Thoughts on reading

 

           Years ago an older priest friend of mine taught me an important lesson about reading. Father Austin Garvey, for many years the pastor of St. Patrick’s Church, Soho Square, London, was a  constant, avid reader, who devoured books. However, they were frequently the same books. At first, I thought this rather odd, but upon rereading favorites, I have become a firm believer in the practice. Every year Father Garvey reread most of Dickens and P.G. Wodehouse; every year he reread all of Raymond Chandler. He also read new books, but more often went back to what he knew and what he loved, having an encyclopedic knowledge of his favorites.

           Maybe you do more rereading than new reading, returning to favorite stories you are drawn to again and again.  Perhaps you tell favorite anecdotes again and again. Maybe you watch favorite movies over and over.

           Our Church has a number of wonderful stories preserved in the Sacred Scriptures that we also return to again and again: the infancy narratives of Christ’s birth, the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Lost Sheep, the post-Resurrection appearance on the Road to Emmaus.

           The story of the Road to Emmaus is, perhaps, the best loved Resurrection appearance. It’s a good story: engaging, well structured, clearly thematic, inspiring. Because of its narrative perfection, some scholars have called it the “greatest short story ever told.”  We can relate to it. We become part of it because we, like those two disciples, are frequently blind to God in our world, concerned mainly with our own worries.

           At every Mass we can enter that story in a special way. What happened to those two disciples, happens to us:

• We hear the Scriptures, which are usually explained in the homily.

           [Of course, during some sermons our hearts do not burn within us!]

• We break the bread. We celebrate the Eucharist.
• We realize the presence of the Lord.

           The Road to Emmaus is the road to “meeting Christ at Mass,” and like the disciples, recognizing Him in the Breaking of Bread. So, whatever the name of the road in front of our parish church, the street is meant to be our Road to Emmaus that has brought us to meet Jesus Christ. That street can also become our address: we live on the Road to Emmaus if we hear the Scriptures, take them to heart, and receive the Most Holy Sacrament, in which Our Lord is truly present. Perhaps even our hearts will then burn within us as we realize His presence.

           Many of us may have favorite stories we enjoy returning to again and again.

But may we not simply reread that last chapter of Luke’s Gospel. Rather, may pray for the grace to live the best story of all: frequently meeting Christ at Mass; frequently recognizing Him on our Road to Emmaus.

Fr. Don Saunders, SJ

Thoughts on eternal life

 

Second Week of Easter

John 3:31–36

Friends, today’s Gospel promises eternal life to those who believe in the Son of God. In almost every religion, the life of faith has something to do with a creature’s relationship to the Creator; nearly all religions speak of the creature’s dependency upon God, of his subjection to the divine providence, and of his need for grace and forgiveness. Christianity, too, articulates these basic relationships, but it pushes beyond them because it speaks of the incarnation and the gifts associated with it. We hear in the third chapter of John’s Gospel that “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” This well-known verse summarizes the Christian faith and gives expression to its distinctiveness, for it speaks of the possibility that a creature might share in God’s own life.  The purpose of the sending of the Son was to gather the human race into the divine life—the rhythm of the Trinitarian love—so that we might relate to God not merely as creatures but as friends. You see, love becomes complete only when there is another who can receive fully what the lover wants to give. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Devine Mercy Sunday

 

Whoever lived through the twentieth century would have witnessed World War I and World War II, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the rise of communism, the decline of faith, the legalization of abortion, numerous genocides, and a host of other tragedies.  It thus stands as one of the darkest centuries in all of human history.  We should not be surprised then to hear that Heaven did not leave us without guidance or hope. In 1917, Our Lady appeared to the visionaries in Fatima.  She warned them of the impending travesties which would take place if the world did not repent and take refuge in her Immaculate Heart.  In this way, she gave us the warning, the cure of praying the Rosary and faithfully undertaking penances, and promised the triumph of her Immaculate Heart and Christ’s Sacred Heart. Additionally, in the first half of the same century, our Lord Jesus Christ appeared numerous times to St. Faustina Kowalska.

Throughout these visions, our Lord graced her with the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and the Divine Mercy image.  Christ knew that the world would be in desperate need of His mercy, and rather than leaving us to despair, He gave us the unshakeable promise of His love. If we heed Our Lady’s advice and turn to the Lord through prayer and penance, if we die to ourselves, then we may also enjoy the glory and victory of Christ’s resurrection.  It is by being washed in the blood of Our Savior which He so generously poured out for us that we can be cleansed from the sin and disorder which plagues our hearts and this world.  He is our only hope, but He is a most sure and beautiful hope! For this reason, the Church has decided that we should end the Octave of Easter today by joyfully celebrating Divine Mercy.  Let us then hopefully join our hearts in this prayer: “Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion — inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself. Amen.” In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Christopher P. Wendt International Director Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima

More thoughts on Doubting Thomas

 

Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)

John 20:19–31

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Thomas says that he will not believe in the Lord’s resurrection unless he puts his finger in Jesus’s nailmarks and his hand in Jesus’s side. Thomas is a saint especially suitable for our time. Modernity has been marked by two great qualities: skepticism and empiricism, the very qualities we can discern in Thomas. And when the risen Jesus reappears, he invites the doubter to look, see, and touch. But then that devastating line: “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” If we stubbornly said—even in the area of science—that we will accept only what we can clearly see and touch and control, we wouldn’t know much about reality. This helps us to better understand Jesus’s words to Thomas. It is not that we who have not seen and have believed are settling for a poor substitute for vision. No; we are being described as blessed, more blessed than Thomas. God is doing all sorts of things that we cannot see, measure, control, fully understand. But it is an informed faith that allows one to fall in love with such a God. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Doubting Thomas

On the Octave of Easter, this 2^nd Sunday of Easter, we always hear the Gospel of Doubting Thomas.

Thomas would not believe the testimony of the other Apostles, as he defiantly proclaimed, until he put his "finger into the nail marks" and his "hand into [Jesus'] side." To believe that Jesus was alive, Thomas needed to see and even to touch Jesus. And he does finally believe, becoming the very first of the Apostles to proclaim the Faith of the Church:  "My Lord and my God."

           What about us who have not seen and touched the Resurrected Lord? Why do we believe, and what do we believe concerning our Lord and the assertions of our religion? Do we believe only what the Bible says?

At the end of today’s Gospel, St. John says that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book.” In other words, Jesus said and did many things that are not recorded in the Bible.

           “Divine Revelation,” which means the truth God has revealed about Himself, is more than the Bible.

Divine Revelation is transmitted to us in two ways: through Sacred Scripture, the Bible, but also through what is called Sacred Tradition.

           It is Sacred Tradition that St. John is alluding to when he says that Jesus did many other things not specifically recorded in the Bible. After all, how could any book, or any number of volumes, contain everything? Sacred Tradition means the truths not contained in the Bible but still revealed by God through Jesus and the Apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Many of these truths are from the preaching and teaching of Jesus and the Apostles that have been handed down in the oral tradition.

Some examples of Sacred Tradition include:

·        The fact that Scripture itself draws from Sacred Tradition, because – think about it – the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles pre-date the Bible. It was the Church that had to decide what would be included in the canon of Sacred Scripture. The Church came before the Bible. The Gospel of Mark dates to around A.D. 70, and the First letter to the Thessalonians was written around A.D. 52. 

Other examples of Sacred Tradition include:

·        Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

·      Assumption of BVM

·     Perpetual virginity of BVM (always a virgin, before and after Jesus’ birth; no other children)

·       Role of Pope, bishops, priests in Christian ministry

·        Infallibility of Pope teaching officially on faith and morals

·        The understanding of the sacraments and their place in Christian life

           Our Catholic Faith relies on the Bible, but not only the Bible. Much of the truth of what the Church teaches comes from Sacred Tradition, which together with Sacred Scripture, forms what is called the one “Deposit of Faith.” It is this Deposit of Faith that comprises all of Divine Revelation: the truths we must believe and the principles of conduct that we must live. The Deposit of Faith is taught, interpreted, and handed down by the teaching authority of the Church, the “Magisterium,” which is guided by the Holy Spirit and given to the bishops (successors of the Apostles) united to the Pope (successor of St. Peter).

           Thomas’s faith was formed and made firm by his seeing and touching the Resurrected Lord, which we read in today’s Gospel, from the Bible. But our Catholic Faith is formed and made firm by the entire Deposit of Faith, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, the truths not contained in the Bible but still revealed by God through Jesus and the Apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

           May we always read and revere the Holy Bible. But may we also revere the teachings of the Church handed down in God’s gift to us of Sacred Tradition.    

                                       

Fr. Don Saunders, SJ

Thoughts on the risen Jesus

 

Thursday within the Octave of Easter

Luke 24:35–48

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus appears alive again to his followers. Upon seeing him, “they were startled and terrified.” They are terrified because the one they abandoned and betrayed and left for dead is back—undoubtedly for revenge! Luke’s risen Jesus does two things in the presence of his shocked followers. The first thing is that he shows them his wounds. This move is a reiteration of the judgment of the cross: Don’t forget, he tells them, what the world did when the Author of life appeared. But he does something else; he says, “Shalom”—“Peace be with you.” In this, he opens up a new spiritual world and thereby becomes our Savior. From ancient creation myths to the Rambo and Dirty Harry movies, the principle is the same: Order, destroyed through violence, is restored through a righteous exercise of greater violence. And then there is Jesus. The terrible disorder of the cross (the killing of the Son of God) is addressed not through an explosion of divine vengeance but through a radiation of divine love. When Christ confronts those who contributed to his death, he speaks words not of retribution but of reconciliation and compassion. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the Resurrection

 

Tuesday within the Octave of Easter

John 20:11–18

Friends, in today’s Gospel, we find Mary Magdalene weeping by the tomb of the risen Lord. She then sees Jesus and doesn’t recognize him immediately. In a wonderful detail, she thinks he’s the gardener. In the book of Genesis, God, the gardener of Eden, walked with his creatures in easy friendship. Sin, the sundering of the loop of grace, put an end to those intimate associations. Throughout the history of salvation, God had been trying to reestablish friendship. Through the death of Jesus, through that tomb placed right in the garden, he accomplished his goal. So now, in Christ, he appears again as a gardener. “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni.’” Then Jesus says: “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers.” The not clinging has to do with the call to proclaim. The idea is not to hang on to Jesus but to announce what he has accomplished. The content of the proclamation is, once again, that we have become the intimates of God: “My Father and your Father . . . my God and your God.” Bishop Robert Barron