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

Thoughts on the Presentation of the Lord

 

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, celebrated on February 2, is rich in symbolism and promise. It commemorates the fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, when Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus to the Temple and present him to the Father in accord with the Law of Israel. Known for centuries as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the feast is also called Candlemas, marked by the blessing of candles and the proclamation of Christ as Light.

The feast day Preface proclaims the heart of the mystery: “For your co-eternal Son was presented on this day in the Temple and revealed by the Spirit as the glory of Israel and Light of the nations.” What is revealed is not only the identity of Jesus, but how God brings about salvation in Jesus. The Son comes not simply to speak or to act, but to be given. In his flesh—in his living and dying, his suffering and rising—the Son is given over entirely in love to the Father, and in that self-gift he becomes the light and salvation of all peoples.

In the Presentation, the Son is brought forward and offered, as sacrifices were once offered in the Temple. Yet this offering surpasses all others: it is the offering of the eternal Son to God the Father, a gift that already points to the self-offering the Son will make on the Cross.

In contemplating this mystery, we glimpse our own place within Christ’s offering. United to him through Baptism, we are taken up into his self-gift. In him, our lives are presented, consecrated, and entrusted to the Father—held within the light that no darkness can overcome.

-Fr. Richard Hermes, S.J.

Thoughts on the beatitudes

 

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:1–12a

Friends, our Gospel for today is one of the most beautiful and important in the New Testament: the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, the eight beatitudes. Why is it so important? Because it is the Son of God telling us how to be happy. It is the one who can’t be wrong telling us how to achieve that which each of us most basically wants. What could be more compelling? At the heart of Jesus’s program are these beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful” and “Blessed are the peacemakers.” These name the very heart of the spiritual program, for they name the ways that we participate most directly in the divine life. One of the most important words to describe God in the Old Testament is chesed (tender mercy). The New Testament version of this is found in the First Letter of John: God is agape (love). Everything else we say about God should be seen as an aspect of this chesed and this agape. Chesed is compassion; agape is willing the good of the other. Therefore, if you want to be happy, desire to be like God. Do it and you’ll be happy. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Ordinary Time

This Sunday we continue a journey through a brief period of “Ordinary Time” before Lent begins in a few weeks. Having celebrated the mystery of the Incarnation, our focus shifts to Jesus’ adult ministry. The questions now become: “What does it mean for Jesus to be the Savior and Messiah? What does he stand for, as revealed by his actions and his words? And, very importantly, what are we supposed to be as his disciples?

 

As you know, the scripture readings of our Sunday liturgies are on a three-year cycle, and each year highlights one of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). This year belongs to Matthew. During Advent and Christmas, at the beginning of the new liturgical year, we read Matthew’s narrative about the birth of Jesus. Now we read his description of Jesus starting his ministry, recruiting followers, announcing the “good news,” and healing the ills of people, both physical and spiritual. Matthew’s story has moved from a description of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, to the story of Jesus’ temptations in the desert, to the news that John has

been arrested. As we learned in last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus sees this as the sign that he must begin his own ministry, and so he moves from Nazareth to the larger, busier town of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. We were told that Jesus went around the whole of Galilee

with the result that he soon became, in his own characteristic way, a powerful and magnetic figure, a sign of liberation unleashing forgotten and discarded hopes.

 

On each Sunday which remains between now and the beginning of Lent on February 18, we will be listening to Gospel selections from what has become known as the “Sermon on the Mount.” While we may speak of the Sermon on the Mount as if it were one single sermon preached on one single occasion, it is far more than that. It is, in fact, a kind of representative summary of all the sermons that Jesus ever preached. In it we have the essence of the teaching of Jesus to those who desire to be his disciples. Anyone who heard it in its present form (107 verses!) would be exhausted long before the end. Maybe in these coming weeks there are blessings to be found in listening to the gospel selections as if we were hearing them for the very first time, letting ourselves be dazzled, challenged and ultimately saved by the message and the promises it conveys.

Fr. Frank Reale, S.J.

Thoughts on love

 

Third Week in Ordinary Time

Mark 4:21–25

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says the measure that you use will be measured out to you. He is speaking about the loop of grace. God’s love can truly dwell in us only in the measure that we give it away. If we try to cling to it, it will never work its way into our own hearts. But if we give it away as an act of love, then we get more of it, entering into a delightful stream of grace. If you give away the divine love, then you keep it. Love is described in the Christian tradition as a theological virtue, a habit or capacity that comes as a gift from God. This is true because love is a participation in the divine life. God is uniquely capable of love in the complete sense, since he alone can fully will the good of the other as other. What makes real love possible among humans is only a sharing in the love with which God loves, some participation in the divine to-be. When we root ourselves in the God who has no need, who exists in radical self-sufficiency, we can begin to love the other as he does. Bishop Robert Barron