Thoughts on prayer

 

Prayer is Personal

Issues easily imprison; a person can set free. Issues easily divide us; a person can unite. Issues easily exhaust; a person can give rest. Issues easily destroy; a person can offer new life. Despair is caused by orientation toward issues, but hope emerges when we direct ourselves with heart and mind to the person of a saving God. That is prayer.

“Apart from me you can do nothing; those who dwell in me as I dwell in them, bear much fruit.”   - John 15:5

Thoughts on the Holy Cross

John 3:13-17

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

For God so loved the world

In history today's feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross celebrates the recovery of the True Cross from the Persians in the year 629.

But more important to us today, the feast reminds us of the centrality of Jesus' sacrifice for our salvation. Our Lord's suffering and death on the Cross brought about our salvation, and what we must always remember is that at every Mass Jesus' same sacrifice is continued and once again offered to the Father.

Every Mass continues to make present to us both the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. The Mass makes present the Last Supper because bread and wine become the sacred meal of the Body and Blood of Christ. And the Mass makes present the Crucifixion. On the Cross Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice in a bloody manner to the Father.

At Mass Jesus offers Himself – through the ministry of the priest – to the Father as a sacrifice in an unbloody manner. 

It is the same sacrifice of Jesus; only the manner is different. The same Christ who offers Himself to the Father as a sacrifice now gives Himself to us as heavenly food.

 

At Mass we also hear Our Lord speaking to us through the Gospel. On this feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross we hear what some say is the very essence of the Gospel:

           “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might

           not perish but might have eternal life.”

Here is the most simple and direct proclamation of the Gospel; here is truly the Good News:

Through the “lifting up” of God’s Son on the Cross and our belief in God’s Son and His message (His Good News), we will be saved. We will not perish in death; rather, we will have eternal life.

Through this central teaching of the Gospel, three important characteristics of God’s love emerge.

1. The initiative in all salvation comes from God 

           God is not angry; He does not have to be pacified; He does not have to be persuaded to forgive.

           Our salvation started with God. It was He who sent his Son because He loved us.

2. The essence of God’s being is love

           God does not act for His own sake, but for ours. He does not seek to satisfy Himself; He seeks to satisfy us completely, perfectly. God is the Father who cannot be happy until His wandering children have come home. He does not compel; He does not dominate into submission. Rather, He yearns for us and tries to draw us to Himself by love.

3. God’s love encompasses all

           The Gospel says that “God so loved the world” – not only a nation, a race, a people; not only the good; not only those who love Him. God loves the unlovable and the unlovely who no one else loves. He loves those who resist His love as well as those who do love Him. It is believed that St. Augustine said, “God loves each of us as though each were the only one who existed.”

These three characteristics of God’s love shine through the mystery and the glory of the Cross.

It is a mystery why God chose that way to save us, but it is our ultimate consolation that the Cross proves without doubt God’s love for us. How will I respond to Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross, which is continued at every Mass? How will I respond to God’s love?

  Don Saunders, S.J.

Thoughts on human value

 

The Value of a Human Person

We are living in a culture that measures the value of the human person by degrees of success and productivity. What is your title? How much money do you make? How many friends do you have? What are your accomplishments? How busy are you? What do your children do? But it is important for us to remember that as we grow older our ability to succeed in this way gradually diminishes. We lose our titles, our friends, our accomplishments, and our ability to do many things, because we begin to feel weaker, more vulnerable, and more dependent. If we continue to look at ourselves from the point of view of success, our condition is not a good one! Because of our strong cultural vision, it is a huge challenge to look at vulnerability not as a negative thing but as a positive thing. Do we dare to look at weakness as an opportunity to become fruitful? Fruitfulness in the spiritual life is about love, and this fruitfulness is very different from success or productivity.

“They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green…”   - Psalm 92: 14

Thoughts on detachment

 

Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

Luke 6:20–26

Friends, our Gospel for today is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, less well-known than Matthew’s but actually punchier, more to the point. It all hinges on detachment, that decisively important spiritual attitude—apatheia in the Greek fathers, indifferencia in Ignatius of Loyola. Spiritual detachment means that I am unattached to worldly values that become a substitute for the ultimate good of God. How bluntly Luke’s account puts things! Look at Luke’s first beatitude, a model for the rest: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.” What if we translated this as, “How lucky you are if you are not addicted to material things.” When we place material things in the center of our concerns, we find ourselves caught in an addictive pattern. Because material goods don’t satisfy the hunger in my soul, I convince myself that I need more of them to gain contentment. So I strive and work to get more nice things—cars, homes, TVs, clothes—and then I find that those don’t satisfy me. So I strive and strive, and the rhythm continues. Therefore, how lucky I would be if I were poor, unattached to material goods, finally indifferent to them. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on healing

 

Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest

Luke 6:12–19

Friends, after Jesus names his twelve apostles in today’s Gospel, he heals a multitude of people. And that multitude represents us, for we all stand in need of the Savior’s healing touch. We are made for love and connection and justice and nonviolence, but at every turn and in every way we are twisted in the direction of hatred, separation, injustice, and violence. We are, as St. Augustine put it, wandering in the land of dissimilitude and in the grip of the libido dominandi. The contemporary philosopher René Girard has reminded us that all of our social arrangements are marked by scapegoating and oppression.  The human race is best characterized as a dysfunctional spiritual family, all of us having been marked from birth by the effects of sin. Sin has found its way into every aspect of human life, personally and institutionally. We would be hopelessly naïve to think otherwise.  And so we need not just a philosopher or social theorist or political activist or military hero but a savior, someone who can break into our dysfunction from the outside and heal us. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 

Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Matthew 1:1–16, 18–23

Friends, today as we celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Church gives us the very beginning of St. Matthew’s Gospel. It is desperately important for Matthew to show that Jesus doesn’t just appear out of the blue. Rather, he comes out of a rich, densely textured history. St. Irenaeus tells us that the Incarnation had been taking place over a long period of time, God gradually accustoming himself to the human race.  Look at this long line of characters: saints, sinners, cheats, murderers, poets, kings, insiders, and outsiders—all leading to the Christ. Of course, King David is mentioned. He is, without doubt, a great figure, the king who unites the nation, defeats its enemies, and establishes the first Israelite empire. But he is also, we know, an adulterer and a murderer, the one who abuses his power in order to eliminate Uriah the Hittite. And finally the climactic entry that notes the virgin whose birthday we celebrate today: “Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.” Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the Gospel

 

Luke 14: 25 – 33                                                                             

 23^rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple                

 

This Sunday’s Gospel is a mixture of good news and bad news. It is good news, but not in the way we normally expect. It sounds more like bad news concerning things quite unpleasant and undesirable, even impossible.

 

We have become used to hearing the Gospel called the “Good News” of Jesus Christ. That is what gospel literally means. Our English word comes from the Old English (sometimes called Anglo-Saxon) language spoken in England from about the 5^th to the 12^th centuries. The it combines god (good) and spel (news, story, message).

 

But today’s Gospel reminds us that “Good News” is not only what we desire and what we think will make us happy. The Gospel is called “Good News” because it announces, not necessarily what we want for our happiness, but what we need for our salvation

 

Today's Gospel can sound like Bad News because Jesus teaches:

           • You cannot be my disciple without hating your family and your own life.

           • You cannot be my disciple without carrying your cross.

           • You cannot be my disciple without giving up all your possessions.

 

So, in the midst of these unpleasant teachings, what’s the Good News? If we follow Christ closely, as His disciple, we will follow Him in glory to everlasting life. Still, it seems to be an impossible task:

Hating our closest loved ones? Embracing painful suffering?  Renouncing all possessions?

 

Be not afraid! We should not take the harsh, unpleasant words completely literally. Hyperbole (exaggeration for emphasis or effect), was a common literary feature of the ancient Middle Eastern world. 

 

The Gospel is about counting the cost of discipleship. And the cost is putting God first in our lives:

● Our Lord teaches that God should come before family and other relationships of this world (That's “hating” father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, even one's own life).

● God should be put before comfort, convenience, health, satisfaction (That's carrying the Cross).

● God must always be in our lives before possessions (That's renouncing all one's possessions).

 

It is up to us to work out the specific details in our lives, but always asking, “How can I put God first?”  It is a daunting task, but it’s a question that should begin every day and every effort: “How does the Lord, here and now, ask me to put Him first?”

 

An ancient prayer of the Church, The Actiones Nostras, may be just the thing to begin our day:

                       Direct, we beseech Thee, O Lord,

                       All our actions by Thy holy inspirations

                       And carry them on by Thy gracious assistance;

                       That every prayer and work of ours

                       May always begin with Thee

                       And through Thee be happily ended

                       Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

 

Today’s Gospel may seem like “Bad News”: we are told to renounce selfishness, possessiveness, ease, comfort, convenience. But, if we do strive to follow Christ more closely as disciples – always with the necessary help of his grace – we will one day hear that best “Good News” of all, as we are welcomed by Our Lord: “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

                                                                                               

Don Saunders, SJ