Thoughts on joy

 

Joy Remains

From: Following Jesus: Finding Our Way Home in an Age of Anxiety

What we have to start sensing is that in the spiritual life, joy is embracing sorrow and happiness, pain and pleasure. It is deeper, fuller. It is more. It is something that remains with us. It is something of God that is very profound. It is something we can experience even when we are in touch with very painful things in our lives. If there is anything the church wants to teach us it is that the joy of God can be with us always – in moments of sickness, in moments of health, in moments of success, in moments of failure, in moments of birth, in moments of death. The joy of God is never going to leave us.

“The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.”   - Psalm 19: 8

Thoughts on obedience

 

Memorial of Saint Martin of Tours, Bishop

Luke 17:7–10

Friends, today’s Gospel describes the obedience of a faithful servant. Our lives are not about us; they are about the King. We are built not for commanding others but for obedience. In the presence of the awesome lordliness of God—that mind and will whose grandeur we can barely fathom—we bow, we listen, we surrender. The Lord is the King, the one who commands, directs, and oversees, and who, accordingly, demands obedience. For a military tribe such as the ancient Hebrews, this term had, to be sure, an especially powerful resonance. The proper response to a king is obedience. The king commands, and the servant responds—simply, promptly, unhesitatingly. A courtier or a messenger might not understand the rationale for, or consequences of, what the king has told him to do, but he does it, trusting in the wisdom and power of the one who sends him. The word “obey” is derived from the Latin obedire, to listen attentively, to heed. In the presence of God the Lord, we his servants should listen, bending our ears and our wills to his word. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on money

 

Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

Luke 16:9–15

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us to approach wealth with wisdom. Let me quote a sermon of St. John Chrysostom on the right approach to money: “Those who love money are fierce in the pursuit of it, like wild animals pursuing their prey. They betray, cheat, or exploit their closest friend when there is gold and silver to be gained. They learn to make their consciences as numb as fingers on a cold day. Their eyes become blind to the suffering they cause, and their ears deaf to the cries of those whose lives are ruined by them.” Those are strong words, and they shook the people at the time who heard them. And they shake us today. But can you hear he’s speaking in the tones of Jesus? What’s the ground of all this for John Chrysostom? Why does he say it? It’s very clear. Because everything we have—our bodies, our life, our breath, our minds, our accomplishments, and, yes, our wealth—is a sheer gift given to us by a generous God, and, therefore, it ought never to be hoarded for our own purposes but always used for God’s purposes. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on God's presence

This Sunday we are celebrating the feast of the Dedication of the Church of St. John Lateran. It might seem surprising that on a Sunday we would be celebrating a Church building. In fact, we are not simply celebrating this Church building. Our scripture readings lead us to see that we are celebrating the sacred presence and deep desire of God for all of us: “Behold God’s dwelling with the human race. God will dwell with them, and they will be God’s people.”

Our Opening Prayer for this feast makes clear the meaning of our celebration: “O God, who from living and chosen stones prepare an eternal dwelling for your majesty, increase in your Church the spirit of grace you have bestowed.” A building, then, (St. John Lateran is the oldest Church in Rome and the cathedral church of Pope Leo XIV) can be the symbol of meaning for a people, an expression of all that is true and good and beautiful, the ultimate hope and desire of God’s people.

Our Gospel passage on this feast has Jesus coming to Jerusalem near Passover time and visiting the Temple. He did not like what he saw—the core of faith had been co-opted into commodity transactions (“…stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”) The Temple for him represented the presence and deep love of God for us. Each visit was a reminder of the hope and promise held out to all of humanity.

So, most importantly, what we celebrate this Sunday is that same reminder, found in a special way in the sacred places we revere, places where we find God’s presence, but also a reminder of the truth about ourselves: “You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.” We can, indeed, give thanks for all the ways that God finds to keep us close and celebrating!



Len Kraus, S.J.

Thoughts on conversion

 

Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

Luke 14:25–33

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says that a disciple must carry his own cross and follow him. All of us sinners tend to see the universe turning around our ego, our needs, our projects, our plans, and our likes and dislikes. True conversion—the metanoia that Jesus talks about—is so much more than moral reform, though it includes that. It has to do with a complete shift in consciousness, a whole new way of looking at one’s life. Jesus’s teaching must have been gut-wrenching to his first-century audience: “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” His listeners knew what the cross meant: a death in utter agony, nakedness, and humiliation. They knew it in all of its awful power. If God is self-forgetting love even to the point of death, then we must be such love. The cross, in short, must become the very structure of the Christian life. This is just what Jesus shows on his terrible cross. And this is just what we, his followers, must imitate. Taking up the cross means not just being willing to suffer but being willing to suffer as he did, absorbing violence and hatred through our forgiveness and nonviolence.  Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on All Souls Day

 

The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls Day)

John 6:37–40

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus talks about raising us on the last day. Our faith is that God will clothe the soul in a new and higher body, what Paul calls a “spiritual body.” Here we might rely on the musings of John Polkinghorne, the Christian physicist, who appreciates the soul as the “form” or pattern of the person. God remembers this “form” and then reconstitutes it at a higher level during the resurrection, much as the pattern of an article or a photograph could be preserved in a computer’s memory and then reproduced in a new way. Listen again to the words of Jesus in our Gospel today: “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me.” As you pray for the souls of your beloved dead, take comfort in those words. They will be raised again.  Bishop Robert Barron Prayer for All Souls' Day ‌ Dear God of mercy, We pray this day for all souls, both known and unknown to us, who, although touched by death, have not yet entered your heavenly kingdom. Lord God, by the precious blood which Jesus, your divine son, shed upon the cross this day, deliver the souls in purgatory, particularly those souls nearest to us and for whom we should pray, that they may come quickly into your glory, to praise and bless you forever. Grant them eternal rest, oh Lord. Amen.

Thoughts on the Beatitudes

 

Solemnity of All Saints

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