Church guide

Monday, August 26, 2019 TWENTY-FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME MATTHEW 23:13-22 Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus launches a blistering attack on the scribes and Pharisees. The Son teaches, heals, preaches to, and forgives those who feel far from the mercy of God. He is the hand that the Father stretches out to sinners and to those who are lost. And by the same token, he is the judge of a sinful world. When the light of God’s forgiving love appears, the shadows of sin become all the deeper and more obvious. In light of him, there is nowhere to hide. And Jesus, the Word of the Father, gives voice to this judgment: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. . . ." The Son names all those powers that are opposed to the creative and loving intentions of his Father. He speaks a word of judgment on a world grown cozy with sin. He "channels" all of the feelings of the Father toward the world: intense, forgiving love to those who are lost, and equally intense hatred for the structures of darkness.

Friday, August 23, 2019 TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME MATTHEW 22:34-40 Friends, in today’s Gospel some Pharisees challenge Jesus to answer which commandment of the Law is the greatest. Jesus responds that every power, every capacity in us must be given over to the love of God. But what exactly does it mean to love God? St. Bernard of Clairvaux is helpful here. He said that the goal of the spiritual life is to love God alone, for the sake of God alone. Obviously, there are many things that compete for the love of God alone—money, sex, power, pleasure. But what Bernard saw is that even if God alone is the center of my life, I still might not be truly loving him for his sake alone. I might be using him. He makes a helpful little distinction. He says that a slave has a kind of love for his master, but it is not truly love, for it is much more like fear. This can be very helpfully applied to the spiritual life. Many people who claim they love God really fear him. What might he do to me? If I don’t do the right things, I will be punished. Such attitudes are a long way from love.

Thursday, August 22, 2019 MEMORIAL OF THE QUEENSHIP OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY MATTHEW 22:1-14 Friends, today we celebrate Mary’s Queenship. Mary was the definitive bearer of the divine presence, the Ark of the Covenant par excellence. When she visited her cousin Elizabeth, the infant John the Baptist leapt in his mother’s womb, doing his own version of David’s dance before the Ark. The Queen Mother—like all of the monarchs of Israel—is a fighter. Israel frequently brought the Ark into battle with them. Most famously, the priests paraded around the city of Jericho bearing the Ark, just before the walls came tumbling down. The Queenship of Mary is not a sentimental feast. Whenever biblical people spoke of kings or queens, they were speaking of warriors. The question for us is: Which side are we on? Those trained in the Jesuit spiritual tradition know of the “two standards” meditation, which compels us to make the simple choice: In which army do you serve? We fight, of course, not with the puny weapons of the world, but with the weapons of the Spirit; by God we fight. So don’t just honor and acknowledge the Queenship of Mary; get in her army.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019 MEMORIAL OF SAINT PIUS X MATTHEW 20:1-16 Friends, in today’s Gospel, we hear of a landowner who goes out to hire workers for his field, hiring some the first thing in the morning and then others at different times during the day. Then he pays each the same wage. Why should those who have worked only an hour be paid the same as those who have slaved in the hot sun all day? Is the landowner really being unfair? Perhaps he saw something that the first workers didn’t see. Perhaps he saw, in his compassion, that their day spent waiting for work to feed their families was a terrible one, marked by anxiety and a sense of failure. Or perhaps he knew that they were poorer, more desperate, less gifted. Maybe he knew they needed a bit more encouragement. Here’s a second perspective on this mysterious story. We sinners are very susceptible to a reward-centered understanding of our relationship to God. Tit for tat; I do this, then you better do that. But this is very juvenile. We’ve been invited to work in the vineyard of the Lord. That is the greatest privilege imaginable, to participate in the Lord’s work of saving the world. Why are we fussing about rewards? And how liberating this is! I don’t have to spend my life fussing and spying and worrying and comparing. I can live.

Bishop Barron speaks on the sexual abuse crisis. Why remain Catholic?

Tuesday, August 20, 2019 MEMORIAL OF SAINT BERNARD MATTHEW 19:23-30 Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus says to his disciples: "Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven." When the disciples express their astonishment at this—"Who then can be saved?"—Jesus replies, "For men this is impossible, but for God all things are possible." When we fail on the spiritual path, we must become, like Bartimaeus, beggars. When we stumble in our attempts to follow the law or to set out on the high adventure of discipleship, we must not fall into discouragement or self-reproach. We must once again cry out, "Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison," relying not on our own powers but on God. Thérèse of Lisieux commented that, amidst the many spiritual athletes and strivers around her, she felt like a little helpless child, lifting her arms up and begging to be carried. The heavenly Father, like any good parent, could hardly resist such a sight, and thus she found herself lifted higher than the spiritual "giants." With us, it is finally impossible; but with God, all things—including the making of saints—are possible.

Monday, August 19, 2019 TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME MATTHEW 19:16-22 Friends, today’s Gospel is the story of the rich young man. The rich young man has a deep desire to share in everlasting life. He is hungry for the infinite good of the Spirit. He knows what he wants, and he knows where to find it. Jesus is the infinite good that the soul wants. He is God’s own self made flesh. If you want to live in friendship with God, there are certain things that you must cut out of your life. Friendship with God means a life of love; therefore, those things that egregiously violate love have to be eliminated. Jesus looks at him with love and says, "There is one thing more you must do. Go and sell what you have and give it to the poor; you will have treasure in heaven. After that come follow me." God is nothing but love, straight through, and therefore the life of friendship with him, in the richest sense, is a life of total, self-forgetting love. But at this point the young man tragically balks. The spiritual life, at the highest pitch, is about giving your life away, and this is why his many possessions are a problem.

The Parish Picnic was so much fun!!!

Thursday, August 15, 2019 SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY LUKE 1:39-56 Friends, today’s Gospel tells of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth. I’ve always been fascinated by Mary’s “haste” in this story of the Visitation. Upon hearing the message of Gabriel concerning her own pregnancy and that of her cousin, Mary “proceeded in haste into the hill country of Judah” to see Elizabeth. Why did she go with such speed and purpose? Because she had found her mission, her role in the theo-drama. We are dominated today by the ego-drama in all of its ramifications and implications. The ego-drama is the play that I’m writing, I’m producing, I’m directing, and I’m starring in. We see this absolutely everywhere in our culture. Freedom of choice reigns supreme: I become the person that I choose to be. The theo-drama is the great story being told by God, the great play being directed by God. What makes life thrilling is to discover your role in it. This is precisely what has happened to Mary. She has found her role—indeed a climactic role—in the theo-drama, and she wants to conspire with Elizabeth, who has also discovered her role in the same drama. Like Mary, we have to find our place in God’s story.

Wednesday, August 14, 2019 MEMORIAL OF SAINT MAXIMILIAN KOLBE MATTHEW 18:15-20 Friends, today we celebrate the feast of Maximilian Kolbe, the great saint of Auschwitz. A prisoner from Fr. Kolbe’s barracks escaped, and in retaliation, the Nazi guards picked out ten other prisoners at random for execution. When one of those chosen broke down in tears, protesting that he was the father of a family, Kolbe stepped forward and said, "I am a Catholic priest; take me and spare this man." Priests are called "father" because they are life-givers in the spiritual order. Spiritual fathers protect their children; they teach them; they are there for them; and at the limit, they even give their lives for them. And that’s what we see in today’s great saint. Jesus gathered around himself a band of Apostles whom he shaped according to his own mind and heart and whom he subsequently sent on mission. Priests, down through the centuries—from Augustine and Aquinas to Francis Xavier and John Henry Newman to John Paul II and your own pastor—are the descendants of those first friends and apprentices of the Lord. They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshiped, and the sacraments must be administered.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019 NINETEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME MATTHEW 18:1-5, 10, 12-14 Friends, one feature of today’s Gospel passage is the craziness of the shepherd: “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray?” Well, the implied answer is “No.” Who would take that great a risk, putting the ninety-nine in danger to find the one? It’s just bad economics. Why would God fret over one little soul? Why would he bother? Well, it’s his nature. It’s what he does. As Catherine of Siena put it, he is pazzo d’amore (crazy in love). God is as crazy for you as if you were the only one in the world.

Monday, August 12, 2019 NINETEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME MATTHEW 17:22-27 Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus prophesies his crucifixion and resurrection: “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day." What enabled the first Christians to hold up the cross, to sing its praises, to wear it as a decoration, is the fact that God raised up and ratified precisely this crucified Jesus. “You killed him, but God raised him up.” Therefore, God was involved in this terrible thing; God was there, working out his salvific purposes. But what does this mean? There have been numerous attempts throughout the Christian centuries to name the salvific nature of the cross. Let me offer just one take on it. It became clear to the first Christians that somehow, on that terrible cross, sin had been dealt with. The curse of sin had been removed, taken care of. On that terrible cross, Jesus functioned as the “lamb of God,” sacrificed for sin. Does this mean God the Father is a cruel taskmaster demanding a bloody sacrifice so that his anger might be appeased? No; Jesus’ crucifixion was the opening up of the divine heart so that we could see that no sin of ours could finally separate us from the love of God.