celebrate the same sacraments together, profess the same faith together, and follow the same pastoral leadership together. The Pharisees and Sadducees  in today’s First Reading argued about the truth of the Resurrection as a general teaching, and on that point, at least, the Pharisees were right, but if someone is in your face it’s not likely that you’re going to accept any truth that comes from his mouth.

Let’s join our prayer today to the prayer of Our Lord: that Christians may be united, spiritually and visibly, in truth, in charity, and in the desire to share the Gospel message with the whole world, above all through our example of charity.

Readings: Acts 22:30, 23:6–11; Psalm 16:1–2a, 5, 7–11; John 17:20–26.

5th Week of Easter, Thursday

by

In today’s Gospel Our Lord reminds us that there is a difference between love and obligation, but that both love and obligation support each other when one or the other comes under fire. Jesus teaches that we remain in his love by keeping his commandments, just as he’s kept his Father’s commandments. If a parent or a spouse commands you to do something, something that may be difficult for you, love is often the reason in the end that you do it. And in a society where family life comes under fire and is not supported as it should be, and marriages face trials daily not just for difficulties between the spouses themselves, sometimes in a moment when you’re thinking of giving up it is remembering the obligation of marriage that your love led you to freely take upon yourself in a brighter moment that keeps you going forward.

Obligation helps us remember that love is not just feeling good. Any parent who gets up at 3:00 AM to change their infants diapers knows that, or a son or daughter who cares for an elderly and ailing parent. Reminding yourself of your obligations is something that you can hold onto in order to regain your footing in a tough moment. We also know that love goes beyond just obligation or it can become pretty miserable. That’s why we must always remind ourselves that we fulfill our obligations out of love. Some of them have their origin in love–marriage, childhood, consecrated life, ordination–but they’re all a response to a love we have received due to no merits of our own. That’s especially true in fulfilling the commandments of God: we obey God as Our Lord, Our Heavenly Father, out of love and gratitude for all the love he has lavished upon us.

Let’s freshen up our love toward God and neighbor today by remembering all the love we’ve received, and fulfilling lovingly our duties and obligations toward God and others.

Readings: Acts 15:7–21; Psalm 96:1–3, 10; John 15:9–11.