MUSINGS

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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Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 55:10-11; Psalm 65; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23

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      We are dirt.

      There’s a little blurb at the beginning of my Mass readings today in the devotional I use, and it reminds me that in Genesis, Chapter 2, it says, “The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground…”

      So, when we look at the analogy in the Gospel of Jesus comparing us to dirt, it has an aura of much deeper reality than I ever realized before.

      God made man out of clay. My backyard is mostly filled-in ground and much of it is clay. Clay is not good soil for planting anything. Each time I plant a bush or flower, I mostly have to remove the heavy thick clay soil and replace it with good garden soil. That is what God chose to make us out of. Not a promising start.

      When I look at the parable of the different types of soil that receive the seed of the Word of God, I sometimes compare myself to the seed on the path. I don’t always understand the Word I hear, and it does not find root in my heart. Other times, I feel like the rocky soil; that I have no depth to my spirituality, and as a result, I lose any spiritual gains I may have had as soon as a trial comes my way. Sometimes, I feel like I’m the soil with the thorns growing in it. Fear and the pursuit of the easy way out all too easily take away my chances of bearing fruit from the Word I receive. I have never felt like the good soil, rich in nutrients and prepared to receive the seed and let it grow to produce fruit.

      When I hear Jesus quote from the prophet Isaiah about the people in the crowd who “look but do not see and hear but do not listen and understand,” my initial reaction is to be upset with God for allowing this. Why doesn’t He change that? Then I read further and I see what Isaiah says, “Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see…and hear…and understand…and be converted, and I heal them.”

      It is we who close our eyes and our ears to the truth of God. It is we who choose to be ignorant of the truth of God’s love for us, who are caught up in our own ideas and goals, and who are too stubborn to change. In another place in Scripture, it says, “Oh, that today you would hear his voice: do not harden your hearts…”

      My heart is hardened. Whether it be from the trials and struggles I experience, or the disappointments in life, I have hardened myself so as not to experience the pain. In Romans, it tells us, “we also groan within ourselves as we wait for… the redemption of our bodies…” Pain is part of the process we must experience if we are to grow in God.

      I pray now that God would prepare me to receive the Word of God, by “drenching [my] furrows, breaking up [my] clods, softening [me] with showers…” so that when His Word comes to me, it will not return to the Father “void, but shall do [God’s] will, achieving the end for which [He] sent it.”

      I am in need of conversion. I desire more than anything that God would convert my heart and heal my soul. Oh, God, make me into the good soil that will “indeed bear fruit and yield” a harvest for You.

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Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Zechariah 9:9-10; Psalm 145; Romans 8:9, 11-13; Matthew 11:25-30

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      “The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.”

      When I think about the “works of God,” I think about all His actions in our world. But, when I think a little bit further, I realize that we—that “I”—am also a work of God.

      “Let your works give you thanks, O Lord, and let your faithful ones bless you.” I believe here the psalmist is talking about us as his works. God is at work in us, transforming us from sinful, lost creatures into His very own children.

      St. Paul says in the reading from Romans, “You are not in the flesh, on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.” The Spirit at work within us is what transforms us. He goes on to say, “…by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body…” This is the work of transformation.

      These truths are revealed to us as we come to Jesus. In the Gospel, Jesus tells us, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” This is the mystery He has revealed to us “little ones.” The very next thing Jesus says is, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

      As we come to Jesus, He reveals the truth about the Father and the Spirit to us, how they desire to work in our lives to transform our bodies as well as our hearts, to make us holy even as God is holy. Jesus says, “take my yoke upon you and learn from me…and you will find rest for yourselves.”

      It is only in doing the will of God that we will find the peace that we long for. As we come to Jesus, and we surrender ourselves to Him, it is there we will find all that we hope for, all that we need. As we open ourselves to God, He will come to us and make His home within us. Then we can experience what we see in the first reading: “Shout for joy…your king shall come to you.”

      Jesus is our answer. He is our hope. He is our way. He is the truth. He is our life. Open yourself to Him now and receive all that He has for you. Your life will never be the same.

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Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Kings 4:8-11. 14-16a; Psalm 89; Romans 6:3-4, 8-11; Matthew 10:37-42

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      “For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.”

      I like the story of the influential woman of Shunem, whose name is unknown to us from this passage. She was kind, generous, and one would assume, intelligent and gregarious. Yet she had a personal struggle. She had no children, which was a stigma in those days, but she did not let her personal pain keep her from her gracious acts.

      When Elisha asked his servant what he thought he could do for the woman to thank her for her generosity, I’m sure the servant remembered some conversations he had with some of the servants of the woman’s household, who shared the secret pain their mistress carried.

      What must her reaction have been, when Elisha spoke the words to her, “This time next year you will be fondling a baby son.” How ecstatic she must have been. She had not given anything to the prophet in order to get a return; she was simply being the generous person she had always been. Yet, God knew her heart and He blest her through Elisha the prophet.

      I can imagine that Psalm 89 would have been on her lips, “The promises of the Lord I will sing forever, through all generations my mouth shall proclaim your faithfulness,” and again, “At your name they rejoice all the day, and through your justice they are exalted.”

      Isn’t it the same for us? We are called to follow Christ, and as we follow Him, He blesses us. “If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.” The happiness that we seek, the longing in our hearts cannot be filled by anything but God Himself, and, as we live our lives in surrender to Him, He rewards us with new life: with joy, with hope, with peace.

      Are you searching for life? Are you searching for happiness and fulfillment? Jesus tells us, “Whoever finds his life will lose it.” You can spend your whole life searching for happiness, but never find it, because you will inevitably look in all the wrong places. It’s human nature to do so. But Christ continues to say, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” It is only there, at the cross, that you will find what it is that you have been searching for.

      “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”

      Stop seeking your own fulfillment. Seek out the cross. Embrace the cross. “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” It is the way, the only way. You cannot bypass the cross to get to the resurrection, but know that Christ is with you every step of the way. He will guide you by “the light of his countenance.” You need not fear, for in the end, you “will surely not lose [your] reward.”

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Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 69; Romans 5:12-15; Matthew 10:26-33

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      “Terror on ever side! Denounce! Let us denounce him! All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine.”

      What a frightening way to start the readings today. Why is this happening to Jeremiah? He is being denounced because he has been obedient to God and spoken the word that God gave him to share with the people, but the people, apparently even his friends, do not want to hear what God has to say.

      I look around our world right now and I see many people who are angry. Voices are raised and gestures that imply violence are flaunted. Where is peace? What is the world coming to?

      I was deeply touched by the words of one of the hymns that was chosen for our liturgy today, called “Christ, Be Our Light”: “Longing for peace, our world is troubled. Longing for hope, many despair.” The psalm response says, “I pray to you, O Lord, for the time of your favor, O God!” And in this morning’s Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, that sentiment is echoed, “Help us, O Lord, for we are troubled; give the command, O God, and bring us peace.”

      Don’t we long for that peace! St. Paul tells us in Romans that “through one man, sin entered the world, and through sin, death…” Sin is at the heart of our unrest, our anger, even our fear, but what does Jesus tell us in the Gospel?

      “Fear no one,” He says. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…” He continues to tell us how much God values us: “Even all the hairs of your head are counted.” God knows us that intimately and loves us that much! Then Jesus goes on to say, “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.”

      Our pastor gave a wonderful sermon on how we can acknowledge Jesus. He suggested three different methods. First, if Jesus is truly the center of your life, if He is your best friend, then you should want to talk about Him, to share your friendship for Him with others. Secondly, you will want to share what He teaches you through His word and what you have learned through His Church. Finally, you can acknowledge Him through living a holy life, showing people what it means to love and follow Jesus.

      I like that he put that point last. My tendency is to want people to see any holiness in my life so that I don’t have to share God’s truth in words. After all, look what happened with Jeremiah when he shared God’s word of truth.

      The words of the Gospel Acclamation, “The Spirit of Truth will testify to me, says the Lord; and you also will testify.” It is our call to testify to the truth of the word of God. If we are to truly acknowledge God in our lives, we must not only live it, but speak it, and take opportunities to teach it, even when our friends present us with their beliefs that may be well-meaning, but really miss the mark of the Gospels.

      The words of the hymn “Christ, Be Our Light” continue: “Your word alone has power to save us. Make us your living voice.”

      We can only truly begin to acknowledge God in our lives as we draw closer to Him. Study the Scriptures, pray always, seek out the sacraments on a regular basis, not just the Eucharist, but also the Sacrament of Reconciliation. “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” It is only then that we will find the peace that we long for, even in the midst of the storms of life.

      When we have that peace, we can share about Jesus fearlessly, knowing as Jeremiah did, that “the Lord is with me, like a mighty champion: my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph.”

      Prepare to testify to God in your life, and prepare to be persecuted for doing so, but know that God is with you, “for he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!”

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Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 19:2-6a; Psalm 100; Romans 5:6-11; Matthew 9:36-10:8

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      “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

      God knows our hearts. He knows how wretched and sinful we are. Yet He chose to send His Son Jesus to us to reconcile us to Himself “through the death of His Son.” Do we deserve it? Did we earn it? No. That is the wonder of our salvation. God knew us in all our sinfulness and yet He still sent His Son to die for us so that we could be reconciled to Him!

      The Scriptures today all clearly point to the love God has for His people. In the Gospel, it tells us that “Jesus’ heart was moved with pity” for the crowds, so He chose 12 men from His disciples and gave them special authority “to drive…out [unclean spirits] and to cure every disease.” He sends them forth with the message, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (In another Gospel, we hear these same words: “The kingdom of God is at hand.” (Mark 1:15) The Scripture there continues with Christ also saying, “Repent and believe in the gospel.”

      God has chosen us to go and bear fruit, another Scripture tells us. Just as He chose the Jewish people in the first reading to be “my special possession,” He has also chosen us and made a covenant with us so that we should also become “a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”

      How we should marvel at this calling! He has taken us from the darkness of our sinfulness not only into the light, but also into His commission to be light for others! We should be able, like the psalmist to, “sing joyfully to the Lord,” knowing that “he made us, his we are.”

      Let us rejoice in that revelation. Let us rejoice to know that we belong to Him, but let us also remember that we must keep His covenant, we must repent and believe the Good News. Let us know that what we have received without cost, “without cost you are to give.”

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The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Readings: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Psalm 147; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58

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      “I am the living bread that came down from heaven…”

      Today we celebrate one of the great feast days of the Church which was formerly known as Corpus Christi. As our priest said at Mass this weekend, it is one of the great mysteries of our Catholic faith how simple bread and wine become the actual body and blood of our Savior.

      In the Vatican II documents, the Eucharist is called the Source and Summit of our faith. From our acceptance of the truth of the Eucharist stems all our beliefs, and at the same time, this is the height, the most sublime, truth of our faith: Jesus is truly present—body, blood, soul and divinity—in the bread and wine that we receive in the Eucharist.

      I was most struck by the first reading, from the book of Deuteronomy. “For forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert…” This life we live now is our “desert.” We are seeking the Promised Land of heaven and our journeying to that land is our desert experience, where there are “serpents and scorpions” and “parched and waterless ground.”

      We recognize the “serpents and scorpions” as temptations to sin, as the evil that confronts us every day where we must learn to choose the good based on God’s laws over the evil we see. The “parched and waterless ground” is sometimes the way our prayer life feels. We seek God, we seek holiness, but sometimes it appears we are walking in the dark and have no direction or guidance to take us where we want to go. Our prayer feels like it evaporates into the air rather than reaching the throne room of God.

      The Scriptures tell us that God wants to “test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.” He brings the test, but He also brings the solution. “He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers…” His testing is to show us that only He can provide all that we need in order to make this journey through the desert of our life.

      Jesus tells us in the Gospel that He has made provision for us to always have all that we need to survive this life. “Unlike your ancestors who ate (the manna) and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” What is the bread He is referring to? “I am the living bread…” He says earlier in this passage from John. He is our food. He is our strength. It is He who provides all that we need in this desert to reach our Promised Land of heaven.

      As the priest said at Mass, the mystery of the Eucharist can never be fully understood in its entirety. Our knowledge can only deepen as we study it more, but it will never reach a finality. We understand that Christ becomes our food, to strengthen us on the journey, but this is only one part of our understanding of the significance of the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith. St. Paul alludes to something more in his first letter to the Corinthians when he says, “because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we partake of the one loaf.”

      The mystery of the Eucharist is also in its ability to draw us into unity, into oneness. As we partake of the Eucharist, we become one body, the body of Christ, another great mystery of our faith.

      Looking at one of the choices for the Preface for today’s Mass, it contains this phrase: “As we eat his flesh that was sacrificed for us, we are made strong, and, as we drink his Blood that was poured out for us, we are washed clean.” Here is another mystery of the Eucharist that our priest touched upon in his sermon: reception of the Eucharist can cleanse us of sin! I have long felt when I pray the prayer before communion, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed,” that the word Jesus is speaking to me is, “Come.” Come, receive and be made whole. Come and experience the fullness of My life within you. Come and be made new again.

      As we received communion at this Mass, the organist played a song that really touched me. It’s called “Lord, I Need You” by Chris Tomlin. “Lord, I need You, oh, I need You. Every hour I need You. My one defense, my righteousness, oh God, how I need you.” One of the verses says, “Where sin runs deep, Your grace is more. Where grace is found is where You are.”

      In the Eucharist, we find Christ. We find all that we need. We find food for the journey, we find grace to take away our sin, we find oneness and unity in Him and in our brothers and sisters, we find peace, we find joy.

      Come to Jesus. Receive Him now. Know that He loves you beyond anything that you can imagine. He is waiting for you to say yes to Him. Come. Receive, and find life forever more!

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