Serve Christ in the poor

Saint Gregory Nazianzen

(Bishop and Father of the Church)

An excerpt from Oration 14: On Love of the Poor

Lent, the Third Week: Saturday

Blessed are the merciful, because they shall obtain mercy, says the Scripture. Mercy is not the least of the beatitudes. Again: Blessed is he who is considerate to the needy and the poor. Once more: Generous is the man who is merciful and lends. In another place: All day the just man is merciful and lends. Let us lay hold of this blessing, let us earn the name of being considerate, let us be generous.

Not even night should interrupt you in your duty of mercy. Do not say: Come back and I will give you something tomorrow. There should be no delay between your intention and your good deed. Generosity is the one thing that cannot admit of delay.

Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the needy and the homeless into your house, with a joyful and eager heart. He who does acts of mercy should do so with cheerfulness. The grace of a good deed is doubled when it is done with promptness and speed. What is given with a bad grace or against one’s will is distasteful and far from praiseworthy.

When we perform an act of kindness we should rejoice and not be sad about it. If you undo the shackles and the thongs, says Isaiah, that is, if you do away with miserliness and counting the cost, with hesitation and grumbling, what will be the result? Something great and wonderful! What a marvellous reward there will be: Your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will rise up quickly. Who would not aspire to light and healing?

If you think that I have something to say, servants of Christ, his brethren and coheirs, let us visit Christ whenever we may; let us care for him, feed him, clothe him, welcome him, honor him, not only at a meal, as some have done, or by anointing him, as Mary did, or only by lending him a tomb, like Joseph of Arimathaea, or by arranging for his burial, like Nicodemus, who loved Christ half-heartedly, or by giving him gold, frankincense and myrrh, like the Magi before all these others.

The Lord of all asks for mercy, not sacrifice, and mercy is greater than myriads of fattened lambs. Let us then show him mercy in the persons of the poor and those who today are lying on the ground, so that when we come to leave this world they may receive us into everlasting dwelling places, in Christ our Lord himself, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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FEAST(in Archdiocese of Philadelphia) Saint Katharine Drexel

“But they did not listen to me, nor did they pay attention. They walked in the stubbornness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me.” (Jeremiah 7:24.)

Saint Jerome offers the following insight on this verses from today’s First Reading:

“When I said, “Hear my voice and I will be your God,” “they did not listen or incline their ears” but followed the desires of their own hearts and, contrary to the principle of the apostle, who forgot what was in the past and strived for what lay before him, they did the opposite, pining for the past and despising the future. He also reports that they acted offensively against the Lord “from the day on which their ancestors left the land of Egypt until the present time.” Hence, the grace of the gospel was necessary to save them, not due to their own merits but to the Lord’s mercy.” (Six Books on Jeremiah, 2.)

Collect

God of love,
you called Saint Katharine Drexel
to teach the message of the Gospel
and to bring the life of the Eucharist
to the Native American and
African American peoples;
by her prayers and example,
enable us to work for justice
among the poor and the oppressed,
and keep us undivided in love
in the eucharistic community of your Church.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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Complete consecration of self, body and soul

Saint Katharine Drexel

An excerpt from an Instruction

Feast (in Archdiocese of Philadelphia):
Saint Katharine Drexel

The complete consecration of self, body and soul, is the distinctive grace of our vocation and consists in giving of self to God by an act of love which embraces our entire being and our whole life, and in acting thenceforth in the spirit of our consecration. We should strive to be unreservedly submissive to the holy will of God in all that concerns us in the present and in the future; to be instruments conducted to our Lord alone, who will manifest his will by the directions of those in authority, the movements of his grace and the occurrences of each instant.

Let us profit of Holy Mass to address to God our ardent prayers to draw upon ourselves and upon the Indian and Black peoples the graces that will save them (us), uniting ourselves to the Adorable Victim in the Holy Sacrifice: “By Him, with Him and in Him,” let us offer to the Blessed Trinity the homage of praise, reparation, thanksgiving and supplication to the Infinite Majesty of God.

“Ask and you shall receive,” is the exhortation of our Lord. We see the practical demonstration of this in his own life, for when he sat weary by the well of Jacob, hot and tired, he condescended to ask a Samaritan woman to give him to drink, but immediately leads her to ask of him the “living water.” All-powerful as he was, and thirsting for her salvation, he, the divine Word, would not give her the “living water” unless she asked it of him. We know him and are enabled by faith to pierce the veil and ask of him the “living water.” Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament yearns no less now to give this “living water” to souls like that Samaritan woman.

Therefore, we pray for ourselves, for the community, for all its works: for the graces that will enable you to carry the teachings of our Lord to the Indian and Black Peoples; graces that will cause your word to fructify; graces that will make of you apostles imbued with a lively faith to animate those with whom you come in contact, and with an ardent love of God to enable you not only to love him personally, but to bring others to participate in this love for him.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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LENT Lent 3: Wednesday

“Now therefore, Israel, hear the statutes and ordinances I am teaching you to observe, that you may live, and may enter in and take possession of the land which the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 4:1.)

Origen of Alexandria (part 2 of Pope Benedict’s reflections on Origen) comments on this verse from the Second Reading proclaimed at Mass today:

“See what we are generally taught about God: “God is not as a man to be deceived nor as the son of man to be threatened,” and we learn that God is not as man. But other texts say that God is as a man: “For the Lord your God has taught you as a man teaches his son,” and again, “As a man he takes on the manners of his son.” Hence, wherever the Scriptures speak theologically about God in relation to himself and do not involve his plan for human matters, they teach that he is “not as a man.” For “there will be no limit to his greatness,” and “he is more feared than all of the gods,” and “praise him, all you angels of God; praise him, all his hosts; praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all stars and light.” You can find many other passages in the sacred Scriptures to which you can relate the words “God is not as a man.”” (Homily 18)

Collect

Grant, we pray, O Lord,
that, schooled through Lenten observance
and nourished by Your word,
through holy restraint
we may be devoted to You with all our heart
and be ever united in prayer.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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LENT — The Lord’s Day — Week 3: Sunday Pondering Jesus’ victorious Word

εὐαγγελίζω (euaggelizo)
“to announce the Good News of victory in battle”

“Some people told Jesus about the Galileans
whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Do you think that because these Galileans
suffered (πεπόνθασιν, peponthasin from πάσχω, páschō) in this way
they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?
By no means!
But I tell you, if you do not repent (μετανοῆτε, metanoete),
you will all perish as they did!
Or those eighteen people who were killed
when the tower at Siloam fell on them
do you think they were more guilty
than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?
By no means!
But I tell you, if you do not repent (μετανοῆτε),
you will all perish as they did!”

(Luke 13:1-5.)

θεωρέω (theoreo)
(“to perceive, discover, ponder a deeper meaning”)

Popularly, they seem to be always joined in some form of question or inquiry: sin and suffering. Many people, faced with the unanswerable question of ‘why suffering,’ inevitably say something to the effect, ‘but s/he (or I) is (am) such a good person. Why would God cause this?’ Jesus Himself acknowledges peoples’ popular perception of suffering and sin in the uniquely Lucan reported events of the falling tower and mixing of sacrificial blood. Is Jesus giving an answer to the age-old question of ‘why bad things happen to good people?’ Yes and no ...

When Jesus asked about the suffering of the Galileans, He seems to imply that ‘things happen’ and does not give any further explanation. πάσχω (páschō) is the Greek verb that is translated into English as “to suffer.” Many biblical and linguistic scholars note that πάσχω originally described an event that happened in such a way so as to make an impression on a person. The event, generally speaking, was rather neutral in its significance and was always external; that is, someone/thing external to a person or community. Whether the event was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depended on how it was received by the person(s) involved. What πάσχω conveyed was simply something happening to you (individually or communally) and you had no control over the event. The fact that one had no control over the event contributed to the verb’s meaning eventually to include “suffering.”

What is interesting here is that Jesus acknowledges that ‘things happen.’ These happenings in the vast majority of cases are by no means neutral: they cause untold pain, devastation and death. Why? Jesus does not answer that question and in not answering it implies that these types of things can, do and will happen. So why does Jesus call for repentance (μετάνοια, metanoia)? Why jump from “suffering” to “repentance”? Does not such a leap reinforce the stereotype that all suffering is a result of sin?

Consider the parable that closes this Sunday’s proclamation. One aspect of the parable certainly focuses on growth. There is a reasonable expectation that a fig tree, especially after 3 years, will produce good fruit. For some reason, the tree has not produced fruit and is given another year, but only 1 additional year. In other words, the tree’s existence is fixed within the constraints of time. Not only does the farmer contend with the vicissitudes of the earth when it comes to crops and to trees, he does so within the limits of finite existence. Of course the farmer (and all of us!) would relish the thought that every seed planted would yield an abundant harvest. Yet despite our best efforts at care and cultivation there are events beyond our control that will definitely affect and effect the harvest.

So what do the mixed blood and falling tower have to do with μετάνοια (click here for a previous blog entry on μετάνοια)? Those 2 events, which in many respects are analogous for any number of events, point to the finite dimension of life this-side-of-the-grave. While a part of us wants a life and a world of perfection, we lost that “in the beginning” when we decided it was better to listen to something else rather than the life-giving Word of the Creator. More troubling for our lives though is that we want ‘a god (or gods!)’ that is able to wave a wand or sprinkle pixie-dust that magically makes everything better in an instant. Such is ‘a god’ of our creation and projection, not the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. While we tend to desire a Shangri-La — and a Shangri-La of our creation on our terms — Jesus is clear that we live an existence that is bounded by space and time for the purpose of being ‘in communion with His Father.’ This was and is the plan for each of us from that unique moment “in the beginning.” With the uncertainly of life, each of us exists in a particular place for a particular time to be ‘in communion with God our Father.’ While it is natural and easy to ask ‘why’ when things go wrong, μετάνοια is actually the response to ‘why’ as the ‘things that go wrong’ are a reminder, painful as they are, that our ultimate life and purpose is found within a community and relationship of Divine Persons. Engaging the ‘work’ of μετάνοια enables the false self to be cut away, making room to live freely as sons and daughters in the Son.

Lent Week 3: Sunday

“There the angel of the LORD appeared to him as fire flaming out of a bush.a When he looked, although the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed.” (Exodus 3:2.)

Saint Clement of Alexandria offers the following insight on this verse from today’s First Reading:

“When the almighty Lord of the universe began to legislate through the Word and decided to make his power visible to Moses, he sent Moses a divine vision with the appearance of light, in the burning bush. Now a bramble bush is full of thorns. So too when the Word was concluding his legislation and his stay among men as their Lord, again he permitted himself to be crowned with thorns as a mystic symbol. Returning to the place from which he had descended, the Word renewed that by which he had first come, appearing first in the bush of thorns and later being surrounded with thorns that he might show that all was the work of the same one power. He is one, and his Father is one, the eternal beginning and end.” (Christ the Educator)

Reflection on this Sunday’s Gospel

Collect

O God,
Author of every mercy and of all goodness,
Who in fasting, prayer and almsgiving
have shown us a remedy for sin,
look graciously on this confession of our lowliness,
that we, who are bowed down by our conscience,
may always be lifted up by Your mercy.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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Christ, the model of brotherly love

Saint Aelred of Rievaulx

(Abbot)

An excerpt from The Mirror of Love

Lent, the First Week: Friday

The perfection of brotherly love lies in the love of one’s enemies. We can find no greater inspiration for this than grateful remembrance of the wonderful patience of Christ. He who is more fair than all the sons of men offered his fair face to be spat upon by sinful men; he allowed those eyes that rule the universe to be blindfolded by wicked men; he bared his back to the scourges; he submitted that head which strikes terror in principalities and powers to the sharpness of the thorns; he gave himself up to be mocked and reviled, and at the end endured the cross, the nails, the lance, the gall, the vinegar, remaining always gentle, meek and full of peace.

In short, he was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearers he kept silent, and did not open his mouth.

Who could listen to that wonderful prayer, so full of warmth, of love, of unshakeable serenity—Father, forgive them—and hesitate to embrace his enemies with overflowing love? Father, he says, forgive them. Is any gentleness, any love, lacking in this prayer?

Yet he put into it something more. It was not enough to pray for them: he wanted also to make excuses for them. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. They are great sinners, yes, but they have little judgment; therefore, Father, forgive them. They are nailing me to the cross, but they do not know who it is that they are nailing to the cross: if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; therefore, Father, forgive them. They think it is a lawbreaker, an impostor claiming to be God, a seducer of the people. I have hidden my face from them, and they do not recognise my glory; therefore, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

If someone wishes to love himself he must not allow himself to be corrupted by indulging his sinful nature. If he wishes to resist the promptings of his sinful nature he must enlarge the whole horizon of his love to contemplate the loving gentleness of the humanity of the Lord. Further, if he wishes to savor the joy of brotherly love with greater perfection and delight, he must extend even to his enemies the embrace of true love.

But if he wishes to prevent this fire of divine love from growing cold because of injuries received, let him keep the eyes of his soul always fixed on the serene patience of his beloved Lord and Savior.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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LENT — The Lord’s Day — Week 1: Sunday Pondering Jesus’ victorious Word

εὐαγγελίζω (euaggelizo)
“to announce the Good News of victory in battle”

“Filled with the Holy Spirit,
Jesus returned from the Jordan and
was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days,
to be tempted (πειραζόμενος, peirazomenos)
by the devil (διαβόλου, diabolou)”

(Luke 4:1-2.)

θεωρέω (theoreo)
(“to perceive, discover, ponder a deeper meaning”)

διάβολος (diabolos), translated often throughout both Testaments of Scripture as ‘adversary’ or ‘devil,’ is a compound that means “to throw apart.” It is the opposite of παραβολή (parabole), which can be translated as “parable” or “symbol.” All throughout the Scriptures, διάβολος is an active power working ‘intelligently’ (with a plan) to divide and to separate. Often this active power is a person, who ‘connects’ to or with other persons (Divine, human or angelic) to divide and then conquer. The image that many have of the devil being that ‘bad voice’ whispering in the ear to do something bad does not really capture the horror of διάβολος. The popular image of being tempted to do this or to do that, misses the mark that the work of διάβολος is to separate one completely from the Other and others. διάβολος is about derailing life’s plan in a way that makes a train wreck out of life. Worse still in the Gospel account, διάβολος is the attempt to drive a permanent wedge between God the Father and the loving plan of salvation He has for each person. Here the words of Saint Paul must be the believer’s battle armor: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).”

Consider for a moment when this particular event occurs in Jesus’ life. The Gospel pericope proclaimed today begins: “Jesus returned from the Jordan.” In the Lucan chronology, Jesus had been baptized by John and was about to begin the Public Ministry in Galilee. Between those 2 events stands Jesus’ ‘test’ of 40 days in the barren wilderness of the desert. The Greek verb πειράζω (peirazo), translated here ‘tempted,’ has an array of meanings including “to test,” “to scrutinize,” and “to prove.” Why would Jesus have to undergo any form of ‘testing, scrutinizing and proving’? A response (not the answer) to that question lies in 2 other Books of Sacred Scripture: The Book of Job and The Letter to the Hebrews. In Job, διάβολος is a person whose role is to antagonize God. God speaks glowingly of the people who follow His way of living. The Antagonist says that humans only do that because of Divine blessings received in the form of various material goods. Take them away and humanity will curse God. Thus begins the ‘testing of Job.’ Will he separate himself from God by cursing God for what has befallen him?

The Letter to the Hebrews offers another facet to consider. “In the days when He [Jesus] was in the flesh, He offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the One who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, He learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him, declared by God high priest according to the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5:7-10).” In His humanity, Jesus lives life always attentive to His Father’s Word. He does not list to another (cf Genesis 3) and certainly dialogues with no one who will derail the Mission He has received from His Father. In His ‘testing,’ Jesus lives in way the Father intended ‘from the beginning.’

The Lenten journey is a journey with Jesus to oneness and wholeness, realizing that each of us has abused many of the elements of creation and in so doing have separated ourselves in varying degrees from our Father’s love. We learn from the catechumens and candidates, many who will be ‘elected’ by the local Bishop in dioceses throughout the world during these early days of Lent. They have listened attentively to The Word that has brought oneness and wholeness to them. They have struggled to separate themselves from elements of the world that preclude a loving relationship with the Divine Persons they will meet in Baptism at the Easter Vigil. For those already baptized, we join in loving solidarity with them – knowing sadly that we have permitted separation from our First Love to infect our very beings with promises for false hopes and joys. With the Word of God and the guarantee of Divine Love, may Lent be the joyful season of Grace that plunges each into deeper union with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

ORDINARY TIME Week 5: Tuesday

“Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of the whole assembly of Israel, and stretching forth his hands toward heaven...” (1 Kings 8:22.)

Saint Ephrem the Syrian offers the following insight on these verses from today’s First Reading:

“Now notice that Solomon did not only pray for his people but also for the foreigners and the strangers who distrusted the nation of Israel and were often hostile to it, so that the son of David might show the God of David to everyone in general, by praying for his enemies and by speaking ahead of time for us those future words: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”” (On the First Book of Kings, 8.)

Collect

Keep Your family safe, O Lord,
with unfailing care,
that, relying solely
on the hope of heavenly grace,
they may be defended always
by Your protection.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

ORDINARY TIME Week 5: Monday

“Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the princes in the ancestral houses of the Israelites. They came to King Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the LORD’S covenant from the city of David (which is Zion).” (1 Kings 8:1.)

Saint Ephrem the Syrian offers the following insight on these verses from today’s First Reading:

“The two weeks [of festivity] and the two solemn celebrations were accomplished by the people of the Lord with the greatest joy. The former prefigured the festivals of our church, which Christ began with the mystical dedication of his temple and the transferring of the flesh which he had assumed, to heaven; the latter foreshadowed the last day, the greatest of all solemn days, that will dawn for all saints after the resurrection of the flesh. And the distribution of the ministries and offices in the heavenly and everlasting temple will follow that day.” (On the First Book of Kings, 8.)

Collect

Keep Your family safe, O Lord,
with unfailing care,
that, relying solely
on the hope of heavenly grace,
they may be defended always
by Your protection.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen