7 June 2021 - have this same mind

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

The Beatitudes conveyed something like the opposite of the wisdom of this world. It was not obvious how being poor in spirit was going to gain anyone a kingdom. Earthly kingdoms usually went to the proud and the strong. Many Jews were expecting a Messiah who was both proud and strong to establish such a kingdom for them. Jesus, however, did not need to contend with the world on its terms. The Kingdom would belong to those whose spirits were small enough to enter it, not to those who were strong enough to conquer it. 

Blessed are they who mourn,

for they will be comforted.

We might expect that it would be better to not mourn and so not need comfort. But in his wisdom Jesus made it possible that those who mourned could find a comfort so great that they would not begrudge the fact of their initial suffering. While the world could only look upon difficulty and hardship as evils, the Christian could enter into mourning together with Christ, and so experience his comfort in a way that made the trial worthwhile.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

the Father of compassion and the God of all encouragement,

who encourages us in our every affliction,

so that we may be able to encourage

those who are in any affliction

with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God.

The Beatitudes are the pathway to becoming Christlike, to entering into his Paschal mystery, to having in ourselves the same attitude that was in Christ Jesus, who emptied himself and took the form of a servant (see Philippians 2:5-7). Jesus himself was poor in Spirit and he mourned. But in doing so he perfectly demonstrated the way to rely on God for true riches of Spirit and true joy. He gave an example of meekness by not unleashing his strength or his army of angels when to us it might have seemed like an easy choice (see Matthew 26:53). His meekness was perfectly displayed by the the fact that he did remain on the cross, even when taunted (see Mark 15:30), although he clearly was strong enough to avoid or escape it. 

For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us,

so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow.

If we are afflicted,

it is for your encouragement and salvation;

The Beatitudes are more than guidelines, and the Paschal mystery is more than an example. The Beatitudes are descriptions of how Christ's life, his suffering, and his glory are meant be made present in our own lives, not as though we were simply repeating a formula, but rather as a people joined to Jesus himself who is living his very life within us.

Our hope for you is firm,

for we know that as you share in the sufferings,

you also share in the encouragement.

Their is something corrective about the Beatitudes, something which the reality of sin in the world makes necessary. We are prideful and so we must become poor. But there is a deeper reality even to poverty of Spirit that defines Jesus himself. For if there was not, he would not have humbled himself to come to us. There is a reality to the value of mourning, or he would not have been moved to shed tears for us, for Jerusalem, for Lazarus, for all peoples. And the same is true of the other Beatitudes. They are first of all the attitudes of Jesus himself. It is because he desires to live within us that he gives us these guidelines, these blueprints to his own heart.

Paul understood the reality of the Beatitudes at a deep level. This was why he could find encouragement in affliction or in joy. He could be abased or he could could abound. No matter what happened to him, he knew that God could work through it to do great things beyond imagining, to overflow for the salvation of the world.

Glorify the LORD with me,

    let us together extol his name.

I sought the LORD, and he answered me

    and delivered me from all my fears.

ILP Chorale - At the Name Of Jesus

6 June 2021 - all sweetness within

Today's Readings

(Audio)

The promise of the first covenant was made to Moses by God himself:

Now, if you obey me completely and keep my covenant, you will be my treasured possession among all peoples, though all the earth is mine.

You will be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation (see Exodus 19:5-6).

As we read today, the Israelites agreed to these terms, saying, "We will do everything that the LORD has told us." They promised to keep the terms of the covenant and so receive the blessings promised within. Yet it wasn't long before they failed spectacularly in the incident with the golden cafe. It wasn't simply a failure in the finer points of the law, but a breach of the first and greatest commandment. 

After the incident with the golden cafe it might have seemed that the covenant promise of God had failed. It had not failed, but it was indefinitely delayed. That the covenant blessings were missing was obvious. Israel was no longer a kingdom of priests, for only those of the tribe of Levi, those who remained faithful, were able to exercise that role. Worse still, although God desired to be near to his people and to bless them, the reality of the curse of sin was now interposed between he and his people. They had chosen to direct their hearts toward lesser things and it would not have been merciful of God to enable them in those pursuits. Moses, as the mediator of the covenant, was able to plead on the part of his people, but he was just a man. He could not bridge the chasm opened between Israel and God. 

After the failure in the desert it was only through the blood of goats and calves that the high priests of Israel could enter into the sanctuary, and that only once a year. And things continued in this way for generations with no apparent progress. Even in the time of Jesus it was still only the Levites who were priests and the presence of God in the sanctuary was still reserved to the high priest on the day of Yom Kippur. The sacrifices were offered year after year, and still the blessings of the covenant remained locked away. 

He said to them,

"This is my blood of the covenant,

which will be shed for many.

The promises of the covenant that had been locked away by sin were restored superabundantly by Jesus himself as he offered his body and blood on the cross. Those who ate the flesh of this Lamb of sacrifice and drank his blood would be included in this new and restored covenant. But this was more than a fresh start or a new attempt at what had been tried before. Unlike the sacrifices that were required after the golden cafe, participation in this one sacrifice of Jesus was truly transformative.

how much more will the blood of Christ,

who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God,

cleanse our consciences from dead works

to worship the living God.

Jesus was more than a scapegoat symbolically bearing away our sins into the desert. He took upon himself the curses of covenant of Moses, curses that we could not take upon ourselves without being destroyed, curses that Israel could only address symbolically, that Moses himself could not mediate away, so that the blessings of the covenant could be unlocked. 

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” (see Galatians 3:13).

Jesus himself would now and forevermore be the mediator of a new covenant. Since he was both God and man he was able to do what Moses could not do and act as both God and man, offering obedience to the Father, and speaking forgiveness and shalom to the his people. No longer could our weakness and failures derail his plans, because he himself already paid the price for our failures, and he himself would be our advocate if we failed, whenever we returned to him and sought his mercy.

he entered once for all into the sanctuary

Jesus made it possible for all of us to enter into the presence of God. The temple veil was torn when he died upon the cross (see Matthew 27:51), revealing that his presence would no longer be only available in a specific place, to a specific person, on a specific day, but rather to all of his people.

But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (see John 4:21).

Peter, reflecting back on all of this, realized that these covenant blessings had finally been realized, unlocked by the offering of the body and blood of Jesus.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (see First Peter 2:9).

When we receive the Eucharist we express our desire to belong to this new and eternal covenant, to throw ourselves upon the mercy of our mediator between God and man, and yet at the same time to experience the promised blessing of his presence. By baptism we ourselves also become priests, able to offer the joys and trials  of our daily lives as a sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, bringing sanctification to the world.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (see Romans 12:1)

Jim Cowan - This Is Jesus

Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz - Pange Lingua Gloriosi

Matt Maher and Audrey Assad - The Divine Praises ❤️

5 June 2021 - where charity and love are found

Today's Readings

(Audio)

They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext,

recite lengthy prayers.

Religiosity can be used as a cloak to hide a selfish and egotistical life. We may desire to be seen as religious in the eyes of others so that we can cultivate a spiritual self image with no obvious cracks in the seams. This sort of religiosity is only concerned with the appearance of things, the form of religion but not the power (see Second Timothy 3:5).

If our prayers are not accompanied by our hearts increasing in compassion for the houses of widows and others in need then there is something deficient in our prayers. We may indeed be using our prayers to distract us from a lack of motivation to love others. Does this mean that the externals necessarily need to change? It might. But more than that, it means that we need to adjust the internal direction of our intentions to be more God focused and less self focused. For if we allow ourselves to encounter God in prayer compassion for the orphan and the widow will come as a matter of course. If we allow ourselves contact with the living water of the Holy Spirit than his fruits will begin to grow in us.

A practical point, less introspective, is that those who are overly interested in appearing religious to us may not be the best guides in the spiritual life. Those who seem more interested in the spotlight than in sanctification, who cultivate appearance rather than authenticity, may look religious from the outside but lacking the charity without which they are just "a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal", nothing, and gaining nothing (see First Corinthians 13). Usually the ratio of charity to ego isn't all or nothing, and no one masters it perfectly in this life. If a desire for God is seen to be valued above a need to be esteemed by others this is at least a good sign.

The wrong response to this concern about external religiosity would be to abandon religion to focus entirely on social service. Without God there are all sorts of ways this could go wrong. Without God such service could become just another occasion to cultivate a self image we like, still not motivated by true compassion for others. Lacking compassion will mean that we will go so far and no further in our willingness to help. When the benefit to our pride is outweighed by the effort involved we will excuse ourselves. Without God, the overwhelming intractability of the problems of poverty and want in the world could easily lead to cynicism or despair. To actually keep one's heart open and vulnerable in the face of such challenges is something we can only do with God's help.

It is better to give alms than to store up gold;

for almsgiving saves one from death and expiates every sin.

Those who regularly give alms shall enjoy a full life;

but those habitually guilty of sin are their own worst enemies.

The world's programs of social justice request vast scale, organization, and are meaningful only insofar as they are successful. Like everything the world does, those programs are predicated on the belief that life ends at death and are designed to maximize the pleasure of the majority for as long as possible. Giving alms is not like this. The word alms comes down to us from the Greek for compassion. It is a compassion that is meaningful in the first place, not because of our success, but because it is a concrete act that entrusts another to God's mercy more than our own, that enters into God's own compassion for others. When we give alms we don't need to worry about the limitations of our abilities provided that we really are giving fundamentally for the sake of God, and entrusting the results to his providence. 

“Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more

than all the other contributors to the treasury.

For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth,

but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had,

her whole livelihood.”

The widow's gift can serve as a thought experiment for us. If we were only able to give two small coins would we refuse because it didn't serve to build up our self image? We should instead learn from the famous line of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, who wrote that "God doesn't ask that we succeed in everything, but that we are faithful." She herself was inspired, by the Little Flower, and this is easy to see in her writings.

Jesus wills that we give alms to Him as to one poor and needy. He puts Himself as it were at our mercy; He will take nothing but what we give Him from our heart, and the very least trifle is precious in His sight. 

- Saint Therese of Lisieux

To the mind of Therese the more hidden the gift the better. Large gifts would easily give rise to pride. Small gifts wrested away from our selfishness for love's sake count infinitely more. It is better to allow ourselves to be small so that God can be great in us, to decrease that Jesus may increase. This is not to say that those with great means ought not give lavishly, for there is surely reward in that. But insofar as magnanimity is a gift that they have been given to offer to others they will need to be especially careful that it not be twisted by the enemy to pervert it from the purposes of love. 

Audrey Assad - Ubi Caritas

Nichole Nordeman - You Are My All In All

4 June 2021 - but now I see

Today's Readings

(Audio)

The Lord said to my lord,

    ‘Sit at my right hand

    until I place your enemies under your feet.’

Psalm 110 which Jesus quoted was understood to refer to the Messiah. It had a limited fulfillment in David's son Solomon when David resigned from kingship to make way for his son to rule. This was the historical sense in which David's own son was briefly his lord. But Solomon left much to be desired and so a more perfect fulfillment of this Psalm was anticipated. How, then, could the Messiah be both the son of David and his Lord? 

David himself calls him ‘lord’;

so how is he his son?”

The great crowd heard this with delight.

Jesus was himself a descendent of David, a son of that royal ancestry, and so a potential heir to this promise. But he was also the Son of God, and therefore David's Lord in a way that was not temporary and flawed, but profound, permanent, and perfect. The crowd was delighted because they picked up the hints that there was more to the story of the Messiah than they had guessed. A mere royal descendent that united and freed Israel by military conquest would not have been David's lord. And so there must have been something better in store. As indeed there was.

David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit

David likely had no sense of the full scope of the things he wrote by the prophetic Spirit. But God guided him just as he guided all of the writing of Scriptures, working with the knowledge and talent of those who wrote, but shaping it to be a cohesive and integrated vision of his covenant plan for salvation history. Neither David nor any other author had this full clear vision, yet the Spirit worked through what they wrote by adding layers that would make sense as the plan of salvation progressed.

The Lord permitted Israel to undergo much hardship before they saw their Messiah. He permitted much blindness and hardness of heart, but only so that the people could realize their need for God and to be ready to welcome his salvation. Sometimes we too are permitted to undergo trials. For us as well as for them God is able to make them work together for our good (see Romans 8:28), to more than make up for the suffering, to bring us to the place where every tear will finally be wiped away (see Revelation 21:4)

When Tobit saw his son, he threw his arms around him and wept.

He exclaimed, “I can see you, son, the light of my eyes!”

He allows blindness so that we can see him with new eyes. Let us hear the words of Tobiah telling us to have courage, confident that the Lord has a plan to heal us, that his angel is already on the way.

 “Blessed be God,

        and praised be his great name,

        and blessed be all his holy angels.

    May his holy name be praised

        throughout all the ages,

    Because it was he who scourged me,

        and it is he who has had mercy on me.

    Behold, I now see my son Tobiah!”

Todd Agnew - Grace Like Rain

Chris Tomlin - Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)

3 June 2021 - the Lord alone

Today's Readings

(Audio)

“Which is the first of all the commandments?”

There were plenty of commandments from which to choose when answering this question. It was a legitimate question to put to a teacher, to ask what was their unique priority or emphasis. The answer Jesus gave ought not to have been a surprise to anyone. His emphasis was consistent with the tradition of Israel. He did not come to point away from love of God is the primary thing, nor just to point toward it, but to finally live out that love perfectly.

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 unexpected part of the answer of Jesus was perhaps that he did not end his answer there. After all, that was the Shema, the famous prayer of the Jewish people. Yet for Jesus, leaving it at that would miss something important.

The second is this:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

It might not be immediately evident that there would be any parallel or analogy between love of God and love of neighbor. When Jesus says the second commandment is like unto the first (as Matthew records) it might not be immediately evident how. Was not God served by ritual, by burnt offerings and sacrifices, and neighbor by concrete works of mercy and charity? If we are honest we still often suffer from this duality. We serve God at mass and praying or daily prayers and our neighbors when we donate to suitable charities and the connection between these often seems vague or insubstantial at best.

Our neighbors, and we ourselves, are made in the image and likeness of God. We are in fact meant to be dwelling places of God, temples of his Holy Spirit. We can't claim to love God at all if we spurn his image in our brothers and sisters, or, for that matter, in ourselves.

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).

We do have a duty to honor God above all else, and not bow to any idols which our age presents to us as deserving of worship. We have a duty to praise God alone, to worship him alone, and to offer our lives as living sacrifices to him (see Romans 12:1) 

and to love your neighbor as yourself

is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.

There is a difference between this religious duty of ours and the burnt offerings and sacrifices of the Old Covenant. By the one sacrifice of the New Covenant offered by Jesus himself we are invited to enter into the love by which the Son perfectly loves and offers himself to the Father. It could be said that the sacrifice of the cross is the Shema lived out perfectly and completely. All aspects of Jesus's being, heart, soul, mind and all his strength were fully engaged in it. When we see his sacrifice as the perfect exemplar or the greatest commandment we see how the love of neighbor cannot be separated out into a distinct duty, for the cross was also the perfect fulfillment of the commandment to love one's neighbors.

God ultimately has no need for our offerings, no need for our worship. He is perfectly content in his blessed life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a way that cannot be increased or diminished by anything we do. Even the commandments add nothing to him, but are given for us. But we have much that we can offer our neighbors, gifts both corporeal and spiritual. When we choose to offer these gifts, to feed the poor, clothe the naked, and instruct those ignorant of God in his ways, God receives such service as done unto him.

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (see Matthew 25:40).

Tobiah and Sarah demonstrated a life properly ordered, a life where God himself was first even before the consummation of their marriage. 

Tobiah arose from bed and said to his wife,

“My love, get up.

Let us pray and beg our Lord to have mercy on us

and to grant us deliverance.”

By putting God first they also loved one another in a way that was greater than they could have done any other way. They loved with a love that was victorious in the spiritual warfare against the demon that had afflicted Sarah until that point. It is the same for us. We place God first not at the expense of others, but because by doing so we entrust both them and ourselves into God's hands.

They said together, “Amen, amen,” and went to bed for the night.

🔥 Bob Fitts - One God 🔥

2 June 2021 - God breathed

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled

because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?

The Sadducees only accepted as canonical the first five books of Moses, the first books of what we call the Old Testament. In these books they did find any obvious and clear descriptions of the dead being raised. 

For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all (see Acts 23:8).

The Sadducees claimed to disbelieve in the resurrection because they did not find a basis in Scripture. But Jesus told them that they were misled precisely because they didn't really know the Scriptures. The view that they effectively took on Scriptures was that the Torah defined the limits of the power of God. They used the Scriptures as a shield against disruption of the status quo, against anything that would unseat their comfortable position in society. They didn't recognize the purpose of the gift of Scripture to us, and so were misled.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work (see Second Timothy 3:16-17).

We must not use Scripture as a limit on God. We are told that, compared with the things about which we read even in the New Testament, "they will do even greater things than these" (see John 14:12). We should try to avoid being selective about which parts of the Bible receive our focus, since it is God breathed in its entirety, deuterocanonical books and all. This means that we must not flee from the difficult passages to those which seem most appealings, from meat to milk, from the apparently bitter to the candy. This approach to Scripture where we are fundamentally in control is always going to come up short. We aren't meant to stand in judgment of Scripture, but rather it of us.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (see Hebrews 4:12).

Because the dead are in fact raised it changes the way we must relate to the world. We no longer live as those trying to eek out what meager pleasure we can before we die. We no longer see the suffering and hardship of the world as a fundamentally lost cause. Rather, we live so as to open ourselves and the world to the coming Kingdom here and now, as much as we are able. 

We must be cautious so that we do not fixate so much on the legitimate goods of the world that we set them in opposition to the world of eternity. Even marriage is a sign of the greater union between Christ and his Church. Even a good as great as marriage set up in opposition to the Kingdom could potentially devolve into idolatry. The only way to avoid being dominated by a worldly perspective is to know the Scriptures and the power of God in them, in prayer, in the Sacraments, and everywhere. When we really know it and aren't just using Scriptures for our own ends we won't try to put limits on the power of God. We will be just as eager as Jesus to demolish the status quo that stands in opposition to the Kingdom.

As for the dead being raised,

have you not read in the Book of Moses,

in the passage about the bush, how God told him,

    I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, 

    and the God of Jacob?

Even the parts of the Bible read by the Sadducees contained the truth they denied. But they read these passages as though God himself was in the past, not powerful, not speaking through his word. Jesus showed them that the power of God implied that God ever present, not bound by time, and that even we could be elevated to eternity by our relationship with him.

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (see John 17:3).

Knowing the Scriptures and the power of God can help us not to give up when we are on the edge of despair, just at it did Tobit and Sarah. We may see all around us the apparent evidence of death but can still hold on to the fact that God is the God of the living.

“Blessed are you, O Lord, merciful God,

    and blessed is your holy and honorable name.

    Blessed are you in all your works for ever!”

At that very time, 

the prayer of these two suppliants

was heard in the glorious presence of Almighty God.

Brotherhood of Hope - To Love You and To Make You Loved

Hillsong - Power Of Your Love

1 June 2021 - opinions

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man

and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion.

You do not regard a person’s status

but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.

To call someone a truthful man when one didn't believe it oneself was high hypocrisy. They complimented Jesus for not regarding the opinions and status of others when public favor and status is exactly what the Pharisees and Herodians were trying to accumulate for their own factions. By these false compliments they hoped to make Jesus feel sufficiently free to say something that would get him in trouble.

Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?

Should we pay or should we not pay?

Jesus, however, really was a truthful man who was not especially concerned with their opinion. Buttering him up wasn't going to serve their purpose. Instead, he would answer them more to expose their own hypocrisy than for the sake of some legitimate intellectual inquiry. 

“Why are you testing me?

Bring me a denarius to look at.”

They had ready access to these coins with the blasphemous inscriptions in praise of Caesar. They were not so pure of this supposed contamination as to be unable to find a coin to show Jesus. Already the integrity of their question began to seem questionable.

They brought one to him and he said to them,

“Whose image and inscription is this?”

They replied to him, “Caesar’s.”

The Pharisees and Herodians were sufficiently narrow in the focus as to only give the obvious and direct answer. But there was a deeper answer that they had forgotten and could not give.

So Jesus said to them,

“Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar

and to God what belongs to God.”

Caesar himself was made in the image of God. This fact itself contained everything they needed to know about relating to Gentile rulers. It meant that such rulers could act legitimately as rulers only when their acts were themselves in keeping with being made in the image and likeness of God. Any overstepping of that image, such as demanding worship for themselves would need to be rejected. Paying taxes was actually a duty for Christians (see Romans 13:6-7) and yet martyrs would choose painful death rather than willingly burning incense to the emperor. In this approach Christians were like, truthful, not concerned with anyones status, and putting the way of God above all social pressure. Jesus gave them not only an broadly applicable answer about living in accord with our dignity as creatures made in the image of God, he also gave an example of what this looked like in practice.

Sometimes the risk is that when the pressure is on we become more like Tobit and our virtue is revealed to be mere pretense, something of which we are only capable when times were easy.

So she retorted: “Where are your charitable deeds now?

Where are your virtuous acts? 

See! Your true character is finally showing itself!

If our virtue is for show it will break down when circumstances become challenging. If, however, we live as children of God made in his image and likeness we will remember this dignity even when times are tough. We will still strive to follow Jesus even when it does not seem immediately expedient for fixing our situations. We will render to Caesar no more than what is his, and everything unto God.

An evil report he shall not fear;

his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.

We Belong To God