2nd Week in Ordinary Time 2022 - Tuesday - Interacting with Pharisees

 
In Mark’s Gospel, the conflict with the Pharisees begins early on in the Gospel-- at the beginning of chapter 2. And throughout chapter 2 and the beginning passage of chapter 3 St. Mark details five controversies—five vignettes in which Jesus encounters opposition in the form of disapproval, suspicion, and contention on the part of the religious authorities and even some of the populace. But in each of these controversies, Jesus reveals something about his identity and mission, inviting his questioners to believe in him. 

When Jesus claims the power to heal the paralytic and forgive sins at the beginning of chapter 2, the pharisees calls him a blasphemer. When Jesus and his disciples eat at in the house of Levi, the scribes question his practice of eating with tax collectors and sinners. Next, the Lord’s piety is called into question because he does not fast like others claiming to be authoritative teachers. In today’s passage, the fourth controversy is much like the second and third, it involves food. 

The Lord and his disciples are passing through a field of grain, and while they passed through, they picked heads of grain to eat. The Pharisees condemn the Lord for doing, what in their estimation, appears to be unlawful—picking grain on the sabbath.

Notice, how the Lord neither affirms nor disputes the Pharisees’ interpretation of whether this is actually unlawful work. Rather, he gets to the heart of the matter, by redirecting the conversation to the Word of God—to the biblical story of King David and to the law that allows priests to do God’s holy work on the sabbath. Here, like in the other controversies, Jesus reveals something about himself--he equates himself with the anointed King and anointed Priest who are dispensed from the sabbath law because they are doing the work of the God of the sabbath. Jesus is the anointed Lord of the Sabbath. 

Because of their hardness of hearts, the Pharisees are going to reject this claim. They refuse to allow the possibility that what Jesus is saying is true. That cannot and will not acknowledge an authority greater than themselves. That’s what we mean when someone is acting Pharisaical. They will not acknowledge truth outside of themselves; they will refuse to listen to logical, biblically derived arguments, the wisdom of the ages, the Word of God.

We who have already acknowledged Jesus as Son of God and Lord of the Sabbath, always need to make sure, of course, that we aren’t allowing the attitude of the Pharisee to creep in—that we don’t hold onto opinions that are contrary to the word of God. But, also in our evangelizing mission, we are likely to come across a Pharisee or two. Like Jesus, we are to patiently and clearly explain the Church’s position. We might have to endure some self-righteous mockery from time to time, so be it. We might even come across those who claim to be Catholic, we have strayed from authentic Church teaching, who ridicule us for holding fast to clear Catholic teaching. Oftentimes these Pharisaical, hard-hearted Catholics are harder to convince than those growing up without faith. 

But again, like the Lord, in the face of religious controversy, ridicule, we patiently make recourse to the Word of God in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and pray for their souls, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For the holy Church of God, that the Lord may graciously watch over her and care for her.

For the peoples of the world, that the Lord may preserve harmony among us.

For all who are oppressed by any kind of need, that the Lord may grant them relief and move Christians to come to the aid of the suffering.

For an increase in vocations to the priesthood and consecrated religious life, for all monastics and hermits, and that all Christians may seek the perfection for which they were made.

For our beloved dead, for the poor souls in purgatory, and for X, for whom this Mass is offered.

O God, our refuge and our strength, hear the prayers of your Church, for you yourself are the source of all devotion, and grant, we pray, that what we ask in faith we may truly obtain. Through Christ our Lord.

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time - The priority of the spiritual over the physical

 

Imagine, with you, that you are peter, james, john or Andrew in the Gospel today. Now mind you, this passage is very early on in the Gospel of Mark. You’ve known Jesus for less then a week. You may have heard something about him being called the Lamb of God by out preacher out in the desert, but you aren’t really sure what that means. He’s told you that he’s going to make you a fisher of men, but you don’t really know what THAT means. He’s indicated he needs a place to stay, so you’ve invited him to come to Capernaum, your home town, and just this morning, he did the most amazing thing you ever saw: he walked into the town synagogue, and a demon began hissing and cursing at him, and called him the Holy One of God. He then commanded the demon to be silent, and cast it out, amazing everyone present.

Leaving the synagogue you go to Peter’s house, and Jesus does something else you’ve never seen. He heals Peter’s sick bed-ridden mother-in-law. Then at sunset, his fame having spread throughout the region because of the exorcism, droves of sick people come to him, and he heals them too and drives out even more demons. Who is this person?

I bet it was quite difficult for Peter, James, Andrew, and John to sleep that first night: replaying the scenes of the preceding day, the anguished haunted faces of the demon possessed becoming serene, the deathly ill suddenly regaining health. Questions bouncing around in their head, possibilities for the future. What’s going on here? What does he want from us? Is there a limit to his ability to heal? What’s tomorrow going to bring?

You finally drift up to sleep, and upon waking, He’s gone. Where is he? Where’s the miracle man. Everyone goes out to look for him. He has a lot to answer for, and there will be, no doubt, more people demanding healing. 

And then he says something surprising: he says, let’s get out of here. No more healings today. Because that’s not why I’ve come. I’ve come to preach.

Your first thought might be “come from where?” He’s from Galilee, we’re in Galilee. He speaks with the accent of Galilean. Again, what is he talking about. And what does he mean? Where has he come from? And how is preaching more important than casting out demons and healing the sick? What could be more important than that?

If the first great question in the Gospel of Mark is “who is this person?” The second, is certainly, “how is preaching more important than healing the sick?” How is preaching a greater priority than curing people who are dying? If he has the power to do that, why doesn’t he do that?

Here the Lord intimates the priority of the spiritual over the physical. Preaching the truth of the Gospel is more important, it is the reason he has come. To “preach” in St. Mark’s original Greek is the Greek word “kérussó”—to preach, to proclaim, to herald, to announce, to establish through his Word—the kingdom of heaven. This is the priority: to preach and establish the kingdom of God for the conversion of those held sway by the kingdom of darkness. And in the end, that is everybody. To preach and invite all people of all places and all times to conversion—to faith and new spiritual life though him. 

All those healing miracles, while yes, they show us the love that God has for all the physically sick, they indicate God’s love for the spiritually sick, all of us. Moreover, all those physical healings symbolize on the physical level what Jesus has come to do on the spiritual level. The healing miracles—the healing of the mute, the blind, the deaf, and the leper—are physical analogues of what he’s come to do spiritually. He has come to heal the spiritually mute—those unable to speak the Word of God due to ignorance or fear; he’s come to heal the blind—those who do not see God at work in the world, and those who do not see the dignity of the human person; he has come to heal the spiritually deaf—those who turn a deaf ear to the truth of God and the call of the poor; and he has come to heal the spiritual leper—those who have contracted the deadly spiritual malady of sin that has separated us from God.

Why is there a priority of the spiritual over the physical? Because the spiritually dead will be separated from God for ever. While those who are reborn by grace, those alive in the spirit—they will remain united to God forever, even though they may experience physical death, they will live forever.

Hence the importance of maintaining and nourishing our spiritual lives. Repenting of sin and confessing our sins. Receiving the bread of life, the Eucharist. Engaging in prayer and good works and spreading the Gospel even when there is a physical price to pay for these things. For the spiritual takes priority over the physical.

In less than two weeks, we will begin again the holy and penitential season of Lent, the time of the Church year for identifying those habits, attitudes, behaviors, and attachments that keep us from living for Christ. We identify the physical pleasures and comforts that, however good, we fast from and abstain from, to remember that in this earthly life, I am not meant to live for the physical and the earthly, but to pursue the spiritual and the heavenly. 

I think it is so important for us to be immersed in the history of the apostles and saints and martyrs, because we encounter, in the holy ones, men and women, of every race and age, who have recognized the need to live for God. The apostles imprisonment and  torture to preach the Gospel, and counted it a joy to persecuted for the sake of the name of Jesus. The martyrs of the early Church, like St. Ignatius who when offered the opportunity to save his physical life by offering a tribute to a pagan god refused, as it would violate the first commandment? Would you die for the first commandment. What does it profit a man to preserve his earthly life, or gain the whole world, but lose his soul?

In the martyrs and the saints, the Lord takes very weak and very ordinary people and transforms them into heroes of our faith, again to show us, the importance, the priority of the spiritual over the physical. So much so that Paul, as we heard in the second reading today, counts all things as loss—woe to me, if I do not prioritize the preaching of the Gospel over all else…for if I don’t preach it, I don’t have a share in it. If I don’t preach it, I don’t have a share in it. That line should cause us to do some serious reflection on our priorities, no? If I don’t preach the Gospel, I don’t have share in it. Does my life, do my words, do my actions, does my lifestyle, speak of—does it preach—the Gospel of Christ? Does the way I act in public and private stem from and point to the Gospel?

Paul hints at the radical nature of Christianity. Radical, not meaning not crazy or irrationally zealous, like it’s sometimes used, but radical coming from the word radix which means, root. Christianity requires reorientation to God all the way down to the root of our human nature. Again, this is why Paul, imprisoned, sentenced to die, having spent his remaining days preaching the Gospel, so transformed by grace, is able to say, it is no longer me, but Christ, who lives in me. 

When faith is prioritized over all else, it shapes and changes and transforms all else, into the work of Christ—preaching and establishing the kingdom—just as he did 2000 years ago, he continues this work, through us for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Friday after Epiphany 2021 - Whoever possesses the Son has life

 We are situated this week between the last two great feasts of the Christmas season: the feast of the Epiphany, last Sunday, and the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, in just a few days.  

The early Church saw the Baptism of the Lord as a second Epiphany in the life of Our Lord.  

Where in the first Epiphany, Jesus was revealed as the Savior, not just for Israel, but for the entire world.  This Sunday, we will hear how, as Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, much like the Epiphany Star shines upon the babe at bethlehem, now the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove, revealing even more of who Jesus is. He is not just a human Messiah, he is the second person of the Trinity, the son of the Father. 

As we heard in our first reading, the Spirit testifies to who Jesus is. He is the Son of God.

If he were not, he would have no power to make us clean. The water and the blood would have no power, if he were just a man. 

Our Gospel reading also sheds light onto the Lord’s identity. The healing of the leper reveals that God does not recoil from our sins and diseases. Yes, he is the holy one of God, the most high, he is life itself, immaculate holiness and divinity. Yet, Jesus, the Son of God, God incarnate, reaches out and touches the leper. Holiness itself draws close to us who have lost original holiness due to heinous sin in order to make us whole and clean and full of life again and like himself.

The broken jar is able to be fixed, it is not irreparable; we are able to possess the life of God again. So much so, that John, in the first reading, says that “Whoever possesses the Son has life; whoever does not possess the Son of God does not have life.” God does not wish us to lifeless because of sin. He entered the world, in the poverty and cold of Christmas, so that he may enter more deeply into our very lifeless souls to be our life. 

Today, we like the leper in the Gospel, do well to fall prostrate before the Lord, and plead, Lord make me clean, in all ways, in every way, make me clean, restore me to life, fill me with your life, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For Pope Francis and all the clergy: that they will draw many to the mystery of baptism and inspire the faithful to live their baptismal promises with great devotion. 

For leaders of nations: that they will govern with virtue and integrity, helping to build society in conformity with the teachings of Christ.  

For non-believers and for those preparing for baptism: that they may be open to the grace of conversion and the joy of the followers of Christ.  

For the sick, suffering, persecuted, and underemployed, and all those facing hardships.  

For all those who have died, for all the poor souls in purgatory, for those who have fought and died for our country’s freedom, 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

2nd Week of Advent 2020 - Friday - The many responses to Jesus

Throughout the Gospels, we see many different responses to the Lord and his call to conversion. Some, like the Apostles, drop everything they are doing to follow Jesus—they put their earthly business on hold, even walking away from it entirely, in order to follow Jesus. Some, fall at his feet to be healed by him, some climb trees to see him, some go to extreme lengths to bring others to him, like the men who lower their friend through the roof to get near him.

And then some, we know question him, try to trap him in logical arguments, and try to prove him wrong, to be a fool or liar or a madman. Some, of course, will seek to silence him and conspire against him to put him to death, as they know that his truth is a threat to their worldly power. In the Gospel today, we hear how some called him a drunkard and a glutton, seeking to discredit him.

For the most part, the name of Jesus has spread to every corner of the earth. And as it was in the Lord’s own day, so, too now, there are many responses to him. Some, recognize his truth and make his Gospel the guiding principal of their lives. Some worship him and seek him wholeheartedly and prayerfully, and strive to bring others into his presence. Some wrestle with him, like Jacob wrestling with God, they are aware of his teaching, but they just don’t want to submit; they are seeking the truth but still haven’t arrived there yet. And then, like those in the Gospel, some mock him, seeking to discredit him, so that they can ignore his teaching, and go on with their lives.

We are nearly two full weeks into the holy season of Advent, and our scripture readings challenge us in a way, to consider how we are responding to Him, to promise of His return, to the call to prepare our hearts, our minds, and our souls for Christmas. Are we taking the Lord’s call to repentance seriously, or are we dismissing it, thinking we know better, so we don’t have to change? 

For many in our world, the beginning of Advent has made absolutely no difference in their spiritual lives. Sure they are shopping more, and putting up decorations of Santa and reindeer, but, their preparation from Christmas is entirely secular. For them Christmas is not about Christ, it’s about make-believe, trying to capture or evoke some emotion. Santa becomes a sort of pagan god of winter, rather than a Catholic saint who did everything he could to point others to Christ. 

We do well to examine our response to the Advent call of Christ. Are we running toward him, are we running away from him, are we standing idly, lazily, dismissingly? 

May we, alert and with lighted lamps, hasten to meet him, to know him, love him, and follow him, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the Holy Father, all bishops and priests, religious and laity may shine with the Light of Christ’s love for the lost and despairing.

That world leaders may look upon the Son of God, believe in him, and seek the peace and justice that only he can bring.

For those who have fallen away from the Church, who have become separated from God through error and sin, for those who reject the teachings of Christ, for their conversion and the conversion of all hearts.

That our young people will turn away from the evils of our culture to spread the good news of Christ’s eternal kingdom.

For those experiencing any kind of hardship or sorrow, isolation, addiction, or illness: may they experience the healing graces of Christ. 

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

O God, you 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.

19th Week of OT 2018 - Monday - Jesus reveals his identity and mission

The four Gospel treat the notion of Jesus’ identity in different ways. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus appears very guarded about his identity as the Messiah and the Son of God. For example, when he asks the disciples that famous question, “who do you say that I am?” and Peter replies, “You are the Messiah”, Jesus warns the disciples not to tell anyone about him. Again, after healing the leper, Jesus tells the leper, “tell no one who I am, but go and show yourself to the priest.”

The Gospel of John takes Jesus’ identity to the other extreme. In John, he is very clear about his identity, saying things like, “I and the Father are One.” "…he who has seen me has seen the Father…". Jesus says, “I AM the Good Shepherd, I AM the Bread of Life, I AM the resurrection and the Life, I AM the way, the truth, and the life.”

Matthew takes a different approach from Mark and John. In Matthew, Jesus doesn’t try to hide his identity, nor does he boldly explain it. Rather, he gives subtle hints. He teaches people how he is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, and he also subtly reveals his identity through the many miracles Matthew records. In Matthew, Jesus feeds the multitudes by performing a miracle, he walks on water, he heals multitudes of sick people, he casts out demons. In Matthew, Jesus performs works that no human could possibly do.

Today’s Gospel takes place a few verses after the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain top, where Matthew clearly records the voice of heaven proclaiming, “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him.”
Through all of these signs and actions, Jesus’ disciples came to believe that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, who came to save us from our sins.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus performs another one of these miracles that no one could possibly do, as a way of proving his divine identity. Who could possibly predict that the next fish pulled out of the sea would have money in its mouth, and not only that, but he would predict the exact amount, and not only that, the amount would be the exact amount of money for the temple tax.

Jesus not only proves his divinity here, but also his mission, he comes to pay the price for our sins, that we may have eternal life. His very name, too, Jesus, which in Hebrew means, “God saves” reveals his identity and mission.

We offer this Holy Mass as a way of giving Eucharistic thanks for our redemption, deepening our faith in Him, and proclaiming to the world that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the World, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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That all Christians may be deeply committed to the spread of Christ’s Gospel.

For the Holy Father’s prayer intention for the month of August that any far-reaching decisions of economists and politicians may protect the family as one of the treasures of humanity.

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, deacons and religious of the diocese of Cleveland, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom.

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.