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.

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

Thoughts on Saint Paul

The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, celebrated on January 25, casts a distinctive light on the Church’s mission. The great Baroque artist Caravaggio captures this moment with striking clarity in The Conversion on the Way to Damascus. Saul lies outstretched on the ground, arms extended, his body forming the shape of a cross as he is seized by the light of Christ. The fiery reds of his vest and cloak suggest the work of the Holy Spirit, through whose action Saul the persecutor becomes Paul the apostle.

Paul’s mission, the proclamation of the Gospel to the Gentiles, is the hard work of making Christ known in the face of hostility, indifference, and doubt – the mission of the Church now and always. It is not a matter of clever rhetoric or momentary fervor. For Paul and his co-workers—Timothy, Titus, and others—it requires vigilance, fidelity to the word of God, and the patient labor of building up the Church. Central to this work is the fostering of unity amid division, so that those who belong to Christ may be united “in the same mind and the same purpose.” Writing to the Corinthians, Paul insists that the Church is not founded on the charisma of so-called super-apostles, nor divided into factions gathered around Apollo, Cephas, or even Paul himself. Instead, the Church is founded on the Crucified Lord, whose Body cannot be divided.



This week the Church prays with particular intensity for Christian unity, a concern that Pope Leo XIV has made central to his pastoral mission. Christ’s call to repentance and the nearness of God’s reign form the deepest basis of our unity in faith, a unity that is never inward-looking. Instead, shaped by the Cross, it carries its own missionary power, drawing others into communion with the Lord who first called Paul on the road to Damascus.

In Christ,



Fr. Hermes 

Thoughts on miracles

 

Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

Mark 3:7–12

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus cured so many people that he had to climb into a boat to escape the press of the crowd. To this day the Church carries on his gracious healing ministry.  We recall that the apostles of Jesus simply continued what the Master did. And one of the principal marks of the Lord’s ministry was clearly healing. There was, of course, a deep biblical conviction that when the day of the Lord arrives, creation would be set right. What we witness in the healings of Jesus is just this repairing of creation. If you doubt that miracles of physical healing still take place in the life of the Church, I invite you to read Craig Keener’s book Miracles or visit the Church in Africa, Asia, or Latin America, where the expectation of the miraculous is taken for granted. But the Church also brings healing to mind, soul, will, and imagination. The Bible knows that sin has done tremendous damage to us, and anyone involved in pastoral ministry knows what this looks like: broken minds, divided hearts, addicted passions. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on evangelization

 

Listen to the Voice of Love

From: Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

As a reaction to a very aggressive, manipulative, and often degrading type of evangelization, we sometimes have become hesitant to make our own religious convictions known, thereby losing our sense of witness. Although at times it seems better to deepen our own commitments than to evangelize others, it belongs to the core of Christian spirituality to reach out to the other with good news, and to speak without embarrassment about  what we “have heard and … seen with our own eyes…. Watched and touched with our hands”(1 John 1:1).

Reflection Question: When was the last time you had the opportunity to reach out to the other with good news?

“We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— what we have seen and heard we also declare to you so that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”   - 1 John 1: 1-3

Thoughts on MLK

 

MLK

Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thunder cloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on him
So let it be
So let it be

Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on him

Bono - U2
from The Unforgettable Fire album released in 1984

Even more thoughts on baptism

 

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

John 1:29–34

Friends, in our Gospel today, John the Baptist gives witness to the role of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’s baptism. Baptism is the moment when the Holy Spirit draws us out of this fallen world and into a new world. And with this in mind, we can understand the relationship between baptism and the other sacraments. Baptism is birth in the spiritual order, the beginning of a properly spiritual life. The other sacraments represent specifications of that life. For instance, a living thing needs to be nourished. This is the role that the Eucharist plays. But do you see why only baptized people can receive the Eucharist? If you’re not alive, there is no point in feeding you. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the liturgical year

Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, the Baptism of the Lord: just as we recover from Thanksgiving, the seasons, feast days, and mysteries follow one another in rapid succession. As the old year gives way to the new, the Church directs our attention to another calendar – the liturgical year – her own cycle of time that sanctifies and gives meaning to our daily lives, already ordered by the cosmic and civic rhythms of time. The seasons and feast days of the liturgical year shape our minds and hearts according to the Christian mysteries and thus help us live the faith with greater focus and interior devotion.

Saint John the Baptist also orients us and focuses our attention, pointing us to the very Heart of the world. When the Baptist proclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” he directs us to follow Jesus, the Crucified Lamb, whose side is pierced and through whom God saves his people. To follow Christ Jesus, to be his disciple, is both gift and vocation: a gift given at Baptism, and a call, in the words of Saint Paul, “to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Our growth in holiness is largely a matter of how we use our time – how we inhabit our days. To offer our weeks and days to God, indeed all our activities, is to sanctify time itself. To unite our daily prayers, works, joys, and sufferings to the Heart of Christ and to his intentions is to draw closer to his pierced Heart. This self-offering allows him to shape and form our hearts, making us holy with all the saints before the face of his heavenly Father.

In Christ,



Fr. Hermes 

Thoughts on healing

 

First Week in Ordinary Time

Mark 1:29–39

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus heals many of the townspeople of Capernaum. His healing of physical ailments points to his spiritual healing—to his being the doctor of the soul. The Gospels are filled with accounts of Jesus’s healing encounters with those whose spiritual energies are unable to flow. Much of Jesus’s ministry consisted in teaching people how to see (the kingdom of God), how to hear (the voice of the Spirit), how to walk (overcoming the paralysis of the heart), and how to be free of themselves so as to discover God. Jesus was referred to in the early Church as the Savior (Salvator in Latin). The term speaks of the one who brings healing—indeed, our word salve is closely related to salvus, meaning health. When the soul is healthy, it is in a living relationship with God. When the soul is sick, the entire person becomes ill, because all flows from and depends upon the dynamic encounter with the source of being and life who is God. We heal the soul by bringing to bear the salvator, the healer, the one who in his person reconciled us with God and opened the soul to the divine power. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on good intentions

 

Remembering Our Good Intentions

From: Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

Our heart might desire to help others: to feed the hungry, visit the prisoners and offer a shelter to travelers; but meanwhile, we have surrounded ourselves with a wall of fear and hostile feelings, instinctively avoiding people and places where we might be reminded of our good intentions.

Reflection Question:  What good intentions do you need to act on today?

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”   - James 1: 27