Year I

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.

11th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday

by

In today’s First Reading St. Paul encourages us to give bountifully and cheerfully, without sadness or compulsion. Our Lord in today’s Gospel describes the three classic dimensions of Christian life, and the attitude we should have while living them: doing it for God, not for self-promotion. Prayer, fasting, and alms giving can be miserable if we do them in a calculating way, grudgingly, or just to fulfill some social obligation out of peer pressure. When we’re miserly in these things, making sure everyone knows we’re not happy about something we feel forced to do is natural, our glum attitude is simply venting in the face of an unpleasant situation. On the flip side, when we do these things in a flashy way, out of a desire for esteem or self-promotion, the boost to our ego is all we should expect, and that is not much: we’re just turning Christian living into another way to get ahead in a competitive world.

It’s not a question of not doing what we don’t want to do; rather, it is reminding ourselves, as St. Paul does in the First Reading, that a generous and cheerful heart is not only a blessing for those to whom it is giving–God and others–but a source of joy and peace to the giver as well. Instead of a vicious circle it becomes a virtuous cycle: it gives us a sort of spiritual second wind that helps us maintain our effort. We’ll feel the weight of sacrificing something for others, of giving precious time to God, of denying ourselves some comforts in order to win spiritual benefits for others and to grow in self-mastery, but we won’t let that stop us from giving from the heart. Virtue goes deeper than feelings. We experience that on those days when we pray, fast, and give alms even when we are having, by other standards, a rotten day and seemingly no recognition. When we joyfully give, quietly pray, and quietly fast we also ensure that what we are doing is for God, not just for ourselves. Our Lord may not reward us with a lot of public recognition, as we reminds us in today’s Gospel, but he will bless us.

Let’s examine today any glumness in our Christian living and ask Our Lord for the grace to give bountifully, cheerfully, and for his glory and not our own, knowing that he will bless us and others.

Readings: 2 Corinthians 9:6–11; Psalm 112:1b–4, 9; Matthew 6:1–6, 16–18.

11th Week in Ordinary Time, Tuesday

by

In today’s First Reading Paul gives the Corinthians a way to measure whether their love is genuine: by their concern for others. As Our Lord reminds us in today’s Gospel good people and evil people receive gifts from God so that they can live a good life: the sun warms them, the refreshes them, together they provide the conditions for the food we need, etc. God’s concern is not conditioned by whether someone is a saint or a sinner: he provides for them and gives them the means to be holy. Droughts, natural disasters, and other calamities don’t just target the good or just the wicked. God really doesn’t need to intervene in that way: a sinner’s punishment is largely self-inflicted, and if a sinner doesn’t use God’s blessings wisely, it’ll only get worse, even eternally worse.

When evil stares us in the face, not some nebulous force or Hollywood B movie caricature, but real evil done by real people and to real people, we must combat it for the sake of others, but we must not lose our concern for the people who are on that path to misery and failure by their misdeeds. That is the sign of genuine love, a perfect love, like our Heavenly Father’s love. It’s not a love conditioned by the love we expect in return or have received; otherwise we’d only care about those who care for us. That is the secret to overcoming the damage any lack of love on the part of others may have caused in our lives. Love can triumph if we let it. Society, a difficult family situation, an evil done to us can only conquer our love if we let it.

Let’s ask Our Lord today to strengthen our love by growing in our concern for others and praying for sinners to take up the path of life again.

Readings: 2 Corinthians 8:1–9; Psalm 146:2, 5–9a; Matthew 5:43–48.

11th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday

by

In a world that’s often focused on vendettas, avenging wrongs, trampled rights, and payback, Our Lord reminds us today of what has been a trademark of Christianity throughout the centuries: turning the other cheek. Meekness is often considered weakness, but it actually involves a very virtuous effort to not strike, or even dislike, the one who’s struck you, to give your time and possessions when someone doesn’t have a right to them, or to go out of your way beyond what any reasonable person would expect.

Our Lord has set the standard. How many blows did he receive? Being God, he didn’t have to become flesh and sacrifice himself for our salvation. When Adam and Eve sinnedGod could have left us to the mess they’d made of our lives, just as he could every time we sin and continue to sin. With all that baggage anything we ask, or sometimes demand, of Our Lord is something he is under no obligation whatsoever to to fulfill. And yet he does and continues to do so.

We often focus on the receiving end of the slights and offenses that he describes in today’s Gospel, but what he also teaches, through example, is how we should not be on the giving end of them either. Even today we have an eloquent testimony in so many Christians suffering persecution and death. Let’s ask Our Lord today for the meekness and humility of heart that enables us to turn the other cheek and to go out of our way for others.

Readings: 2 Corinthians 6:1–10; Psalm 98:1, 2b–4; Matthew 5:38–42.

10th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

by

In today’s Gospel Our Lord reminds us that making a promise or giving testimony is a powerful thing. The promises we make give witness to who we are, and the witness we give is a testimony to how seriously we take our promises. We’ve all experienced how unedifying it is when someone swears something to be true, promises to deliver on something, and then is revealed to have lied or fails to deliver, and not just because of circumstances beyond their control. When something is as simple as “Yes”or “No,” as Our Lord teaches us today, there’s no room for spin, for sophistry, for fine print, or for establishing little grey areas in our conscience instead of admitting we can or can’t deliver on something or whether we know or don’t know something.

Our Lord gives a laundry list of things the people of his day were using as collateral to show how serious they were about the oaths they made. He also puts his finger on the problem: that collateral is not theirs, nor is it under their control. It’s not as common today, but when someone swears “on my life,” or any other number of things or people, we are put on a guard, exactly because they are swearing on something over which they have no control or ownership and usually as a way of convincing others of their sincerity.

The easiest way to be sincere, as Our Lord reminds us today, is simply to be sincere: it’s the simplicity of a yes or no attitude to life, one that leaves no room for deceiving ourselves or others. Let’s ask Our Lord today to achieve that level of simplicity with ourselves and with others.

Readings: 2 Corinthians 5:14–21; Psalm 103:1–4, 9–12; Matthew 5:33–37.