Thoughts on faith

 

Mark 8:11–13

Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign from heaven. They are testing him because they have no faith nor trust in him. Faith is an attitude of trust in the presence of God. Faith is openness to what God will reveal, do, and invite. It should be obvious that in dealing with the infinite, all-powerful person who is God, we are never in control.  This is why we say that faith goes beyond reason. If we can figure it out, calculate precisely, predict with complete accuracy, we’re in charge—and by definition, we are not dealing with a person. Would you use any of those descriptors in talking about your relationship with your husband, wife, or best friend? Instead, you enter into an ever-increasing rapport of trust with such people. One of the most fundamental statements of faith is this: your life is not about you. You’re not in control. This is not your project. Rather, you are part of God’s great design. To believe this in your bones and to act accordingly is to have faith. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on detachment

 

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Luke 6:17, 20–26

Friends, our Gospel for today is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, less well known than Matthew’s but actually punchier, more to the point. It all hinges on detachment, that decisively important spiritual attitude. Apatheia in the Greek fathers, indifferencia in Ignatius of Loyola. It means that I am unattached to worldly values that become a substitute for the ultimate good of God. How bluntly Luke’s Jesus puts things. Look at Luke’s first beatitude, a model for all: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.” What if we translated this as, “How lucky you are if you are not addicted to material things.” When we place material things in the center of our concerns, we find ourselves caught in an addictive pattern. Because material goods don’t satisfy the hunger in my soul, I convince myself that I need more of them. So I strive and work to get more nice things—cars, homes, TVs, clothes—and then I find that those don’t satisfy me. So I strive and strive, and the rhythm continues. Therefore how lucky I would be if I were poor, unattached to material goods, finally indifferent to them. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on choices

 6^th Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

Luke 6: 17, 20-26

There is no more common metaphor for following the Christian life than traveling a road. In fact, the first name for Christianity in Apostolic times was simply The Way.

In high school or college, many of us remember reading the poetry of Robert Frost (1874 – 1963). “From 1914 to his death, he was probably the nation’s best-known and best-loved serious poet,” according to the Norton Anthology of American Literature. His accessible imagery, regular metrics, and rhyme have introduced generations of students to poetry. One of his best loved-poems uses the metaphor of a road for our journey through life:

                       I shall be telling this tale with a sigh

                       Somewhere ages and ages hence:

                       Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

                       I took the one less traveled by,

                       And that has made all the difference.

                                                        “The Road Not Taken” 1916

The ideas of a road and a journey were used in the 17^th century by John Bunyan (1628-1688) in his allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), which at one time was second only to the Bible in popularity.

Bunyan describes a journey taken by “Christian,” during which “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” frequently urges Christian to give up his difficult and dangerous journey.

Our Lord teaches, “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction . . . narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Mt. 7: 13-14). So often we are tempted and even counseled to take the common, wide, and easy way. So often we give in to “worldly wisdom.”                                                    

The Beatitudes, which begin the Sermon of the Plain in Luke’s Gospel, are meant to guide us along The Way. Here is a complete reversal of conventional values and ambitions. Here Christ’s counsel stands in shocking contrast to the urgings of Mr. Worldly Wiseman and the “way of the world.” The poor, hungering, weeping, hated, and reviled – are really the blessed, whose reward will be great in heaven. The rich, satisfied, laughing, with sterling reputation – will be woeful, for they have their reward now.

Here we are face-to-face with an eternal choice that begins in childhood and never ends until life ends:

·        Will I take the way of immediate pleasure and profit –

or the way that may involve toil and suffering for the eternally greater good?

·        Will I choose pleasure and profit of the moment –

or sacrifice for the eternally greater good?

·        Will I concentrate on the world’s rewards –

or concentrate on what I know will be Christ’s rewards?

The “challenge of the Beatitudes” is the question: Will I be happy in the world’s way – or in Christ’s way?

Each day I must beg God’s help in following His Way rather than the World’s Way. In each choice I try to see two roads diverging in a wood – and take the one less traveled by.

                                                                                                                     

 Fr. Don Saunders, S.J.

Thoughts on gratitude

 

Divine Gifts

Gratitude flows from the recognition that all that is, is a divine gift born out of love and freely given to us so that we may offer thanks and share it with others. The more we touch the intimate love of God which creates, sustains, and guides us, the more we recognize the multitude of fruits that come forth from that love. They are fruits of the Spirit, such as: joy, peace, kindness, goodness, and gentleness. When we encounter any of these fruits, we always experience them as gifts.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” - Galatians 5: 22 – 23

Thoughts on evil

 

Mark 7:14–23

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches that evil comes from within. From our hearts “come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.”  The Church teaches that such evils are consequences of original sin. The doctrine holds that there is something fundamentally off about us, that all is not well, that we are off-kilter, skewed, mixed up. We Catholics don’t hold to a doctrine of total depravity, but we do indeed hold that original sin has worked its way into every nook and cranny of our lives: our minds, our wills, our desires and passions, even our very bodies. As G.K. Chesterton argued a century ago, original sin is the only doctrine for which there is empirical evidence, for we can feel it within ourselves and we can see the effects of it everywhere. One of the surest signs of our dysfunction is that we tend to celebrate all of the wrong people and despise or look down upon the best people. Pay very close attention to the people that you don’t like, to those that you consider obnoxious; it might tell you a lot about your own spiritual state. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on hypocrites

 

Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Mark 7:1–13

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites because they “disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” For instance: “If someone says to father or mother, ‘Any support you might have had from me is qorban’ (meaning, dedicated to God), you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother.” If you claim to be a person of love but fail to honor your parents, something is seriously off. Thus the hypocrisy of the Pharisees is a disregard of love. In its essence, love is an act of the will—more precisely, the willing of the good of the other as other. To love is really to want what is good for someone else and then to act on that desire.  Real love is a leaping outside of the narrow confines of my needs and desires, and an embrace of the other’s good for the other’s sake. It is an escape from the black hole of the ego, which tends to draw everything around it into itself. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on grace

 

Luke 5:1–11

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus climbs into Peter’s boat without asking permission. He simply commandeers this vessel that is central to the fisherman’s life and commences to give orders. This represents something of enormous moment: the invasion of grace. Though God respects our relative independence, he is not the least bit content to leave us in a “natural” state. Instead, he wants to live in us, to become the Lord of our lives, moving into our minds, wills, bodies, imaginations, nerves, and bones. This commandeering of nature by grace does not involve the compromising of nature but rather its perfection and elevation. When Jesus moves into the house of the soul, the powers of the soul are heightened and properly directed; when Jesus commands the boat of the natural human life, that life is preserved, strengthened, and given a new orientation. This is signaled symbolically by the Lord’s directive to put out into the deep water. On our own, we can know and will within a very narrow range, seeking those goods and truths that appear within the horizon of our natural consciousness, but when grace invades us, we are enticed into far deeper waters. Bishop Robert Barron