7 June 2017 - the God of the living

Today's Readings

God's power changes everything. It changes apparent tragedy into triumph. Things may seem quite bad and we may feel that, although God is good, we have somehow failed him and do not qualify for his mercy. We tend to get this way when things in our circumstances get bad. We rationalize how a good God can let us suffer and this is what we end up with. He is good, but not to me. I must have lost his favor somehow.

So now, deal with me as you please,
and command my life breath to be taken from me,
that I may go from the face of the earth into dust.
It is better for me to die than to live,
because I have heard insulting calumnies,
and I am overwhelmed with grief.

But what if God is still at work? What if we're giving up on him before he gives up on us?

At that very time, 
the prayer of these two suppliants
was heard in the glorious presence of Almighty God.
So Raphael was sent to heal them both

It is God's way that the resurrection follows the cross. We tend to think to ourselves that if we have to face the cross we must not be loved. But it is not so. We need to hold on. We need to ask and keep asking. We need to pray constantly without losing heart even as the widow does with the unjust judge. When we do we find that all things work together for the good of those who love God. Perhaps not as quickly as we would like. But if we hold on to hope and cling to the one who loved us first we do discover that he is in fact the God of the living. The cross has a part to play. He insists it not be skipped. But it leads on to life eternal.

Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my savior.

6 June 2017 - whose image

Today's Readings

They brought one to him and he said to them,
"Whose image and inscription is this?"
They replied to him, "Caesar's."
So Jesus said to them,
"Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God."

Because God's inscription is on Caesar. Caesar, like all of us, is made in the image and likeness of God. There is no private secular realm which is beyond God's rightful influence. It's true that we do pay taxes and respect legitimate civil authority. But we do so only with reference God. Even the government can't compel us to compromise our values or do that which God forbids.

We need to remember God's rightful claim on all of us. When we don't we risk dividing our lives into spheres that are exempt from God's rule. Perhaps, like Tobit, we fall on such hard times that we exempt ourselves from the responsibility to be moral and decent.

So she retorted: "Where are your charitable deeds now?
Where are your virtuous acts? 
See! Your true character is finally showing itself!"

Even when times get tough, when we are sick and doctors can't seem to help, still we are made in God's image. Still we are meant to reflect his glory. Still we are meant to live in virtue and in love. However, when we forget our dignity it becomes almost impossible to act in accord with it. We need to remember our dignity and to remind others of theirs. We are made in the image of God! We are made to reflect the divine glory to the world. We do not live to show our own image alone, but his. When we remember our purpose it begins to become possible to live it. We can't live virtuously just because we want to. But because it is what God wants it is possible.

Blessed the man who fears the LORD,
who greatly delights in his commands.
His posterity shall be mighty upon the earth;
the upright generation shall be blessed.

5 June 2017 - love for the people

Today's Readings

Saint Boniface

And I wept.
Then at sunset I went out, dug a grave, and buried him.

Why is Tobit so interested in burying the dead, indeed, the dead to whom he is only distantly related, that he is willing to put his own safety in jeopardy?

Once before he was hunted down for execution
because of this very thing;
yet now that he has scarcely escaped,
here he is again burying the dead!

Tobit has a love for the people of God. He has deep sorrow at their misfortune. To the modern mind, burying the dead might seem like a waste of time. After all, what good is really being done for someone once they are dead? But what Tobit knows, that we forget, is that the body is holy, a creation of God almighty. Whether he realizes it fully or not he is signifying and preparing for the day when the bodies of all the dead will rise.

We don't relate for two reasons. The first is that we don't have much compassion for the people of God. We are able to show love only to a very narrow sphere of acquaintances. This attitude is different than that of the peoples of the Old Testament. Listen to the words of the psalmist:

I say of the holy people who are in the land,
"They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight."

The second reason is that we are basically Gnostic. The world itself seems so corrupt with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, that we retreat into the life of the mind. We try to run to that which is merely spiritual. We forget that creation belongs to God. Even if it is tainted by death we must still do our best to offer it back to him.
Trouble comes when we forget that creation belongs to God. In imagining ourselves to be becoming spiritual we actually become even more fleshly. We use creation greedily, without reference to its origin and purpose.

At the proper time he sent a servant to the tenants
to obtain from them some of the produce of the vineyard.
But they seized him, beat him,
and sent him away empty-handed.

If we, like Tobit, have a love for the people of God and a love for the creation of God it helps to ensure that we give God the fruit he has entrusted to us back to him in due season. It helps us avoid the fate of the tenants of the vineyard. It ensures that we don't accidentally reject the cornerstone chosen by God.

Blessed the man who fears the LORD,
who greatly delights in his commands.
His posterity shall be mighty upon the earth;
the upright generation shall be blessed.

 

4 June 2017 - the river of life is here

Readings for Mass During the Day

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
"Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained."

This gift is first to his Church, giving her life. It is not just any life. Only God can forgive sins after all. Jesus gives his own life, divine life, to his Church. But it is not too the priests alone that his divine life is given. The manifestations are different in each of us but it is for everyone.

To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.

Without the Spirit we have no power. We have no life. We are like Adam before God breathes Spirit into him. We are inanimate clay without the Spirit. We can say the words "Jesus is Lord" but only the Holy Spirit gives life to those words and makes them true in us.

We must not try to live the Christian life without the manifestations of the Spirit that God desires each of us to have. Otherwise we end up with a body missing a hand, a foot, or an ear. No one is inconsequential. We all have a part to play.

Even if we've allowed the Spirit into our lives he always he more for us. He is always calling us deeper. He wants to manifests more and more as we become more willing to surrender to him and trust him. Let us invite him to enter our hearts afresh today.

Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire,
which parted and came to rest on each one of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in different tongues,
as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

We need to welcome him or else our proclamations of the Lordship of Christ will be lifeless. We won't have the Spirit confirming our words with signs and wonders as he is meant to do, as he, in fact, desires to do.

If you take away their breath, they perish
and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.

Come Holy Spirit, give us to drink of the water of life!

 

3 June 2017 - what's it to ya

Today's Readings

When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what about him?"
Jesus said to him, "What if I want him to remain until I come?
What concern is it of yours?
You follow me."

We should resist the trap of comparing ourselves to one another. We tend to look around and see people who are successfully following Jesus and want to be just like them. Their is much about such people that is indeed worthy of imitation. But that does not mean our lives are called to look just like theirs. God has a plan for each individual. That plan may look very different from one person to another. There is no archetypal "right way" to live life. There is no formula we can just see and follow for success. So we need not be jealous when others receive apparent blessings. It is enough to just follow Jesus.
Paul isn't trying to live out any preexisting formula. He might well be distressed by being a prison and then under house arrest. After all, his mission is to bring the gospel to the world and especially to the Gentiles. This can't be how he imagined it would go. Shouldn't there be more travel, more adventure, more proclamation to ears that have not heard the message? Yet he does not squander the opportunities of his present situation just because it doesn't match up to some ideal.

He remained for two full years in his lodgings.
He received all who came to him, and with complete assurance
and without hindrance he proclaimed the Kingdom of God
and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Imprisonment and house arrest may hinder many things. But they do not hinder the purpose God has for him. He learns the truth that he later tells Timothy: "But the word of God is not bound!" (see Second Timothy 2:9).

So what if our lives don't match up with this or that Christian celebrity? So what if others seem more blessed than us? We need to worry about only one thing. We need to just follow Jesus. Like Peter, Paul, and Charles Lwanga and his companions, we need to follow him wherever he calls us. We learn that the success that looks good on TV really isn't the success that means the most to Jesus.

The just will gaze on your face, O Lord.

 

2 June 2017 - no reservations

Today's Readings

Instead they had some issues with him about their own religion
and about a certain Jesus who had died
but who Paul claimed was alive.
Paul must be quite clear about his message. Festus really doesn't know the finer details about the Jewish religion but he still understands the gist of what Paul is saying. Jesus is alive. This is the truth that makes all this difference. From this point all else follows. Festus says he doesn't know how to prove this true or false but he really could if he wanted to. There are plenty of witnesses. He simply doesn't want to deal with it. He wants to offload the burden to someone else. Many people in the world can relate. Perhaps we've all been there at one time or another. A truth we hear would require so much of us if it were actually true that we just don't bother figuring out if it is. This isn't a good strategy with the resurrection. If death has truly been defeated we need to know about it, lest we remain under its power.

Jesus sometimes asks us the same question multiple times to make sure that we truly understand the full ramifications of our acceptance. At first they begin at an almost unconscious level when we first tell Jesus we love him.

"Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"
Simon Peter answered him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs."
The more we hear this question the more we understand that loving Jesus means more than we had guessed.

Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.
Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger,
you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted;
but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will dress you
and lead you where you do not want to go."
He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.
And when he had said this, he said to him, "Follow me."

But as we grow in faith, we grow in our ability to say yes without reservations, wholeheartedly ready to follow Jesus. Jesus draws this love from our hearts. He is willing to work with us, to keep asking, inviting, and nudging, until we finally are all in for him.

Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits

A different All in All:

 

1 June 2017 - the light of unity

 Today's Readings

And I have given them the glory you gave me,
so that they may be one, as we are one,
I in them and you in me,
that they may be brought to perfection as one

We are meant to live in the unity of the Trinity even in our relationships with one another as Church. This is the unity of the Spirit. It is not trivial or abstract. It is visible enough for outsiders to notice.

that the world may know that you sent me,
and that you loved them even as you loved me.

We are called to live a unity which, to an outsider, doesn't make sense, and doesn't even seem possible. We're too different. Our personalities don't align. Our temperaments are often diametrically opposed. Yet we can, in spite of this, manifest a unity that is supernatural and amazing.
The world is rightly scandalized when they see divisions among us. These divisions reveal our all to evident human failings. We are not meant to be easy to divide on doctrinal lines like the Pharisees and the Sadduccees. We are meant to be united around the person of Jesus Christ. We are meant to be held in union by the glory he himself receives from the Father.

And I have given them the glory you gave me,
so that they may be one, as we are one,

It is, in fact, that direct line of grace, of glory, of divine life, that makes the unity to which we are called possible. It is a posture of receiving what God does not cease to pour upon us. It is constantly being filled and filled again with the Spirit and the words of Christ. As soon as we take the initiative ourselves we find ourselves fragmenting along the lines of our human failings.

In the midst of divisions we can take courage. Even if the waves of the sea have taken our gaze from the horizon there is a fixed point to which we can look, a lighthouse guiding our way, a voice calling us home.

The following night the Lord stood by him and said, "Take courage.
For just as you have borne witness to my cause in Jerusalem,
so you must also bear witness in Rome."

Assuredly Paul would not be able to walk in union with the plans of God for the Church without the Spirit. If he put himself first he wouldn't go anywhere near Rome. But Paul receives the glory from Jesus which the Father gives. He is able to follow no matter the cost.

Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, "My Lord are you."
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.