THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY [C] (Dec 26, 2021)

(1Sm 1:20-22, 24-28; 1Jn 3:1-2, 21-24; Lk 2:41-52)

 

On this feast of the Holy Family, let us reflect on the privilege we enjoy, of belonging to the most beautiful family the world has ever known: the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. The Church is our sacred family. This family sanctifies its members by the holiness of its head, the Christ. All the holiness that belongs to this family is conferred by Jesus to its members. Since the head is holy, the family is holy. We say in our creed: I believe in the Holy Catholic Church. We may think, is that really true? We know about ourselves how sinful and unworthy we are. We also hear a lot about other members of the Church who do not behave in manner worthy of this adjective “holy” of the Church. Only those who are not in mortal sin are really members of the mystical body of Christ. Mortal sin separates one away from God and therefore one cannot be in the Holy Church where God is sacramentally present. The Church is the sacrament of God, sign and reality combined.

 

That there are sinners, like you and me, in this family hardly needs pointing out. Nor should it surprise us. Jesus saw his mission as bringing healing and hope to sinners. It is the same for the Church. In Jesus’ day, some sinners welcomed his love, let it turn their lives around, and we know them as saints. Others brought about his crucifixion. When disciples of Jesus sin, we do so in spite of who he is, and against his teaching and example. It is the same today with the Church. We sin in spite of the beauty and grace that make the Church what it is.

This beautiful family is the ‘Body of Christ’ in the world, the ‘Temple of the Holy Spirit’. It embraces and consecrates us in the sacrament of baptism. The risen Christ, through the Church, continually pours into our hearts that Spirit of love that binds the heart of Jesus to the heart of God. He promises a bridegroom and a bride to consecrate their mutual self-giving in such a way that they are a sacrament to each other of God’s love. When a disciple dares to take up his challenge and ‘do this in memory of me’, by offering his or her energy to carry on Jesus’ ministry in various parts of the vineyard, he promises to sustain them by his love and to make their ministry fruitful. He is there to embrace the sinner and to sustain us as our earthy journey nears its end. At every step of our journey, at every turn in the road, he is there, present in his Body, assuaging our hunger and quenching our thirst.

Think of all the beautiful people who are part of our Church family – and it is the desire of the heart of Jesus that no one would be left out. All are welcome, and we are to play our part in making that welcome apparent. The synod that is coming up in Rome in April is meant to take improving actions after listening to all the people in the Church family. This listening is not just from church going Catholics but even from other Christians from different traditions and also from non-practicing Christians. The Church takes it seriously and wants to listen to its children of all walks and traditions. Therefore, for the coming two-three months let’s take some time to think and discuss about how we can make the Church really a family that can grow not only in number but in depth of holiness of life.

 

 On this feast of the Holy Family let us renew our commitment to not only to our own family, but also to our Church family. This includes a searching of our souls to see if, with God’s grace, we can move towards resolving any hurts that keep the family divided. Let us commit ourselves also to work for social and especially church structures that welcome men and women to enrich us by sharing their special gifts. Let us reflect more deeply on the feminine as well as the masculine experience of love as we look to God, our Father-Mother. By baptism we are all brothers and sisters and we are all called to be fathers and mothers to each other as well. We need everyone’s gift, everyone’s love, for we need each other to be sacraments of the fatherly and motherly love of God.

May the celebration of this feast of the Holy Family help us to dedicate ourselves to the well being of our both families: the Church family and the biological family. May the Holy Family of Jesus Mary and Joseph become a beacon light for us in this endeavour.

 

CHRISTMAS Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-16; John 1:1-18

On this joyful evening/night/day, we are celebrating the day of the birth of Jesus. We share the Joy of Mother Mary, we share the joy of St Joseph, we share the joy of the Shepherds and we share the joy of the Angels.

For four weeks now we have been preparing to celebrate this blessed day. Through four Advent weeks we have been listening, reflecting, praying about the expectations of a people that walked in darkness. It was a time of hope, hope expressed in those magnificent messianic oracles of Isaiah, visions of universal peace when there would not only be no more war and not even preparations for war. Spears and swords, instruments of death and destruction, would be turned into plowshares and pruning hooks, farm tools that cultivate the fruits of the earth and give us life.

 It was a time of promises yet to be fulfilled, a time of eager longing and expectation, a time of hope, that this could be a better world and that something great and wonderful would happen to let us know that God continues to be faithful, that God has not abandoned his people, and that God would break into our sad and sorrowful world with proof of a love beyond all expectation. Christmas is the fulfillment of those expectations. However, this fulfillment is not totally here. Though, Christ came into this world and fulfilled his mission of bringing peace to this world, only when he and his message are accepted and appropriated in each one’s life that fulfillment of the promise will remain incomplete.

 

Now, Why did God become man? Pope Benedict in one of his Christmas homilies said here is why.  

In the Credo there is a line that on this day we recite on our knees: "For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven." This is the fundamental and perennially valid answer to the question -- "Why did the word become flesh?" -- but it needs to be understood and integrated. The question put another way is in fact: "Why did he become man 'for our salvation?'" Only because, we had sinned and needed to be saved?

Blessed Duns Scotus, a noted Franciscan theologian, regards God's glory as the primary reason for the Incarnation. "God decreed the incarnation of his Son in order to have someone outside of him who loved him in the highest way, in a way worthy of God." This answer, though beautiful, is still not the definitive one. For the Bible, the most important thing is not, as it was for Greek philosophers, that God be loved, but that God "loves" and loved first (cf. 1 John 4:10, 19).

 

Christ did descend from heaven "for our salvation," but what moved him to come down for our salvation was love, nothing else but love. Christmas is the supreme proof of God's "philanthropy". John too responds to the why of the Incarnation in this way: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever should believe in him would not die but have life everlasting" (John 3:16).

So, what should be our response to the message of Christmas? The Christmas carol "Adeste Fideles" says: "How can we not love one who has so loved us?" There is much that we can do to solemnize Christmas, but the truest and most profound thing is suggested to us by these words. A sincere thought of gratitude, a feeling of love for him who came to live among us is the best gift we can give to the child Jesus, the most beautiful ornament in the manger.

 

The first to hear about his birth were shepherds, poor people, looked down upon by others because, despite the importance of their occupation, it was one that violated the intricate regulations of ritual purity, and so they were excluded from the synagogues and from temple worship. A major theme of Luke’s Gospel will be Jesus’ mission to the poor and the outcasts. He was one of them. He would be rejected by his own. There was no room for them in the inn, so he was laid in a manger.

Interestingly in Saint Luke’s short account of the birth of Jesus this manger is mentioned three times. We are told that Mary laid her infant in the manger. The shepherds are told that it is a manger which will be for them the key to identifying new born saviour. And it is when they reach the unlikely scene of a new-born in a manger that they recognize in this the person of the saviour, the Messiah and Lord.

The manger is thus a sign, not just for those mentioned in the Gospel narrative but also for us. When we look at the manger this evening what is it pointing to in today’s world? The manger is first of all a reminder that God tells us that if we want to understand who God is, then we have to look first of all at the humility of Jesus’ birth. The God of power and might appears in our midst without any of the trappings of what power and might mean in our terms. When we recognize that Jesus is born as an outsider, then we realize that God must be different to what we think.

The mystery we celebrate today is not just a historic occurrence that happened once two thousand years ago. The Incarnation, the enfleshment of the Word of God, is a mystery that is still with us. How does this mystery become real in the lives of each and every one of us?

Listen to what St. Theresa of Avila has to say on the subject: Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.

It’s Theresa’s insight into the mystery of the Incarnation and how it continues in our lives today. After all, as St. Paul so strongly insisted, we are the Body of Christ. Since that is so, then, it is in and through us that the Incarnation remains actual, that the presence of Christ is manifested in our world today.

Since God took on our human nature, we now share in God’s own nature. There is in each and every one of us at least a spark of the divine. How do we best celebrate the birth of Jesus? By accepting so great a gift, by letting that spark shine, by using our heads and hands and hearts to show the world the compassion that was born two thousand years ago but is still with us. Jesus is still Emmanuel.

May the peace, the joy, the love, the wonder that this day celebrates be yours today and every day of your lives. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advent-IV-C:  Mic 5:2-5a; Heb. 10:5-10; LK1:39-45

The wait is almost over. Christmas is only 5 days away. The Church gives us this 4th Sunday of Advent as a last reminder that Christ is coming. The first reading, from the book of Micah, reminds us that Christ is coming. “Bethlehem, too small to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.”

And then the gospel gives us the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary. The wait is almost over, and Elizabeth realizes it. She says: “How is it that the Mother of my Lord comes to me?” There’s a sense of anticipation, someone is coming. And he is The Prince of Peace.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of peace in the world. Terrorist attacks abound. We have shootings in our own country. Evil and injustice can appear overwhelming. But in the first reading today, Micah tells us something more. The reading ends with these powerful words: “He shall be peace.”  When Jesus was born the first message the angels announced was “peace on earth”. Ever since man estranged himself from God, he lost his peace - Peace within himself, Peace with the nature and peace with God. And man’s search for peace continues throughout ages.

A story is told of a child who’s afraid of thunderstorms. One night there was a particular violent thunderstorm. The lightening was flashing outside, and each new crash of thunder sent a shiver down the child’s spine. He huddled underneath his covers, terrified and feeling very alone. During a momentary lull in the storm, he gathered the courage to leap out of bed and sprint down the hallway to his parents’ room. He hurtled into his parent’s bed, and hugged his mother for dear life. She hugged him back, and waited till he stopped shaking. Then she asked him a question. “Why didn’t you pray to God when you were so afraid in your room?” And his answer was very telling. “I tried to, but I needed something with skin on it.”

And when it comes to peace, we need something with skin on it to give us the guarantee that peace is possible. That’s why the promise of Micah in the first reading is so wonderful. “He will be our peace.” Peace is not an abstract idea. Peace is not a beautiful theory. Peace is a person, Jesus Christ, something with skin on it.

Why is He peace? Because, peace means wholeness. If we are not OK with God, then we can’t be at peace with ourselves or with others. St.Teresa of Calcutta used to say: “I’m not ok, and you’re not ok, and that’s why Jesus came.”But in Jesus, in the sacraments that make him present here today, we come to be at peace with God. In the sacrament of Reconciliation, our sins are forgiven and we’re at peace with God. In the Eucharist, we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ and we’re united to God.

 

Peace is a state of mind, and there is no point asking for peace in the world if, at the same time, we are constantly in a war mind state with one another: if we give strangers a bad look, if we ignore other human beings around us, if we argue with strangers while driving and if physical fights break out for the most trivial things. 

We have to make peace within ourselves first, then within our family. Peace with our neighbors and peace with the strangers we encounter outside. Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise or trouble. Peace means to be in the midst of all the chaos and still be calm in the heart. The real peace is the state of mind, not the state of the surroundings. It comes from a mindset that is ready to accept others and serve others.

There is a Chinese saying that goes: “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” For centuries, the greatest thinkers have suggested the same thing: Happiness is found in helping others. “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.” said Winston Churchill.

Gospels present Mary as the perfect example of this. "Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country to visit Elizabeth” When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb and she cried out, “blessed are you among women.”

Mary was an instrument to bring the prince of peace into this world. Today the same mission is given to each one of us. To be an instrument of peace.

Making someone else feel good is more rewarding and longer-lasting than anything else. So building up a reserve of happiness through acts of service could increase our inner peace. And that will be our best preparation to welcome the Prince of Peace.

We may call ourselves true Christians only if our lives express Christ by our own peace. We must never allow grudges to be rekindled in us in any way… may we never risk the life of our souls by being resentful or by bearing grudges.

Am I bearing a grudge against someone? Ask God to free me from that. Am I resentful against God, against someone else, or about a particular situation in my life? Let that go.

And do we want to know the best way to do that? By giving thanks to God. Let’s take Paul’s advice today in gaining peace for our life:  “With thanksgiving, present your petitions to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

 

 

Advent III-C (Zep 3:14-18a; Phil 4:4-7; Lk 3:10-18) 

The third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete [gow-DAY-tay] Sunday, the Sunday of rejoicing. That’s why today’s readings mention the word “joy” twelve times.

In today’s first reading, the prophet Zephaniah says, “Shout for joy, O Zion! Sing joyfully, O Israel.” Zephaniah made this prophetic proclamation at the height of the Jewish exile when things appeared hopeless and unbearable. In today’s Responsorial Psalm (Is 12:6), the prophet Isaiah gives the same instruction: “Shout with exultation, O city of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” St. Paul echoes the same message of joy in the second reading, taken from his letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again, rejoice… The Lord is in your midst… Fear not… be not discouraged… The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all…” Paul was imprisoned when he made this appeal for rejoicing!

In the Gospel today, John the Baptist explains the secret of Christian joy as a wholehearted commitment to God’s way, lived out by doing His will. A sad Christian is a contradiction in terms. According to the Baptizer, happiness comes from doing our duties faithfully, doing good for others, and sharing our blessings with those in need. John challenges people to develop generosity and a sense of fairness, and to use these to give others reason to rejoice. John’s call to repentance is a call to joy and restoration.

 

Advent is a time for joy, not only because we are anticipating the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, but also because God is already in our midst. Christian joy does not come from the absence of sorrow, pain, or trouble, but from an awareness of the presence of Christ within our souls through it all.

We can only rejoice “always” if our joy is based on something that goes deeper than the passing pleasures of this world. What is that deeper thing? Salvation; friendship with God; something that never ends, and something no one can take away from us. That is the source of a Christian’s joy, and that is the gift Jesus brings us. The joy of Christ the Savior is different from the joys of the world in three ways.

First, it doesn't wear out.

This is because it comes from something that is alive: our relationship with Christ. This is why the Christmas tree is an evergreen tree. In winter, the other trees are leafless and dormant. But the evergreen tree is still green and fragrant. The evergreen symbolizes hope amid winter’s lifeless, cold, and dark days.

Second, Christ’s joy gets more and more intense as we advance in our journey of faith.  This is why the vestments for today's Mass are rose-colored.

Third, the more we give this joy to others, the more we will have for ourselves. And this, of course, is why we have the tradition of exchanging gifts on Christmas.

"It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35).

We have all experienced that when we do something for others, even if it is costly or uncomfortable for us, we experience true fulfillment and satisfaction. But when we give into our selfish, self-centered  tendencies, we shrivel up, like Scrooge.

Like the candle-light service on Christmas Eve, by lighting someone else's candle with ours, we lose nothing, and gain more light and warmth than we had before. This is the joy Jesus wants to bring to us: a lasting, growing, self-multiplying joy that comes from accepting God's gift of our Savior.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote: "If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you... Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life.”

If friendship with Jesus Christ is the source of lasting joy, then the deeper and more mature this friendship is, the more fully we will experience lasting joy.

The Church's best spiritual writers, all agree, that this friendship depends on three things: knowing, loving, and imitating Jesus Christ. The fact that we are here today, shows that all of us, at least to some extent, already know and love Jesus Christ. But what about imitating him?

Advent still has two weeks left.

Let's make this our goal: to strive to be imitating Jesus better at the end of these two weeks than we do today. And I think we all know exactly how to make that happen: First of all, we need to start out each day in prayer, because without God’s help, we can do nothing. Then we simply need to make a decent effort to treat our neighbors as we would like them to treat us – family members first, then friends, colleagues, teammates, and strangers.

If we strive to know, love, and imitate Christ just a little bit better each day, our friendship with him will never grow cold, and, little by little, our lives will become true fountains of Christian joy. May the rest of the advent season keep us in earnest efforts to deepen our friendship with Christ.

DECEMBER 9: FEAST OF the IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (Gn 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38)

 Some non-Catholic Christians criticize Catholics for our devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. They are afraid that celebrations like today's take away glory from Jesus Christ, the one Lord and Savior.  They are afraid that because we give so much veneration and respect to Jesus' Mother, we will fail to give enough respect to Jesus himself. But those are foolish fears. Have you ever known anyone who resented compliments being given to his mother? 

Jesus himself, in fact, started devotion to Mary, by choosing her to bring him into the world. After all, he could have become incarnate just by forming himself from the clay of the earth, as he had done with Adam. But instead, he chose to give himself a human mother, to whom he was devoted, following his own commandment to "honor your father and mother." And he passed that devotion onto his Church, by entrusting his disciples to her care while he hung on the cross. [To undermine Mary’s importance in Jesus’ life and the Church her opponents say Mary had other sons besides Jesus. And to support their position they quote Mk. 6:3: “Isn’t this Carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him.” If these were Jesus’ siblings, where were they, when Jesus was dying on the cross. Of these siblings of Jesus who are mentioned in the above verse two  are mentioned as another person’s children in the same gospel. Mk. 15:40: Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdelene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph. So it is highly likely that they were cousins of Jesus. And if they were real blood brothers of Jesus, he did not do right when he gave his mother over to John hanging from the cross. How could Jesus give their mother over to someone to be cared by. And the tradition says Mary stayed with John in Ephesus rest of her life.]

True devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary does not distance us from Christ; it brings us closer to him. Today's celebration is a perfect example of how that happens.

Today we commemorate and celebrate two things: first, the conception of Mary in her mother's womb; and second, the dogma (officially defined in 1854 by Pope Pius IX, after being believed and celebrated by the whole Church for centuries) explaining that, that conception was "immaculate", that Mary was protected from the stain and effects of original sin from the very first moment of her existence. Why did God give Mary such a unique privilege?  Because of Christ, and because of us. And I explain only the first one today.

First, because of Christ.

In the Old Testament, God commanded Moses to take great pains in the proper construction of the Ark of Covenant, the sacred container in which the people of Israel preserved three things: the stone slabs with the Ten Commandments chiseled on them; some of the manna that God had miraculously sent from heaven to feed the Israelites during their forty-year sojourn in the desert; and the staff of Aaron, Moses' brother, the high priest of Israel.

The Old Covenant was a preparation for the New Covenant. And so, these items, Israel's most precious possessions, all symbolized Christ.

Jesus himself is God's Word, more truly and fully than the cold stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.

His real presence in the Eucharist makes him the real bread from heaven. [than the manna in the desert. Manna came in the form of dew and that is why in the second Eucharistic prayer when the Epiclesis or the prayer of inviting the Holy Spirit says, like the dew from on high] His perfect sacrifice on the cross made him the definitive high priest of human history.

Now if the items inside the Ark of the Covenant foreshadowed Christ, what was foreshadowed by the Ark itself, the container of those items? It foreshadowed Mary, whose womb became the Ark, the container, of the New Covenant.

And God had commanded the Israelites to give special construction to the Ark of the Old Covenant. They had to make it out of acacia [uh-KAY-shuh] wood, which, like cedar wood, doesn't corrupt with age. And they also had to cover the entire Ark, inside and out, with gold - the most valuable and stainless metal known to the ancient world. These special requirements for the Ark reflected the unique importance of what the Ark contained: the Ark was the sign of God's presence among his people.

When the Old Covenant symbols gave way to the New Covenant reality, God himself prepared the Ark of the New Covenant, Mary, Jesus' Mother, just as carefully has he had commanded the old one to be prepared.

He allowed her to be conceived in the normal way, but without inheriting the stain or the effects of original sin - pure and sinless, immaculate, like acacia wood and gold.

This privilege stemmed not from her greatness, but because of the incomparable greatness of what she would contain: Jesus Christ, God himself, our Savior.

That's the first reason for the Immaculate Conception - because of Christ, to give him a fitting mother. 

The Immaculate Conception was God's way of giving Jesus a worthy mother on earth, and of giving us a worthy mother in heaven.

We should thank him for this great gift, and the best way to do that is to follow in our mother's footsteps, answering every call that God sends to our hearts and consciences in the same way that Mary answered her call, by saying: "May it be done to me according to your word."

At the first miracle at Cana, Mary said to waiters, “Do whatever he tells you”. This is what she continues to tell everyday to us. And let’s pay attention to what Jesus tells us today. 

 

ADVENT II [C]: Bar.5:1-9; Phil. 1:3-6, 8-11; Lk. 3:1-6

Let me begin with a quiz. Who was the tetrarch of Abilene? You will have to look back the reading again if you want to answer that. Why did St Luke put out a list of names and places that seem pretty irrelevant to us? Twenty centuries after the fact, we are interested in Jesus, not in tetrarchs and obsolete geography. But these details reveal something crucial about Jesus: he is not an abstract God. He weaves his action and presence into the fabric of ours. He is not a myth. Some people today try to attack Christianity by saying Jesus was not a historical person. To them these historical facts which Luke mentions in this gospel cannot be disproved. Or the Historical records of Jewish historian Josephus or Greek Historian Tacitus mentions Jesus as someone who lived and was crucified during the time of Pontius Pilate. Bart Ehrman, an agnostic, but a noted N.T Scholar and used to be professor at Chapell Hill, North Carolina, though he rejects the virgin birth of Christ, he strongly defends the historicity of Christ.

Jesus takes up his stance on the crossroads of everyone’s personal history and addresses us there. Jesus Christ is a God who wants to be involved in our lives; he wants our friendship. Pope Benedict XVI made this same point during an Advent speech in 2006: “In these days the liturgy constantly reminds us that ‘God comes’ to visit his people, to dwell in the midst of men and women and to form with them a communion of love and life: a family”

In today’s Second Reading, St Paul makes the same point in one of the most memorable, beautiful, and powerful phrases of the entire New Testament:

“"I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus."

God doesn't create us and then forget about us, like some kind of divine architect or watchmaker. He gives us the gift of life, and then he accompanies us, gently trying to guide us into a deeper and deeper friendship with him, never giving up on us. Nothing about our lives is indifferent to him, because we aren’t indifferent to him.

Maybe the most glaring evidence of God's desire to be involved in our lives is the sacrament of the Eucharist. Every Mass, when Jesus becomes truly present in the Eucharist, is like another Bethlehem, another Christmas.

Through the Eucharist, Jesus continues to accompany and nourish his people, staying involved in their lives, even in the most unlikely of places.

We all believe that God wants to be involved in our lives. And yet, sometimes it feels as if he is pretty far away. Sometimes, in the face of economic difficulties, sickness, and so many other kinds of suffering, it seems hard to find him. But we can actually get better at finding God's hand in all things, even our crosses, if we do three things. First, we need to have an honest, regular prayer life. Too often we only pray to God when we are in trouble.

We need to recommit ourselves to daily, personal prayer, even if it's only for 10 or 15 minutes. If we learn to converse with God every day, we will be much more likely to hear his voice on the terrible days.

Second, we need to take the crucifix seriously. It is no coincidence that the crucifix is the central image of our religion. God chose to save us by sharing in human suffering. We need to look often at the crucifix, and contemplate it, and teach ourselves to remember that suffering is not outside of God's plan of salvation, but an essential part of it.

And third, we need to help others carry their crosses. The devil's favorite tactic is to make us think so much about ourselves that we lose sight of the bigger picture. When we go out of our comfort zone to support, console, and encourage those who are suffering even more than we are, we break the devil's spell.

This week, if each of us chooses just one of those three tactics, I can guarantee that we will all gather again for Mass next week having had a deeper experience of God's involvement in our lives. And along with that experience will come a bigger share of Advent joy. He wants to come again spiritually this Christmas, to let us experience more fully the grace of his salvation.

And he will come again at the end of history to bring his plan of salvation to its final fulfillment. This is our God, a God who is lovingly and powerfully involved in our world and our lives.

Today’s First Reading also reminds us that we should rejoice because we are “remembered by a caring God.”

As we continue with this Advent Mass, we should thank God for reminding us of his action in our lives, of his goodness and power.

Maybe, part of our preparation for Christmas can be spreading the good news, being living signs of God's involvement in the world, reminding others that God wants to be involved in their lives, no matter what they may have done, just as God has reminded us.

 

 

 

 

Advent I [C]: Jer 33:14-16; Thes 3:12–4:2; Lk 21:25-28,34-36

We have reached a new beginning, the first Sunday of a new liturgical season, Advent, Year C. Every year the Church leads us through the different liturgical seasons. The first season is Advent, followed by Christmas. After Christmas we have a few weeks of what is called Ordinary Time. Then we begin the season of Lent, which leads into the Easter season. And with Pentecost, we get back into Ordinary time, 34 ordinary Sundays. Each one of these liturgical seasons has its own meaning, and along with its meaning, it has its own characteristics. Why do we have to revisit the same celebrations and seasons every single year?

The Catholic Church is a wise spiritual mother, guided by the Holy Spirit, and the liturgical seasons are an expression of this wisdom. The seasons are designed to help us grow in grace. The seasons of the natural world create rhythms of light, temperature, and moisture that enable plants and animals to grow, spread, and thrive. This is why you can tell the age of a tree if you count the rings exposed by a cross-section of its trunk. Each ring is a year, a series of ordered and inter-related seasons. God designed the natural world to work that way. And he has designed the supernatural world, the world of faith and grace, to work in a similar way.

The liturgical seasons help us grow spiritually in a balanced and healthy way, avoiding spiritual staleness and stunted growth. As we go through life, the truths of our faith stay the same, but we change. And so, every time we revisit them, we see new aspects of them. For example, it is one thing for a child to celebrate Christmas and welcome Jesus into the world. But it is a very different thing for someone who has become a parent to contemplate God becoming a little baby. (The Christmas pageant that the Children will put up next Sunday will be seen by children and adults in different angles. A particular character may touch you differently this time not because the cast was your child or grandchild, but the cast spoke to your heart in a different way than it did before). It's the same mystery of divine love, but seen and appreciated from vastly different perspectives. God always has something fresh to say to us, and he says it through our contemplation of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Each event in Christ's life, celebrated through the liturgical seasons, is a flowing fountain of wisdom, and every time we go back to it, we are refreshed and strengthened anew; and we grow in grace.

God has something ready for each one of us during this Advent: maybe a new insight that will make us grow in wisdom; maybe an experience of forgiveness or spiritual liberation that will bring us deeper interior peace; maybe a word of grace that will heal us of an old and festering emotional wound; maybe a personalized spiritual vitamin that will strengthen and inspire us for a new mission he has in store.

Only he knows how we are meant to grow during this Advent. And the best way for us to find out is to cooperate with him, to make a decent effort to do our part. Something should be different in our lives during these next four weeks. Something should be different in our homes, in how we spend our time, in what we think about.

Advent is about the coming of Christ: his first coming two thousand years ago, his future coming at the end of history, and his present coming in our lives today. Our job during this month before Christmas is to focus our attention on that, to pray about it, to reflect on it, to let it touch our lives. Sister Lynn is suggesting some simple family advent activities that you can do home with rest of your family. Check the bulletin for information, if you are interested, how to access it. Advent calls all of us to take a deep look into our way of life and make necessary modifications as the season demands from us.

Michelle Malkin, the renowned American journalist and social commentator, tells a true story about how she temporarily lost sight of the bigger picture, and how it almost caused a horrendous tragedy.

Michelle, a Catholic mother of two, was living and working in the Washington, D.C. area. She was writing, speaking, and giving television commentary on political and social issues, frequently appearing – and even hosting – the most watched cable TV news stations, and publishing her articles in the most read print and online publications.

People were so thirsty for her point of view that she kept taking on more and more responsibilities. She also began acquiring a taste for the glitz and excitement of life in the spotlight. She was always in fifth gear, enjoying notable professional success, but spending less and less time with her family. One day she was driving home between shows. Her neighbors’ children were playing in the yard, and as she pulled her SUV into her steep driveway, she saw her son’s face in the living room window. She was so eager to get inside and be with her son that when she turned off the engine she forgot to set the parking brake. As she made it into the living room, her SUV had started rolling backwards down the steep driveway, heading right towards her neighbors’ children. By the time she ran back outside, it was too late; the car was gathering speed and she couldn’t do anything but watch in horror.

At the last second, the large vehicle collided with the trunk of a young, little birch tree, which stopped it. The sound of the collision caught the children’s attention, and only then did they realize the danger they had been in. Michelle described later how this experience was a wake-up call. It made her realize that the pace and priorities of her life were out of whack. It sparked a family decision to relocate and radically restructure how they used their time, before it was too late. We may not be television personalities, but we live in the same frenetic culture that had begun to unravel Michelle Malkin’s life.

The liturgical seasons are regular wake-up calls, scheduled by God himself for resetting our priorities. We don’t have to wait until tomorrow to start our Advent activities: we can start right now, with this Mass. Christ will come to us during this Mass, faithfully entering into our lives through the Eucharist, just as he entered into the world at the first Christmas. Let’s make sure he finds plenty of room in our hearts and lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHRIST THE KING (Dn 7:13-14; Rv 1:5-8; Jn 18:33b-37)

We just listened to one of the Bible’s best known phrases, Jesus said: I am a king and for this I was born and for this I came into this world. Jesus affirms that he is a king, but he also affirms that his kingdom does not “belong to this world.” Since it does not belong to this world, it will outlast this world.

It was important for Jesus to mention this when Pilate questioned him, because Pilate was worried that Jesus was trying to organize some kind of political rebellion against the Roman Empire. And Jesus explains that he was not. But if Jesus is not a political king, what kind of king is he? If his kingdom is "not of this world," what kind of kingdom is it?

On the Solemnity of Christ the King in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI explained the answers to these questions:

"[Jesus] did not come to rule over peoples and territories," the Pope pointed out, "but to set people free from the slavery of sin and to reconcile them with God."(This is the major difference between Christianity and Islam. Islam came to conquer countries and peoples by sword).

Ever since, the original sin, this fallen world has been enslaved to selfishness and got separated from God.  By throwing off God's rule, we made ourselves into followers of the very first rebel against God: the devil.

Jesus came to save us, by bringing the light of truth back into our darkened, confused world. And what is that truth, the truth that will set us free from sin? That God is love. By accepting God's love in our life, we accept the antidote to the poison and are reinstated as citizens of the kingdom of God, where Christ is the everlasting King.

 Every king has a throne. Thrones symbolize a king's power and authority. From his throne, a king administers justice, conducts diplomatic negotiations, receives petitions, and issues his commands. The existence of a throne reminds a king's subjects that the king is not just another citizen; he is the ruler, the lord, the sovereign. He has been given the task of guiding his nation the way a ship's captain guides his ship. He has been given the task of guiding his people the way a father guides his children. The throne is the symbol of this unique royal identity.

And the type of throne that, a particular king possess, reflects the type of kingship – benevolent or violent, aloof or compassionate – he strives to live out. Our King, Jesus Christ, the eternal King of life, history, and the entire universe, has a throne that is absolutely one-of-a-kind. No other king in all of human history has chosen such a throne. What is this throne? We all know it.

It presides over every Catholic Church and every Catholic household. It is the sign by which we are welcomed into God's family and made citizens of the everlasting Kingdom. It has been the mark of every Christian since the age of the catacombs. Christ's throne is the cross. Lying on the cross the king promised to save the good thief saying “You will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus on the cross bears witness to the fact that God is not primarily power, anger, or even justice. But Jesus showed, by his unstoppable mercy and his total self-sacrifice, that God's primary identity is love, self-giving, goodness.

God is love –That's the truth that will set us free from sin and lead us into the eternal Kingdom, if we accept it.

Jesus himself gives us the explanation to this acceptance when he tells Pilate, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” With that sentence, Jesus teaches us all, the secret to intimacy with God.

Courageous acceptance of God’s truth, the truth that God is love – that’s the only way to follow our eternal King, and to experience the fulfillment that comes from being a faithful citizen of his everlasting Kingdom.

 

When the angel announced to Mary that she had been chosen to be the mother of Jesus, he said, "His kingdom will have no end."(Lk 1:33) The angel thus confirmed the prophecy of Daniel:

"His sovereignty is an eternal sovereignty

Which shall never pass away,

Nor will his empire ever be destroyed." (Dan 7:14)

 

We are privileged to be citizens of this everlasting kingdom. But the citizenship in this kingdom is not by birth, but it is by choice. The choice has to be made by every individual, that he is willing to accept and practice the precepts of this kingdom. Jesus, not only taught us to love our neighbours, but also showed practical ways as how to express our love towards them.

The greatest manifestation of the new precept was laying down his life for us. We have heard of kings offering ransom to save their kingdoms from foreign invasion. Great quantities of gold, silver and other precious metals were placed before kings to spare their kingdom from attack. But here we have a king who has placed himself in the hands of his enemies for saving mankind. And the thought of his love moved millions of Christians to live and die in order to establish Jesus’ Kingdom on earth. Today it is our turn to prove that we are the loyal subjects of his kingdom. Our love, the values that we cherish, the sacrifice that we make should be credible testimonies to prove our identity as the citizens of the kingdom of Jesus.

In every moral decision we face, there’s a choice between Christ the King and Barabbas. In every situation we need to ask ourselves the question, “What does Jesus, my King, want me to do or say in this situation?”  Does our home life as well as the way we conduct ourselves with our friends come under the Kingship of Jesus?  Or do we try to please ourselves rather than please Jesus? Longing to live as loyal citizens of Christ the King every day of our life, let’s pray today: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” 

 

 

 

 

OT XXXIII: Dn 12:1-3; Heb 10:11-14, 18; Mk 13:24-32

 These words of our Lord were spoken at the very end of his earthly life, just a few days before his crucifixion. And at the end of the age of the Church, Christ will return to bring all human history to its culmination. He actually finishes the discourse by saying: “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.” We do not know, because we do not need to know.

God has seen fit to assure us that history has a purpose, and that it will come to an end. Through the ages, many Christians have become obsessed with the details of how and when this will occur.

There are numerous predictions about the end of the world. The French "prophet" and astrologer Nostradamus (1503-1566), foretold that the world would end when Easter fell on April 25. This happened in 1666, 1734, 1886 and 1943. In 1379, St. Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419), a Spanish Dominican monk predicted the demise of the world in AD 3936. The Jehovah's Witnesses predicted the "end of the world” in 1914, 1918 and 1974. Many more such failed predictions we had seen.  

 Jesus said: "But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it." Hence he asks us to be prepared. None of us are guaranteed our next breath.

God will be bringing things to a triumphant end, and His Truth, Love, and Justice will prevail forever.  But we must always be well prepared to face our judgment because we do not know the day nor the hour, either of the ending of the world or of our own call from this life.  Hence, true disciples are to watch and wait in a state of readiness.  Instead of worrying about the end-time events, we are asked to live every day of our lives in loving God in Himself and as living in others through our committed service to them.  Thus, we will enter into a deeper relationship with God, which will continue when we pass through death into a different kind of life.

 

Through the parable of the fig tree, Jesus warns us all to read the “signs of the time,” and reminds us that we must be ever prepared to give an account of our lives to Jesus our Judge, because we cannot know “either the day or the hour” of our own death or of His final coming. When or how this world will end is of no great importance to us; what is important is that we shall leave this world very soon and our eternity will depend on the state of our consciences at the moment of our departure.

Some modern critics say that Jesus, being so meek and humble, would not have told these harsh things. But in fact, Jesus did say these things, and he said them precisely because of his deep love for us. Christ knows that the battle between good and evil will continue throughout human history. But he also knows that this ongoing battle will provide the opportunity for his grace to spread throughout the world.

 

We profess our belief in these truths every Sunday, when we say “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his Kingdom will have no end.”

Since this is the way things are, it would have been cruel and heartless for Jesus not to tell us about it. Telling us about it gives us a chance to organize our lives accordingly, to build our lives on the everlasting rock of Christ our Savior: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Jesus doesn’t speak about these events in order to scare us, but in order to motivate us.  

It is so easy to fall into a purely natural outlook on life, getting so wrapped up in our daily to-do lists that we forget the big picture, and we neglect our friendship with Christ. Jesus knows that nothing could be worse for our happiness, now and forever – and that is what interests him most. Even his predictions of the end of the world, then, are a reminder of his endless love.

Jesus doesn't tell us when the end of the world will come, because he wants us to live each day actively, vibrantly and fully. One excellent way to do that is to give a bigger place in our lives to the Holy Eucharist.

He is thinking of us all the time, continuing to offer himself as a sacrifice to the Father for our sake. And we can come and visit him at any time, for five minutes or for five hours, sharing our joys and sorrows, begging for his help, praying and meditating, or simply sitting and letting his grace penetrate our minds and hearts. Frequent Holy Communion and frequent visits to the Eucharist help us keep our lives headed in the right direction - in Christ's direction. And if we do that, we will be ready at every moment, for the end of the world, whenever it happens to occur. He taught us, “In the world you have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). Today Jesus is asking us not to take extraordinary measures to face the end of time but to persevere in our faith and trust in him.

 

 

 O. T. XXXII (B) I Kgs 17:10-16; Heb 9:24-28; Mk 12:38-44

 

Two readings today speak of generosity. There are two ways of being generous: the way of the scribes, and the way of the widow. The scribes were the experts in interpreting the Law of Moses, and the Law of Moses was the core of Jewish culture. And so the people of ancient Israel respected and reverenced the scribes. But Jesus was unhappy with them.

Without a doubt, they worked long, hard hours; they were always busy with worthy projects. But, unfortunately, their natural intellectual gifts and elevated social function had gone to their heads. Instead of exercising their leadership as a service to the nation and to their neighbors, they were flaunting it to stroke their vanity, increase their comfort, and enhance their reputation. The higher they climbed, the more they looked down on everyone else. They considered themselves superior because they gave more time, talent, and treasure to the Temple than anyone else. But this was a one-dimensional view of generosity.

The scribes were forgetting that all those external things were actually gifts God had given them in the first place. What God truly wants from us is something more, something deeper: he wants our love; he wants us to trust in him. This is what the poor widow gave to him. She didn’t just share some of her abundance; she handed over to God all of her wealth, saying to him: “Lord, you are my good shepherd, and I will follow wherever you lead.”

The Scribes considered that they were doing God a favor by serving him; the widow understood that God was the one doing the favors. That’s the kind of generosity God wants to see flourish in each one of us: the generosity by which we give to God not just our stuff, but our heart.

This same lesson comes across clearly in today's First Reading. We don't know if the widow who was gathering sticks would have recognized that Elijah was the famous prophet. It is likely that she wouldn't have – there was no TV or Internet back then to spread images of famous people. But even if she did, she had very little reason to comply with his request for a drink of water. A drought and a famine had devastated the country, and she and her only son were on the verge of starvation. She was suffering intensely, she had grave problems of her own, and she had plenty of reasons to lash out at someone who ignored her suffering and asked favors of her. It is in times of hardship and stress that our true character shines out. Her selfless generosity accurately reflected God’s goodness. And God rewards her for it. He showers her with his blessings, proving that she was right to trust in him; that He truly is the Lord of the universe.

God doesn't always insulate us from the sufferings of life in a fallen world, as he did with this widow after she met Elijah. But if we, like her, humbly recognize our dependence on him, and living by generosity of the heart, we will not lose our reward. 

Today when we reflect on the generosity of these poor widows who trusted God more than on themselves, let’s ask for generous hearts and the attitude of total surrender to God and His will, everyday of our lives. That will help us to lead blessed and happy lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 O.T.XXXI-B:Deut 6:2-6; Heb 7:22-28; Mk 12:28-34.

The central message of today's readings is the most fundamental principle of all religions, may be, except Islam. It is to love God in loving others and to love others in loving God.

The scribe asked Jesus to mention one law, but he mentioned two. This was the clearest way of saying that they cannot be separated. Between these two there is a bridge: there is no real love of God without love of neighbor, and no deep or lasting love of neighbor without love of God. (But many love God unawares.) If these two cannot be separated, they are really only one in practice – like two hands. When a person loses one hand he is said to be “half-handed.”

The Church’s one of the most famous examples of this link between loving God and loving neighbor comes from France way back in the 300s, when Christianity had recently emerged from a long period of persecution.

At the time, a young army officer named Martin lived near the city of Amiens. He lived the rough and tumble life of the military, but he had begun receiving instruction in the Christian faith. He was what we call a "catechumen" - someone who was being taught the Catholic faith in preparation to receive the sacrament of baptism. So he knew about Jesus and about the inseparability of the two great commandments to love God and neighbor.

One cold winter's day, as he returned to the city gates on his huge war horse and in his full military regalia, a poor beggar shuffled up to him to ask for money. The man was dressed in rags, almost naked, and violently shivering with cold. Martin reined in his mighty charger when he saw the beggar, and felt his heart moved with sincere compassion.

But he didn't have any money with him. He stared for a moment at the beggar, and then dismounted. He took off his long, thick military cloak and held it in one hand while he drew his sword in his other hand. Then he slashed the cloak in half, and gave one half to the freezing beggar with a smile and kind word. He slung the other half onto his own shoulders, remounted, and continued back on to the barracks, where his fellow soldiers gave him a hard time about his torn cloak.

That night, as he was sleeping, Jesus appeared to him in a vision, surrounded by angels, and - wonder of wonders – the Lord himself was wearing the cloak that Martin had given to the beggar!

Jesus looked with love and gratitude at Martin and said, "It was Martin, still only a catechumen, who gave me this cloak."

The future St. Martin was soon baptized, and afterwards followed his call to serve the King of Heaven instead of the Emperor of Rome, first as a monk, then as a priest, a missionary, and the holy Bishop of Tours.

Truly, our love for God and our love for neighbor are two sides of the very same coin – we can't have one without the other.

True love for our neighbor can't be based on how much we like our neighbor or on how much we can get from our neighbor. Those motivations won't last, and they won't lead us to the true self-giving that Christ-like love involves. True love for our neighbor can only come from a true love for God, in whose image our neighbor is created.

Strict orthodox Jews wore little leather sachets (phylacteries) around their wrists, containing two verses from Scripture. (They still do, when they are at prayer.) One of these verses was, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul” (Deut 11:13), and the other was, “You must love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18).

Loving God with our whole heart is the key to everything in life; because our relationship with God affects everything and everyone in our life.  St. Augustine wrote: "Love God – and do what you like."

 

There is an old philosophical dictum that says you cannot love what you do not know. And that's true.  To love something, we have to know it. And so, if we want to grow in our love for God, which is the surest way to grow in our love for neighbor, the best thing to do is to get to know God better.

Here are two things we can do to know God better.

First, spend fifteen minutes a day this week reading the Bible. The Bible is God's Word - he reveals himself there. Read through the Letters of St. Paul, or one of the Gospels, or even one of the books from the Old Testament (though these are not always easy to interpret).

Second, do a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. When we spend time with him, near the Tabernacle, in silence, in prayerful reflection or even in prayerful reading, he speaks to our hearts. He reveals himself to us. We have our Fall adoration on 12^th and 13^th. It will help us to get into the habit of it and continue it. Besides these two, doing spiritual reading and scripture meditation will help deepening our knowledge of God, leading to love him with all our heart. Taking no effort doing any of these would manifest disinterest, or I don’t care attitude, in knowing God. Let’s make a resolution today to try to increase our efforts to seek to know God and love Him with our whole being.

 

 

 

 

 

 

OT XXX [B] Jer 31:7-9; Heb 5:1-6; Mk 10:46-52 (L/21)

Today’s Gospel explains how Jesus showed the mercy and compassion of his Heavenly Father by healing Bartimaeus, a blind man. Just as the blind and the lame were God’s concern in the first reading, Jesus was concerned with the blind beggar, Bartimaeus of Jericho. Opening the eyes of the blind was prophesied as one of the works of the Messiah: “The eyes of the blind will see” (Is 29:18; see also 32:3). In fact, in the very next scene he is being proclaimed by the crowds as Messiah.

Jesus and his team are approaching Jerusalem where the story will reach its climax with his death and resurrection. In Jerusalem all eyes will be fixed on him, with malevolent intent. In the meantime, Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, having received his sight, followed him to Jerusalem. One of the great ironies of this Gospel passage is that the one man who couldn't see with his eyes was the only man able to see with his heart. This gospel passage is a meditation on the different kinds of blindness.

 

A blind beggar’s misery is compounded: worse than the sum of the misery of a blind person and a beggar. He is totally at our mercy, stretching out his hand into the darkness, unable to gauge our mood, not knowing if we even see him.

Every believer is that man, most of the time. Faith is dark knowledge. Often we lift up our hands in prayer, and we feel no presence of the Other (God); we hear neither a promise nor a refusal. That is the time to remember Bartimaeus. He is placed here in the gospel story as an encouragement for us.

When he heard that Jesus was passing by he began to shout, “Have pity on me!” People told him to shut up, he was making too much noise. But he shouted all the more. “Call him,” Jesus said.... “Cheer up! On your feet, they told him, he’s calling you.” Then, the account continues, “throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.” He came, of course, still in the dark.

Notice that he threw aside his cloak! It was a strange thing for a blind person to do: would he find it again? Blind people have great trouble finding things, they need the world to stay put. See how carefully they place things, caressing them almost. But sighted people are forever throwing things around. In throwing his cloak aside Bartimaeus acted like a sighted man. While all the sighted people held their cloaks and their possession around them with careful fingers, he alone leaped up, threw aside his cloak and ran to meet the Lord.

We say seeing is believing. We put great stress on seeing. “Sight is our principal source of knowledge,” said Aristotle, twenty-five centuries ago. And western culture has followed him particularly in this; it has a marked preference for sight over the other senses. Seeing is believing, we say. The meaning of today’s gospel reading is best expressed by turning that phrase around. Believing is seeing. There is a kind of seeing that is even more basic than the sight of our eyes. That is the kind of sight that Jesus restores.

Let’s again briefly go back to Mark’s emphasis on the seemingly insignificant detail: “he threw aside his cloak. To get at it, we need first of all to understand the role of the cloak in ancient Palestine. It was heavy and thick, and it was also the most versatile item of Palestinian clothing at the time.

It was protection against the rapid and frequent temperature changes, insulation against the harsh Judean winds, and at night it doubled as a blanket, especially for the poorer residents of the Holy Land, like Bartimaeus.

For these reasons, and because St Mark highlights it so clearly, the Fathers of the Church have seen in this cloak a symbol of self- sufficiency, a symbol of our deep-seated tendency to think that we are capable of solving all of our problems on our own. The cloak symbolizes all those things that we wrongly depend on for happiness, that we tend to idolize: good looks, intelligence, athletic ability, money, good education, success, popularity...

Following Christ, obeying his commandments and teachings, means putting these other things – good and valuable though they may be – into second place and trusting that friendship with God alone is the real source of the fulfillment we most yearn for.

 

Matthew (Mt 10:59), says in his gospel: “Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.”  Bartimaeus was willing to “lose his life,” to leave behind his comfort and sense of self-sufficiency, in order to put himself entirely under Christ’s care.

Insofar as we trust him completely and follow him unconditionally, leaving all cloaks behind, we will be able to experience the full power of his transforming grace, as the blind beggar did.

And we, like the blind man, want to see him more clearly; we want to know him, and to know how to follow him more closely – that's why we came today. But to make that happen, we need to leave behind our cloak of self-sufficiency.

Let’s pray the prayer of St. Ignatius today: Lord, grant that I may see you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, day by day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O.T. 29 SUNDAY:Is 53:10-11; Hb 4:14-16; Mk 10:35-45

In today’s Gospel James and John want glory, and Our Lord wants to show them the path to it: suffering for the sake of others. Our true glory comes from the degree to which we give ourselves to others, just like Our Lord.

Today’s First Reading speaks of the Suffering Servant and the fruits of his suffering for himself and others. The Suffering Servant is a prophecy of Our Lord, and the “cup” to which he refers in today’s Gospel is the suffering he knows he must endure for us. [I have seen videos of testimonies of several Jews who embraced Christianity because they read the Suffering Servant prophecy in the Book of Isaiah and its fulfillment in Christ after they came across the New Testament. Jewish Rabbis forbid the Jews to read the New Testament, branding Jesus as a heretic Jew. But when someone reads it they can easily connect the link].

The reading says, the suffering servant gives his life as an offering for sin. And through his suffering, he shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear. Suffering has a purpose in this case: through Christ’s suffering, his followers will receive a long life, the Father’s will is accomplished, and many are justified. No one likes needless suffering. We seek to alleviate it, but it is not needless if it has a purpose. The suffering servant of Isaiah suffers for the sinners.

In today’s Second Reading we see the glory that Our Lord received for drinking the cup of suffering: he became our High Priest by sacrificing himself.

In the Gospel James and John are seeking glory, but they don’t entirely understand the path to it or the kind of glory to be won. Our Lord works with them; he doesn’t simply tell them they’re being ambitious and should focus on other things. Followers of Christ will be glorified if they persevere in the faith, but it’s the Lord who sets the terms as to what that glory consists of and how to get there.

In the kingdom of Jesus the standard was that of service. Greatness consisted, not in reducing other men to one’s service, but in reducing oneself to their service.

 Hannibal Barca was a military commander of the Carthage army in 247 BC. He led a famous campaign in the second Punic War against the Roman army, remaining undefeated until the very gates of Rome. His most famous military accomplishment was the battle of Cannae, where he defeated a Roman army double the size of his. What was the secret of his success?  He was a man who led by example. He would sleep among his soldiers and would not wear anything that made him distinct above his soldiers. He would lead the armies into battle and be the last to leave the battlefield. Even today he stands as a model for leadership.  Real leaders put the needs of the people they lead ahead of their own. So they became great.

 Jesus summarized his mission in one sentence: "The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." According to Jesus, greatness consists not in what we have, nor in what we can get from others but in what we give to others. Jesus thus overturned all our values, teaching us that true greatness consists in loving, humble, and sacrificial service. For Jesus, true service means putting our gifts at the disposal of others. For our contemporaries Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa, greatness lay in the giving of their whole self to the very lowest, treating them as brothers and sisters and living close to them.

 This is the lesson that the church places before us today. This is the lesson that the Saints have put into practice, and achieved greatness. This is the lesson that the world expects from the followers of Jesus.

Every baptized Christian has been called to enter the servant leadership of Jesus. The best place to begin this servant leadership is in our own homes and in the workplace.  We have to look upon our education, training, and experience as preparation for service to others.  Whatever may be our place in society — whether important or unimportant — we can serve.  We should learn to serve with a smile.  This is possible whether we are in military service, social service, law, medical service, government, or business. We get chances to serve others every day.  Nurses serve their patients, teachers serve their students, parents serve the needs of their children, and spouses serve each another and their children as well as their own parents in old age. “Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.” —Albert Schweitzer.

Today, as Jesus puts us first by giving himself to us in this Mass, let's ask him to help us follow his example, by being available to others this coming week.