31st Week in Ordinary Time 2021 - Cunning as Rogues

 

What a strange parable the Lord employs to teach his lesson in today’s Gospel.

This dishonest steward had been embezzling from his master’s business. He goes to the master’s debtors, who had been delinquent in paying their rent the master, because the master, after all, was an absentee landlord. The steward then falsifies entries in the books so that the debtors would be grateful to him, but also complicit in his fraud. Perhaps he would blackmail them later. And when the master discovers all this underhanded business, he’s actually impressed and praises the criminal mastermind for his shrewdness.

The lesson? The disciples of Jesus are to employ similar cleverness in working for God. Not committing crimes of course in furthering the kingdom, but certainly exercising ingenuity, creativity, and cunning in fulfilling our Gospel mandate.

If people of faith were as motivated and cunning as these strange figures in the parable, how different the world would be.

So we need to be more clever in organizing charitable activity than head coaches in organizing victory for their franchises. We need to be more diligent in disciplining our minds and hearts than professional athletes in training their bodies. We need to be more clever than Wall Street bankers, in storing up treasure, not on earth, but in heaven.

Over and over again people will expend twenty times the amount of time and money and effort on pleasure, hobbies, gardening, sports, and leisure, than they do on their church. And our parish suffers for it, the church suffers for it.

How have we squandered the time we have been given? ? How many wasted hours in front of a television? Or a computer screen? In pursuing mindless entertainment or social media status? How many wasted opportunities for visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, visiting the lonely? How many God-given gifts, have gone unused because we didn’t want to leave our comfort zone?

Isn’t God saying to us, what the rich man said to the steward in the Gospel, “What is this I hear about you? Squandering the gifts I have given you?”

What would my life look like, what would my soul look like, if I planned and plotted with my fellow parishioners, like the steward and the debtors in the gospel today, planned and plotted in doing the works of God?

Let us take serious accounting, and by God’s grace, seek a transformation, a reorientation of values and practices, that our whole lives may be at His service for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

- - - - - - -  

That all Christians may endeavor to put their time, talent, treasure, creativity and energy into serving the mission of the Church. Let us pray to the Lord.

That our young people may be blessed to be raised in faith filled homes, that they may be protected from the evils of our culture, and be granted a firm knowledge of their vocation to holiness. Let us pray to the Lord.

That Christ the Good Shepherd will draw close to all who suffer, the sick, the needy, victims of injustice, and the dying.

We pray in a special way during this month of November for all the faithful departed, all deceased members of St. Ignatius of Antioch Parish, our deceased family members and friends, deceased clergy and religious, those who fought and died for our freedom 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.

17th Sunday in OT 2018 - The Eucharist in God's plan of salvation

Since the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, our scripture readings for Sunday Mass are organized into a three-year cycle.  The first year we hear from Saint Matthew’s Gospel, the second year from Saint Mark, and the third from Saint Luke.  Right in the middle of the Year of Saint Mark, for six weeks beginning this sunday, the Gospel readings are taken from the sixth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel, and we won’t hear from Saint Mark again until September.

The sixth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel is a crucial chapter; it contains what biblical scholars call Jesus’ Bread of Life discourse—the Lord’s teaching about the Bread of Life—the Eucharist.
In the upcoming weeks, we will hear again the Lord teach that He is the Bread of Life, and that all those who come to Him will never hunger, that those who eat the Bread of Life will live forever, and that the bread that he gives, the Eucharist, is his flesh for the life of the world.

John chapter six begins not with direct teaching, but with the story we heard today of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes. This miracle story, sets the tone for the Lord’s teaching on the Eucharist to follow, and contains some important lessons about the Eucharist as well.

The First lesson that we do well to reflect upon is this miracle and the teaching to follow was His idea, the Eucharist is part of God’s plan for the Church, it’s not a human invention. The Lord planned this miracle, he planned this teaching. As the Gospel told us today, “he knew what he was going to do” even before he did it. And so, the Eucharist is part of God’s plan for Human Redemption.

Anyone who has ever thrown a banquet or cooked a meal knows that some planning is involved. And what’s the purpose of the meal, to nourish and to bring people, to bring a family together. The Eucharist is a meal that God has planned for the same purpose, to nourish and to bring the human family together.

Because of Original Sin, the Human Family is malnourished and divided. We keep going back to addictions and earthly, selfish pursuits which don’t feed our spirit. And our enemy, the Devil, loves to keep us spiritually malnourished and divided.

One example, I think of the enemies tactics is how he has attacked the family meal. One of the saddest sights is to see a family at a restaurant, at a meal, where parents and children, instead of talking to each other, they are using their mobile devices. Use of cell phones, books, other distractions, have no place at the Christian table. (That goes for Mass too, by the way) Why? Because they keep the family from communicating, from communion, with each other. And they keep us from prayer, from communicating, and communion, with God.

So, the Eucharist, is part of God’s plan, for reconciling fallen humanity with himself, and with each other.

Secondly, from the Gospel story, we see derive another important lesson. We see God doing somethings for us we cannot do for ourselves. The crowds who followed Jesus had no food, the disciples had no money to buy food, the five loaves and two fish were not enough to do the job, the people couldn’t feed themselves and on their own the apostles were helpless to meet the needs of the people.

Some very poor scripture scholars argue that actually the people had plenty of food, but they didn't want to share it—that the real miracle is that somehow Jesus, by sharing what he had, convinced them all to do the same thing. Such an insinuation is nonsense, it distorts the biblical data.
The fact that Jesus really did multiply the loaves and fish is emphasized by today's First Reading, where the prophet Elisha performed a similar miracle for a hundred people. Only the power of God was sufficient to meet the needs described by these passages of the Bible.

It reminds us of another Old Testament passage where only God’s power was sufficient: when he sent the Israelites manna in the desert. That too was a foreshadowing of the Eucharist, the true bread from heaven, as next week's Gospel passage will remind us. If Jesus hadn't intervened with his miracle, those people would have gone hungry; they needed bread, and only Jesus could give it to them.

The same thing goes for us today. Heaven is not reachable by human effort alone. Sinful man cannot redeem himself. Divided humanity cannot unify itself. We need God. Sinful man needs a Divine Savior, spiritually malnourished humanity needs a Divine Physician. Similarly, with the Mass, no Christian, priest or lay has the power to change bread and wine into flesh and blood by his own power. Only through the Lord’s gift of the Sacrament of Holy Orders can we have the Eucharist.
To live the lives of wisdom, courage, hope, faith, and self-giving that we are called to live, in a sin-infected culture that is like a desert, void of all those virtues, we need God's help.

This is why, from the very beginning to our present day, it is considered gravely sinful to fail to come to Mass when we aren’t hindered by illness or age. Something crucial, something absolutely vital, is missing from the Christian’s relationship with God when we fail to come to Mass as we should.

But also, for those of us who do come to Mass, we also have a responsibility to do our part to open ourselves to the spiritual nourishment, to the grace, of the Sacrament.

When little effort is made throughout the week to pray, to practice virtue, to repent of sin, to prepare our minds and souls for this great banquet, little grace is obtained. I know many Catholics who say, I don’t go to mass because I don’t get anything out of it. When little is put into mass, little is gotten out of mass.

But when you attentively listen to the sacred words of the liturgy, desiring to integrate the wisdom of God’s Word into your life, when you come to Church conscious of your blessings with gratitude to God for them, when you come here with trust that God will give you the strength you need to be holy and to remain faithful to Him throughout the week’s challenges, when you fully, consciously, actively unite yourself to the sacrifice of Christ made present on this altar, and when you come here with openness to being led by the Spirit to work for the spread of the Gospel outside these walls, you will get something out of mass, you will get the life of Jesus Himself, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.