6 March 2023 - let mercy flow

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Jesus said to his disciples:

"Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Recently we read about the call to be holy as God himself is holy, and to be perfect as God himself is perfect. But those lofty concepts were easy to misconstrue. The Pharisees imagined themselves to have holiness, but of a sort that made it necessary for them to separate themselves from others, and to be perfect, but in a way that was merely external and performative. But by calling us to be merciful Jesus made what he was asking of us more concrete. 

Stop judging and you will not be judged.

Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.

Judging and condemning were the preoccupation of the Pharisees, by which they convinced themselves of their superiority over others. It was not simply an understanding that recognized sin for what it was, because such knowledge could have been helpful in reaching out to sinners. It was rather a false puffed up knowledge that separated them from those they considered sinners. Therefore they complained when Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors and did not recognize themselves as also sick and in need of the same Divine Physician.

We too have issues with judging and condemning others, in thoughts we entertain, if not in outright action. We have hard time avoiding comparing ourselves with others in order to achieve a kind of self validation that hinges upon the imagined fact that we are doing better than they. And when we rely on this sort of affirmation we set ourselves up for disappoint, both at our own failures, and perhaps worse, at the success of others. Some of us have elevated judgment to a meta skill wherein the only ones we will judge are those who seem to us to be judging others, who won't seem to just live and let live. But every judgment of the sort condemned by Jesus is unhelpful, and not a firm foundation for our self image. We must, if we are to stop judging, find a better foundation in Christ himself.

Give and gifts will be given to you;

In this statement of Jesus we find a law of the spiritual life: that we when we need something, we should seek not to get it, but to give it away. Only in doing so will we truly find it. This is of course easy to say, but hard to realize and put into practice. But by repeated attempts to practice this spiritual law we will come to realize just how reliable is the promise that underlies it.

The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver (see Second Corinthians 9:6).

Instead of a conception of holiness that turns us inward and makes us try to justify ourselves, one that allows is to be content with merely external compliance, Jesus is calling is to one which sends us outward to our neighbors and fellow sinners in order to share the mercy we ourselves have discovered as the only firm basis for our lives. Just as Daniel, righteous though he was, implicated himself in the sins of his people in order to bring down mercy upon them, so too must we.

But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!

Yet we rebelled against you

and paid no heed to your command, O LORD, our God,

to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.

Vineyard - Help Us Our God

5 March 2023 - seed of hope

Today's Readings

(Audio)

And he was transfigured before them;

his face shone like the sun

and his clothes became white as light.

Jesus provided Peter, James, and John with a glimpse that revealed more truly who he was even before he "emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (see Philippians 2). This was the glory that Jesus had together with the Father before the world began (see John 17:5). This was indeed the light shining in the darkness that the darkness could not overcome (see John 1:5). It is why we confess Jesus to not only be God from God but also light from light in the Creed.

his face shone like the sun

When Moses encountered the word of God in Sinai his face became radiant like (see Exodus 34:29). An implication of the Transfiguration was that this radiance was encounter was with the radiance of Jesus himself, the true eternal word of the Father. This explained why Jesus himself took it for granted that Moses knew and wrote about him.

"For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me" (see John 5:46).

The people of Israel were expecting another prophet like Moses to come and fulfill their hopes, and Elijah to return to usher in the Messianic age.

"The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen" (see Deuteronomy 18:15).

"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes" (see Malachi 4:5).

Together Moses and Elijah were now present to certify that Jesus was himself the fulfillment of these hopes. But it was not to be a matter of the three of them merely existing side by side in their own tents on equal footing. It was rather that everything that went before in the Law and the prophets would now be properly understood only in reference to Jesus himself, hence "when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone". This fulfillment of the Old Testament found in Christ explains what happened when Jesus himself opened the Scriptures to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (see Luke 24:27).

But this revelation of the identity of Jesus, this testimony of the Father to his beloved Son, and this assurance of the fulfillment of the hope of Israel could not be understood apart from the cross, could not be shared "until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead". The reason this was so was because the purpose of the granting this experience to Peter, James, and John was not merely to hint at an invisible reality present in Jesus himself but also to reveal the new life Jesus made possibly for humanity by his resurrection when he "destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel". Specifically, the reason Peter, James, and John were given this assurance was to strengthen them for the experience of seeing the horrific death of Jesus, to plant a seed of faith in their hearts that was strong enough to give hope even in spite of every external appearance being to the contrary. For this reason we see that Jesus did not yet dwell in this momentary manifestation of glory as though nothing remained to be done but to enjoy it. And after his Father told the disciples to listen to him his first words, encapsulating the whole experience into something they could bring and hold with them, were "Rise, and do not be afraid".

Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk

and from your father's house to a land that I will show you.

We too are called to go forth on a way we do not know to a destination we cannot see, the way of the cross. But God has given us the light of faith in Jesus himself to strengthen us for this journey, and to assure us that, even in spite of every appearance to the contrary, if we follow the path he has for us we will find the blessings God intends for the world.

Our soul waits for the LORD,

who is our help and our shield.

Maranatha! Praise Band - Shine Jesus Shine

Matt Maher - Shine Like The Son

TobyMac featuring Hollyn - Lights Shine Bright

Newsboys - Shine

4 March 2023 - blind spots

Today's Readings

(Audio)

You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

For those Jews living at the time of Jesus it was easy to identify the enemy: the occupying Roman forces. And though there was nothing in the Law that required hatred of the enemy neither did there seem to be anything against it. In fact, it seemed to be a corollary of concern for the a Law that those opposed to the Law should themselves be opposed.

What of us today? No one speaks of having an enemy outside of video games and movies. But do we not avail ourselves in a similar imagined "blind spot" in the command to love, and concern ourselves particularly with the just, with those who love us, and with our brothers and sisters? Is not our love as so-called Christians not altogether different from that of pagans, closed in on itself, insistent upon reciprocity? After all, we tell ourselves, we can't love everyone equally without exception. And this is in fact the case. But even so, we must consider whom we are excluding, often even without realizing it.

But I say to you, love your enemies,

and pray for those who persecute you

We can't rely on the present goodness of a person to judge whether they merit our active care for them, much less their potential utility to us. If there is to be any hope for the transformation of the world it can only be realized if we do not limit our love in this way, but rather reach out to those most who are most in need and whom, by our unique gifting, we are the most able to help.

Our love is nevertheless called to be genuine love, not just whatever we wish love to mean, just as the Father's love for us is genuine. He does not act as an enabler of sin that can never satisfy, does not validate our misguided self-images as he finds them, but rather elevates us by his love to better paths and to more wholesome ways of thinking about ourselves, others, and our goals.

that you may be children of your heavenly Father,

for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,

We know not to love a drug addict by giving them drugs, nor a sinner by empowering them to sin, nor even by telling them that their sin is something other than it is. But this does not mean we are free to wash our hands of involvement with them. And herein is the difficult part for us. For precisely what we should do is not always clear to us. To discover it, we need discernment and prayer that look to our heavenly Father as the model, his perfect love as our example.

So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

It isn't so much that we are called to go out searching new places for new faces to bless, though perhaps we may do this. Today what we have in the Gospel is more of a call to see the opportunities to love that we have failed to notice in the usual orbit of our lives day-to-day. It is more of a call to recognize that, without calling others our enemies, we have all developed something of a blind spot. We should check it before changing lanes. There is most likely someone like Lazarus on our door whom we have excused ourselves from assisting, maybe because we don't know what we can do for them. Rather than surrendering at the start, let us ask our Father how he wants to make his light rise upon them through us. Let us ask how the living waters of the Spirit might best be shared with those starved for growth.

When we seek to imitate the perfection of our heavenly Father we become the people we were meant to be, peculiarly his own, sacred to him, because he will see within us a reflection of his own heart of love.

Blessed are they whose way is blameless,

who walk in the law of the LORD.

Matt Maher - Bigger Table

3 March 2023 - no pharisee

Today's Readings

(Audio)

unless your righteousness surpasses that

of the scribes and Pharisees,

you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.

We are not called to a righteousness that is merely external and ostentatious, or even fastidious, exactly. The Pharisees kept the law with an extreme level of detail and wanted everyone to know about it. Yet it was not actually transformative for them. Even with their practices their was no corresponding healing effect on their relationships. They managed to use the law as a shield to defend their selfishness and a weapon to pursue the interests of their egos. They neglected, as Jesus said, the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness (see Matthew 23:23). This meant that even those relationships that should have been the most important to them, those to their parents, and to their spouses, were often transactional and even mercenary, motivated only by what would be for their own individual benefit.

But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother

will be liable to judgment,

and whoever says to his brother, Raqa, 

will be answerable to the Sanhedrin,

and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.

Jesus takes away from us the internal hiding places where unrighteousness can be concealed and fester. He is not content to let our interactions be guided by a superficial adherence to nonviolence while implicitly cultivating violence in our thoughts and intentions. He insists that we not only wear a mask of peace with our brother, but actually try to establish genuine peace with him insofar as we are able.

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,

and there recall that your brother

has anything against you,

leave your gift there at the altar,

go first and be reconciled with your brother,

and then come and offer your gift.

Our tendency is often to avoid those things which are undeniably sinful actions while still cherishing the idea of sin in our hearts. But this is to build on a house of cards, ready to collapse if someone breathes on it, let alone if the wind blows. When we hear that we must even put to death this internal attachment to sin we may be tempted to despair at what seems to be out of our control. And indeed it is humbling to realize how little is actually in our control, and how perfection seems utterly beyond our grasp. But it is when we are in this posture of humility that Jesus himself is most able to help renew us from within.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind (see Romans 12:2).

It's true that on our own we may avoid external sin, because we care too much about what others would think. But on our own we have no such impetus to avoid the internal affection for sin and seek the transformation Jesus desires for us. That is why it is Jesus himself who desires to give us new hearts (see Ezekiel 36:26) filled with the fruits of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22-23), to himself work within us to bring about this transformation, "for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (see Philippians 2:13).

We have no grounds to say, "The LORD's way is not fair!" when he himself has done what is necessary for us and stands ready to do what is necessary within us. Our part is now to stick with him, to not turn from the virtue he is creating within us even as our own weaknesses are exposed and become more apparent to us. But even trying to do this. we will not avoid entirely at least some partial turning away, some collapse under the weight of our weakness. But even this need not be the end of our story as long as we return again and again to him, to the fountain of mercy.

But if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed,

does what is right and just,

he shall preserve his life;

since he has turned away from all the sins that he committed, 

he shall surely live, he shall not die.

Tom Booth - The Jesus Song

2 March 2023 - how much more

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Ask and it will be given to you;

seek and you will find;

knock and the door will be opened to you.

It is almost certain that we don't really believe these words of Jesus. If we did, our relationship with prayer would be different. For many of us prayer is a task to be performed out of duty and a sense of religious obligation. This isn't entirely bad. We pray because we know that we should pray, because God himself desires that we pray. But we tend to do so without having much in the way of expectation that our prayer will have an impact.

For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;

and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

We would say to Jesus: 'I have asked, sought, and knocked, and yet my desires remain unfulfilled'. We should not be afraid to tell Jesus that we have difficulty taking him at his word when we test that word without apparent results. Jesus does indeed have answers to our doubts. The first answer might be that he never said these things would happen immediately, which is why we prefer the translation of this passage from the Amplified Bible:

Ask and keep on asking and it will be given to you; seek and keep on seeking and you will find; knock and keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you (see Matthew 7:7 AMP).

We might still be tempted to respond by asking him why these things that we desire might not be given to us immediately, since it is in his power to give them as he chooses. But do we not already hear in such a question the questionable impatience of children, unwilling to wait? We are in fact meant to be like children, but not in this sense. We are meant to learn to patiently trust God to give us what will be for our God when it will be the most beneficial. By making us wait God is calling us to cling to whatever was good in our desire while encouraging us to grow by, among other things, letting go of our desire to be in control.

Which one of you would hand his son a stone

when he asked for a loaf of bread,

or a snake when he asked for a fish?

In prayer we don't often know how to ask for the loaf of bread or the fish. We content ourselves to ask for stones and even for snakes. The Father knows that we have legitimate needs that we are trying to express, but knows better than to answer us literally according to our limited comprehension. He has better things in store for us than we can ask our imagine (see Ephesians 3:20). Let us not hold it against him that he has denied us what we've asked when we have in fact asked for a snake and to learn to look instead for what he desires to give, to look for the "how much more" of our heavenly Father.

Prayer is the sine qua non required to empower us to live the life of disciples. If we truly propose to love others even as ourselves we are going to need prayer. This prayer itself needs to be open to transformation as the Father continues calling us higher, and inviting us to have a heart that is more like his own heart. It was because of the power of prayer that Queen Esther was able to fulfill her role in salvation history. It can be so for us as well.

Save us from the hand of our enemies;

turn our mourning into gladness

and our sorrows into wholeness.

We are meant to go through this whole process with confidence, from beginning to end, ready even from the start to say with the psalmist, "Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me".

Songs In His Presence - So Bless The Lord

1 March 2023 - no sign like the presence

Today's Readings

(Audio)

This generation is an evil generation;

it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,

except the sign of Jonah.

It was not as though there was a lack of signs for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. But those whom Jesus addressed wanted something above and beyond the healings and exorcisms Jesus had already performed. They wanted to set the terms and make the demands that Jesus would then fulfill, to require something direct and incontrovertible. They wanted to tame the dangerous dynamism of the spreading Kingdom by setting the criteria for whether or not it should be accepted, setting themselves up to judge it, rather than to be judged by it. Perhaps some of this stemmed from jealousy that some had received miracles but others had not. We can easily imagine the ego of those who did not receive miracles saying that such a Kingdom was simply unacceptable. 

Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,

so will the Son of Man be to this generation.

Jonah went to the Ninevites to proclaim that they were not going to be able to retain the role of arbiters of judgment themselves, but that the judgment of God was instead coming upon them. Rather than trying to find a loophole by which they could condemn the prophet and retain their imagined sense of control they instead took his words to heart and repented at his preaching.

she came from the ends of the earth

to hear the wisdom of Solomon,

and there is something greater than Solomon here.

The crowd was called to set aside their jealousy, to surrender their desire to be in control, and to recognize the wisdom found in Jesus, who was himself far greater than Jonah or Solomon. The crowd had become ensnared in the wisdom of men, stemming from a desire to remain in control of their own lives, and giving rise to jealousy. But this false wisdom was preventing them from discovering a divine wisdom that directly contradicted it. They weren't meant to be in control, and usurping that control from God was the chief source of suffering in the world. It was not easy to surrender, to let God be God, and to accept the wisdom he revealed in Jesus Christ. To do so was already a sort of death to self. But oh, for those who found the grace to do so, how great was the gain.

For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (see First Corinthians 1:22-24).

It would be nice if this was only a condemnation that applied to them, as if only that generation was an evil one, if we could pat ourselves on the back and feel affirmed that what was true of them was not true of us as well. But we ought to recognize the all too apparent reality that we too try to find ways to remain in control, as we imagine, in our relationship with God. And this control is doing us little good except preventing Jesus from doing all he wants to do in us and through us. We are called as Christians to learn to surrender the throne of our lives to him, to take whatever steps we need, even radical ones, to ensure that he alone will sit upon it.

Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep,

shall taste anything;

they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water.

Making God the center of our lives does not necessarily guarantee us the signs and miracles we desire. What it does instead is to enable us to trust him completely to give us what will be for our good, whether it is those signs or something else. It can't be a sort of religious reverse psychology to get what we want. It must be genuine surrender. This is not something that is easy or natural for our natures. Rather it comes to us only as a free gift that is on offer to us in the person of Jesus himself, in the encounter with him that is always available to us. Let us seek this encounter with our whole hearts.

My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit;

a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.

Calvin Bottoms - Over All The Earth (Reign In Me)

28 February 2023 - its not a technique

Today's Readings

(Audio)

In praying, do not babble like the pagans,

who think that they will be heard because of their many words.

The idea behind pagan religion condemned here is that there was some technique which could be discovered and put into practice; that there were perhaps some specific words that, if repeated sufficiently, would achieve desired results. It is as though they imagined prayer as one more science or skill, just one more facet of life to attempt to rigorously control. But Christianity turns this preconception on its head.

Do not be like them.

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

With such a premise as Jesus offers here it is obvious that we can gain nothing by cajoling our Father, as though we have needs about which he knows nothing, and about which we can persuade him, by sufficient arguments, that they are worthy causes. Rather, it seems, God won't be moved at all by our prayers. But if this is the case, why pray? And how can prayer, as Christianity has always maintained, have genuine power? It must be the case that we pray in order that we ourselves be changed. And if power is unleashed when we do so it isn't because we managed to talk God into it but because he always desired to unleash it and we finally allowed grace to bring us to a place wherein we could receive it. 

Our Father who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name

God is himself perfectly holy, but we pray that his holiness be known and understood whenever his name is invoked in thought or in speech. This has obvious ramifications for those who do not know his name at all and for those who, by misunderstanding his nature, are antagonists opposed to his name. But it has deep meaning for ourselves as well, for none of us know God to his inexhaustible depths. The result of our limited comprehension is that even we sometimes think we know better than him what he ought to do. But the result of this petition is that we might learn more and more that there is no fault within him and no shadow, but only goodness, only light, only awe-inspiring holiness.

thy Kingdom come

Jesus came among us proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was at hand. But it was not a Kingdom that could be imposed by military conquest. It could only be proposed and, by that invitation, conquer hearts with love. It was an invitation asking that individuals would open themselves to God's will for their world and for their own lives. With this was meant to be the recognition that if God's will were truly done on earth than the chief thing that made heaven to be heaven would also be realized here among us.

Give us this day our daily bread;

In the Kingdom of Jesus the citizens were not to live merely on physical bread, but above all on the word of God. It was precisely that word that would make the Eucharist a reality, transforming mere bread into the body and blood of the Word by his word. It is this sacred species above all else on which the Church is meant to rely for the strength she needs day to day. 

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us;

If we cling to unforgiveness we place a roadblock between ourselves and all that God desires to do in us and through us. Mercy cannot be for ourselves alone but must flow through us to others, even to those among us who are doing the best they can from their side of the relationship to be our enemies. It is insufficient to get right with God ourselves and remain indifferent or even set against others. We must become active agents of his mercy in order to know that his mercy has been effective in us.

and lead us not into temptation,

Although God does allow us to be tested so that we might be proven and grow, even as gold is tried by fire, we are meant to remain humble and to realize that any temptation, without the grace to escape, would overwhelm us. If not for this grace, we would give in to temptation just as quickly as anyone. And since we have such desperate need for grace we pray that the trials God does permit corresponds to our weakness and his grace, that we might remain humble and dependent, and therefore at less risk of a prideful fall.

but deliver us from evil.

We need protection not only from a neutral and indifferent world, but also from active and hostile forces of evil. It would be one thing, perhaps, if we found ourselves on neutral ground from which we could be objective and independent. But apart from the Kingdom the power of evil and the lies of the Evil One are realities that, if hidden, are nevertheless present. And even within the Kingdom we don't rely on divine protection as much as we ought, giving evil a foothold within the Church itself that it ought not and need not have. There is genuine evil, but God himself desires to deliver us if we will but ask him.

So shall my word be

that goes forth from my mouth;

It shall not return to me void,

but shall do my will,

achieving the end for which I sent it.

When we pray in the words given to us by Jesus himself we can be sure that those words will be efficacious, not because they are a formula, but rather because they unite us to Jesus himself in prayer. When the Son stands before the Father in this way there is no limit to the grace and blessings that can result, watering the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats. We need the fruit of the Spirit, the seed of the Gospel, and the bread of the Eucharist. Therefore let us not neglect, perhaps because of excessive familiarity, the prayer Jesus taught us. Let us ask him to give us the grace to pray it with newness and fresh attentive love.

Matt Maher - The Lord's Prayer (It's Yours)