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

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.