Thoughts on criticism

 

Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 7:1–5

Friends, Jesus’s parable in today’s Gospel is one of the most psychologically and spiritually insightful remarks in the New Testament. Let’s face it: a favorite pastime of most human beings is criticism of others. We delight in pointing out the shortcomings, moral failings, and annoying tendencies of our neighbors. This is, of course, a function of pride and egotism: The more I put someone else down, the more elevated I feel. But it is also, oddly, a magnificent means of turning a mirror on ourselves, to see what usually remains unseen. Why, we ought to ask, do we find precisely this sin of others particularly annoying? Why does that trait or sin of a confrere especially gall us? Undoubtedly, Jesus implies, because it reminds us of a similar failing in ourselves. I remember a retreat director asking each of us to call to mind a person that we found hard to take and then to recount in detail the characteristics that made the person so obnoxious to us. Then he recommended that we go back to our room and ask God to forgive those same faults in ourselves. His words were as unnerving and as illuminating as these words of Jesus. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Father's Day

 

I want to wish a very happy Father’s Day to all the fathers, grandfathers, and spiritual fathers reading this right now. Watch my reflection here.

Fatherhood is one of the most profound and necessary callings in our world. As fathers, men become living signs of God’s own sacrificial love—providing, protecting, and guiding with a compassionate heart. “As a father has compassion for his children,” the psalmist proclaims, “so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.”  In living out this calling, you walk in the footsteps of Saint Joseph, who looked after the Holy Family with such quiet and steady devotion. Fathers, never underestimate the influence you have; your commitment to your family and your faith is the foundation upon which the next generation stands. This year, I want to propose a special intention for your Father’s Day celebration. As you honor the men who have shaped your life, remember in your prayers the priests you’ve known throughout the years. These men have answered a call to spiritual fatherhood, becoming, as Fulton Sheen put it, a Jacob’s ladder connecting heaven and earth, serving as a bridge between human beings and God.  In a particular way, I invite you to pray for your own pastor—the man who shepherds your local parish family. Pray that he be strengthened in his ministry and find joy in his sacred calling. In Christ,

Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on missions

Having returned last week to “Ordinary Time” and to St. Matthew’s Gospel as the source of our Sunday Mass readings, we find Jesus trying to prepare his disciples for the missions that they themselves will be called to assume. Specifically in the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus prepares them for the rejection and hostility they can expect if they embrace the mission he gives them. In doing so, he addresses their anxieties and fears about human opposition on the part of those who already have rejected Jesus’ message with great hostility.

The Twelve were understandably anxious about being sent out to preach on their own.

In response, Jesus commands two simple things: fear no one, and preach boldly. Of course, these are familiar themes throughout early Christian literature. Bold speakers may inspire fascination, but in an explosive environment like that of Roman-occupied Palestine, such fearless speech must have struck the Twelve as more imprudent than inspiring! They, like we, however, could draw inspiration from Jeremiah the prophet, whose story we also hear in the Sunday readings. His preaching aroused hostility, so much so that at one point he was imprisoned, tortured and left to die in a muddy well; he was delivered each time. He never stopped preaching, and history proved his words to be correct.

Matthew was writing for Christians of every age. The fearless, risky speech of Jeremiah and Jesus is both an example and a command to Christians in all times and places. Jesus trusted in his heavenly Father and had confidence in the truth of his own message. His love was greater than the world’s hate. We need to trust the same message. Love conquers all. You and I preach it less in words than in deeds, recognizing that the “cost” of our witness is sometimes the same insofar as we encounter cynicism, defensiveness and misunderstanding, if not blatant hostility. And yet, whenever you and I make ordinary, daily choices of love in response to whatever circumstances and opportunities each day brings, no matter how seemingly small, we are acknowledging that Christ is alive and at work in the world. We are the disciples on whom God relies to continue the Son’s mission as history unfolds.


Fr. Frank Reale, S.J.

Platinum Birthday

 

Last week I celebrated my birthday and my wife informed me that I was turning 63 years old and I was born in 1963.  She said there should be some kind of special name for this type of birthday, since it is so rare.  In recent years we have heard about folks, mostly children, celebrating their Golden Birthdays.  Golden Birthdays are when you are the same age as the day of the month that you were born, so for example, if you were born on the 17th day of May and you are turning 17, then that is your Golden Birthday.  Well, my Golden Birthday was in 1975 and we didn't celebrate Golden Birthdays back then, at least not where I lived, but now it seems to be a fairly common thing.  Well, we decided to check with ChatGPT and we were informed that when you are the same age as the year that you were born, that is called a Platinum Birthday.  Well, there you have it!

Thoughts on the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Sacred Heart

Each year on the Friday following the feast of Corpus Christi, before returning to “Ordinary Time,” the Church celebrates the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Heart-language is powerful language. Simple phrases convey and capture meaning beyond verbal expression: a contrite heart, brave-hearted, with a heavy heart, heart- to-heart, a stony heart, a broken heart, cold-hearted, a divided heart, light-hearted, with one heart and mind, wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve, hard-hearted, a passionate heart; cross my heart; know by heart; give my heart; heart filled with…; aching heart; clean heart. It’s rather amazing how dependent we are on heart-language to convey a great variety of human emotions and experiences.

I don’t know why I came at a young age to be fascinated by the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It probably has something to do with my high school days at St. Louis U. High, where the engaging Sacred Heart image was ubiquitous. Over the years, that familiar image, that devotion, has seeped more deeply into my own heart, shaping my devotional life and spirituality.

Perhaps on retreat at White House you have prayed before the Sacred Heart statue which resides to the south of Snyder Hall. Or, perhaps you are aware of other places, including in your own home, where the image has found a place of honor. It is not easy to precisely capture what the Sacred Heart image conveys. It does so “silently,” without words, not unlike the method through which my parents conveyed to their children their convictions about right and wrong, their experience of God, and their Catholic vision of life. But it does communicate. In the presence of the Sacred Heart, we know that we have a God who understands, who feels, who forgives, who speaks the words that we deeply long to hear, who loves with that kind of love that is all-encompassing and still relentlessly personal and unconditional.

It is that Jesus, that God, that I often address in prayer. Assessing the quality of my own heart, and recognizing how “mixed” it can be, I nonetheless want to offer it to a God who I trust will know exactly how to respond. Perhaps we can all beg for ourselves that same grace.


Fr. Frank Reale, S.J.

Thoughts on forgiveness

 

Memorial of Saint Barnabas, Apostle

Matthew 5:20–26

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus commands us to be reconciled with one another. I want to say something about the role of forgiveness in repairing our broken relationships. When you are at worship and realize that you need to forgive someone (or be forgiven by someone), go and do it. Go get reconciled, then come back. It’s like a rule of physics. There is something hidden in the deep mystery of God, and I can’t fully explicate it. Somehow, if there is a lack of forgiveness in you, it blocks the movement of God in you. Perhaps it’s simply because God is love, and so whatever is opposed to love in us blocks the flow of God’s power and God’s life. One reason we do not forgive is that we feel that some injustice has been done to us, and we resent it. A good cure for this feeling is to kneel before the cross of Jesus. What do you see there? The innocent Son of God nailed to the cross—the ultimate injustice. What does he do? He forgives his persecutors. Meditate on that, and your sense of being treated unjustly will fade away. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on community

 

Community Keeps the Flame of Hope Alive

From: Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and the Spirit

Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us. In this way we can live with courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power in us when we are together that allows us to live in this world without surrendering to the powerful forces constantly seducing us toward despair. That is how we dare to say that God is a God of love even when we see hatred all around us. That is why we can claim that God is a God of life even when we see death and destruction and agony all around us. We say it together. We affirm it in each other. Waiting together, nurturing what has already begun, expecting its fulfillment – that is the meaning of marriage, friendship, community, and the Christian life.

Reflection Question: When was the last time that you shared your burdens with others and what steps can you take to to seek out others to wait, listen, pray, and cultivate hope with?

When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. - Acts 1: 13 - 14