Thoughts on relationships

 In Sunday’s Gospel Jesus speaks about his mission on earth, indicating that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Jesus does not overturn the Mosaic law; rather, he gives it a new interpretation, one that is even more demanding than the one given the law by Jewish leaders. To truly keep the law, one must go beyond it. With that in mind, Jesus speaks to his disciples about the little things that can erode their relationship with God and others and escalate into major offenses.  

By instructing his disciples to watch out for the little transgressions, Jesus did not intend to frighten his followers into obeying a God whom they might falsely imagine was lying in wait to punish them for every small inadequacy or transgression. Instead, he alerts his followers that little slights, left unchecked, can lead to major offenses with dire consequences. By the same token, great love and greatness in God’s reign begin with little acts of love toward the least brother or sister.

On February 18th we begin Lent, and there will be many good ways to make it special. Some ways are about giving things up, some are about taking things on. For me, it’s a prime time to examine before God all of my relationships: to God, to things (food, entertainment, work, TV, internet, etc.), to myself, and to other people (family, friends, fellow workers, neighbors, as well as the poor, be they known or unknown). How Christian are those relationships? Do they lead me to greater health and holiness, greater peace, greater generosity? And, in regard to my relationships to other human beings, how LOVING are those relationships? Because love is something other than liking or desiring or getting along. As a follower of Christ, in my relationships, do I act (or at least want to act) as light and as salt? Do I respect the goodness and beauty in everyone else?  

Fr. Frank Reale, S.J.

Thoughts on original sin

 

Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

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 miracles

 

Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Mark 6:53–56

Friends, today’s Gospel reports Jesus healing many people at Gennesaret. We hear that people brought the sick from all over the region and all of them were cured. “Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.” An awful lot of contemporary theologians and Bible commentators have tried to explain away the miracles of Jesus as spiritual symbols. Perhaps most notoriously, many preachers tried to explain the multiplication of the loaves and fishes as a “miracle” of charity, with everyone sharing the little that he had. But I think it’s hard to deny that the first Christians were intensely interested in the miracles of Jesus and that they didn’t see them as mere literary symbols! They saw them for what they really were: actions of God breaking into our world. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on salt

 

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:13–16

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus asks, “If salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?” That question ought to bother us as much today as it did Jesus’s audience long ago. What he means is that a weak Christianity is a disaster for the world, for the world depends upon the Christian Church in order to become what it was meant to be. Consider the truly awful gun violence in the streets of Chicago and other large American cities. A vibrant Christianity would actively get in the way of this affront to human dignity. Vibrant Christian churches would rub salt into the earth of this violence; vibrant Christian witness would be a city set on a hill. Consider the tens of millions of unborn eliminated over the past fifty years. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of the mothers and fathers of these murdered children came from a Christian background. Why wasn’t their Christianity strong enough to function as salt and light? Why wasn’t their faith illuminating enough to shine a light into the darkness of what they were doing? The clear implication is that without vibrant Christians, the world is a much worse place.  Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the Sermon on the Mount

 In the Sermon on the Mount selection which follows immediately after last Sunday’s rendering of the Beatitudes, Jesus says to his disciples (to us!) that we are light and we are salt. We might ask ourselves, what do salt and light do, what do they have in common? 

It seems to me that light is meant to be cast on something else. If, for example, it is cast on a painting, it does so not to make it beautiful, but to let the painting’s beauty become known. The use of such light isn’t intended to call attention to itself. In fact, if light does, we complain, saying that it’s blinding, keeping us from seeing clearly the very object it is meant to illuminate.  

And what about salt? We use salt on food not to make it tasty, but to let the tastiness of the food that’s already there to somehow emerge more obviously. And, like the light, it’s not meant to call attention to itself. In fact, if we put too much salt on a food, we complain, saying it’s salty, and that it’s destroying the natural good taste of the food.

OK, so Jesus says that WE are light and salt. What’s his point? I think that he’s teaching us something about Christian love. For you see, our love for those we know and for those we don’t know, our love for all of creation, is meant to draw out the beauty and goodness that already exists, as a gift from God, in that other person. Our love is not meant to make someone something other than what he or she already is as a son or daughter of God. Our love is not meant to make others good or beautiful; they are already that. Rather, our love is meant to draw out, to point out, to make obvious and clear, others’ beauty.  

Imbedded in that insight is a challenge which all of us face when we take seriously the mandate to be light and salt… to love in the manner of Jesus himself.

Fr. Frank Reale, S.J.

Thoughts on your mission

 

Memorial of Saint Agatha, Virgin and Martyr

Mark 6:7–13

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus sends the Twelve on their mission to announce the nearness of the kingdom. I want to say a few things about embracing our mission and being equipped for it. What do you need for your mission? You need a keen sense of God as the absolute center of your life. In a word, you require the spiritual gifts of piety and fear of the Lord. I realize that these terms can sound fussy and puritanical, but they are actually naming something strong and essential.  You need fear of the Lord, which does not mean that you are afraid of God. It means that nothing to you is more important than God, that everything in your life centers around and is subordinate to your love for God. And your equipping needs to include piety. That means that you honor God above everything else, that you worship him alone. These spiritual gifts enable you to find true balance; they allow you to know what your life is about. Equipped with these gifts, you are ready for mission. Having received the fire of the Holy Spirit, you are ready to set the world on fire. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on fear

 

The House of Christ

From: Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective

Why is there no reason to fear any longer? Jesus himself answers this question succinctly when he approaches his frightened disciples walking on the lake: “It is I. Do not be afraid” (John 6:21). The house of love is the house of Christ, the place where we can think, speak, and act in the way of God - not in the way of a fear-filled world.

Reflection Question: How will you make space today to hear Jesus say to you, “Take heart, it is I - do not be afraid”?

But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”   - Matthew 14: 26, 27