Twenty-Fourth Week

24th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord teaches us how the Word of God can grow in us. First, we have to open the door to it: we have to listen to what he is saying. That involves a desire in our heart and mind to welcome it in, and to use it to shape our lives, even when our inclinations say differently. A parable is a sort of test to see whether we’re really interested.

Second, we won’t just understand it on our own: even his best disciples asked for an explanation; today he mentions that they have already started receiving teachings about the Kingdom of God without the need to use parables as tests of whether they really care. The Church has grown in understanding of the Word of God throughout her history, helped by the Holy Spirit, and Our Lord has entrusted this mission to the Apostles and to their successors, the bishops, in order to help us understand. We need Church teaching to help us understand.

Finally, it requires perseverance. Our Lord describes the dispositions necessary to receive the Word of God: to “embrace it with a generous and good heart.” A generous and good heart requires a lot of work, and the Word of God is meant to help achieve that. That involves lifestyle changes, attitude adjustments, swallowing our pride, and turning the other cheek, not just once, but repeatedly. Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us persevere in welcoming his Word into our hearts with the proper dispositions of life and of heart.

Readings: 1 Timothy 6:13–16; Psalm 100:1b–5; Luke 8:4–15. See also 16th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday and Friday.

24th Week in Ordinary Time, Friday

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The mention of holy women in today’s Gospel underscores their importance not only to the first generations of believers, but to us as well. Some of these same women on the day of the Resurrection were the first witnesses of the Risen Lord, because as they followed him and served him today, so they sought to do him one last service when he was laid in the tomb, and ended up giving the news to the Apostles. Their example teaches us the good traits of every disciple: gratitude, generosity, and service.

They’ve been blessed by healing in their life, and they show their appreciation with gratitude. Maybe the blessings we’ve received haven’t been as dramatic as someone like Mary Magdalene, but they are a cause for gratitude. These blessings prompt them to respond with generosity: the holy women helped Jesus and the other disciples out of their own resources. It’s likely that their names are mentioned here alongside the Twelve not only to be remembered, but also for the first hearers of Luke’s Gospel to know how they came to know and follow Our Lord after meeting them or hearing about them. Lastly, this gratitude and generosity are translated into service: they don’t just stay home and send care packages. They follow Our Lord and serve him and the Twelve in their work of proclaiming the Gospel. Everyone has a role in the work of evangelization.

Let’s ask Our Lord to grow in gratitude, generosity, and service, inspired by the example of these holy women.

Readings: 1 Timothy 6:2c–12; Psalm 49:6–10, 17–20; Gospel Luke 8:1–3.

24th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

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Conversion in the spiritual life is when life takes a turn for the better. The Christian life is a life of conversion, whether we have turned away from a life far from God and full or sin, or have been lifelong believers who received deeper understanding of who God is and all he’s done for us. A life of conversion means life will constantly be taking turns for the better, not necessarily in the area of material things, health, etc., but in a holy life with God in Christ that blooms, little by little, into eternal life.

In today’s Gospel we see a contrast between a converted sinner–the sinful woman–and someone who is observant, but is not living much of a spirit of conversion–Simon the Pharisee, as is reflected in how coldly he treats people, as if he is doing them a favor of tolerating their flawed existence. Conversion leads to charity: love for God and love for others. The “sinful” woman is abounding in it after a life of things she thought were loving, but were simply sin. She is experiencing a strong moment of conversion and Our Lord is the means through which she shows her appreciation to God. It’s not just because Our Lord was nice to her when everyone else was not; in his own words, it is her faith that has led to her conversion and the gift of forgiveness.

Conversion is a journey; we never forget where we’ve been, and, God-willing, we never forget where we’re headed. Let’s examine all the turns for the better Our Lord has granted us in our life, turns for the better in the true sense of the word: turns toward God and away from sin. If we’ve been blessed with a good life, let’s thank him. If we’ve been freed from a life of sin, let’s thank him even more. Wherever our starting point, he has been with us every step of the way and deserves our love and thanks.

Readings: 1 Timothy 4:12–16; Psalm 111:7–10; Luke 7:36–50.

24th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord laments that the public square in his time had been reduced to two polarized parties whining at each other: the ascetic, traditional types, who saw life as an extended funeral, and the hedonistic, progressive types, who saw life as a party. Each party had some valid points, but each also sought simply to absorb the other into its own way of thinking and feeling and to ignore any merits it may have had. When John the Baptist and Our Lord enter the public square, the parties try to do the same thing to them. Our Lord reminds them that the true goal is to seek wisdom: they are receiving John and him as if they were other children on the same level who should just get with one program or another.

The world today works very similarly: people want us to think, to feel, to act in a certain way, to either spend all our time making waves and partying, or to stay quiet and just suffer through life like everyone else trying to make a living. Wisdom, as Our Lord describes today, is recognized by all as something not worthy of criticism: it goes beyond opinion to the question of a truly fulfilling way of life. There is wisdom in moments of joy and moments of duty, but neither can be excluded. Wisdom keeps the bigger picture always in mind, and based on it we know that there are moments of feast and of famine in life. Jesus is the Wisdom of God, and he seeks to help us to break out of lifestyle stalemates and to embrace life, with its lights and shadows, in all its fullness and truth.

Let’s pray today for the Wisdom that breaks us out of any ruts or stalemates in which our lives are stuck.

Readings: 1 Timothy 3:14–16; Psalm 111:1–6; Luke 7:31–35.

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

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In today’s First Reading, part of Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant, Our Lord reminds us that sometimes he needs to open our ears, just like he did for Peter in today’s Gospel. Listening and hearing are two different things. Hearing just means something within earshot is buzzing in our ears. Listening means cocking our head, trying to get our ear a little closer, trying to understand what we’re hearing. Hearing is something passive—the noise just pops into your ears. Listening is something active—it requires a decision on our part. We’ve all received our faith as a gift—by revealing himself to us, the Lord has opened our ears to hear and listen to his Word. Sometimes we can take that for granted, and if we don’t put it into action, soon we stop listening to God’s Word in our lives, and instead it is just some more noise in our ears.

In today’s Gospel Our Lord gives the disciples a pop quiz to see how much they’re listening. At first the disciples think he is just asking them about what the crowd thinks about him. But then he turns the tables on them: who do they say that he is? They pass the first part of the quiz: the disciples have taken a step closer to Our Lord, they’ve been active, they’ve been listening. The crowd doesn’t need to do much more than be there; they’ve “heard” things about Jesus, they’re curious, but they haven’t tried to draw closer to him yet. The second part of the quiz doesn’t turn out so well. Peter couldn’t imagine that Jesus could do anything other than become a great military and political ruler. He was hearing, but he still needed to do a little more listening to Our Lord, who was trying to teach them that the Messiah and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah were one and the same. After Our Lord had seen his disciples believe he was the Messiah, he opened his heart to them, and St. Peter spoke a little for all of them and basically said the Messiah shouldn’t act like Jesus said he would. The disciples failed the second part of the quiz. God had opened their ears, like the Suffering Servant in the First Reading, but, unlike the First Reading, they were rebelling about what they were hearing. And Jesus knew that this lesson, the lesson of the cross, was the most important lesson of Christian life.

The disciples learned the lesson eventually, and passed it along to us. Let’s ask Our Lord to help us when that voice whispers in our ears and tells us the cross is not necessary, and cast it out as decisively as he helped St. Peter.

Readings: Isaiah 50:5–9a; Psalm 116:1–6, 8–9; James 2:14–18; Mark 8:27–35.