22nd Week of Ordinary Time 2026 - Friday - The joy of the wedding feast

 

Already having gained a number of disciples early on in his public ministry, the Lord attended a dinner in the house of Levi, also known as St. Matthew, a tax collector. And while at dinner in the house of Levi, some Pharisees and scribes begin to murmur about Jesus’ unconventional behavior—of dining with tax collectors and sinners. The word St. Luke uses to describe the Pharisees’ murmuring is the same word found in the book of Numbers, when the rebellious Israelites murmur and complain about the leadership of Moses out in the desert.

Then the Lord, really gave them something to murmur about. When the Scribes and Pharisees question the Lord’s practice of dining with sinners, Jesus compares what he is doing in the house of Levi, and in his ministry in general, to a wedding feast.

The Scribes and Pharisees, who were versed in the scriptures and traditions of Israel, would no doubt have picked up on the messianic undertones of the Lord’s explanation. The age of the Messiah, the long-awaited final stage of human history, when the Messiah would definitively usher in the kingdom of God—is scripturally linked to the wedding feast.

The Scribes and Pharisees would no doubt have detected that Jesus was claiming the role of the Messianic Bridegroom who was ushering in the kingdom of God.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ first miracle takes place at a wedding, the wedding at Cana, where water is turned into an abundance of wine. It was there that Jesus revealed that He wasn’t just a teacher, he wasn’t just a commentator on scriptures: that first miracle at the wedding, signaled something new in God’s plan of salvation for sinful humanity.

 Just as a wedding is filled with joyful celebration, so too, Jesus’ public ministry is a time of great joy for sinners. Sinners are invited to repent so that may be join the wedding feast. The wedding feast is not just for a particular ethnic group. All people, of all places and time, are invited into God’s presence.

We are poor, wretched sinners—but we are joyful sinners: sinners whom Christ has invited to cast off the old garments of sin and to take up a new life of friendship with God. And that is great cause for rejoicing.

That is why the Church is never merely a society of the self-satisfied, of those who gather to congratulate themselves on their virtue, their knowledge, or their respectability. The Church is the gathering of those who know they need a Savior.

Nor are we to distance ourselves from sinners and unbelievers out of fear that they might somehow infect us. We have a mission to them: to invite them to the Lord, to conversion, to the joy of the wedding feast. And that mission requires patience, prudence, humility, gentleness, and perseverance. If one approach does not work, we try another. We appeal to truth, yes; to beauty, yes; but also to goodness.

We witness to Christ through charity: charity that is patient and kind, generous and self-sacrificial. We show by our lives that friendship with Christ is not a burden, but a joy; not a restriction of life, but the beginning of life in abundance.

So that is our task. Let us take it up with courage and with joy, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

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That Christians may take up the task of evangelization with renewed conviction, with generosity and creativity, to spread the saving Gospel of Christ.

For an end to indifference to God and human dignity in our communities, institutions, businesses, and personal attitudes.

During this month of September, dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, we pray for all those who grieve, and that we may grieve sufficiently for our sins.

That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering.

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased priests and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. We pray.

O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

 

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That Christians may take up the task of evangelization with renewed conviction, with generosity and creativity, to spread the saving Gospel of Christ.

For an end to indifference to God and human dignity in our communities, institutions, businesses, and personal attitudes.

During this month of September, dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, we pray for all those who grieve, and that we may grieve sufficiently for our sins.

That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering.

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased priests and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. We pray.

O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

 

October 16 2024 - St. Margaret Mary Alacoque - Visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

 Throughout the ages, some of the Saints have been gifted by God with visions or visitations from heaven. St. Paul is of course visited by Jesus on the road to Damascus. Legend has it that Jesus appeared to St. Peter before his own martyrdom. The book of Acts says that St. Stephen the Deacon had a vision of Jesus right before his martyrdom, and St. John the Evangelist of course, writes of his vision of heaven in the Book of Revelation. 

St. Francis famously had a vision of Jesus speaking to him from the cross in the chapel of San Damiano telling him to rebuild his Church. St. Catherine of Siena’s life was filled with visions. St. Juan Diego received a vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

In 1677, St. Margaret Mary, a Visitation nun in France, received visions of Our Lord. She writes in her diary how she plainly saw His heart, pierced and bleeding, yet there were flames, too, coming from it and a crown of thorns around it. She writes, “He told me to behold His heart which so loved humanity. Then He seemed to take my very heart from me and place it there in His heart. In return He gave me back part of His flaming heart.”

St. Margaret Mary received not just a vision, but a command. Our Lord charged her with making known the powerful devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which today has spread throughout the world. 

The message of the Sacred Heart is powerful. It is the message, that Jesus’ Heart—the heart of God—burns with love for sinners, and so he calls sinners to repent—to turn away from their sin—so that their hearts might be set afire like His. 

The message of the Sacred Heart addresses two errors of the spiritual life. On one hand, there is the temptation to see oneself as a hopeless sinner unworthy of God’s love, to see God as a task master who demands the rigid observance of the law or else he will send you to the eternal hell-fires. On the other hand, there is the temptation to explain away sin, to claim that since God’s mercy is so great, we really don’t have to put in that much effort to reform our lives: that it doesn’t really matter what we believe or what we do.

Rather, the devotion to the Sacred Heart shows us that we are loved intensely by God, his love for us is a fiery furnace. But because we are so loved, we must respond to God by seeking purification of all that is unlovable in us, the selfishness, impurity, pride, error, and hardheartedness.

May the message which St. Margaret Mary faithfully made known—the message of the love of the heart of Jesus—resound in our lives—that all of our selfishness may be burned away—that we may be set aflame with love for our fellow man and concern for his eternal well-being, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

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In reparation to the Sacred Heart for all sin and all blasphemy.

For an increase in faith, hope, and love for all Christians.

That our children and young people may be kept safe from the poisonous errors of our culture, and that their families may be places where the faith is practiced and cherished.

For all those whose love for God has grown cold, who have fallen into moral laxity or despair of the mercy of God, for all souls in danger of hell, for their conversion and the conversion of all hearts.

For all the needs of the sick and the suffering, the homebound, those in nursing homes and hospitals, the underemployed and unemployed, victims of natural disaster, war, and terrorism, for all those who grieve the loss of a loved one, and those who will die today, for their comfort, and the consolation of their families.

For the repose of the souls of our beloved dead, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, for the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, for the deceased priests and religious of the diocese of Cleveland, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom.

Gracious Father, hear our prayers, and through the infinite mercy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, grant us what we truly need, through the same Christ our Lord.

Saturday before Ash Wednesday 2022 - Our Lady, Refuge of Sinners

On this final Saturday of Septuagesima, on the verge of the penitential season of Lent, I’d like to consider briefly one of the titles of Our Lady from the Litany of Loreto: Our Lady, Refuge of Sinners.

This title of Our Lady inspires confidence in us who are in need of God's mercy. As St. Louis Marie de Montfort says: "If we fear to go directly to Jesus Christ, our God, whether because of His infinite greatness, or because of our vileness, or because of our sins, let us boldly implore the aid and intercession of Mary, our Mother. She is good, She is tender, She has nothing in Her austere and forbidding, nothing too sublime and too brilliant. In seeing Her, we see our pure nature. She is not the sun, which by the brightness of its rays blinds us because of our weakness; but She is fair and gentle as the moon (Cant. 6:9), which receives the light of the sun, and tempers it to make it more suitable to our capacity" 

And yet, we know that God is merciful and full of compassion, so when we turn to Our Lady with that consoling title, "Refuge of Sinners," we see in Her one who loves the lost sheep, as God loves them. Our Lady loves us because God loves us. And she intercedes continually that not one of us may be lost. She is our refuge, our advocate, because God wants us to come to Him through Her, since every grace He gives us is given through Her hands. 

The tender arms of Our Lady are opened to all of us poor sinners, so much that St. Bonaventure said that "Mary embraces with motherly love even such a sinner as is despised by all the world, and ceases not to embrace him until he is reconciled with his Judge." 

As the members of the Church acknowledge our sins this Lent, we turn to our Lady, seeking refuge in the folds of her mantle, where we plead with our Mother to teach us how to repent well, to be reconciled well with God, to be open to the conversion God desires for us. 

Our Lady, Refuge of Sinners, pray for us, that we may become worthy of the promises of Christ, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

4th Week of OT 2018 - Tuesday - Loving your enemies

King David’s behavior, his grief is somewhat confusing. Absalom was a usurper. He killed his brother Amnon. He had stolen the loyalty of David’s army and countrymen. You would think that David would rejoice at the news of Absalom’s death, that he would heap praise upon the soldiers who killed this anti-king.

And yet, we see David cry out with grief, “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you.”

Intimations of Christ-like forgiveness are found in this story—Christ who chose to die for us when we were worthy of death.

We are Absalom, guilty of usurpation, seizing what did not belong to us; we are Adam and Eve grasping at the forbidden fruit, as if divinity could be gained through disobedience.  We are Cain, jealous of our brothers favor. We are Israel worshiping false idols even after it is clear that God had intervened in our history.

We made ourselves into the enemies of God by virtue of sin. How absolutely mind-blowing, ego-shattering to consider that God chose to become man to die, not for his friends, but for his enemies. Paul write to Rome, “Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

So when, Our Lord teaches us that we must not hate, but love our enemies, he’s not just saying that we are simply to refrain from killing them, but that perhaps we would be willing to die for them, like David desired to die for his son Absalom, like Jesus desired to die for us.

This sort of Christ-like love for our enemies makes most of us quite unsettled. And it should, because most of us have a lot of converting still to do. But no doubt, true joy is found in the conversion of our hearts from hardness to Christ-like love.

We do well to ask the Lord to teach us the meaning of love, to give us the desire to love, not simply our friends, but our enemies, for the stranger, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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That all members of the Church may live out their baptismal call with greater conviction and faithfulness, and turn to the Lord in their sins with sincere contrition.

During this Catholic Schools Week, we continue to pray for all students, for their openness to knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, and for their teachers ability to educate.

For parents, the first teachers of their children, and for a strengthening of all families in faith.  We pray to the Lord.

For all the needs of the sick and the suffering, the homebound, those in nursing homes and hospitals, the underemployed and unemployed, immigrants and refugees, victims of natural disaster, war, and terrorism, for all those who grieve the loss of a loved one, and those who will die today, for their comfort, and the consolation of their families.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers, we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to the supplications of those who call on you. Through Christ our Lord