Thoughts on Saint Joseph

 

Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Matthew 1:16, 18–21, 24a (or Luke 2:41–51a)

Friends, today’s Gospel centers on the intriguing figure of Joseph. Joseph is one of the most beloved of the saints, featured in countless works of art and prominent in the devotional lives of many. We know almost nothing about him, yet some very powerful spiritual themes emerge in the accounts of Joseph. He had become betrothed to Mary, and this union had been blessed by God. And then he finds that his betrothed is pregnant. This must have been an emotional maelstrom for him. And, at a deeper level, it is a spiritual crisis. What does God want him to do? Then the angel appears to him in a dream and tells him, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.” He realizes at that moment that these puzzling events are part of a much greater plan of God’s. What appears to be a disaster from his perspective is meaningful from God’s perspective. Joseph was willing to cooperate with the divine plan, though he in no way knew its contours or deepest purpose. Like Mary at the Annunciation, he trusted and let himself be led. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on brokenness

 

The Upside-down Kingdom

The Kingdom is where everything is turned upside down. Those who are marginal, those considered not respectable, are suddenly proclaimed as the people who are called to the Kingdom. The part of us that is weak, broken, or poor suddenly becomes the place where something new can begin. Jesus says, “Be in touch with your brokenness. Be in touch with your sinfulness. Turn to God because the Kingdom is close at hand. If you are ready to listen from your brokenness then something new can come forth in you.”

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”   - Matthew 6: 33

Thoughts on relationships

 

   We always begin the Lenten season with the distribution of ashes. The priest traces a cross of ash on our foreheads with the words, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." We are invited to come face to face with the fact that we will die. That can scare us! As the comedian said, " I'm not afraid to die; I just don't want to be there when it happens." For many years as a younger man and priest I was afraid of dying because I envisioned it as coming before God and having to account for all of my sins. I was sure that I didn't deserve mercy and expected only just punishment.

   

After I receive the Lord in the Eucharist I always pray the Soul of Christ and I have been struck by the last line,

"At the hour of my death call me and bid me come to You that with Your saints I may praise You forever." I now envision my death as waking to see Jesus stretching out his hand to me and saying, "C' mon, Ralph, let's go home."

   I have been changed by that prayer and Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-24). The son seriously insulted his father in asking for his share of the father's estate. It was saying, "I wish you were dead." The father let's him go and the son wastes the money on selfish pleasures. I picture the father going out every day and sitting under a tree along the road waiting for his son to return. And when he does, the father runs out and meets him with a bearhug and a kiss. There's no judging, no shaming, no questions about the money; there's only love and forgiveness and reinstatement as son with new clothes, sandals and the family ring and the announcement of a huge party. I think that would be worth dying for!

Fr. Ralph Huse, S.J.

Thoughts on The Lord's Prayer

 

First Week of Lent

Matthew 6:7–15

Friends, today’s Gospel gives us the Our Father. It asks that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven,” but biblical cosmology sees these two realms as interpenetrating fields of force. Heaven, the arena of God and the angels, touches upon and calls out to earth, the arena of humans, animals, plants, and planets. Salvation, therefore, is a matter of the meeting of heaven and earth, so that God might reign as thoroughly here below as he does on high. Jesus’ great prayer, which is constantly on the lips of Christians, is distinctively Jewish in inspiration: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This is decidedly not a prayer that we might escape from the earth, but rather that earth and heaven might come together. The Lord’s Prayer raises to a new level what the prophet Isaiah anticipated: “The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” The first Christians saw the Resurrection of Jesus as the commencement of the process by which earth and heaven were being reconciled. They appreciated the risen Christ as the one who would bring the justice of heaven to this world. Bishop Robert Barron

More thoughts on temptation

 

First Sunday of Lent

Luke 4:1–13

Friends, in our Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, Luke gives us the story of the temptation in the desert. At every point in the Gospels, we are meant to identify with Jesus. God became man that man might become God. We participate in him and thereby learn what a godly life is like. Jesus has just been baptized; he has just learned his deepest identity and mission. And now he confronts—as we all must—the great temptations. What precisely is entailed in being the beloved Son of God? First, the tempter urges him to use his divine power to satisfy his bodily desires, which Jesus dismisses with a word. Having failed at his first attempt, the devil shifts to perhaps the greatest of the temptations: power. Power is extremely seductive. Many would gladly eschew material things or attention or fame in order to get it. Jesus’ great answer in Matthew’s account of this story is “Away with you, Satan!” To seek power is to serve Satan—it is stated that bluntly. Finally, the devil plays a subtler game—he tempts Jesus to manipulate his Father, encouraging him to jump from the temple and let angels save him. It is the temptation faced by Adam and Eve in the garden: deciding how and when God will act. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on conversion

 

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Luke 5:27–32

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells Matthew, “Follow me.” The call of Jesus addresses the mind, but it is meant to move through the mind into the body, and through the body into the whole of one’s life, into the most practical of moves and decisions. “Follow me” has the sense of “apprentice to me” or “walk as I walk; think as I think; choose as I choose.” Discipleship entails an entire reworking of the self according to the pattern and manner of Jesus.  Upon hearing the address of the Lord, the tax collector, we are told, “got up and followed him.” The Greek word behind “got up” is anastas, the same word used to describe the resurrection (anastasis) of Jesus from the dead. Following Jesus is indeed a kind of resurrection from the dead, since it involves the transition from a lower form of life to a higher, from a preoccupation with the temporary goods of this world to an immersion in the goodness of God.  Those who have undergone a profound conversion tend to speak of their former life as a kind of illusion, something not entirely real. Thus Paul can say, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me”; Thomas Merton can speak of the “false self” that has given way to the authentic self; and, perhaps most movingly, the father of the prodigal son can say, “This brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”  Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on temptation

Jesus Is Tempted

At his baptism Jesus hears his Father's voice, "You are My beloved Son." He is then led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. The temptations begin "If you are the Son of God, ..." They are temptations to his identity, his self-understanding, his mission. They are tempting because they are three different ways to fulfill his mission without his death on the cross. The devil says, Feed the people and they will follow you, cure the sick and the possessed and they will follow you. Jesus refuses to buy their loyalty; he wants them to believe and love him and everyone else. He feeds and cures out of compassion for their hunger and suffering, not as bribery.

   In the Spiritual Exercises Ignatius calls the devil "the father of lies". He always tempts us by his lie that this choice, this decision will make us happy, satisfied, fulfilled, admired, important, etc. We know from experience that it doesn't. Let us ask the grace to recognize and resist the lies and always turn to the Lord for strength in our weakness.

Fr. Ralph Huse, S.J.