OT XVIII [C] Eccl 1:2; 2:21-23; Col 3:1-5, 9-11; Lk 12:13-21

Charles Dickens in his play “The Christmas Carol” gives the picture of a selfish man, Mr Scrooge, whose sole aim in life was acquiring as much wealth as possible at any cost. He considered Christmas celebrations as humbug, and hated charity. He weighed human relationship against material wealth.  He never bothered to care for his nephew or his employees. 

One night, he saw an unusual figure in his bed room. It was a ghost in chains. The ghost introduced himself as the ghost of his deceased partner Marley. He came to warn Mr Scrooge about the futility of the life that he was leading. He told him that some spirits would come to him and he should listen to their message, to avoid the fate that Marley was suffering. 

First came the ghost of the past. He took Mr Scrooge to his past. He was presented as a young man who did not heed to the voice of his parents; who abandoned the love of a beautiful maiden to amass wealth. The second ghost, the ghost of the present, took him to the church where Christmas celebrations were being held; and to the house of one of his employees. There he witnessed what others thought of him. Everyone hated him due to his over attachment to wealth. The third ghost took him to the future. He was taken to a house where a dead body lay unattended and unlamented by any one. He was curious to see the dead man. The ghost allowed him to see the corpse. Mr Scrooge was shocked, it was his own death scene. 

 Mr Scrooge learned a great lesson that his frantic chase for wealth was meaningless. It would only lead him to eternal misery.  This is the message of today’s readings. 

The author of the book of Ecclesiastes, from which the first reading is taken, was evidently a man of wealth and education. Like every Hebrew of his time he too shared the view that material prosperity was one of the chief signs of God’s blessing and approval. Yet he questioned the assumptions of his society. He declares the truth that “a man who labors wisely, skillfully and successfully, must leave what is his own to someone who has not toiled for it at all. So he asks himself, “What profit comes to a man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?”

 The man in the story of Jesus too is like this. He exhorted himself, “eat heartily, drink well, and enjoy yourself.” He gave no consideration to his end. But God said to him: “fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then?  

We are all familiar with the famous eruption of Mt Vesuvius in ancient times, which buried the city of Pompeii in lava in a matter of minutes. The lava and ash came quickly and in huge quantities, preserving a snapshot of life in that ancient city, as if freezing a moment from the past. When archeologists uncovered the lava-caked city, they found entire families gathered around a meal - buried in lava before they even knew the volcano had erupted; they found beasts of burden standing in their stables; they also found some people who had seen or heard the eruption and were trying, in vain, to run away when the eruption caught up with them.

But according to some records, the very first human remains that the archeologists found were the skeletons of a man and a woman, preserved in their lava shell. When they broke through that shell, they found the skeletons' bony fingers clutching handfuls of gold coins.

The temptation to trust too much in money is an old one - as old as money itself. Today Jesus is encouraging us once again not to fall into it.

St Paul advises us, “Let your thoughts be on heavenly things, not on the things that are on the earth.” 

One very practical way to keep our thoughts on heavenly things and keep money in its place is to sponsor an evangelization project as a family. If the whole family is involved in saving and sacrificing in order to reach a goal of this kind, it constantly reminds everyone in the family that money is meant to be a means to a higher end, not an end itself. For example, a family could commit to save enough money each year to sponsor a missionary priest, or a child in an orphanage run by missionaries, or feeding orphans in an orphanage for one week. Find out early how much it would cost and collect that amount; or sponsor a seminarian during his years of formation, or a certain number of Masses for the souls in purgatory. Or anything like that you can do it directly that your incentive to help the disadvantaged or the church will keep growing.  Together, as a family, you decide your goal, and then make a plan on how you will be able to meet it. You make a poster with a chart on it, so you can track your progress during the year.

And at the end of the year, when you make your goal, you celebrate with a ceremony in which the money is given to its destination.

Another way to do it is to set a more challenging goal and join forces with another family or two in order to achieve it. It also contributes to family unity and growth in faith.

Jesus doesn't want us to spend our lives building barns that we will never use. He wants us to spend our lives building his everlasting kingdom in our hearts and in the world.

There is a wise saying in India: 

Rivers do not drink their water. Trees do not consume their fruits themselves. Clouds do not rain for them. Thus, the wealth of the noble men is to be used for others. 

May the Lord open our ears and minds to understand his words: What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul.

 XVII-OT-C:Gen. 18:20-32; Col. 2:12-14; Lk. 11:1-13

Today's Reading from the Gospel of Luke reminds us of the necessity to persevere in our prayer. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus taught them the Lord's Prayer, the Our Father. The prayer our Father is not just a personal prayer. It is also a community prayer. We do not pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “give ME this day what I want.” We pray, “Give US this day our daily bread.” We are created for community. Our prayer-focus should not be just God and me, but God and US.

 To emphasize the importance of persevering in prayer, Jesus gave the story of a friend who arrived at midnight and the necessity to go next door to one's neighbour to borrow three loaves of bread. Under normal circumstances, it is expected that the neighbour will complain because of the hour during which the request is made. It must be realized that in those days, to open the door meant to remove a very large wooden or iron bar from the door that was shut. To do so was tiresome and noisy. Furthermore, the entire family slept on a mat in the peasant house that was single-roomed. To open the door meant to disturb the entire family from its sleep. However, because of the visitor’s persistent knocking or importuning he would get up because his family would be woken up by that any way. Jesus concluded His teaching by saying that if you ask, it will be given to you; if you search, you will find; and if you knock, the door will be opened to you.

God honors persistence throughout the bible. Abraham in the first reading was persistently praying for the good people of Sodom. He was concerned that God would destroy Sodom if fifty righteous souls were not found within the city. On behalf of a lesser number of righteous soul, even ten, Abraham obtained God's unconditional promise that He would not destroy the city. Even Jesus was persistent in prayer. At the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus left his disciples and prayed three times. Sometimes we feel like our prayers are never answered. We wonder if God actually hears our prayers.  

The parable of the persistent widow offers us some answers. The judge in the parable was a man who didn’t fear God or respect anyone. He was in it himself, for the money and the power. So when the widow asked for a judgment, there was nothing in it for him. So, he was unwilling to help. The widow, however, was persistent, approaching him multiple times until he finally gave in and rendered a just judgment. Unlike the judge, God wants to intervene on our behalf. We are His chosen people, His beloved children. He wants to answer our prayers. What God simply need from us is our faith.

There is a story of the Sea Captain, who in a terrible storm feared the loss of all lives.  He asked if anyone knew how to pray.  No one volunteered.  So the captain, prepared to do a captain’s duty, agreed to pray.  His opening words were, “God, I’ve never bothered you before, and if you help us through this storm, I’ll never bother you again.”  That is hardly what God desires from any of us. Even persistent prayer is not bothering God, but manifesting our trust in him.

When we come to God with our request we often come very casually.  We ask and then leave.  When we do not get an immediate answer we return with the request but more urgently.  The longer we do without what we need, the more we are aware of its importance to us, until like ancient Jacob we say “I will not let you go until you bless me.”  If we really need something from God, we will find ourselves returning again and again.

St Augustine understood Christian prayer better than almost anyone. He had learned all about it from his mother, St Monica, who spent almost twenty years begging God with daily tears to convert her heretical and pleasure-loving son. This experience helped him understand why God doesn't always give us what we ask for right away. It's because he wants to give us more than what we ask for. By inviting us to be persistent, God is stretching our hearts, making them able to receive more grace, the way you stretch out a burlap sack so you can fill it to the brim.

Here's how Augustine explained it: "Suppose you want to fill some sort of bag, and you know the bulk of what you will be given, you stretch the bag or the sack or the skin or whatever it is.  You know how big the object that you want to put in and you see that the bag is narrow so you increase its capacity by stretching it.  In the same way by delaying the fulfillment of desire God stretches it, by making us expand the soul, and by this expansion he increases its capacity."

God never ignores our prayers.  If we keep on asking with sincerity and confidence in God's goodness, we are guaranteed to receive, and it will probably be much more than we could have imagined. When we do not understand why answers to our prayers are delayed, put our hand into God’s hand.  And continue to pray for those things we know to be his will.

Today, in response to Christ's reminder about the nature of Christian prayer, let's renew our commitment to taking time every day to be alone with God, to reboot our souls every morning and evening; so that our lives can run more smoothly, the way God designed them to run.

 

 

 

 OT XVI [C] Gn 18:1-10a; Col 1:24-28; Lk 10:38-42

Today’s reading from the Gospel reminds us of keeping priorities. Jesus visited the house of Martha and Mary.  Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to Jesus and asked, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.' But the Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.' " [Lk. 10:38-42]

There was once a master lion tamer in a famous circus who was a couple of years from retirement. So the circus management and the master lion tamer decided to start training his successor as it would take a lot of hard work and focus for the young tamer to be able to control the lion. From hundreds of candidates, a young student was chosen and the training began.

As the first lesson, the master explained to the student that most courageous lion tamers use only two tools to control the fierce beasts prowling around the cage. A whip and a chair. The young student, surprised, looked at his mentor. The mentor noticed the surprised look of his young apprentice and asked him “Which of the two is the most valuable to the tamer?” The student answered, “Surely the whip.” To which, the master replied, “No. The most important tool is the chair, and more specifically, the four legs of the stool!”

The student just stood there baffled. “A chair,” said the student “that’s odd! But why a chair? And why the four legs?” The master lion tamer replied “A lion can easily overpower, maul and kill a person. However, it’s only easy for the lion to do so if it can focus on a singular object or one person. The lion tamer uses the stool as a method of distraction. The lion, when faced with the legs of the stool, tries to focus on all four at once. Confused, and unable to focus, it stands there, frozen!  The lion tamer remains relatively safe behind the stool.”

When we miss our priorities in life we get distracted. When we get distracted from Him, we are likely to miss His guidance.

If Jesus Christ truly is the one Lord of life and history, the one Savior, the one Way, Truth, and Life (which he is), then, it is certain that "only one" thing is needed for a fulfilling, meaningful, and fruitful life: to stay as close to him as possible at all times. Much more important than what we can do for Christ is what we can be for him, and what he can be for us.

Martha was doing all kinds of tasks, and that was good. But Mary was listening to him, letting him serve her, being his close, intimate friend, and that was even better, "the better part". Friendship with Christ is the one thing needed. Therefore, our task here on earth is to make a conscious choice to shape our lives accordingly, to keep Christ first, to live from his love and for his love. 

Jesus doesn't congratulate Mary because she won the spiritual lottery or had received a particularly beautiful soul from God. He praises her because she has "chosen the better part." She chooses it. She chooses to submit to the Lord, to let him be for her what he in truth already is for everyone - the one needed thing.

Martha, on the other hand, has a divided heart. She loves Christ, but she still depends on her own strength to earn his love in return. She hasn't learned that what matters is not so much what we can do for Christ as what he has done and wants to do for us.

Jesus kindly teaches her in this encounter that the greatest thing she can do for him, the "one needed thing", is to let him rule completely over her heart, to take her place at his feet and listen to his words. 

Every day we are faced with the choice to be more like Martha or more like Mary. This is one of the most amazing things about Christianity. God respects our freedom so much that, in a sense, he leaves our destiny in our own hands. We can freely choose our priorities in life. We can make our own achievements our highest priority, like Martha, or we can make knowing, loving, and imitating Christ our highest priority. Every single time we choose to give Christ and his will priority in our lives, we allow his sanctifying, healing grace to seep deeper into our lives.

Keeping Christ first, keeping his friendship as our highest priority and his will as our greatest desire - that's "the better part". But it is not always easy to do. After sitting at the Lord's feet and listening to his words, we have to go off and live them out. This means living by his standards, standards very different than those of the world around us. It means being honest when everybody else is cheating or cooking the books. It means speaking well of others when everybody around us is gossiping and criticizing. It means staying faithful to our duties and relationships, always giving our best at home, at school, and at the office, even when we get tired, even when no one notices. But above all, it means doing all things because we love Christ and want to follow him.

 

During this Mass, Christ has something to say to each one of us. That's why he comes to us individually in Holy Communion. Spend some time each time you receive Jesus. Like Mary, let's choose the better part and listen carefully.

And let's promise that we will live accordingly during the coming week, having confidence not in our own strength, as Martha did, but in the power of God's grace at work within us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

OT XV [C] Dt 30:10-14; Col 1:15-20; Lk 10:25-37

When the Communists came to power in China, not a few Christians were arrested and tried for their faith. One person was given the opportunity to reveal why he chose Christianity instead of the religion of his ancestors. I was in a deep pit, he said, sinking in the mire, and helpless to deliver myself. Looking up I saw a shadow at the top, and soon a venerable face looked over the brink and said, “My son, I am Confucius, the father of your country. If you had obeyed my teachings, you would never have been here.” And then he passed on with a significant movement of his finger and a cheerless farewell, adding, “If you ever get out of this, remember to obey my teachings.” But alas! That did not save me. Then Buddha came along, and, looking over the edge of the pit he cried, “My son, just count it all as nothing. Enter into rest. Fold your arms and retire within yourself, and you will find Nirvana, the peace to which we all are tending.” I cried, “Father Buddha, if you will only help me to get out, I will be glad to do so. I could follow your instructions easily if I were where you are, but how can I rest in this awful place?” But Buddha passed on and left me to my despair.

Then another face appeared. It was the face of a man beaming with kindness and bearing marks of sorrow. He did not linger a moment, but leaped down to my side, threw his arms around me, lifted me out of the mire, brought me to the solid ground above, then he did not even bid me farewell, but took off my filthy garments, put new robes upon me, and bade me follow him, saying, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” That is why I became a Christian.

As followers of Christ, we can very easily see ourselves in that injured man because we were once dead, badly beaten up by our sins. But we have been spotted by – ‘The Good Samaritan par excellence and our ultimate neighbor, beyond all comparison,’ who healed and delivered us from our sins out of his loving mercy and compassion for us. After he healed us, he entrusted us to his inn, which is his Church, for further spiritual caring and nourishment. And, our Samaritan who saved us is none other than Jesus himself, who said that he will be back someday in the future to take us with him to his Kingdom. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem when he told this parable. It is on Calvary, near Jerusalem, that he was going to take the wounded half dead man on his donkey, ie. the cross, and clean and bandage the wounds and pour wine on the wounds to heal them. This story is Jesus’ own story and he is the Good Samaritan, whom the Jewish leaders despised.

In this story, the Samaritan provides an example of risk-taking love, and those who love Jesus are to follow that example. The Samaritan treated the stranger’s wounds. He poured out expensive oil and the wine that would have quenched his thirst. He tore his clean and costly cloth to bind the bleeding man. Then he hoisted this dirty, bloodied stranger onto his donkey. He did not think of his position or the responsibilities he had. The Samaritan likely had things to do and places to be. He had a life and obligations. He might have been inconvenienced to help the hurt man, but he wasn’t deterred. He put his life aside for the moment and did what was required to make sure the man got the help he needed. He did not preach compassion to the innkeeper or expected any return for payment from the beaten man. The Samaritan took responsibility financially and personally and lived out a belief.

Pope Benedict XVI said. “The relevance of the parable today is evident. Aren’t we surrounded by people who have been robbed and battered? The victims of drugs, of human trafficking, inwardly devastated people who sit empty in the midst of material abundance. All this is of concern to us; it calls us to have the eye and the heart of a neighbor, and to have the courage to love our neighbor.” 

There is a growing number of elders who are experiencing loneliness in their community.  Some have been abandoned by their children who have moved to other cities. Others are unable to reach out and socialize because of their old age or their ill health. Trapped in solitude, they pray that someone would show care towards them, that someone would maybe take them out once in a while to the park for some fresh air. They are waiting for the help of good Samaritans to provide an opportunity for them to receive the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

This parable asks us to help without expecting anything in return. There was no obvious benefit for the Samaritan to help the fallen man. The Samaritan knew that the wounded man might never see him again. Yet, he pressed on because he knew it’s the right thing to do. Being a Good Samaritan in the modern-day context is hard. Most of the time, we are so wrapped up in our own lives that we forget about our less fortunate brethren. But you can still fix that when we start with little acts of kindness. Think less about what others can do for us and more on what we can do for them. That, in itself, is already being a good Samaritan.

The parable makes us realize that every human person is our neighbor. Our neighbor is the living image of God the Father, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and placed under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit. Our neighbor must therefore be loved, even if he or she is an enemy, with the same love with which the Lord loves him or her.” Let us pray that the Spirit of the living God may melt us, mold us and use us so that there will no longer be even one person who is untouchable or outside the boundaries of our compassion. May the Lord help all of us to prove to be good neighbors to others.

 

 

 

OT XIV [C] : Is 66:10-14c; Gal 6:14-18; Lk 10:1-12, 17-20

Today’s Scriptures remind us that announcing the Good News of the Kingdom by words, deeds, and life is not the task of only a few. Rather, it is a task of all baptized Christians. The 2.38 billion Christians (31%) in the world today have the same mission of the 72, to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to the other 5 billion non-Christians. While all the synoptic Gospels mention a mission of the Twelve, only Luke adds a second mission of the 72. 

Christ's appointing seventy-two disciples (some Greek manuscripts identify seventy) to collaborate in his mission is an action with deep Biblical significance. When Moses was leading the people of Israel into the Promised Land, God had him appoint seventy elders to receive Moses' same spirit and become his assistants. Later, the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Israel after their return from the Babylonian exile, was made up of 71 elders.

The number 72 may even have yet another level of meaning. The Book of Genesis described the division of the non-Jewish world into 70 nations. So Jesus' choice of 72 disciples may reflect the universality of his saving mission. It includes those 70 Gentile nations, plus the nation of Israel, and, perhaps, his Church, the new People of God. A total of 72.

By following this pattern, Christ, the new Moses, shows that he is bringing the Old Covenant to its fulfillment. This Old and New Testament insistence on God's choosing coworkers to help build his Kingdom shows us something essential about our Lord: he is a team player. Jesus is saving the world, but not all by himself. He wants to do it with our help. From the pope down to the most recently baptized believer, we all share the same mission: to help Christ build up his Kingdom. This should be our greatest joy. Unlike the Twelve, called by the Lord to remain with Him, the seventy-two then returned to their families and their work. They lived there with what they had found with Jesus: to bear witness, each in its place, just helping those to come closer to Christ.

As Pope Benedict once wrote: "I am convinced that there is a great need for the whole Church to rediscover the joy of evangelization, to become a community inspired with missionary zeal to make Jesus better known and loved."

Sometimes we think of the Church as kind of a gas station - somewhere we go to fill up our spiritual tanks. That's part of the story, but not the whole story. We are his coworkers, his fellow laborers. We are players on his team. And on his team there are no bench-warmers. Announcing the Good News of the kingdom is not something optional for a Christian. The disciples received instructions as to how they were to carry out their mission. For example, “Do not carry a walking staff or traveling bag; wear no sandals.” The disciples were only armed with their Faith and the name of Jesus. They needed nothing more. Their detachment from material goods would enable them to uphold the absolute priority of preaching the Good News. They did not need a staff or provisions because God would take care of them through the people to whom they were to preach. The spirit of detachment would also help them to trust more deeply in Divine Providence and would oblige them to rely humbly on the hospitality of those who were receptive to the Gospel. Their life-style should help proclaim their message.

 “Greet no one along the way.” (See also 2 Kings 4:29). This instruction implies that the mission was so urgent that nothing should divert the disciples from it.  Likewise, the disciples were told to travel in pairs (perhaps for mutual support), suggesting that the work of evangelization should be a collective one. And if you have a companion you can encourage each other when you face rejection.

Why most people don’t talk about their faith to others any longer is due to fear of being rejected. Very often this fear is unfounded. However, if we never got rejected for the sake of faith we never did any mission work either.

A recent survey asked the question, “Why do adults join the Catholic Church in spite of the scandals publicized in the media?”  Seventy-five percent of the new adult converts to the Catholic Church reported that they were attracted by a personal invitation from a Catholic who had a lively relationship with Christ and his Church.  As faithful Catholics, we will attract others to the Catholic Church—just as a rose attracts people by its beauty and fragrance. It’s our job.  It’s our responsibility. We must not miss the current opportunities to be apostles in everyday life by our words and deeds.

Sr. Lynn will be starting the OCIA sessions soon. It used to be called RCIA, Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Now it is called Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. The RCIA participants were usually referred to as a “candidate.” OCIA will be split depending on where the candidate is in the initiation process. Terms used will be “inquirer,” “catechumen” and “elect.” During the COVID season we did not have anybody joining during Easter season. Now we should think about inviting someone to be a Catholic. As said, do not bother about the fear of being rejected. Rejection adds to the merit of the work.

 When Jesus tells his listeners to "ask the master of the harvest", he is telling us to pray for vocations. This is something concrete that every Catholic can do to further the Church's mission. Asking God to send the Church, vocations to the priesthood, consecrated life, and missionary life shows that we care about what Christ cares about, that we really care about being on his team. On this Sunday let’s recognize our call to be missionaries, to be Christ’s face, tongue, hands and feet, for without us Christ does not preach Gospel any more.

 

 

 

 

 

OT XIII [C]: I Kgs 19:16b, 19-21; Gal 5:1, 13-18; Lk 9:51-62

Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem for the last time.  Along the way, he meets three men who have heard his call in their hearts. These encounters teach us three tough lessons about what it means to follow Christ. To follow Christ, we have to transfer our sense of security.  We have to relocate it from ourselves to God. We have to unlearn the lesson we have been taught our whole life long, to rely only on ourselves for success and happiness. We have to learn to rely wholly upon God, plugging all our efforts in life into his grace. This is what Jesus means when he says that "foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to rest his head."

Christ is trustworthy, but he is not predictable. When we follow him, we have to agree to go one step and one day at a time - he refuses to give us a full-life outline in advance. When we follow him, we have to stop pretending that we can keep our lives under control by our own efforts. By accepting Christ's friendship, we agree to follow him, to put our lives under his leadership.

The prophet Elisha gives us an eloquent example of this transferal of our security in the First Reading. When Elijah comes and calls him [Elisha] to become his successor as Israel's prophet, Elisha goes back home to tie up loose ends. And he really ties them up.

He was a farmer. His whole livelihood, his whole way of life, was linked to his farm. This was how he made his way in the world. Up until the time of his calling, this was the source of his security. But when God makes his will known, Elisha doesn't hesitate to break completely with that former way of life. He doesn't just leave the farm behind. He actually slaughters his most important farm animals and burns his most precious tools - offering them all to the Lord as a sign that from now on he will depend on God for his livelihood and his happiness. Not everyone is called to serve God in this way, by consecrating their lives completely to the Church. But all Christians are called to make a spiritual offering to God of our oxen and our plows, of those things, talents, or activities that we tend to depend on instead of God.

God can only fill our lives with the meaning and fruitfulness we long for if we put him first, trusting that he will lead us better than we can lead ourselves.

 

We live in a fallen world. When we declare ourselves to be citizens of Christ's Kingdom, in a sense, we lose our citizenship in this world; we become aliens, refugees waiting to return home to heaven, or, as sacred Scripture often affirms, pilgrims. This earth is no longer our home, and the closer we get to Christ, the more we realize it, the more we feel its sufferings and imperfections. Christ only reached Easter Sunday by passing through Good Friday, and Christians can expect nothing less.

Two young martyrs names are mentioned in the First Eucharistic prayer: Saints Perpetua and Felicity. Their lives are so challenging to any Christian of all times. Perpetua, a young noblewoman and her slave Felicity, were martyred for their faith in A.D. 203, under emperor Severus. At the time of their arrest, Perpetua had an infant son, and Felicity was pregnant and a couple of days before their martyrdom she also gave birth.

Prior to their arrest, the women had been studying the Scriptures and were preparing for baptism. They were baptized in prison by their teacher, who was imprisoned with them. Their prison warden was so inspired by their faith that he converted.

While she was in prison, Perpetua wrote about the circumstances leading up to their death in a diary that was later published as The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity – one of the earliest writings by a Christian woman. Perpetua’s mother was a Christian but her father was a Pagan.

In that diary she described: While we were still under arrest, my father out of love for me was trying to persuade me and shake my resolution.

“Father,” said I, “do you see this vase here, for example?”

“Yes, I do,” said he.

And I told him: “Could it be called by any other name than what it is?”

And he said: “No.”

“Well, so too I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian.”

Despite threats of persecution and death, Perpetua, Felicity refused to renounce their Christian faith.

In her diary, Perpetua describes her period of captivity: “What a day of horror! Terrible heat, owing to the crowds! Rough treatment by the soldiers! To crown all, I was tormented with anxiety for my baby…. Such anxieties I suffered for many days, but I obtained leave for my baby to remain in the prison with me, and being relieved of my trouble and anxiety for him, I at once recovered my health, and my prison became a palace to me and I would rather have been there than anywhere else.”

Perpetua and Felicity were thrown into an arena of wild animals, but they were not killed. Tragically, the emperor Severus then commanded that they be put to death by the sword.

Persecution for religious beliefs is not confined to Christians in ancient times. Consider Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who with her family, was forced into hiding and later died in Bergen-Belsen, one of Hitler’s death camps during World War II. Anne, like Perpetua and Felicity, endured hardship and suffering and finally death because she committed herself to God. In her diary, Anne writes, “It’s twice as hard for us young ones to hold our ground, and maintain our opinions, in a time when all ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when people are showing their worst side, and do not know whether to believe in truth and right and God.” Perptual and Felicity did not have a long history of the Church before them only a little over a hundred years. How could two young mothers with babies not older than a couple of weeks say I love Christ more than my own life and my babies? Can you and I do that? Let’s think over it and check how strong our faith in Christ is.

 

THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST [C] (Gn 14:18-20, 1Cor 11:23-26, Lk 9: 11b-17)

The Solemnity of Easter was the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God and his oneness with God the Father. At the end of the Easter season we celebrated the Pentecost, the revelation of the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity and His oneness with the Father and Son. Last Sunday we had the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the worship of the One God in three different persons. And, today we have the Feast of the Most holy Body and Blood of Christ, honoring the sacrifice of Christ.

At the heart of the system of worship in the Old Testament is sacrifice: the offering to God of the best that humanity has to give Him. Much of the book of Leviticus is given over to setting out how the people of Israel are to worship God with sacrifice. Indeed, from the beginning of Genesis, the importance of right worship is a theme we find in the narrative: there is the story of Cain and Abel and the offerings they make, and we encounter too the slightly mysterious figure of Melchizedek, priest of the Most High God, and his offering of bread and wine about which we read in today’s first reading. He is the first priest mentioned in the Bible, and he comes long before the Jewish priesthoods of Aaron and Levi are established. Melchizedek is therefore an example of religion before Scripture. Human beings existed long before recorded history; the stories in the Bible are actually very recent in the grand sweep of human existence. Melchizedek is a sign of God’s care for human beings before he chose his Chosen People. In Psalm 101, Jesus Christ is predicted — a king from before the dawn of time who will outlast time, and a priest from before priesthood whose sacrifice will end all sacrifice.

Alongside those texts which speak of the need to worship with sacrifice, we also find passages of the Old Testament which treat sacrifice as a much more ambivalent phenomenon. ‘I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,’ (Hosea 6:6), ‘the knowledge and love of God is greater than burnt offerings.’ In Psalm 49(50), animal sacrifice seems almost to be mocked: ‘Do you think I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?’ Sacrifice – the attempt to give anything, even what we hold most valuable, to God – is always going to fall short, because at the most fundamental level we don’t have anything to give Him which is not already His. Thus, one of the dangers of offering sacrifice is that we can think that, by giving God something valuable, we have in some sense ‘bought Him off’ and done our bit in relation to God, so that we can then act as we choose without further reference to Him. This is the attitude Isaiah criticizes when he says, ‘bring your worthless offerings no more’ (1:13), and ‘stop doing evil! Learn to do right; seek justice and correct the oppressor, defend the fatherless and plead the case of the widow’ (1:16-17).

But if the offering of sacrifice is so problematic, or liable to misunderstanding as it seems to be from the history of the Old Testament, why is it nonetheless such an important element of the worship? In the context of today’s feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, we can find part of the answer in the sacrifice of Christ, the perfection of humans’ worship of God. The Old Testament teaches us that sacrifice – despite the dangers of misunderstanding and abuse – is important because that helps us to understand what Christ does for us on the Cross. His offering, unlike human beings’ earlier attempts, really is perfect and sufficient, because the life he freely offers to the Father is the life he shares with the Father from all eternity, an offering more precious than the whole of the universe or anything in it and an offering which is as much the Son’s to give, as it is the Father’s to receive.

Because Christ’s offering is perfect, a worthy sacrifice to give to God, human beings, in Christ, can now offer truly acceptable worship to God. Not only has Christ offered himself, once for all, as a perfect and living sacrifice, but he has given us the means to participate in that sacrifice in a manner appropriate to our earthly life, allowing us – the Church, his Body – to offer his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity to the Father under the appearance of bread and wine. The sacrifice of the Mass is the source and summit of our Christian life because it simply is the praise and worship of God in which the life of heaven consists. As the book of Revelation presents, there is a constant praise and worship of God by the denizens of Heaven.

The Eucharist follows this pattern. There is constant praise and worship of God for giving us a second birth through Christ who sacrificed himself for us and shares himself with us. How Jesus shares himself is well represented in the miracle of the Gospel today. Jesus took the loaves and fishes that the Apostles gave him, and he multiplied them.

We give to God simple bread and wine. Then, through the ministry of the priest, Jesus takes these gifts, blesses them, and transforms them into his very self, his real presence. Our offerings represent our lives and work. Our offerings are both the fruits of our labor, and the means by which we stay alive. He wants us to give him our lives, our work, our resources, our talents, our time, thereby our whole week’s life, every efforts our week becomes a sacrifice. He will transform what we give to him with his grace, and make them blossom in ways far beyond we could ever imagine. We should never live it as an empty ritual or dry obligation.

When we bring our everything to him for his blessing: Our sicknesses, spiritual and physical, he can bless us with healing, spiritual or physical, as he sees best for our souls. St. Cyril of Alexandria said. “The Savior will multiply the little you have beyond expectation.”

To give due honor to the Body and Blood of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament involves those ritual actions by which we express our faith in the real presence, like worthy celebrating the Mass, offering everything without restraint, taking time communicating with Jesus after the reception of the Holy communion, spending time before the blessed sacrament etc., but more than that, it involves living a life which expresses that mystery of God’s love for humanity through the Eucharist, we share. So, on this feast of the Eucharist, let’s ask for the grace to help us grow in appreciation of the most real presence of God among us.