31 October 2021 - the Lord alone

Today's Readings

(Audio)

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,

"Which is the first of all the commandments?" 

This scribe didn't seem insincere in the way that many others did when they tried to entrap Jesus with trick questions. He rather seemed to ask Jesus a question in order give him a chance to freely express what was most important to him, a summary, perhaps of his entire message.

Jesus responded to the scribe with with the commands to love God above all things to love one's neighbor as oneself. By drawing together these two threads from the Old Testament Jesus succinctly the meaning of the entire law. We could imagine Pharisees giving different answers, answers concerned with serving God by proper ritual and sacrifice as the starting place, and only concerned with inner transformation or love of neighbor as secondary matters. What Jesus definitely did not offer as a response was something which could be merely external to oneself, worn as a mask, or adopted as one aspect among many to compromise one's identity.

Jesus replied, "The first is this:

Hear, O Israel!

The Lord our God is Lord alone!

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, 

with all your mind,

and with all your strength.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (see Proverbs 9:10). If we fear to lack or to lose the temporary things of this life more than we fear the Lord we are misled to our harm and our peril. As Bob Dylan sang, "[I]t may be the devil or it may be the Lord but you're gonna have to serve somebody". We are creatures made for worship. If God is not in that central place we have no recourse but to treat created things as idols, to worship them and serve them in spite of the fact that they cannot fulfill us. It is not enough to say we love the Lord, either, to be safe from this risk. We must do so actually, committing all of the energies of our hearts, our souls, and minds, and our strength to doing so. We might imagine that if we really were concerned only for God that our lives would be as those of monks or hermits, disinterested, we imagine, in the world. This is not actually the case for monks or hermits who live in the presence of God for the sake of those in the world. Nor is it is not the case for us.

The second is this:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no other commandment greater than these." 

In Matthew's Gospel we hear Jesus say more on the link between the two commandments. We hear, "[t]he second is like unto the first" (see Matthew 22:39). By saying this Jesus made a remarkable and dramatic link between the love of God and the love of neighbor which may have been implicit before but only now said definitively. Yet it is clear that this link was the basis around which the early Christians ordered their lives. Jesus said that whenever we fail to love those made in his image, the lowest and the least, we fail to love him. Paul realized that his persecution of Christians was taken by Jesus as persecution of Jesus himself. John made the connection between the commandments clear:

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen (see First John 4:20).

This intertwining of love of God and love of neighbor ensures that we will not become so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good. Indeed, the more we love God, the more we must love and serve here on earth. But now, in Christ, things are properly ordered. We don't love neighbor merely unto temporary ends of wealth and success and health. We love them as we have learned to love ourselves, which is unto things eternal. This does not exclude transitory blessings but it does set them in proper perspective.

The scribe said to him, "Well said, teacher.

The scribe was very receptive to the answer his question received. He saw prophetic proof that God was more interested in love than in the ritual sacrificial system. It was indeed the case that the entirety of that system served to bring awareness to the need for a perfect offering of love of which man unaided by grace was unable to offer. Rather than offering what was needed, humankind had to settle for the blood of goats and calves and lambs as substitutes until God himself provided the Lamb.

"You are not far from the kingdom of God." 

And no one dared to ask him any more questions.

The scribe only at this point realized that the answer he received was more than he expected. He now realized that, although he knew the answer,  he couldn't live it. He himself was still only near the entry to the kingdom, still outside, still missing something. He was unable to offer that perfect offering of love and thereby fulfill these two commandments perfectly. He was no longer merely having an interesting intellectual discussion among equals, but was in the presence of holiness, of a true master, of someone on a different and higher level than himself. The call to conversion, which could now only mean a call to follow Jesus himself, was made plain. Perhaps in the silence following his question he did choose to follow him. If he did so he would find the answer to the question of how to move from near the kingdom but still outside to the halls of the banquet within.

Therefore, he is always able to save those who approach God through him, 

since he lives forever to make intercession for them.

Bob Fitts - One God

Bob Dylan - Gotta Serve Somebody

30 October 2021 - get low

Today's Readings

(Audio)

I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers and sisters,

so that you will not become wise in your own estimation

There is a similar temptation for us as there was for these early Roman followers of the Messiah whom Paul addressed. That temptation is to think highly of ourselves for discovering the truth of salvation and to think less of those on who "a hardening has come" as if the difference between them and us is a matter of our intelligence, our cleverness, or our superior moral character. 

He told a parable to those who had been invited,

noticing how they were choosing the places of honor at the table.

We have been invited to the great banquet of salvation, a true heavenly feast. But when we come into the feast with a sense of deserving and entitlement, when our place in the guest list causes us to see ourselves as better than others, we are then taking for ourselves places of honor to which we are not entitled. We become wise in our own estimation, which was exactly what Paul warned his readers not to do.

A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him,

and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say,

‘Give your place to this man,’

and then you would proceed with embarrassment

to take the lowest place.

For those early converts to Christianity the temptation would have been to see themselves as superior to the part of Israel that was hardened and unable to recognize the Messiah. But that sense of superiority would miss the point of how their inclusion was not simply for their sakes, much less because of their merit, but was precisely so that all of Israel could be saved. So too for us. We are not invited to the banquet merely to relish the places of honor, but rather in order that we ourselves may become vehicles by which the message is spread, by which the full number is brought in. 

a hardening has come upon Israel in part,

until the full number of the Gentiles comes in,

and thus all Israel will be saved

Seeking places of honor at a banquet may not seem particularly tempting to us in our own day. But we all have ways, varied and subtle though they be, by which we try to broadcast why others should consider us worthy of honor, why we are valuable, or even why we are, so we imagine, superior to them. The trouble is that true value is not something which we can originate within ourselves by our efforts. It can only come as a gift.

Rather, when you are invited, 

go and take the lowest place

so that when the host comes to you he may say,

‘My friend, move up to a higher position.’

We are afraid to take the lowest place because we are afraid that we will go unseen, that we will remain unloved, and that we will be finally considered worthless. But- and here is the secret- the host sees clearly everyone at his table, and he delights to bestow blessings on those who are open to receive them, whereas he can not do so on those who are already overfilled with their own pride.

Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table.

It is a great blessing to be able to take the lowest place. We do not enjoy the feast, or those with whom we share it otherwise. It is immense freedom when we no longer need to prove our worth, or to sell ourselves in the highly competitive market of what other people think. The only true exultation, the only value that lasts, is that which the host himself gives freely. He gives it to all who are open enough to receive it. May we be among those whom he calls.

Were not the LORD my help,

my soul would soon dwell in the silent grave.

When I say, “My foot is slipping,”

your mercy, O LORD, sustains me.

John Michael Talbot - Only In God

Dan Schutte - Table of Plenty

29 October 2021 - the source of our blessings

Today's Readings

(Audio)

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ

for the sake of my own people,

my kindred according to the flesh. 

We might imagine this having gone differently. We could understand Paul joining the persecuted sect of the Messiah and then beginning to reciprocate that hostility against his persecutors. He did experience that his own people "opposed and reviled him" to the point that he decided from then on to go to the Gentiles (see Acts 18:6). 

Yet although Paul was certainly frustrated he could never close his heart to his own people. Even after all that he still had "great sorrow and constant anguish" in his heart for those around him that did not recognize the Messiah. The Messiah, after all, was not merely some different and superior path to that of "adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises". Rather, Jesus was truly the completion and fulfillment of all of those things.

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory (see Second Corinthians 1:20).

What Paul discovered was precisely what all the children of Israel should have been so eager to hear. It was to Jesus himself that all of Scripture pointed, he that all the sacrifices foreshadowed, and it was in him that the fullness of the adoption to divine sonship was given. Paul himself had experienced this very fulfillment in his own life and it pained him to see those around him hardening their hearts to the possibility it was true.

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ

for the sake of my own people,

Paul felt this deeply enough that he wished that his own suffering could imitate that of Christ, bearing the curse for the sake of bringing about the redemption of his people. Paul's sufferings doubtlessly did merit much for the glory of the early Church but God had other plans for the final restoration of Israel. The time has not yet come. But even now we know that eventually every knee shall bow and every tongue confess (see Philippians 2:10-11) "Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever."

From Paul we can learn a deep and abiding concern from those around us who oppose us and who have hardened their hearts to the possible truth of the Messiah. We recognize in them the God shaped hole that Jesus is meant to fill.  It is, or ought to be, distressing for us to see when they insist on trying to fit anything other than he into hole. We also ought to learn a profound love for the children of Israel, without whom we would have none of the blessings in which we now rejoice. We do well to pray that the veil be lifted so that they be fully included in the restored Israel, which is the Church.

For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? (see Romans 11:15)

Jesus came to announce a year of jubilee when captives would be set free. The jubilee year was something of an extreme sabbath, coming as it did after seven sabbath years. The freedom it promised was an even more concrete embodiment of what each sabbath was always meant to be. Jesus knew and understood the true purpose of the sabbath, and for this reason knew that even more than any other day the sabbath was fitting for healing and freedom.

“Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?”

But they kept silent; so he took the man and,

after he had healed him, dismissed him.

We tend to make secondary matters primary. We use the law as an excuse to exculpate us from any perceived responsibility that doesn't feel natural to us. We'll care naturally for our ox or our son, but become nervous when we realize that we may be called to open our hearts more broadly and be concerned even beyond the narrow confines of home. Jesus shows us that salvation always has priority over rigid self interest. Paul teaches us how to desire this salvation even for those who don't seem to desire it for themselves. May thanksgiving for the blessings we ourselves have first been given motivate us to prioritize salvation and freedom, like Paul, and like Jesus before him. May we too work until the jubilee year has come in fullness.

Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.

Robin Mark - Days of Elijah

28 October 2021 - hope and zeal

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Jesus went up to the mountain to pray,

and he spent the night in prayer to God.

If Jesus took time away to pray how much more ought we imitate him, especially when we face important decisions. Jesus was preparing to call those who "will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (see Matthew 19:28), those who would lead the new "Israel of God" (see Galatians 6:16). He did not simply perform a cost-benefit analysis or review the resumes of potential applicants. In fact, his decision cut in the face of world wisdom.

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God (see First Corinthians 1:27-29).

God often asks us to trust him in ways that seem impractical. Rather than facing a battle fully equipped we are sometimes called to send some of our resources away simply so that the glory of the victory can belong fully to God just as was the case for Gideon (see Judges 7).

Without a life of prayer we can't have sufficient confidence of what God is asking of us to pursue it zealously. We may perhaps, like Simon, be zealous for our own projects and initiatives, for those plans of action which make sense to us and which seem tenable. But we will not have the good zeal from the Holy Spirit that marked Jesus himself, so much that his disciples remembered the prophecy that, "Zeal for your house will consume me" (see John 2:17). Prayer can help us recommit our energies from our own projects to zeal for the household of God, built upon the Apostles, and still growing in our midst.

Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord (see Romans 12:11).

We may not feel capable of zeal, not able to fight battles, and as though we have already been defeated before we even begin to face a challenge. There may be little to distinguish us at this point, humanly speaking, from Judas. We may still feel that we are "strangers and sojourners", still "alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise". We may even feel that we are "without hope and without God in the world" (see Ephesians 2:12-13). Prayer can help us to see things differently. It can help us to believe that God can do anything with the raw materials he chooses. From ordinary clay he can make beautiful vessels for his service. From even the most meager living stones he can build a sacred temple as a dwelling place for his own Spirit. 

If we still look to all appearances to be potential traitors to the Lord, if there are no obvious signs of commitment or the manifestation of gifts or talents, this is the perfect starting place for the Lord to write a new story of testimony to his glory. We can be transformed from potential hopeless cases ourselves to those who can assist other apparent lost causes among us. We can come to realize that if the Lord can do this for us he can indeed do it for anyone.  If our zeal is still committed to worldly projects the Lord invites us to come away with him so that we can learn to see reality in a new and deeper way, so that the priorities of his Kingdom become our own.

The Lord gives us hope and directs our zeal. When we experience these things we need no longer fear to fail. We are able to become bold messengers of his Kingdom, just as were his Apostles.

Through all the earth their voice resounds,

    and to the ends of the world, their message.

Darlene Zschech - The Potter's Hand

27 October 2021 - gate recognition

Today's Readings

(Audio)

The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness;

for we do not know how to pray as we ought,

but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.

We know how to say prayers. Indeed, we have abundant resources in terms of written prayers, litanies, and devotions that help us to pray. We have the prayer Jesus himself taught us, as well as the rosary. This truly is inestimable wealth and we should not ignore it. But even with all this we still sense the need to go deeper and to enter into a truly personal communion with God himself. We want to say more to God than we know how to say. We desire to ask more than we know how to ask. He himself invited us to ask, to seek, and to knock. But we rightly come to realize that there is a depth possible in prayer beyond what we have attained and that our words, even our most exalted and poetic words, our most humble and sincere words, inevitably fall short of realizing the promise. When we come up against these human limitations in our prayer life we can learn that the deepest prayers we pray are not the result of our intellect, our emotions, or even, finally, of our will. They can only come from the Spirit praying within us.

And the one who searches hearts

knows what is the intention of the Spirit,

because he intercedes for the holy ones 

according to God’s will.

We are called to conform ourselves to Christ, so that we may enter through the narrow gate, since Christ himself is the gate for the sheep (see John 10:9). This can only happen through a life of prayer in which we come to know the Lord and he in turn comes to recognize us. This ensures that we don't risk standing outside and knocking, but hearing in reply, 'I do not know where you are from.' We are called to strive after this goal, not on our own, but with the help of the Spirit. In our strivings we are to open ourselves up to his "inexpressible groanings", his own effort when our strength is insufficient. Thus we are told that "it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (see Philippians 2:13). That God is the one who does the work makes it no less true that we must strive to enter, that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, that is, that we must in every way commit ourselves to relying entirely on this new life of the Spirit within us. 

Jesus will bear our burdens and share our yoke if we come to him, if we preserve together with him, but we must still be careful not to fall back into self-reliance, to striving with our own strength, for if we do we will surely not be strong enough. The image is inadequate, but one imagines the Spirit as a weightlifting spotter who ensures that we are not crushed by the weights we attempt to lift, whose assistance allows us to genuinely grow, but who will ultimately put the bar back in the rack when our own strength is exhausted. His encouragement, though is not merely as one standing behind us cheering us on, but as one striving from within our very soul.

We know that all things work for good for those who love God,

who are called according to his purpose.

We don't always experience all things as working for our good. But the perspective of faith makes it possible to see things from a higher vantage point. It testifies that circumstances are conspiring to make us, not healthy, not comfortable necessarily, but holy. The more we rely on the love of God poured into our hearts by his Spirit the more we truly become "those who love God, who are called according to his purpose". When this describes us there can be no stopping us, for we are then in the will of God, who is himself unstoppable.

For those he foreknew he also predestined

to be conformed to the image of his Son,

so that he might be the firstborn

among many brothers.  

We are invited to a feast in the Kingdom of God. We are daily offered a foretaste of the feast. Let us not be content to have Jesus merely near us when we eat and drink, not content to merely know that he is teaching in our streets. Rather, let us know, let us strive to know the Lord (see Hosea 6:3). The key to entry into the fullness of the feast, and the key to entering more deeply into the mass each day is growing in our relationship with the Lord. This brings us full circle to prayer, to relying on the Spirit's strength when our own words fall short.

Let my heart rejoice in your salvation;

    let me sing of the LORD, “He has been good to me.”

Will Reagan of United Pursuit - Set a Fire

26 October 2021 - not full groan

Today's Readings

(Audio)

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing

compared with the glory to be revealed for us.

For our part we tacitly acknowledge this fact, that life is short and that the life to come is eternal. But it seldom seems to provide for us the hope that it did for Paul and the saints.

From heaven even the most miserable life will look like one bad night at an inconvenient hotel.

- Saint Teresa of Avila

The saints find great consolation in the hope of the Gospel. Yet what happens for us is that the difficulties and sufferings of life press in while the hope and promise of heaven seems to become ever more abstract, elusive, and ephemeral. It doesn't work for us to merely shut our eyes to the hardships of mortal life and try to force feed our imagination images of heaven, nor is this what God intends. We are meant to have a perspective that can fit what we see going on around us into our understanding of God's plan, how even the challenges we face contain within themselves the implicit hope for redemption.

For creation awaits with eager expectation

the revelation of the children of God;

for creation was made subject to futility,

not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it,

in hope that creation itself

would be set free from slavery to corruption

and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.

When we see our sufferings not as annoyances to be minimized or ignored, but as "groaning in labor pains" of something being brought to birth we become able to maintain our hope of heaven even with our eyes open here on earth. We no longer run the risk of being so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. Further, we come to realize that our own suffering participate in these groans and gain meaning thereby.

We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now;

and not only that, but we ourselves,

who have the firstfruits of the Spirit,

we also groan within ourselves

as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Man and woman were subjected to futility and labor pains, and creation along with them, because of their sin. This wasn't just an unfortunate natural consequence of that unfortunate choice. It was rather allowed by God so that by the means of that very futility, corruption, and pain, and a new world could be brought to birth, and with it, sons and daughters who would "share in the glorious freedom of the children of God".

For in hope we were saved.

Now hope that sees for itself is not hope.  

For who hopes for what one sees?

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.

We do not always perfectly understand the way the this or that specific instance of sufferings maps unto this or that blessing or restoration. In fact, much of the suffering we see does appear to us to be meaningless, cruel, and unnecessary. But our hope lets us hold that somehow, that too is creation groaning. It is not necessarily that the specific people who suffered deserved what they got. But it is the case that all who are willing to embrace suffering as labor pains toward something greater do in fact benefit. They grow in endurance as they themselves come closer and closer to the goal.

When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world (see John 16:21).

In terms of impacting the world around us our hope starts small, even to the degree of being hidden, like a mustard seed, or like yeast. But as we begin to rely on it we begin see even now the growth of the Kingdom of God in our midst. Even before the complete restoration of all things we see the just how much potential is in the "firstfruits" we have been given. Creation is groaning, but the tree is already growing, already providing shelter for the birds of the sky. While we must yet earn our bread by sweat and toil we already receive a massive batch of leavened dough which we can use to sate our own spiritual hunger and that of the world. If we are not yet convinced the invitation to us is, "Taste and see!"

Although they go forth weeping,

carrying the seed to be sown,

They shall come back rejoicing,

carrying their sheaves.

Newsboys - Secret Kingdom

Songs In His Presence - Our Hearts Will Rise

25 October 2021 - those who are led by the Spirit

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Brothers and sisters,

we are not debtors to the flesh,

to live according to the flesh.

We don't owe anything to our base instincts and disordered to desires. The sensations, feelings, and emotions, associated with these are often so overwhelming that we feel like a debt collector come for his due. Indeed, we often live as though we have no choice but to yield to the flesh but we must not, for "if you live according to the flesh, you will die". It is the world, the flesh, and the devil, that are together symbolized by this debt collector. Make no mistake, his strength is greater than our own. However, thanks be to God (see Romans 7:25), one who is stronger still has come and given us freedom.

The freedom we have been given is from captivity to the spiritual Egypt of sin. But we must now embrace the journey through the desert to the Promised Land. Our longing for the "the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic" of Egypt (see Numbers 11:5) must be set aside if we are to survive the journey. Anything that draws us back toward the spiritual pole of sin, toward Egypt, puts us at risk. The Spirit will help us on this journey, giving us the power to put to death sin and idolatry in our lives, just as he used the Levites to purify the idolatry of the golden cafe from the people.

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,

but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,

you will live.

We may not think of ourselves as having idols, or notice anything in our hearts that needs to be excised and killed. But what was it exactly that drew the people of Israel back to idolatry again and again? It was not so much the idols as what they hoped to attain for themselves. They wanted the comforts that their previous enslavement provided or assurance of success for their own plans. We too long for lives of comfort and success, however we measure those things. As we journey through the pilgrimage of our own lives we need to make sure those things don't hold us back to the degree that we fall behind and are finally left to go our way.

We have been brought out from slavery, from subhuman subjugation to sin. But we are not merely let loose into a neutral world to make of it what we will. The desert is in fact a hostile environment and to it we will quickly fall prey if we do not follow the guidance of God as he leads us on.

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,

but you received a spirit of adoption,

through which we cry, “Abba, Father!”

We are not merely set free from sin, we are set free for sonship. Contrary to our expectations, it is precisely in God's guidance in and through the desert, even by his discipline, that we most directly and concretely experience his providential protection and his Fatherly care.

There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place (see Deuteronomy 1:30-31).

The Spirit is the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day that guides us. He is longer as something merely external to us as he was for Israel in the desert, but now rather as witness from inside of us together with our own spirit. He is for this reason said to be "the first installment of our inheritance" (see Ephesians 1:14). To the degree that he lives in us, and that we ourselves surrender to his guidance, even in our suffering, we have the assurance that we will one day arrive at the true Promised Land of heaven. Indeed, his presence in us, and our experience of God's Fatherhood, and the love of Christ who draws us on, all of these are already a foretaste of heaven. Heaven itself is nothing but this experience in its fullness.

This daughter of Abraham,

whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,

ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day

from this bondage?

The rest promised by the sabbath was necessary in a particular way for those who had previously been enslaved.

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day (See Deuteronomy 5:15).

The sabbath was supposed to prepare us for life in the Promised Land and even to provide a foretaste of it as we journeyed on. It was training to prioritize being over doing, relationship over commerce. But in her condition it could not be thus for the crippled woman. The sabbath rest had not yet attained its promise. But Jesus was the one who came to deliver all of us unto the perfect sabbath rest of heaven, and he was not content to leave this woman as he found her.

“Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”

He laid his hands on her,

and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.

Jesus came to restore the sabbath for this "daughter of Abraham" and for all those who would become his sons and daughters by faith. Those with the mindset of the leaders of the synagogue are still out there are in our world today. They still exist as voices even within our own minds. They conspire with the flesh, telling us that we must remain debtors, captives, and slaves. But this is a lie. Although we are still journeying through the desert Jesus does want to bring us ever more deeply into his sabbath rest, practicing for the coming of the Kingdom until the hour arrives and we receive the promise in all of its fullness.

The father of orphans and the defender of widows

is God in his holy dwelling.

God gives a home to the forsaken;

he leads forth prisoners to prosperity.

Matt Maher - Firelight

24 Hebrews 2021 - thy word is a lamp

Today's Readings

(Audio)

"Jesus, son of David, have pity on me."

And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. 

They rebuked Bartimaeus because they thought Jesus was similar to the high priests that were taken from among men, who had to make sin offerings for themselves as well as the people. They had to be isolated by social conventions and rituals as much as possible to ensure that they would be sufficiently pure to provide some service as mediators for the people.

Christ was indeed a high priest, but in a different and superior way to the members of the Levitical priesthood. No one could simply choose to be a member of the tribe of Levi and decide to be a priest if they were not born to that tribe. Much less was one able to decide to be for themselves that they were both priest and king according to the still more ancient lineage of Melchizedek. Those honors could, properly speaking, belong only to the firstborn (see Hebrews 1:6).

The upshot to the divine origin of the priesthood of Christ is that it did not require that he keep himself separated from sinners. In fact, he chose to be made like them, like us, in all things but sin.

Surely he did not help angels but rather the descendants of Abraham;

therefore, he had to become like his brothers in every way, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people (see Hebrews 2:16-17).

High priests of the tribe of Levi had some degree of patience with the ignorant and erring, because they themselves were beset with weakness. Yet it was the nature of the office that they had to resist this solidarity and try to keep themselves separated from those whom they served. Surprisingly, it was precisely in his freedom from sin that Jesus was able to most fully express his solidarity with sinners.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (see Hebrews 14:15).

Jesus had a purity that meant that the unclean could not contaminate him, and a sinlessness that meant that proximity to sinners was not a problem for him. He might well have chosen to remain aloof and apart, but he did not. His Sacred Heart was unwilling to remain apart from the people he loved. He was unwilling to see one like Bartimaeus and pass him by.

"Son of David, have pity on me."

Jesus stopped and said, "Call him."

When Jesus called Bartimaeus it was a beginning stage of the fulfillment of the promises about the Messiah about which we read in the first reading from Jeremiah. 

I will gather them from the ends of the world,

with the blind and the lame in their midst,

the mothers and those with child;

they shall return as an immense throng.

These same promises are still available to us. Physical healings do still happen, and it is not wrong for us to seek them. But even more importantly, Jesus is still working to heal and restore the spiritual vision of his people. We have proof of his desire to heal us by just how close he came, by the degree to which he chose to be identified with us, even to the point of dying on the cross for our sins. He knows well how the difficulties and challenges of our life feel and longs to bring us healing and set us free.

The blind man replied to him, "Master, I want to see." 

Jesus told him, "Go your way; your faith has saved you." 

Immediately he received his sight

and followed him on the way.

We are spiritually blind when we chose lesser goods over the weightier matters of mercy and judgment and faithfulness (see Matthew 23:22-24), when we put self before God or others. Jesus can speak a word to us that so fundamentally reorients our inner life that we are made able to navigate the landscape of life in the same way that he did. His word can then provide such a nuanced map of the terrain that to really receive it is ipso facto to regain our sight. Once we do so we have Jesus himself as the point to which the needle of our spiritual compass will point henceforth.

Immediately he received his sight

and followed him on the way.

What do we find when we follow Jesus? We discover the promises of the Good Shepherd. We experience the truth of the promises in Psalm 23, that he will make us lie down in green pastures, lead us to still waters, and, finally, that he will heal and completely restore our souls.

They departed in tears,

but I will console them and guide them;

I will lead them to brooks of water,

on a level road, so that none shall stumble.

For I am a father to Israel,

Ephraim is my first-born.

Songs In His Presence - Our Hearts Will Rise

Sonicflood - Open the Eyes of My Heart

Peter Furler - Psalm 23

23 October 2021 - there is now no condemnation

Today's Readings

(Audio)

There is only one way to gain victory over the struggle with sin about which we read yesterday. It is that struggle which makes us says with Paul, "I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want" (see Romans 7:19). The law of our mind is insufficient in itself to overcome the law of sin that dwells within us. Paul finally revealed the answer to the struggle, saying, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Only Jesus an deliver us from slavery to sin. It is to this point that he returns in today's reading.

Brothers and sisters:

Now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

If we allow ourselves to be joined to Jesus Christ in baptism and we continue to walk with him, remaining in him, and not rejecting him, there will be no condemnation for us. From this vantage point the struggle looks very different from it did when we tried to face it apart from Christ.

For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus

has freed you from the law of sin and death. 

Without that help of Jesus we were unable to fundamentally reorient our inner lives to prioritize and desire the things of God. Motivation was mostly extrinsic, fear of punishment, and desire of reward. Our hearts themselves remained hardened with we ourselves able to do very little to bring about a change within. But the freedom Jesus came to offer delivered on the messianic promise to give us new hearts.

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people (see Jeremiah 31:33)

I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them (see Ezekiel 36:26-27).

These promises stand behind what Paul meant when he wrote of the "law of the spirit of life", for this is the law that Jesus writes within us, at the deepest core of our beings. United to Jesus Christ himself it is now possible "that the righteous decree of the law might be fulfilled in us". The temptation will always remain to lean back into the flesh instead forward toward the spirit, to forget about Christ within us, our hope of glory, and instead to go back to a more self-centered perspective where we do things for ourselves rather than for love and must therefore also insist that we do them by ourselves, without help. When we give in to this temptation we find ourselves back in the frustration expressed by Paul in chapter seven, feeling very much how the flesh cannot please God, how it really is concerned with and leads toward death. Hence Paul tells his readers that they must use their renewed minds to remember the truth of who they have become in Christ:

But you are not in the flesh;

on the contrary, you are in the spirit,

if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.

Believers must activate their faith by believing this truth about themselves in order to bear good fruit. If we forget that we are in the Spirit it is unavoidable that we will start to live from the flesh. Yet since Paul tells us to remember it is clearly possible to forget.  We must therefore accept every invitation to bring it before our minds, to meditate on it, and to treasure it in our hearts. Faith becomes saving faith when the renewal of our minds brings forth the fruit Paul calls the "obedience of faith".

We can have great confidence even though we are yet imperfect and possibly very much so, as long as we do not give up on the one who will never give up on us. Our mistakes can't bring condemnation, nor can anything we do outweigh his love for us. Provided we don't walk away, but to persevere as Jesus taught (see Matthew 24:13), we can be assured that we will receive the fulfillment of the promise.

If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,

the one who raised Christ from the dead

will give life to your mortal bodies also,

through his Spirit that dwells in you.

We are all fig trees that are meant to bear spiritual fruit for this messianic age in which we live. A litmus test of our spiritual health is weather the fruits of the Spirit are to be found in our lives. These are not in fact optional, as though we could say the Spirit was in us but somehow inert or unfruitful. If there is a lack of fruit it probably stems from a lack of faith in the reality of his presence within us. Rather than backsliding so far into the flesh that we might someday choose, God forbid, to separate ourselves entirely from life of God within us, let us put our faith to work, remembering all that we have been given, so that we might bear fruit for the Kingdom. We are not alone in this. No, we are joined to Christ at the core of our beings. Let us live relying on him completely.

‘Sir, leave it for this year also, 

and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; 

it may bear fruit in the future.

If not you can cut it down.’

Chris Tomlin - Give Us Clean Hands

Laura Hackett - I Put On Christ

22 October 2021 - the willing is ready, the doing is not

Today's Readings

(Audio)

I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.

The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.

For I do not do the good I want,

but I do the evil I do not want.

This is the nature of slavery to sin. Sin pretends to encourage a so-called freedom that would supposedly result from breaking moral fetters imposed upon us. But it is not the case that sin is merely a master who encourages us to choose what we want. It is rather a master that compels us, that drags us down, even when our we know there is a better way. We know this from our experiences of resisting temptation in order to the good we know we should choose. Even though our flesh tells us that it is the good that is servitude it is actually temptation that is so opposed to our freedom. Sin can't make its case merely on rational grounds but must instead enlist the disordered appetites at its disposal in order to keep us trapped, enslaved, and addicted.

So, then, I discover the principle

that when I want to do right, evil is at hand.

Was Paul writing about a time before he was Christian to compare it with his experience of life in Christ? Or was he writing about his ongoing struggles? It is a disputed point. But we know that we do still struggle with sin and temptation even after we begin our walk of faith with Jesus. Because this struggle is ongoing we make a continuous practice of prayer against temptation when we pray the Our Father as Jesus taught. Why reflect on the unpleasant facts of the reality of this ongoing struggle? We stand to benefit from recognizing the way that sin tries to usurp our freedom and, more importantly, that to struggle on our own strength against it is not enough.

Miserable one that I am!

Who will deliver me from this mortal body?

Who will deliver us from the ways in which we are not yet free from sin? By now we ought to realize that simply trying harder is exhausting and unsatisfactory. The more we have a sense of this the more we will rejoice together with Paul at the solution. We were not meant to carry our burdens alone.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Many of us make efforts to read the signs of the times, to plan for the future, to be sure that we're ready for it. This sometimes gives us some measure of control, some insight in how to respond. But more often it gives us the illusion of control. For this reason it isn't always a good way to fully "interpret the present time". It gives a limited perspective and can obscure things that we don't want to face and don't want to control.

You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky;

why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

The signs of the present time are meant to point us toward the mercy and forgiveness of Christ. We are meant to see the signs of the times revealing God's patience with us, and his desire that we become all that we are meant to be. Rather than this, we prefer to predict things with no moral impact, which make no demands upon us. We think we can continue to kick the can of perfection down the road indefinitely. But we will have to deal with any vestiges of sin within our lives eventually. It is better to let the Lord do it now, in his preferred way, at his preferred time. If we wait until purgatory to have them pried from our grasp we can't expect to enjoy that experience.

I say to you, you will not be released

until you have paid the last penny.

This is not bad news. It would have been nothing but condemnation if we were left to struggle on our own. But let us listen again to the joy and exaltation in Paul at discovering the answer.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Matt Maher - My Deliverer

21 October 2021 - long division

Today's Readings

(Audio)

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness.

But what profit did you get then

from the things of which you are now ashamed? 

Sin promises so much but delivers so little. The awareness of the discontent sin produces in us can become a strong motivation to help us commit to avoiding it in the future. We need this awareness because, to one degree or another, we have all presented our bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness. We have, for instance, used our words as weapons to tear others down. We have made a prideful display of our own accomplishments. We have gazed with envy on the blessings of others or with judgment upon their failings. Why do we do such things? It is always because there is some imagined profit, even some legitimate but lesser good, that we choose over and against the greater goods of love of God and neighbor.

For the end of those things is death.

We may manage to make ourselves ignore the stink of death on our sinful behavior at the time, but it is difficult to completely dull our consciences to the fact that we are heading in the wrong direction. Often we don't know how to respond to the absence of peace and contentment we feel and choose to double down on sin rather than to seek another way. Other times we try to change and find that we have in fact become "slaves to impurity", addicted to sin, and unable to make a clean break on our own.

But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God,

the benefit that you have leads to sanctification,

and its end is eternal life.

As a species were  too invested in sin to get free on our own. We needed one who was already free to come and to set us free. Only Jesus himself could do this. Once he came and we were set free by grace we received the ability to commit ourselves to becoming "slaves of God", to following his ways exactly. Yet this new slavery was not like the old. It was to be chosen and embraced because it delivered on the promise that stood behind it. With it there was not the sort of base compulsion that drew us against our own better judgment back to addictive behaviors again and again. We could be happy to be slaves of God, to delight in it, because we could see all too well how we failed in our attempts to be the masters of our own lives.

For the wages of sin is death,

but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What sorts of things do we believe we need and deserve to make us happy apart from the will of the Lord for us? Do we insist on being the lords of our own lives at times to protect these goods when we know God is calling us to something better? Let us come away from any remnants of sin to which we still cling. Let us remember that they have never brought us true peace or joy before. But the gift of God never fails to deliver. It is sanctification leading toward eternal life, a genuine process process of growth in the resurrection life of Christ, which is also life in the Holy Spirit, even as we progress through this earthly pilgrimage.

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?

No, I tell you, but rather division.

Jesus came with to set the earth on fire with his Holy Spirit. The division he created was with the sword of the Word of God which made it possible for those who received it to have malignant areas of sin within their hearts removed. At a larger scale it necessarily divided those who would embrace it from those who would continue to prefer the false promises of addiction and sin. What Jesus would not do was free those who did not want to be free, for that would be a contradiction. Hence division, though not preferable, was and continues to be necessary.

From now on a household of five will be divided,

three against two and two against three;

In spite of appearances of immobility and rigidity, in spite of the tribalism we find all around us, it is nevertheless the case that those who are now against us may yet be for us, just as those ways in which we are not yet for God may by his grace one day be so. Just because people are on the road that leads to death does not mean they must stay on that road. Our own experiences with the way that sin leaves us empty should give us the empathy we need to continue to reach out, to love even our enemies, just as Jesus commanded. We should desire for them the same thing that we desire for ourselves, for the hope of those who hope in the Lord is very great indeed.

He is like a tree

planted near running water,

That yields its fruit in due season,

and whose leaves never fade.

Whatever he does, prospers.

Kutless - Word of God Speak

20 October 2021 - choose only one

St. Paul of the Cross

Today's Readings
(Audio)

Sin must not reign over your mortal bodies

so that you obey their desires.

If sin we run the risk of becoming slaves to sin. Paul issued this warning to his brothers and sisters, people of faith, who were not under the law but under grace. He didn't want his readers to believe that they now had license to do anything they wanted because they were under grace. Neither did he want them to believe that good and right actions would happen and sin would be avoided without any conscious involvement on their parts. Their will, healed and restored by grace, was still needed.

but present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life

Their faith was meant to allow them to participate in the resurrection life of Jesus himself even while they were still in their mortal bodies. This participation was to begin with the renewal of their minds, believing what was written in God's Word about reality, including about who they themselves had become in Christ. Believing those things made would empower them to be able to bare good fruit. God had given them grace as a gift, but they had to choose to continue to believe in that gift and rely on it and not slip back into their former ways of thinking and acting. It was as though they were presented with the same choice Moses set before Israel:

I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live (see Deuteronomy 30:19).

Yet to respond to this choice was possible for Paul's audience in a way that it was not for that of Moses. Those to whom Paul preached were not under the law but under grace. Yet it was clear that choosing the path "of sin, which leads to death" was still a real possibility for them. Being free from the law was not somehow a freedom from the call to holiness. It meant rather that they no longer needed to rely on their own strength, insufficient as it was, in order to live lives that were pleasing to God.

In the end, they had two options:

you are slaves of the one you obey,

either of sin, which leads to death,

or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Sin would use and abuse those who surrendered to it, making them weapons for wickedness. What was the alternative to which believers were called? Obedience. Not merely adherence to the law, but obedience, but which was something inherently personal, relational, and based on faith. Anyone could try to keep the precepts of the law if he felt like it. But only a person of faith was in a position to be led by the path of obedience. God was willing to lead those who would rely on him on the path of righteousness, making their very bodies weapons for righteousness, capable of overcoming the strongholds of the dark powers by means of self-sacrifice.

Brothers and sisters, let us believe so that what Paul said of the Romans be true of us as well:

But thanks be to God that, although you were once slaves of sin,

you have become obedient from the heart

to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted.

Freed from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.

Faith inspires us to resist not only big sins, but little ones, knowing that the little sins to which we acquiesce strip us of the firmness of resolve that we need to resist the big ones. We know that the further entrenched we get in sin the more difficult it becomes, humanly speaking, to make an about face. We can't simply hope we'll make a deathbed repentance after a life of embracing sin. Such graces aren't impossible, but represent presumption on our part. Should God contradict our freely expressed opposition to him? May he do so! But let us not rely on it.

Finally, we have all been given much. We are meant to help others receive the food allowance at the proper time. Our call is to lead others to the same feast that we ourselves of discovered in the heart of the Church. When things don't immediately go our way we are tempted to say, "My master is delayed in coming". If we allow this thought to go unopposed our zeal will flag and grow slack. We will not live in keeping with the true identity as risen in Christ. We need to keep the lamp of faith as the guide on which we rely, burning brightly in the night.

We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts (see Second Peter 1:19)

Todd Agnew - Romans 12:1

19 October 2021 - a new Adam

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Through one man sin entered the world,

and through sin, death,

and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned.

Adam bore the responsibility for the first sin against God, yet the consequences did not stop with him alone. Though he did not immediately die physically he did die spiritually at that very moment, losing the supernatural life within him. Physical death would follow later as a symptom of that more significant lose. Adam and Eve were meant to be the father and mother of the living, but their children would now, as a consequence of this sin, be born deprived of the grace of a supernatural life. The consequence of this was that although men and women were meant to be born to live lives of righteousness it instead became the case that sin spread to all of them as a consequence of this spiritual death which they inherited. They lacked the supernatural life they needed to consistently resist temptation and choose the good.

Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed" - a state and not an act. 

(see Catechism of the Catholic Church 404).

It wasn't until Jesus came to save us from the consequences of the fall that Paul was able to discover just how deep those consequences had been. Before Jesus it was known that physical death was a result of the fall in the garden. But only by reflecting on his saving act did Paul realize the deeper spiritual death and condemnation came upon all men. He recognized this because he recognized that Jesus was healing something much deeper than the physical body. He saw in Jesus a new Adam, and reflecting on his sacrifice of love he recognized something like Adam's fall from grace in reverse.

If by that one person’s transgression the many died,

how much more did the grace of God

and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ

overflow for the many.

Just as Adam brought spiritual death to mankind by his sin so did Jesus' self-offering provide new life "to those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of justification". Just as the children of Adam were made subject to the evil serpent by Adam's decision to sin so Christians were made free in Christ, not just to live, but "to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ".

Adam really did cause mankind to be born in a state of spiritual privation. The symmetry in Christ was equally real and not merely a legal fiction. Because of his obedience "many will be made righteous", not merely by fiat, but in actual fact.

It might have seemed that the sin of Adam rendered the whole project of creation as a failure. It opened the door to sin and suffering and all the horrors of our history. If we were to decide from our limited perspective we might never have begun a thing which would have gone so far off the rails. But God alone knew that this sin could one day be called a "happy fault". He already had a plan for blessing that far surpassed the curse.

Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more,

so that, as sin reigned in death,

grace also might reign through justification

for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We need to remember that this need not only be true in the case of our redemption in Christ. Wherever we see sin increasing there is always grace waiting to be unleashed. The North American martyrs were able to recognize precisely that and were therefore able to become conduits of that grace.

Jesus said to his disciples: 

“Gird your loins and light your lamps

and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,

ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.

In the night, when times are difficult, when there are challenges on every side, we should not just shut our eyes and ears, nor fall asleep. Neither should we focus merely on our own fear of the darkness. Rather, we should await our master's return. It is he and he alone who can bring grace where we see only the darkness of night.

Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,

have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.

Jesus truly does wait on us at table in every Eucharistic feast. Grace in abundance is already beginning to be unleashed and to overflow even before the morning has fully dawned. Already we are given access to eat the fruit of the tree of life, that is the cross, of which the tree from which Adam and Eve were banished was merely a shadow.

May all who seek you

exult and be glad in you,

And may those who love your salvation

say ever, “The LORD be glorified.”

Audrey Assad - O Happy Fault

Saint Meinrad Schola - Exultet