Thoughts on discipleship

 

Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Luke 8:1–3

Friends, in today’s Gospel, we learn that some women accompanied Jesus and provided for him and the Twelve from their resources. Jesus invited women into full participation in the life of discipleship. All of those women sat in eager discipleship at the feet of Jesus. Now, don’t get me wrong! I’m not advocating the contemporary feminist agenda, which often runs rough-shod over the real differences that obtain between men and women.  But I am urging you to see the radicality of Jesus’s call to discipleship, which cuts through so many of the social conventions of his time and ours. I am urging you to see that everyone—rich and poor, those on the inside and those on the outs, men and women—are summoned to discipleship and that this summons is the most important consideration of all.  Given all of this, can we see these women disciples as forerunners of all of the great women who have followed Jesus over the centuries? Can we see them as prototypes of Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, Clare of Assisi, Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother Teresa of Kolkata, Katharine Drexel, Edith Stein, and Dorothy Day?  Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on human suffering

 

Our Suffering God

God's compassion for all human suffering is exactly what becomes visible on the cross. What this means is that we are called to see God's suffering in the people. Every time we see someone in pain and we wonder how that person is going to live through it, know that God suffered that pain and is suffering that pain with that person. In a way, the whole of history is the showing of the depth of God's suffering. From a Christian perspective, history is the unfolding of the intensity and immensity of God's suffering, but also of God's resurrection, because in the midst of all the suffering, you can see signs of hope again and again and again.

“Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”   - Hebrews 13: 3

Thoughts on mercy

 

Infinite Mercy

To relearn what praying for the world means, we have to realize that the burden of the world has become a light burden because of Jesus. When God saw how humanity's sin made the world an unbearable burden – a burden of painful birth and hard labor, competition and rivalry, anger and resentment, violence and war, sickness and death – God showed us infinite mercy in sending Jesus, not to take our burden away but to transform it. Jesus gathered up the human suffering of all times and places. He destroyed its fatal power by offering it to God through his voluntary death on the cross. Thus Jesus made an unbearable burden bearable. We now have a companion who has tasted the agony of humanity more fully and deeply than any other person in history.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”   - Romans 5: 8

Thoughts on the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

 

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

John 3:13–17

Friends, today we celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. How strange this feast would have sounded to someone in the ancient world! The triumph of the cross! It would have been analogous to someone speaking today of the triumph of the electric chair or the exaltation of the noose. The cross terrified people in Greco-Roman times, and that was the point. The cross was state-sponsored terrorism, a form of capital punishment reserved for those who had in the most egregious ways undermined the authority of the Roman state. So why are we celebrating the triumph of the cross? There is only one possible explanation, and that is the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. All the attempts to soft-pedal and explain away the Resurrection are ruled out by this feast. If Jesus was a victim of that terrible cross tout court, then we should all go home. Once they had taken in the experience of the Resurrection, the first Christians turned with rapt attention to the cross, convinced that in it they would find something decisive. Somehow, in the strange providence of God, that cross was ingredient in the very process by which God would save the world.  Bishop Robert Barron

More thoughts on prayer

 

When Prayer Descends

How do we concretely move from head to heart? When I lie in my bed, not able to fall asleep because of my many words and worries; when I am preoccupied with all the things that I must do or that can go wrong; when I can't take my mind off my concern for a needy or dying friend – what am I supposed to do? Pray? Fine, but how do I do this? One simple way is by slowly repeating a particular prayer with as much attentiveness as possible. Focused prayer, first in the mind and then repeated in the heart, becomes easier the more you practice. When you know the “Our Father,” the “Glory Be to God,” or the “Lord, Have Mercy” by heart, you have something to start with. Just by praying those prayers repeatedly. You might like to learn by heart the Twenty-third Psalm (“The Lord is my shepherd…”) or Paul's words about love to the Corinthians, or the Prayer of St. Francis (“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…”). As you lie in bed, drive your car, wait for the bus, or walk your dog, you can slowly let the words of one of these prayers go through your mind down to your heart by trying to listen with your whole being to what you are repeating. You may be distracted by your worries, but if you keep going back to the words of the prayer, you will gradually discover that your worries become less obsessive, your attention becomes more focused, and you really start to enjoy praying. As prayer descends from your mind into the center of your being, you will discover its healing power.

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”   - Isaiah 26: 3

Thoughts on prayer

 

Prayer is Personal

Issues easily imprison; a person can set free. Issues easily divide us; a person can unite. Issues easily exhaust; a person can give rest. Issues easily destroy; a person can offer new life. Despair is caused by orientation toward issues, but hope emerges when we direct ourselves with heart and mind to the person of a saving God. That is prayer.

“Apart from me you can do nothing; those who dwell in me as I dwell in them, bear much fruit.”   - John 15:5

Thoughts on the Holy Cross

John 3:13-17

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

For God so loved the world

In history today's feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross celebrates the recovery of the True Cross from the Persians in the year 629.

But more important to us today, the feast reminds us of the centrality of Jesus' sacrifice for our salvation. Our Lord's suffering and death on the Cross brought about our salvation, and what we must always remember is that at every Mass Jesus' same sacrifice is continued and once again offered to the Father.

Every Mass continues to make present to us both the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. The Mass makes present the Last Supper because bread and wine become the sacred meal of the Body and Blood of Christ. And the Mass makes present the Crucifixion. On the Cross Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice in a bloody manner to the Father.

At Mass Jesus offers Himself – through the ministry of the priest – to the Father as a sacrifice in an unbloody manner. 

It is the same sacrifice of Jesus; only the manner is different. The same Christ who offers Himself to the Father as a sacrifice now gives Himself to us as heavenly food.

 

At Mass we also hear Our Lord speaking to us through the Gospel. On this feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross we hear what some say is the very essence of the Gospel:

           “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might

           not perish but might have eternal life.”

Here is the most simple and direct proclamation of the Gospel; here is truly the Good News:

Through the “lifting up” of God’s Son on the Cross and our belief in God’s Son and His message (His Good News), we will be saved. We will not perish in death; rather, we will have eternal life.

Through this central teaching of the Gospel, three important characteristics of God’s love emerge.

1. The initiative in all salvation comes from God 

           God is not angry; He does not have to be pacified; He does not have to be persuaded to forgive.

           Our salvation started with God. It was He who sent his Son because He loved us.

2. The essence of God’s being is love

           God does not act for His own sake, but for ours. He does not seek to satisfy Himself; He seeks to satisfy us completely, perfectly. God is the Father who cannot be happy until His wandering children have come home. He does not compel; He does not dominate into submission. Rather, He yearns for us and tries to draw us to Himself by love.

3. God’s love encompasses all

           The Gospel says that “God so loved the world” – not only a nation, a race, a people; not only the good; not only those who love Him. God loves the unlovable and the unlovely who no one else loves. He loves those who resist His love as well as those who do love Him. It is believed that St. Augustine said, “God loves each of us as though each were the only one who existed.”

These three characteristics of God’s love shine through the mystery and the glory of the Cross.

It is a mystery why God chose that way to save us, but it is our ultimate consolation that the Cross proves without doubt God’s love for us. How will I respond to Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross, which is continued at every Mass? How will I respond to God’s love?

  Don Saunders, S.J.