MUSINGS

Solemnity of All Saints

Readings: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; Psalm 24; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a

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      “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God…We are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him.” The words from John’s letter tell us that because we are now children of God, we shall someday be with Him in heaven and that means we shall be saints!

      How blessed we are, but do we understand the truth of that blessing? When I listened to the Gospel proclamation, it struck me that the things that Jesus calls blessed are not what the world would call blessed. The Gospel didn’t say, “Blessed are you when you have all the things you want; blessed are you when others admire you and look up to you; blessed are you when you are healthy and strong.” No, Jesus’ ideas of what it means to be blessed are entirely different from what the world considers blessed.

      The sermon I heard concerning this Gospel reading was amazing! It really helped me to get some deeper insights into what is important to God. I will try to recap what I heard as best I can with the limitations of my memory. The priest told us that to be blessed is to be anointed to fulfill the calling for which God has created you. If we look at the first four beatitudes in the Gospel, they tell us what kind of disposition we need to have to accomplish that. We must be poor in spirit: knowing our own sinfulness and need for God. We must mourn, not in sadness for loss, but over the sin that is us and in the world. We must be meek, offering kindness to others. Finally, we must hunger and thirst for righteousness, that God would reign over all. As our disposition changes, we will learn to be merciful as God has been merciful to us. We will strive after purity of heart, that we would live as God commands. We would become peacemakers, because we desire others to experience Christ, the Prince of Peace. If we do all these things and our hearts become more like Jesus’ heart, we will be persecuted because of it, but it is then that we are blessed! It is then we are truly following Christ and becoming more like Him each day.

      The psalmist tells us that the “one whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain. He shall receive a blessing from the Lord, a reward from God his savior.” What is that reward? Jesus answers that question in His sermon on the mount: “Your reward will be great in heaven.” As children of God who follow His way, we shall one day stand with the multitude in heavens’ throne room, as described in the reading from Revelation, and worship God for eternity, our robes washed “white in the Blood of the Lamb.”

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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 22:20-26; Psalm 18; 1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10; Matthew 22:34-40

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      “You shall love the Lord, your God, will all your heart…”

      The words we hear Jesus speak today in the Gospel are part of the prayer of every good Jew prayed morning and evening, known as the Shema. This would have been so common for all Jesus’ listeners to hear that they probably lost the full meaning of it because it was so often repeated.

      I’m reminded of one of the first questions in the Baltimore Catechism, which many of us learned as little children: “Why did God make me? God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him in the next.” I wonder how many of us really understand what those words mean for us now.

      Jesus said this was the greatest commandment: to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. How many of us can truly say we do that? I know I fail miserably. Yet that is our call, our greatest commandment from the Lord.

      So, how can we begin to do that? It requires time spent in prayer, time spent in His Word, time spent in Eucharistic adoration, time spent in worship of God through songs and hymns. Then comes the second part: Putting that love into action. We can grow in our love for God by loving our neighbor. The second commandment that Jesus talks about stems from the first. As we begin to practice virtue by helping others in need, we can draw closer to God. Our acts of mercy to others reflect our time spent with the Lord. The two commandments become reciprocal. They build upon one another to continue to deepen our relationship with God and deepen our commitment to our fellow human beings.

      St. Paul talked a little about that in his letter to the Thessalonians. He says, “You became a model,” for their neighbors with how they treated Paul and how they spread the faith they received.

      St. Paul makes it clear that those who do not grow in their faith will suffer dire consequences. The ones he praised would be delivered by Jesus “from the coming wrath” that others would experience.

      The reading from Exodus sounds even more ominous. If you do not love your neighbor, God tells the Israelites, “My wrath will flare up and I will kill you with the sword…”

      God is serious about this. It’s not just a nice thing to love and serve God by loving your neighbor through your actions. It is required of you. Having faith is not about warm fuzzy feelings; it’s about the hard work of serving God even when it’s not comfortable. If we truly love God, we will want to serve Him regardless of the circumstances.

      May our love for God grow stronger each day, so that we would be able to say that we love Him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind, and may we show that in how we love our neighbor.

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Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; Psalm 96; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b; Matthew 22:15-21

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      “…Knowing … how you were chosen.”

      This phrase really stands out to me in the reading from the Letter to the Thessalonians. Paul goes on to say, “Our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit…”

      God has chosen us. He has called us. For many of us, we have heard that call through the Word of God proclaimed to us each week, but also through the power of the Holy Spirit being poured out on us each day as we seek God in prayer. As I mentioned in another reflection, I believe God’s power is His mercy. We should not think of empowerment like the world does, where we now have the strength to lord it over others, but instead we should recognize that we have been touched by God’s mercy and we, in turn, can give that mercy to others.

      In the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, it talks about how God had chosen Cyrus to do His will to bless His people even though Cyrus did not know Him. God can, and will, orchestrate the things that happen in your life to draw you to Himself, even if you do not yet acknowledge Him as your Lord and Savior! He loves you that much.

      In the Gospel reading, Jesus says to “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” I think it’s pretty obvious in the lesson what Jesus is referring to that belongs to Caesar: it is the coin. So, it is clear that we must “repay” to the world what the world gives us—we must be obedient to the laws of the land, as long at they are righteous and do not conflict with the laws of God.

      What do we have that belongs to God that we must repay to Him? It is our very lives! Everything we are and everything we have comes from God. Therefore we “owe” it all back to Him. How do we repay? By surrendering our hearts to Him. Elsewhere it says in the Scripture that we should “love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength…” That is how we can “repay” God for all His love for us.

      When we acknowledge that we belong to God, that should bring us such joy, such happiness, such peace. The God who created the universe claims us as His own special creation, His very children. We are loved! This is a love beyond anything we have ever experienced in this world. Nothing can compare with the magnitude or the depth of His love for us.

      If we could truly grasp that reality, we would shout with the psalmist, “Give to the Lord glory and praise; give to the Lord the glory due his name!”

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Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

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      “The Lord … will provide for all peoples a feast…”

      Banquets. Feasts. Today’s readings almost all center around them. “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast…,” says Isaiah; “You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes…” from the Psalms; and from the Gospel: “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast…”

      We understand the feast to refer to the wedding feast of heaven that the Church as His bride will celebrate with Jesus for eternity, but we live out the reality of that feast here now through our celebration of the Eucharist. This is our wedding feast. We are the bride and Jesus is the groom. He waits on the holy mountain of the altar to give Himself completely to us under the forms of bread and wine. It is our participation in the feast of eternity, glimpsed only dimly now in our own celebrations.

      There is so much joy, so much promise in what God is calling us to. “He will destroy the veil that veils all people…he will destroy death forever. The Lord will wipe away the tears from every face…” This is a banquet of juicy, rich foods and pure, choice wines. “This is the Lord for whom we looked (to save us); let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!”

      The Psalm continues to tell us of the wonderful gifts God is lavishing on us. “In verdant pastures he gives me repose…he refreshes my soul.” “You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

      The reading from St. Paul even echoes these sentiments: “My God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches…”

      Yet, how many of us turn away from the invitation? I am too busy: I’ve got my kid’s soccer game today; there’s an important football game on TV this afternoon and I’ve got to get home for it; I just want to sleep in this morning.

      There’s a banquet prepared for you with all that God desires to give you and you have excuses why it’s not important. If you understood the reality of what you were invited to, you would see how foolish is the desire for anything other than making it a priority to get there as quickly as possible.

      Then comes the second part of Jesus’ parable. “But when the king came in to meet the guests, he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment…”

      In the Church, we understand this as an analogy which refers to the garment of righteousness that we receive at Baptism. God has clothed us in Himself as we have turned to Him. As we sin in life, we stain that garment. So, when we come to the feast, we need to have prepared ourselves by washing our garment so that it is spotless and ready. St. Paul tells us in First Corinthians, Chapter 11 that we should not approach the table of the Lord unworthily.

      An image came to me during Mass. I imagined as people stepped forward to receive communion that suddenly their garments of righteousness were visible for all to see. How many of them were stained and dirty and unsuitable to be at this wedding feast.

      Oh, how little we understand the love of God, the mercy of God, the joy of being His children. We daily squander all that, like the prodigal son, then we come to the wedding feast, expecting to receive from our Lord, and our hearts are not ready. They are hardened by sin, by making choices that have drawn us away from God rather than toward Him throughout the week.

      God is always calling. Turn to Him now and ask Him to wash you clean of your sins and the poor choices you have made through the week. Take this time now as you wait to ascend the holy mountain to let Him restore your wedding garment so that when the time comes for the invitation to the feast, you will be ready to accept it and to receive all the gifts that God desires to lavish on you.

      “Come to the feast of heaven and earth…” as the song says, and receive all that God has for you. You are His children; He loves you and He desires to give you His very self. Take now, receive, and rejoice!

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Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80; Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43

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      “What more was there to do…that I had not done?”

      Have you ever felt like the vineyard in the first reading? God has done so many wonderful things in your life, has shown you that He is walking with you each day, has given you gifts and talents that make you the unique individual that you are. Yet, you in return, have given Him a harvest of wild grapes. Rather than surrendering everything to Him, you have decided how you will live your life. You have decided what is best for you. The choices you have made have all been about you.

      Where has it gotten you? A lot of unhappiness, lack of fulfillment, restlessness. The peace of God that St. Paul describes in the second reading is far from you, and you really have no one to blame except for yourself.

      Have we been like the tenants in the Gospel reading? Are we squandering the gifts that God has asked us to steward for Him? Have we been jealous of our accomplishments and not desired to offer them to God?

      After Jesus speaks the parable, He turns to the religious leaders of that day and tells them, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people that will produce its fruit.”

      Can you imagine Him speaking those words to you? How devastating to have been given such great gifts, only to squander them and eventually have them taken away.

      We know that God is merciful. In the Collect, the opening prayer, we pray, “…in the abundance of your kindness…pour out your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask.” God does pour out His mercy upon us, in abundance.

      No matter how far you are from God, no matter how many of His gifts you have squandered, He, like the father of the prodigal son, welcomes you back with open arms. St. Paul tells us, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything…make your requests known to God.” If we do so, we can expect “the peace of God…will guard your hearts and minds.”

      Turn now to God. Pray, as the psalmist does, to “give us new life,” to “restore us,” “then we shall be saved.”

      At communion, we sang the song “Here I Am, Lord.” The third verse particularly struck me: “I have borne my people’s pain. I have wept for love of them. They turn away. I will break their hearts of stone, give them hearts for love alone.”

      God’s desire is always to bring His children back to Himself. He is waiting. He is calling. Turn to Him now and let Him change your heart from a stony, hardened heart to one of flesh. Let Him show you how much He loves you. He desires to take the vineyard of your heart and pull out the weeds, rebuild the wall, hoe and fertilize your tender vines once more so that you would produce fruit that will bring joy to others, to yourself, and to your Father.

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Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ezekiel 18:25-28; Psalm 25; Philippians 2:1-11; Matthew 21:28-32

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      “All that you have done to us, O Lord, you have done with true judgment, for we have sinned against you and not obeyed your commandments. But give glory to your name and deal with us according to the bounty of your mercy.” (Daniel, chapter 3)

      This is today’s Entrance Antiphon, rarely heard at Mass on Sundays, but powerful to set the tone with this Liturgy. God has every right to punish us for our sins, to deny to us the gift of eternal life. We certainly don’t deserve it, but we beg Him to deal with us according “to the bounty of [His] mercy,” and He does!

      In the Collect, the opening prayer at Mass, we hear: “O God, who manifests your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy…” God’s power is wrapped up in His mercy. He shows us His power by being merciful to us. The Psalm Response echoes that sentiment: “Remember your mercies, O Lord.”

      We hear in the first reading, from Ezekiel, our need for mercy. If we are virtuous but turn away from virtue to commit iniquity, we shall die. This is not the literal sense of death; this refers to a spiritual death—losing our salvation. If we turn from our wickedness, and do what is right, we can preserve our life. God will have mercy on us and bring us to redemption.

      The parable in the Gospel sets up a similar scenario. One son refuses to obey his father but then repents and does what is required of him. The other son seems to be obedient to the father but instead does not obey him. Who is the one who has done the will of the father?

      Even those in the crowd Jesus was addressing knew the correct answer to that question, but they didn’t realize he was talking about them! They said yes to all the commands of God, but in the end did not obey because their hearts were hardened. They thought they knew better about what God wanted and how to please Him, but they were really only pleasing themselves and doing things for others to see.

      Have we ever gotten caught in that trap? Have we told God we would obey Him, but then began to do things our way, pleased that we looked good before others, and squashing that little voice inside our head that tells us this is not what God has called you to do? It’s time to stop lying to ourselves. It’s time to turn—to repent—to follow Jesus with our whole hearts and leave behind our wrong choices.

      We need to ask, as the psalmist does, for the Lord to make His ways known to us, to teach us His paths, to “guide me in your truth and teach me.”

      We know we have failed Him up to now. We pray with the psalmist: “Remember that your compassion, O Lord, and your love are from of old. The sins of my youth and my frailties remember not…” As we pray, we know that God will answer our prayer. “Good and upright is the Lord; thus he shows sinners the way…”

      Let God lead you. Do not remain in your sin but cry out to God for mercy. He will hear your plea and will answer you and set you free from all your sins. Stop trying to play God in your life, but humble yourself before God and He will raise you up. Become “obedient to the point of death” as it says in the second reading. This death is death to sin in your life, the cross of your own making. As you do, the mercy of God will wash over you like an ocean wave, cleansing you of your sins and making you new again, and permitting you to enter into the kingdom of your Father as His beloved children.

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Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9; Psalm 145; Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a; Matthew 20:1-16a

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      “I will give you what is just.”

      I have always liked this parable that Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s because I often look at myself as one of those workers that arrived in the vineyard later than many. Yet Jesus promises me the same wage as those who worked the whole day long.

      When we read this parable, our sensibilities are often set on end because we think it’s patently unfair what the landowner did. Then he purposely pays the last employees first so that all will see that he is putting them on equal footing with the day-long laborers. He could have been more discreet and never let the earlier workers know what he was doing, but he chose to show his generosity to all and that irked them all the more.

      Why? This thing about fairness, about justice; we have really overrated it. If we want justice for ourselves, we might find that what we deserve is not nearly as nice as what we have been given. In fact, in justice we should be condemned for our sinfulness. We have no right to any reward from God. We are the prodigal. We have taken all that God has given us and we have plundered it on worthless things, adding sin upon sin in our lives, and we excuse all that sin, rationalizing it so that it is more palatable, but God knows our hearts. He knows just how wicked we really are. Yet He loves us and continues to reach out to us and offer us Himself and His forgiveness.

      “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.” So says today’s Psalm Response. He is good to all and compassionate toward all His works. Look around you at the people you see and recognize that God is good to all of them and has compassion on all of them. All. Not just the ones who are good, or loving, or faithful, but all. His desire is for all to work in the vineyard, even the ones who don’t answer the call until the last hour.

      In Isaiah, it says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near. Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked his thoughts…Turn to the Lord for mercy, to our God who is generous in forgiving.” Today is the day. Now is the hour. It is no longer time to make excuses for why you did what you did or to say that it doesn’t really matter; it was no big deal. Sin is always a big deal, but God is always ready to forgive. He wants you to come to Him, to seek Him out, and to seek His forgiveness, that you may be grafted into His kingdom and become His child.

      Surrender your heart to Him. Let Him cleanse you of your sins and make you new again. Ask Him to wash you in His precious blood that He would make you whiter than snow. He will change your heart and you will be able to say, like St. Paul, that you don’t know which is better, to depart this life and be with Christ, or to stay and work for His kingdom.

      Do not be envious because Jesus is generous to others who appear to be less “deserving” than you. Rejoice that He has called you, He has chosen you, and He desires you to be part of His family. He has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Celebrate His love, and call everyone you know to come into the vineyard as well, so that they might receive from the Lord His mercy.

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Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Sirach 27:30-28:7; Psalm 103; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35

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      “The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.”

      I like the sentiments in this Psalm Response. It is full of encouraging words: “He pardons all your iniquities, heals all your ills. He redeems your life from destruction, crowns you with kindness and compassion…Not according to our sins does he deal with us, nor does he requite us according to our crimes…As far as the east is from the west, so far has he put our transgressions from us.”

      That is the kind of God I want: One who doesn’t take into account my failures; One who forgives me in spite of my waywardness. Then I look at the contrast in the first reading: “The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail. Forgive your neighbor’s injustice, then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord? Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins?”

      Our relationship with God is a little more complex than just “God loves us despite what we do.” While that is true, it is also true that He will love us all the way on the road to hell if we choose not to live in the fullness of His mercy, which necessitates us to be merciful to others.

      When I look at the wicked servant in the Gospel, I think how can someone who has been forgiven so great a debt not be able to forgive his brother a lesser debt? I think the key is in the servant’s own words: “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.” The servant never fully realized his debt was forgiven. He was still determined to pay it back. He figured he was given a reprieve, so now he better start working to pay that debt off, and how better to start doing it than to get money from someone who owed him, which is why he was so unrelenting with his fellow servant.

      His master had offered him mercy, but he didn’t receive it. I read something recently that said you cannot have forgiveness for others if you’ve never received it from God. How many times do we stop to realize that God has truly forgiven us, or do we figure we still owe God something; that we’ve got to “make up” for our sin by great acts of penance or some devotional practice? Elsewhere in the psalms it says, “Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you…” and twice earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus makes it clear that God “desire[s] mercy, not sacrifice.” We can only learn mercy when we have received mercy.

      St. Paul tells us in the reading from Romans that “none of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord.” Do you feel that’s true for you? Are you so sold out to the Lord that you recognize that you belong to Him and your life is in His hands? If so, can you receive all the mercy He has for you? Can you allow Him to forgive you so completely that you are able to look at the lesser faults of your brothers and sisters and forgive them as you have been forgiven?

      In the opening prayer at Mass, the Collect, it says, “Grant that we may serve you with all our heart,” “…that we may feel the working of your mercy.” It is only when we submit ourselves fully to Him that we can truly begin to understand and accept His mercy in our lives, and that is not a one-time thing; it is an ongoing process.

      Take the first step. Ask Jesus to come into your heart, to forgive your sins, and to make you new. Receive Jesus with reverence in the Eucharist. Let “its effects, and not our own desires…always prevail in us,” as it says in the Prayer after Communion. The frequent reception of your Savior will allow you to grow closer in your union with Him and to become more like Him. Watch as He begins to transform you into the image of His Son. Then offer forgiveness to those who have offended you. Let the mercy you have received be the mercy you give.

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Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Psalm 95; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

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      “I will hold you responsible for his death.” Very disturbing words to hear from the reading in Ezekiel today.

      I have often heard about the idea of sins of omission: when we should have done something but did not do it. Here is a perfect example: when your brother is in sin and you see it but do not “warn them” for God, then you are liable. That’s hard to hear, and hard to put into practice.

      In our culture today, we have no shortage of people who are very willing to point out their brother’s faults. Social media shaming is all too common, and almost always unloving. God did not appoint you judge. You have no right to publicly point out another’s fault, especially when your heart attitude is of one-upmanship, instead of the love for a brother or sister whom you desire to bring back to a relationship with God.

      Jesus makes very clear in the Gospel how we should approach our duty to bring a brother or sister into truth. It requires first, private discussion, and again, done in love. If that is not successful, then one or two witnesses, then finally, the church, but the focus is always on trying to bring a brother or sister back to the truth, to help ensure that they will not lose their immortal souls. This is not about who is right and who is wrong. This is about love. If you care enough for that person, you want to see them back on the right path that leads to their eternal salvation.

      In the Collect—the opening prayer—we pray that God, by whom “we are redeemed and receive adoption” would “look graciously on your beloved sons and daughters” that they “may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.” Do we see this one with whom we are angry as our brother or sister, and also a beloved son or daughter of God as much as we are? If we can learn to accept that truth, then we can more easily approach one another in love and speak in love, even if the words we speak are words of chastisement.

      God has called us into a body—the Body of Christ. This is more than just a group of people that have the same ideas and same goals—it’s not that kind of body. Look at your own body—your arms and hands and fingers, your legs, knees, toes. That’s the kind of body the Body of Christ is. We belong to one another; we are all one. How can one toe look at another toe and judge and condemn it? They are part of you. Rebuke them, chastise them, but do it in love. When they are hurt, ultimately, we are hurt too. That’s how much we are a part of one another.

      The psalmist tells us today to “harden not your hearts.” I’ve always considered this passage to refer to us in dealing with our relationship with God. But today, I feel like God is telling me it’s also in relationship to our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we recognize our relationship with God, that we have been adopted into His family and we are now part of His Body, then we cannot have hard hearts where our brothers and sisters are concerned, because they are also adopted into His family and are part of His body.

      St. Paul makes it very clear in the reading from Romans. He tells us that all the commandments can be “summed up in this saying, namely ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no evil to the neighbor.”

      Can we love others like that? Can we see their faults and point them out to them in love the way Jesus tells us to? Can we seek reconciliation and wholeness in the Body, rather than try to prove we are right?

      If we do, then we can approach the Communion rail, and, as it says in the Offertory Prayer, “By partaking of the sacred mystery, we may be faithfully united in mind and heart.”

      Unity is one of the signs of Christianity. Let our unity begin with loving our brothers and sisters enough to correct them in love and bring them back to the fold that they, along with us, “may merit an eternal share in his life,” as it says in the Prayer After Communion.

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Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Psalm 63; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

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      Jeremiah was an honest man, and his relationship with God was full of honesty. He had no problem complaining to God. “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped.”

      Jeremiah had done what Paul talks about in the reading from Romans. He had offered his body “as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” God, in turn, had given him a difficult assignment: to “cry out” with “violence and outrage” as his message. Jeremiah was apparently still in the process of having his mind transformed and renewed since he struggled so much with the assignment God had given to him.

      Have you ever been in a situation where you have tried to do the right thing, but because of it, you have suffered and been treated badly by others? Have you ever cried out to God, complaining about how awful things are because you obeyed God? Have you ever wished, like Jeremiah, that you had never spoken up and caused yourself all this grief?

      Remember the words of Jesus from the Gospel: “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Can we truly believe that? Do we trust that God knows better than we do, and that if we choose His path, we will find true happiness?

      Even Peter didn’t understand that. After making his amazing profession of faith in last week’s Gospel, led by the Spirit to pronounce that Jesus was “the Christ, the son of the living God,” Peter did not understand that Jesus must do the will of the Father wherever that would take Him.

      I think it’s interesting that Peter begins his rebuke of Jesus with the words, “God forbid…” We think of that now as a colloquialism, but I believe Peter literally meant exactly what he said. He wanted God to forbid Jesus to do such a thing, but Jesus saw that Peter was not thinking with a transformed mind; that he needed to begin thinking as God does, not as human beings do.

      How often are we like Peter, or even Jeremiah for that matter, when we look at the way that God has chosen for us and we see it with minds that are not transformed by the Gospels? We may have had experiences of God revealing Himself very clearly in our lives, but we still hold onto the old ways of thinking. We are not yet able to “discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”

      We must seek more diligently after God in order to allow Him to transform our minds and hearts. We must cry out like the psalmist: “for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless, and without water.” We must “gaze toward [Him] in the sanctuary to see [His] power and [His] glory,” and let Him take our “bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God,” so that He can transform our minds. We must open our minds and hearts so that He would pour out His Spirit upon us like the “riches of a banquet” that will satisfy our souls. We must “cling fast to [Him]” so that He would uphold us.

      Consider Eucharistic adoration. This is a perfect opportunity for you to enter His sanctuary and let Him fill you with His presence so that He can transform your mind. A long time ago, I had a friend who challenged me to spend an hour before the Blessed Sacrament every day for a month. I modified that a little and only spent a half hour each day, stopping at an open church after work each evening. Although there were times when I felt like I got nothing out of it, after 30 days, I saw changes in my life. God was indeed beginning to transform me.

      I still have a long way to go. I still cry out to God sometimes, complaining about the situations I believe He has brought me to, feeling very much like He duped me as well, but as I continue to cling to God, I know He has a plan for me that is better than anything I could imagine or have chosen for myself.

      God is patient. His plan unfolds gradually, in the world, and in each of our lives. Wait patiently for Him, trust in Him, and you will eventually see His hand at work, transforming you and your life into what is good and pleasing to Him.

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Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 22:19-23; Psalm 138; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

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      “Grant your people… to desire what you promise.”

      The first thing that stood out to me today was from the Collect—the opening prayer of Mass: “grant your people to love what you command and to desire what you promise, that…our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found.”

      We are praying not that God would gives us our desires, but that He would give us a love for what He desires! He wants to change our hearts; to help us think anew about the world and ourselves. He doesn’t just want to be our cosmic Santa Claus who gives us all we want; He desires to transform us and make us into the image of His Son, so that we would desire only what is best—for us and for those around us.

      I must admit that the key words of the Gospel reading did not jump out at me today. “But who do you say that I am?” It wasn’t until our pastor began to speak in his homily that I was touched by those words.

      Our pastor shared about a trip he took to the Holy Land several years earlier. He said that he was spending some quiet time in the evening on the grounds of his hotel and God spoke very clearly to him and asked him, “Who do you say that I am?” Being a Catholic for many years and a priest for some years at that point, he felt like God should know how he felt about Him.

      The next evening, the same thing happened again. It was then the priest realized that what God was asking of him was to know who he thought God was to him NOW. How did he see his relationship with God at that moment?

      I thought about that and realized that over the years my view of the answer to that question has changed. There are many names for God in the Bible, each of them referring to some attribute of God’s relationship to us. “El Shaddai” means God almighty, Elohim means the creator, Yahweh Yireh means God provides, Yahweh Ropheka is the God who heals, Yahweh Shalom is the God of peace, and so on. The name that immediately struck me as my pastor was speaking was “Abba,” God my father. I think it’s interesting that Jesus would reveal that name of God to us when he taught His disciples the Lord’s prayer. Its translation is not “Father” as we understand the formal term; it is more correctly translated “Daddy.” Can you imagine the shock that this group of Hebrew men experienced when Jesus told them that? In Hebrew culture, they had great reverence for God and His name, so much so that they dared not speak it at times. Yet, here was Jesus telling them to call God their daddy.

      I am learning to do the same. This God who created the universe, who controls the winds and the seas, holds me in the palm of His hand and calls me “son.” I am overwhelmed by that thought sometimes.

      I have been listening to a few worship songs recently that speak of that. “Come to the altar, the Father’s arms are open wide…” and “You’re a good, good father, that’s Who You are, that’s Who You are. And I am loved by You, that’s who I am, that’s who I am.”

      God desires to transform me so that I would become more like His son Jesus, and He knows best the area where I need the most help to allow Him to transform me.

      In the Offertory prayer, we pray that the God “who gained for yourself a people by adoption through the one sacrifice offered once for all...” We are adopted into His family; we are His children.

      It talks in the first reading about Eliakim being given the office of Shebna and in the Gospel a parallel reading where Simon is given an office as well, and even a new name to show his transformation, which was only beginning at that time.

      God calls each of us. He calls us in different ways to different places in His kingdom, but He does have a place for each of us, and He wants to transform each of us to be able to fulfill that role He has called us to.

      Open your heart. Let God speak to you, calling your name. Then pray for the strength to be able to answer with your whole heart. What He has called you to is far better than anything you would have chosen for yourself.

      Then we can pray with the psalmist, “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart…I will sing your praise; I will worship at your holy temple.”

      Jesus is calling. As the song says, “Come to the altar…” and receive Him Who will transform your life; He Who will make you new again. He’s waiting for you.

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Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Psalm 67; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

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      “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”

      What a remarkable thing for Jesus to say! How shocking it must have been to be on the receiving end of that comment. Essentially, Jesus is calling the woman a dog and saying she has no right to ask a favor of him.

      How would I have reacted to a statement like that if it had been directed at me? I’m sure I would not have been as humble as that woman was, but her great need helped her to put aside her own feelings of self-righteousness and continue to beg God for what she asked. How she must have loved her daughter!

      Her answer to Jesus not only shows humility, but also great wisdom. She is willing to bargain with God even after He insults her! “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table…”

      Jesus sees her faith and her putting aside herself in order to receive from Him. So, He grants her request. I was reading a little meditation on this Scripture that talked about that very thing. How, if we can truly abandon ourselves to God, then nothing can shake us from continuing to hold onto Him and eventually see His hand working in our lives.​

      The Collect—the prayer at the opening of Mass—says the following: “…fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises…”

      Loving You in all things and above all things. Can we do that? Sometimes I believe that I can love God above all things, but then He usually shows me somewhere in my life where I am still holding onto something that I love more than Him. The really hard one for me would be to love Him in all things. That means all the circumstances of my life as well as all the difficult people in my life. Can I love Him there?

      We have been given a great gift in being allowed to be called His children. It says in the reading from Romans, “just as you once disobeyed God, but have now received mercy…” because of the disobedience of the Jewish people. Then he continues, “God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.”

      We don’t understand why God orchestrates things the way He does, but we know that everything is planned in order to bring all of us into the kingdom. The psalm today says, “May God have pity on us and bless us… so may your ways be known upon earth; among all nations, your salvation.” God desires nothing more than that ALL be saved, that all become one in Him.

      So, what’s a little dying to self with all that at stake? Can we do it? Can we let our self-righteousness go and humble ourselves before God, recognizing our unworthiness because of our disobedience, and then beg Him for His mercy? We may be surprised to find that He tells us, “great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

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Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

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      “…there was a tiny whispering sound.”

      When I first looked at today’s readings, I didn’t sense any particular theme running through them, but the more I looked at them and prayed over them, the sense that emerged for me was that God often acts unexpectedly in our lives.

      Elijah could have expected the Lord to come in a mighty wind or an earthquake or fire. Hadn’t the Israelites experienced something similar when Moses climbed Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of the Law? In the Gospel reading, Jesus “made the disciples get into the boat and precede him” so that he could later walk on the water toward them. He planned it!

      Yet, I think the surprising thing in these readings is how the people reacted. Elijah knew that God was not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire. He recognized God in the “tiny whispering sound.” Peter and the disciples did not recognize Jesus at first—they thought it was a ghost! Once Peter recognized Jesus, he had the courage to step out of the boat and begin to walk toward Jesus on the water! Maybe we forget that. Maybe we just remember that he sank because he had so little faith, but he actually did begin to walk on the water! He was able to do the unexpected because he knew Jesus and who He was.

      Even St. Paul, in the reading from Romans, recognized the Messiah in the unexpected carpenter from Nazareth. His reaction was to believe so firmly that he had “great sorrow and constant anguish in [his] heart” when his fellow Jews did not believe.

      Do we recognize Jesus in the unexpected? Are we attuned enough to our Savior that we can see Jesus working in the circumstances of our life that are sometimes so confusing or so frightening or seemingly so hopeless? Can we see Him there? Can we hear His still, small voice calling to us to “take courage…do not be afraid”?

      One of the things that stood out most to me at Mass was from the Collect—the opening prayer. We prayed that “taught by the Spirit, we dare to call [God] our Father,” and ask that He “bring…to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as [His] sons and daughters.”

      We are His children! We are beloved by Him because of that. That amazes me. Then I see that He loves us so much that He desires the intimacy of letting us receive Him, body, blood, soul, and divinity, in the Eucharist. He wants to give Himself completely to us in the Eucharist! What more unexpected way could God come to us than that, but are we able to see Him there? Do we realize what an honor, what a privilege, what a joy it is to go forward and encounter our God there in the bread and wine now changed into His precious body and blood?

      Look for God in the unexpected in your life. Look for Him in the little ways, the hidden ways, in the moments of silence and stillness. Look for Him when you come forward to receive the Eucharist. Let your reception of the sacrament be a true encounter with your Father who loves you and gives Himself completely to you. Then offer yourself completely to Him in return. You cannot imagine the joy your will experience as you deepen your relationship with your Father, and the peace and the wholeness that comes from that.

      “I will hear what God proclaims, the Lord—for he proclaims peace. Near indeed in his salvation to those who fear him, glory dwelling in our land.”

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Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 55:1-3; Psalm 145; Romans 8:35, 37-39; Matthew 14:13-21

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      Jesus “withdrew…to a deserted place…The crowds heard of this and followed him…”

      My initial thought when I read this was that Jesus withdrew to give himself some time alone to grieve for his friend and cousin John the Baptist, whom He had just learned was dead.

      As I began to meditate on this Scripture and read some commentaries, it struck me that Jesus withdrew to the deserted place in order that the crowds would follow Him there. How often do we feel like we are in deserted places where we have no one to help us as we struggle with a particular problem, whether it be an external problem like sickness or the loss of a job, or whether it is an internal problem, like anger or grief or hopelessness? Did we ever consider that Jesus might have drawn us to that place?

      Why would He do that? Why would He want us to experience the emptiness of feeling alone, the fear of not knowing how to resolve our problem, the ache of having no one to comfort us and help us make it through?

      In the book of Hosea there is an interesting Scripture that always struck me: “I will lead her into the wilderness and speak persuasively to her.” God has a reason for calling us into the desert. It is there, and sometimes only there, that He can speak to our hearts. Certainly that is not due to His lack of ability; it is always due to our lack of being able to hear, with all the distractions of busyness or even our own sense of security derived from our own efforts.

      Sometimes it is only when we reach the end of our resources, the limits of our abilities, the lowest points in our life, where we can look up and see the reality that God is there with us and we have only to ask for His aid, to know that He will supply all that we need.

      The psalm today tells us, “you give them their food in due season.” The reading from Isaiah tells us, “You who have no money, come, receive…Come without paying and without cost…Come to me heedfully, listen that you may have life.” Then the reading from Romans summarizes the whole discussion by telling us that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Paul also says in that same reading, “in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.”

      It’s not magic. You can’t just wish your circumstances away because you follow Christ. You may still have to go through many of those difficulties Paul describes in that passage from Romans.

      If we look again at the Gospel, we see that once Jesus had drawn the crowds to this deserted place, He didn’t dismiss them so that they could go provide for their own needs. Nor did He immediately solve their problem through the multiplication of the loaves and fish. No, he turned to his disciples and said, “give them some food yourselves.” Here again, the disciples had to come to Jesus and present to Him their inadequacy in being able to solve the problem. “Five loaves and two fish are all we have,” they said, aware that this meager offering would never suffice for such a large crowd. Yet, they gave it to Jesus with a sense of trust in Who He was, and Jesus showed them that the little they had was indeed sufficient for such a huge crowd.

      In the homily the priest gave, he suggested that we, too, should offer ourselves and our meager gifts to the Lord, and then we can watch as He multiplies those gifts to become all that is needed to meet the current circumstances.

      Do not be afraid, especially if you are walking right now in a desert place. Do not look down at the ground you are walking on: the circumstances you are dwelling in. Look up at your Father in heaven, Who desires to lavish His gifts on you without you having to pay a price for them. Let Him takes the littleness of your offering and make it into all that you need to walk through your circumstances and reach the other side in victory, “conquer[ing] overwhelmingly through Him who loves” you.

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Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12; Psalm 119; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52

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      “The law of your mouth is to me more precious than thousands of gold and silver pieces.”

      When I read that line in today’s psalm, I wonder if I believe that’s true. Can I recognize this “pearl of great price” that I have in the Scriptures?

      When God appeared to Solomon in a dream and said to him, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you,” I wonder what I might have asked for if God appeared to me and told me the same thing. Would I ask for something transient that will not last—that cannot last—like wealth or health or youth? Or would I ask for something with more eternal consequences? It seems Solomon was already pretty wise when he asked God for an understanding heart, but God still blessed him with a wisdom so great it has become for us the standard of the greatest wisdom.

      We have before us the opportunity to gain wisdom for ourselves. We have the “pearl of great price” right in front of us. Do we see its value enough to realize that we need to “sell all that (we) have and buy it?”

      The Word of God is not an end in itself. The psalm says, “The revelation of your words sheds light, giving understanding to the simple.” The Word of God is a key. It is a doorway. It is our way to encounter Christ, to begin a relationship with Him, and He has given us the sacraments, which the Scriptures foreshadow and describe, as the means to grow that relationship.

      Wisdom is not just head knowledge; it is experiential knowledge. We cannot just know about Christ, we must encounter Him, we must experience Him in order to have real relationship with Him.

      Last week’s readings told us that Christ IS the kingdom of heaven. This week we learn that He is the pearl of great price. Are we willing to sell all that we have, to give up all that we are, in order to claim this pearl, or are we still holding on to our own ideas of what will make us happy?

      In the reading from Romans, it says that we are “predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.” We are called. He has chosen us, but we still have our part to play. We must, like Mary, give our consent to allow God to work in our lives.

      Our organist chose to include a song called The Summons as one of our hymns for today. The words of that song touched me deeply: “Will you come and follow me if I but call your name? Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same? Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known, will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?”

      God is calling. He has chosen you. He is coming to you as He came to Solomon and He is saying, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.”

      What will you ask? Will you recognize the pearl of great price and sell all that you have so that you can obtain it? Your eternity depends on the answer you give.

      Let Jesus into your life today. Let Him begin that relationship with you that He longs to have. Let His love in you grow as He fills you with Himself, and you will find that all lesser desires seem as nothing compared to this “pearl of great price.”

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Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wisdom 12:13, 16-19; Psalm 86; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43

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      “Let them grow together until harvest…”

      When I read the Scriptures, I know that they contain layers of meaning and each time I read them, God can reveal something new to me. That is the amazing reality of the living Word of God.

      I have often heard this passage about the weeds and the wheat refer to individuals who have both good and evil in them and how God permits that until the final judgment where we have to make an accounting for our sins. Reading the Scripture today, I am struck that that is not the original meaning of the passage. Jesus clearly says that the good seed are “the children of the kingdom” and “the weeds are the children of the evil one.” These are two distinct groups of people.

      In an explanation of this passage, I read that the word used for the “weeds” is actually a word used to describe a grain called darnel, which is also known as “false wheat.” It looks exactly like wheat when it is growing; it is only when it produces its fruit that you can tell the difference, and its fruit is poisonous to humans.

      Have you ever looked around your church and wondered if there are some there who are “false wheat”? They look like Christians, they act like Christians, but what is the fruit of their lives. Do they carry secret sin that they do not acknowledge, or worse, that they have rationalized away?

      The danger in doing that is that you become judgmental and start seeing yourself as better than others. Maybe first look at yourself. Have you let sin into your life in one particular area? Have you dismissed it as not that big a deal, or have you rationalized it, saying that God will understand? The problem with sin is that it darkens our minds and we begin to rationalize more and more things until we have gone so far down the path to wickedness and didn’t even realize we were walking away from God.

      Don’t look at others to be the “false wheat.” Look at yourself. Don’t wait for the harvest to remove the lies. Acknowledge your sin and let Jesus heal you of it now. St. Paul says in today’s passage from Romans that “the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness…” He intercedes for us. He wants to help us to repent.

      In today’s psalm, it says, “You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and fidelity. Turn toward me, and have pity on me.”

      Do not presume on God’s mercy. If you sin—and we all do—do not hesitate to run to Him and ask for His mercy to heal you and set you free so that you can become the children of God that you are meant to be.

      In the reading from Wisdom, it says, “You have the care of all, that you need show you have not unjustly condemned.” Because He cares for all of us, He will in justice condemn those who wantonly choose to walk away from His mercy, but in that same passage, He assures us, “You gave your children good ground for hope, that you would permit repentance for their sins.”

      Do not live in denial of your sins. Do not choose to rationalize them and make light of them. Acknowledge your sins. Repent of them. In First John, it says, “If we acknowledge (in older versions, it uses the word ‘confess’) our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing.”

      Prepare for the harvest. In the book of Isaiah, it says, “Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before My eyes, cease doing evil…” Let the power of God and the mercy of God transform you from the bad seed into the good seed, so that you can rejoice to be called the Children of God.

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