Memorial of Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Readings: 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Ps 34:2-11; Luke 14:25-33

Much can and has been said about Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Most of all, he is known as the founder of the Society of Jesus, known popularly as the Jesuits. As you probably all know, Pope Francis is a Jesuit, that is, a member of the Society of Jesus and, therefore, a son of Saint Ignatius.

What is not given enough attention is the revolution in Christian spirituality that was wrought through Ignatius. His story is pretty well-known. Born Iñigo de Loyola into a noble Basque, not Spanish, family, he initially set out to find fame and fortune as a soldier. Badly wounded in the hopeless defense of Pamplona in 1521, he went home for months of recuperation.

During his convalescence, wanted to read novels about chivalrous knights of the kind Cervantes’ Don Quixote was so fond. But all he had to read was the lives of the saints and the Cistercian Ludolf of Saxony's well-known Vida Christi As a result, he experienced a profound conversion. Once he was well, set out as a pilgrim.

But his deepest experience of conversion happened in Manresa, a town near the great city of Barcelona. From 25 March 1522- mid-February of the following year, Ignatius lived as a beggar, ate and drank sparingly, and practiced other extreme penances, which he later discouraged others from doing. He went to Mass daily and spent seven hours in prayer, often in a cave outside Manresa.

During this time, he was walking beside a river and, according to his autobiography, “the eyes of his understanding began to open and, without seeing any vision, he understood and knew many things, as well spiritual things as things of the faith.” While a mystic, Ignatius never claimed any grand visions. Shortly after this he began to write down what would later become the Spiritual Exercises.

Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises are the means by which the revolution in Christian spirituality brought about through him was achieved. These were revised and refined several times before they reached the final version we now possess.

This portrait of Ignatius is thought to be an "authentic portrait," ca. 1598-1600

Relevant to our first reading, the motto of the Jesuits from Ignatius’ day to our own has been Ad majorem Dei gloriam- for the greater glory of God. Another of Ignatius’ key insights is not just the possibility but the importance, even the necessity of finding God in all things. The axis around which the revolution in spirituality wrought through Ignatius orbits is his conviction that God speaks to everyone directly; God communicates with each person.

Hence, what the Spiritual Exercises are geared towards are learning methods of prayer through which God speaks, not in weirdly revelatory ways, but in a quite ordinary ways through your daily experiences. The key word in Ignatian spirituality is discernment. Specifically, how to discern in order to do God’s will.

The daily Examen is perhaps the most accessible of the practices Ignatius set forth in the Spiritual Exercises. This daily practice unfolds in five easy steps:

1. Become aware of God’s presence- God is always and everywhere present
2. Review the day with gratitude- even as you consider those things you did wrong
3. Pay attention to your emotions- consider what you were feeling and thinking at the time and how you feel about them now
4. Choose one thing from the day and pray from it- it can be something for which you are grateful or something you regret, use this as prayer starter
5. Look toward tomorrow- Christians are people of hope, trusting in God's goodness

Apropos of our Gospel, Ignatius was very serious about the importance of poverty and simplicity of life, not just for the members of the Society he founded, but as a way of Christian life appropriate to one’s state of life.

Saint Ignatius was serious about always bearing in mind the final end for which you are created and redeemed, and for which are being sanctified: eternal union with God. It seems fitting, therefore, to end this short reflection with the beginning section of the Spiritual Exercises:

By the term “Spiritual Exercises” is meant every method of examination of conscience, of meditation, of contemplation, of vocal and mental prayer, and of other spiritual activities that will be mentioned later. For just as taking a walk, journeying on foot, and running are bodily exercises, so we call Spiritual Exercises every way of preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments, and, after their removal, of seeking and finding the will of God in the disposition of our life for the salvation of our soul

Year A Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kgs 3:.7-12; Ps 119:57.72.76-77.127-128.129-130; Rom 8:28-30; Matt 13:44-52

Whenever Jesus teaches a parable beginning with “the kingdom of God is like,” we need to pay particular attention. As we have seen the past few Sundays, parables are understood allegorically. We should be grateful, as his trusted disciples, for those parables, like that of the sower, that Jesus himself gives us the correct allegory.

Before we get to what the kingdom of heaven is “like,” we need to ask what the kingdom of heaven is. While not yet fully realized, the kingdom of heaven is already here. This kingdom was inaugurated by Jesus Christ, who, according to Origen, the great Church father who remains the unsurpassed master of scriptural allegory, is Autobasileia. Autobasilieia, which is a big Greek word, means something like "the kingdom in person."

So, wherever Christ is, there is the kingdom of heaven. As the inspired author of the Letter to the Colossians points out “the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past… is Christ in you.”¹ Just how does Christ come to be in you? Well, the Holy Spirit, who, since Pentecost is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence, is the one through whom Christ can dwell both in and through you.

Each of the Church’s sacramental rites features an epiclesis. Epiclesis is a Greek verb that simply means to call down. In the sacrament of the Eucharist, the epiclesis occurs during the Eucharistic Prayer. It sounds something like this:

Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dew-fall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ²

It is the Holy Spirit who transforms the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. It is the mystical Body of Christ we receive that, in turn, transforms us into Christ’s true Body, the Church.

At the end of Mass, having been thus transformed, we are sent to make Christ present wherever we go. This how is the kingdom of heaven of which Jesus speaks presently exists. This is perhaps stated better by the lyrics of a song written by Michael Card:

Every time a faithful servant/
Serves a brother that's in need/
What happens at that moment/
Is a miracle indeed/
As they look to one another/
In an instant it is clear/
Only Jesus is visible/
For they've both disappeared³

The kingdom of heaven is not something abstract that will be realized in some distant future and that has little to do with us. As Christians, our mission is to make the kingdom of heaven visible and present here and now. Let’s not forget that a simple definition of a sacrament is a visible and tangible sign of Christ’s presence in and for the world. This means by virtue of your baptism, your confirmation, and your ongoing participation in the Eucharist, you are to become a sacrament- a visible and tangible sign of Christ’s love in and for the world.

Saint Lawrence was a deacon in Rome who lived in the third century. Pope Valerian entrusted Lawrence, who was a young man, with the management of all the Church’s assets. After Valerian was arrested while celebrating Mass and beheaded shortly thereafter, the agents of the emperor set their sights on the young protégé of the Bishop of Rome: Lawrence, whom they knew was entrusted with the Church’s wealth.

After his arrest, Lawrence was given three days to round up the wealth and surrender it to the emperor. During those three days, Lawrence sold everything and distributed it all to the poor. When the emperor summoned the deacon to his palace on the third day, he asked him to hand over the treasure on pain of death. Whereupon he gestured back toward the door where, streaming in behind him, poured crowds of poor, crippled, blind, and suffering people. “These are the true treasures of the Church,” he boldly told the emperor.

Lawrence understood that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field and like a pearl of great price, worth selling everything to obtain. To say something is “like” another thing is to establish a recognizable similarity but not an identity. The kingdom of heaven is infinitely more valuable than any earthly thing.

Another thing that needs to be noted about the kingdom of heaven based on Jesus’ teaching, is that it is a kind of a bizarro world. It’s where the first will be last and the last will be first. It’s the world the meek will inherit. It is a kingdom that will not be and cannot be brought about either through political action or by force.

Lawrence, and many other holy women and men throughout the Church’s history, are certainly among the keepers caught by the net cast by God into the sea of humanity. Even though, like his bishop, Valerian, he died as a martyr, he is one for whom all things worked for his good because he loved God.

For a Christian, death is not the worst fate. As we hear Jesus say elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, “do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”⁴ Currently, the memorial acclamation we’re using is “Save us Savior of the world, for by your cross and resurrection you have set us free.”⁵ Christ has set us free from the fear of death, which frees us for fearlessly making present the kingdom of heaven.

Solomon was wise because, as a young king, instead of asking for riches, power, or fame, he asked God for wisdom to govern the kingdom with which he was entrusted. Wisdom comes through discernment. As the example of Saint Lawrence amply demonstrates, true wisdom often, as in almost always, seems counterintuitive and countercultural. He did the wise thing, which to the eyes of many, looks very foolish.

Let this petition from our Collect for today be our prayer:

O God… grant that, with you as our ruler and guide,
we may use the good things that pass
in such a way as to hold fast even now
to those that ever endure⁶

---

1 Colossians 1:26-27.^↩
2 Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer II, sec. 101.^↩
3 Michael Card. "Distressing Disguise."^↩
4 Matthew 10:28.^↩
5 Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer II, sec. 105.^↩
6 Roman Missal, Collect for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.^↩

Year I Friday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 20:1-7; Psalm 19:8-11; Matthew 13:18-23

“Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.”¹ Only someone with ears to hear can credibly make this statement. In our first reading, we hear about God revealing the Ten Commandments, to Moses.

Rather than a list of dos and don'ts, the Ten Commandments can easily be seen simply as a list of don'ts. Based on a certain, tone deaf, reading this can result in constructing a religion of “Don't!”

As Irish Catholic writer John Waters, reflecting on the highly Jansenistic version of Catholicism that was all too common in Ireland and in which he was raised, once observed- the question the Church has to answer is “What comes after don't?"² In other words, “Don't” is not enough, not by a long shot!

Jesus’ teaching is about what comes after don't. What comes after no is agape, that is, self-giving, self-sacrificing love. This why his so-called Two Great Commandments are positive: love God with your entire being and love your neighbor as you love yourself.³ It’s more accurate, then, to say that love comes both before and after don't.

One of the ways “the Evil One comes and steals away what was sown in [someone’s] heart” is by convincing that person that Christianity is just a big “Don't!” and that God is a cosmic killjoy, who stands opposed to enjoyment, happiness, excitement.⁴ It is a short leap from there to understanding being a Christian as one who strictly follows a prescribed set of rules.

On this view, the more rules you follow the better Christian you are. As most of us know, this is a shortcut to hypocrisy. Perhaps nothing is more off-putting than hypocrisy. This pseudo-Christianity is anti-evangelization. It’s not good news. It’s just old news.

What was fundamentally wrong with the Pharisees’ approach to the Law is that they mistook means for ends. According to the Gospels, love seems to have played little or no role in their understanding of the Law. In other words, they seem not to have had ears to hear.

One way to put this is that you obey the commandments out of love for God as a way to love your neighbor. Looking at the Ten Commandments, we can schematize them in the following way: the first three are about loving God; the last six are about loving your neighbor.

What about the fourth commandment? It is about honoring your parents. It’s true, your parents occupy a unique place between God and other people. I can’t think of a better way to end than by invoking today’s Gospel acclamation:

Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart
and yield a harvest through perseverance⁵

---

1 Responsorial, see Readings link above.^↩
2 Final chapter of John Water's book Lapsed Agnostic, entitled "After Don't".^↩
3 Matthew 22:36-40.^↩
4 Matthew 13:19.^↩
5 See Readings link above and Luke 8:15.^↩

"I will sleep in peace"

In the wake of the news of Sinéad O'Connor's death, I posted a flurry of things on social media in memoriam. This Friday traditio gives me the chance to pull some of that together and write a few things. Before anything else, I am going to say something about her religious quest.

Like the vast majority of people in Ireland, certainly people her age, which means people of my age, O'Connor, born in Dublin, was raised Catholic in a heavily Catholic culture. The Church in Ireland, for far too long, was infected with the ecclesial/theological virus of Jansenism. Jansenism, for those who do not know, is a kind of Catholic Calvinism. As such, it is hung up on things pre-destination. Its most devastating symptom is that it reduces faith moralism and, therefore, creates the oxymoron of "Christian Pharisees." There's a lot of talk about God's wrath and hell, etc.

What I wrote above, of course, is no doubt quite oversimplified. One effect of that approach to Christian faith is that it resolves into a joyless keeping of rules. And so, in 2018, O'Connor, quite publicly converted to Islam. Predictably, her relationship to Islam was interesting and fairly idiosyncratic: "In the same way I would have embraced Christianity, there’s things I like and there’s things I don’t like and things I identify with and things I don’t identify with. But I really felt, oh my god, I’m home."

For O'Connor, the fundamental issue was to worship God and God alone. Initially, she took on the Muslim name Shuhada' Davitt and, in a move quite characteristic of her (I mean that positively- she thought and rethought things), she later changed it to Shuhada Sadaqat. There have been a few complaints that, post-mortem, she is not referred to as Shuhada Sadaqat. But, even while she was alive, she publicly went by her given name, the name by which she is lovingly known by millions of fans the world over. She was quite comfortable with this bifurcation. We should be too. Because she fought so hard for it nearly all her life, she is the guardian of her own identity.

Islam, for her, seemed to serve as something of a spiritual decluttering. From what I can tell, while she did not shy away from identifying herself as a Muslim and was willing to talk about her conversion and her faith, being Muslim had something of a very personal feel for her. In fact, she spoke about her spiritual life at some length during her 2020 appearance on Tommy Tiernan's show (watch here). Given her experience with Christianity, I find this, sadly, very understandable. She was utterly correct about growing up in an Ireland where nobody got any joy out of God through religion. The Church in Ireland is only now, institutionally, moving past Jansenism, but the loss has been staggering.

Morrissey's remembrance of her is also notable. If nothing else, Stephen Patrick, a bit like Sinéad, likes to stand out. I don't really care what you think about Morrissey. He's always been, quite intentionally, a rather polarizing figure. He is right in insistence about the stupidity of the media. This is verified by the attempt of some in the media to turn his repugnance toward the people who treated O'Connor like crap and who are now lionizing her into an attack on her. Anyone who can read with comprehension can clearly see that is not the case.

Rememberings is her memoirs. It was published to great acclaim in 2021. It is very much worth reading. She even read it for the audio version.

She was a tremendous talent, not just an amazing singer but an extraordinary songwriter. Of her songwriting, Tommy says in the interview I link to above- "it must've been like being possessed by fire."

Our traditio for this Friday is a live performance of her very autobiographical song "The Emperor's New Clothes." The video is alright, but this performance is wonderful. As you can see, this was during the time she was affiliated with the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church. A breakaway Catholic-ish denomination in which she was even ordained a priest at one point.

Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne

Readings: Exodus 16:1-4.9-15; Psalm 78:18-19.23-28; Matthew 13:1-9- Obligatory Memorial, regular lectionary readings can be used

Today the Church observes the Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Quite naturally, this points us back to the Immaculate Conception. The dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception holds that looking forward to the redemption of her Son, by a unique and singular grace, she was preserved from the “stain” of original sin.

As to her parents, our Blessed Mother was conceived in the normal way. This prelude leads us to our Gospel for today, which is an excerpt from our Gospel for the Sunday before last. Rather than restate Jesus’ unpacking of the allegory of the seed, it’s good to focus on what it means to make our hearts rich soil in which the word of God can be planted, germinate, sprout, be nurtured and grow.

I think most of us are familiar enough with gardening to know that simply taking a handful of seeds and scattering them across a patch of ground isn’t likely to yield a successful garden. Before planting you prepare the soil. At the end of the previous season, you might fertilize. Then, in the spring, you typically till, hoe, weed, and water.

It is by doing these things that plant a successful garden and produce a good crop, be it tomatoes, onions, peppers, beans, squash, or even flowers. This parable extends to our hearts, to our souls. Are you preparing the soil, that is, your soul for the word of God?

The spiritual equivalent of fertilizing, tilling, racking, and hoeing is the practice of the spiritual disciplines. There are three fundamental spiritual disciplines taught by our Lord himself: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Beyond these are penitential practices, solitude, and spiritual reading. One particular form of spiritual reading that involves God's word directly is especially efficacious: lectio divina.

These practices, when done intentionally and consistently, open you up to God, and make you more attuned to the movements of the Holy Spirit. These are time-tested practices. They are called disciplines because it is important to engage in them whether you feel like it or not.

In spiritual life habits become habitus. While it is a polyvalent word with several contextual meanings, habitus in the context of spiritual life means habituating one’s self to God through the consistent practice of spiritual disciplines. Spirituality is nothing other than the effects of spiritual practices.

Perhaps the biggest killer of spirituality is impatience. Grace takes its time. The life of the spirit is not a hurried life. When we don't achieve some preconceived results quickly, we're tempted to mix up our routine or abandon it altogether. Not too long after meeting Israel's demand for food, Moses began to hear grumbling about eating the same old thing day in and day out.

Another way to understand our impatience when it comes to practicing spiritual disciplines is a child who plants seeds for the first time, after planting, watering, and ensuring the seeds receive enough sunlight, she begins to ask when they will sprout. After they sprout, she asks when they blossom. After they blossom, when they will bear fruit. Once they bear fruit, when will ripen enough to eat. Spiritually, most of us have a tendency to be like that. Engaging in spiritual practices each day is not likely to yield, or even really geared toward effecting, deeply profound subjective experiences daily or even weekly, or even monthly.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola dubbed such experiences "consolations." According to Ignatius, these experiences, as nice and even as important as they are, are not to be sought. When they happen, these experiences are to be received gratefully and enjoyed. Unlike drinking, we don't engage in spiritual practices to feel a buzz. Spiritually experienced Christians understand advent, understand waiting.

Eugene Peterson observed that

When nothing we can do makes any difference and we are left standing around empty-handed and clueless, we are ready for God to create. When the conditions in which we live seem totally alien to life and salvation, we are reduced to waiting for God to do what only God can do, create

This seems certainly to be the case with the Annunciation, or, in the case of the Blessed Virgin’s parents, the normal delivery of a healthy baby girl who would become the Mother of God.

A Wedding Homily

Readings: Pvbs 31:10-13.19-20.30-31; Ps 103:1-2.8.13.17-18; 1 Cor 12:31-13:1-8a; Jn 15:9-12

Arelia and Thomas, as I said in my greeting at the beginning of our celebration today, for both of you “this is a moment of unique importance.”¹ Today you come to God’s house and, in the presence of your families, your selected witnesses, and the Church’s minister, pledge yourselves to each other for the rest of your lives. This is a big undertaking. A tremendous act of hope, of trust in God and in one another.

Too often, as Catholics, when we speak about vocations, that is, the calling God issues to the baptized, we refer only to priesthood and/or religious life. This is a mistake. Marriage, too, is a vocation, a divine calling. Like becoming a priest or a deacon or entering a religious order, marriage that is really a marriage requires a lifelong commitment. As such, it requires prayerful discernment. It is no small thing to publicly commit the rest of your life to another person no matter what happens.

Like ordination, marriage is a vocation confirmed and strengthened by the grace of a sacrament. Together with Holy Orders, Holy Matrimony is a sacrament at the service of communion. Very often we call the Sacrament of Orders “Holy Orders.” In my view, we should only refer to it that way if we also always refer to the Sacrament of Matrimony as “Holy Matrimony.”

Sacraments are symbols. Symbols are necessary for grasping reality. For example, rather than actually being the things to which they refer, words are symbols. The rings you will exchange in this rite are symbols of your love for one another, which love flows from God, who is love- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.²

What Holy Matrimony is supposed to sacramentally symbolize is the unfailing, undying love of Jesus Christ for his Bride, the Church. Rather than a private arrangement between two people, or even between two families, Christian marriage is a public witness to the love of God given us in Christ Jesus, which love is the foundation of the Church.

The readings you have chosen for this celebration indicate that you understand this very well, maybe even better than you realize. Whether it is Saint Paul’s disquisition on love from his First Letter to the Corinthians or the passage from Saint John’s Gospel, the original Greek word translated into English as “love” in these passages is agape.

Unlike English and other Western languages, koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament, has four words for love. Philia is brotherly love, which is why Philadelphia is called “the city of brotherly love.” Storge refers to the love of a parent for her/his child. Eros, the root of our word “erotic,” describes the intimate, romantic love between two people.

Eros is the only one of these four words not used in our uniquely Christian scriptures. Agape, by contrast, appears more than two hundred times throughout the New Testament. Agape is best understood as self-giving, self-sacrificing love- the kind of love demonstrated by Jesus giving his life for our sake.

As our first reading from Proverbs states, “Charm is deceptive and [physical] beauty is fleeting.”³ Life together, usually sooner rather than later, presents challenges. As anyone who has been married for even a few years can tell you, if you look for reasons to leave, you can find them. The secret to staying married is to look for reasons to stay and being determined to stay.

How do you find those reasons? Our reading from 1 Corinthians, in addition to being beautiful, is very practical. It bears noting that in its context this passage is not addressed to couples, but to the whole Church. What Saint Paul has given us is a very detailed definition of agape. Above all, through life’s inevitable difficulties, agape “bears all things…hopes all things, endures all things.” Because of this, “Love never fails.”⁴

True love, true agape, never fails because “God is love” and God never fails.⁵ So, make God the center of your life together. Do not be hesitant to cross the final frontier of intimacy with each other. No, I am not referring to that! I am talking about praying aloud together.

Because it is a call from God, marriage is a way for you both to become like Christ. Being like Christ means being perfected in love. Being perfected in love means to love like Christ, to love perfectly. This is precisely where the grace of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony becomes so important. Through this sacrament, your “intention to enter into Marriage” is “strengthened by the Lord with a sacred seal.”⁶

The rites that the Church celebrates are first theology. In other words, they instruct us on living as Christians. And so, as the Order of Matrimony states, through this sacrament, which only begins today and is lived out for the rest of your lives, “Christ abundantly blesses the love that binds you. Through a special Sacrament, he enriches and strengthens those he has already consecrated by Holy Baptism.”⁷

What does Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, strengthen you both for in and through the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony? He strengthens you to “be faithful to each other for ever and” to “assume all the responsibilities of married life.”⁸

Among the responsibilities of married life, as the vows you take reveal, is the responsibility of accepting “children lovingly from God and [bringing] them up according to the law of Christ and his Church.”⁹ What is the law of Christ? As our Gospel reading tells us, the law of Christ is the law of love.

Pope Saint John Paul II identified “the Christian family as a true ministry through which the Gospel is transmitted and radiated, so that family life itself becomes an itinerary of faith and in some way a Christian initiation and a school of following Christ.”¹⁰ There is a reason we call our homes “the domestic Church.”

So, Thomas and Areli, today, taking a cue from the Gospel reading you have chosen, remain in Christ’s love. The way you remain in Christ’s love is by loving one another as Christ loves each of you- in a self-giving and self-sacrificing way. Make participating in the Eucharist together a habit from the very start. Don’t be strangers at the confessional. Be willing to ask forgiveness of each other and extend forgiveness to each other.

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1 Order of Celebrating Matrimony. Without Mass, sec. 87.^↩
2 1 John 4:8.16.^↩
3 Proverbs 31:30.^↩
4 1 Corinthians 13:7-8a.^↩
5 1 John 4:8.16.^↩
6 Order of Celebrating Matrimony, Without Mass, sec. 93.^↩
7 Ibid.^↩
8 Ibid.^↩
9 Order of Celebrating Matrimony, Without Mass, sec. 94.^↩
10 Pope John II. Apostolic Exhortation, Famliaris Consortio, sec. 39.^↩

Year I Friday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 11:10-12:14; Psalm 116:12-13.15-18; Matthew 12:1-8

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”¹ This is the heart of today’s readings. In this passage, the inspired author of Matthew’s Gospel has Jesus invoking a passage from the Book of the Prophet Hosea.² This is also the message of our reading from Exodus.

In this passage about the institution of the Passover, how were the Israelites saved? By putting some of the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorpost of their houses. Of course, this is a parallel to how we are saved by the blood of Christ, our Passover.

The very fact that you and I need to be saved is a testimony that we’ve done something, or some things, that have put us in some kind of jeopardy, perhaps even a life-threatening situation. These days, this is a reality we tend to gloss over: “all have sinned…”³

Another aspect of being saved that emerges from our readings this morning is that we cannot earn our salvation through rule-keeping. Whether it is strict adherence to the Law’s instructions as to when and how to sacrifice the Passover lamb, or when and how to eat it after it has been sacrificed and prepared,and to properly dispose of leftovers, or whether it is adhering to all the rules governing how to observe the Sabbath.

It’s interesting that Jesus points to the fact that a priest serving in the Temple on the sabbath must break the sabbath rules to perform his priestly ministry. As any member of the clergy can tell you, Sundays are not days of rest! The Lord then alludes to his messiahship when he tells his interlocuters “something greater than the temple is here.”⁴ At the end of the passage, he lets them know that the one whom they were admonishing was no one other than the Lord of the Sabbath.⁵

Indeed, Jesus is greater than the Temple. While this may seem like no big claim to us, it was blasphemy to Jews of the Second Temple period, or for the First Temple period for that matter. It’s something akin to John Lennon’s claim in the Sixties that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

You see, Jesus is both the priest and the sacrificial lamb. The whole purpose of the Temple was to have a divinely designated place where Israel, God’s chosen people, could worship God offering him the sacrifices the Law commands. Carrying over into the New Covenant, which is nothing other than the extension of God’s original covenant to all people, churches serve this same purpose.

For Catholics, a church isn’t just a building where we happen to meet. Churches are not incidental gathering spaces. It is a consecrated place where we worship God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord remains present in the tabernacle.

Fridays remain, even now, days of penance. This is why the first psalm for Morning Prayer on Friday is Psalm 51, known as “the Miserere.” As we know from our singing of the Agnus Dei at Mass, we translate the Latin word miserere as mercy.

In Psalm 51 we acknowledge that, due to our sins and failings, it maybe that God takes no delight in our sacrifices and may even refuse our offerings.⁶ What does God want? As the psalmist tell us the sacrifice God wants is “a broken spirit: a broken humbled heart.” ⁷ These are the offerings that please God.

The reason we begin Mass and even our Communion Services with a penitential rite is because we know that God is merciful. In fact, the name of God is Mercy. God’s mercy is the best and perhaps only starting point.

In order to receive God’s mercy, you must acknowledge your need for it. In confession, we do this quite explicitly by naming our sins in kind and in number. In the Sacrament of Penance, by God’s grace, our sins become the very stuff of our salvation. If that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.

As recipients of God’s mercy, we are to become ministers of that same mercy to others. This is what it means to live by Jesus’ hard sayings about forgiving 70x7, which means forgiving without limit, loving and praying for the good of your enemies, etc. Living in this way is how we show forth the blood of the Lamb that saves us.

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1 Matthew 12:7.^↩
2 Hosea 6:6.^↩
3 Romans 3:23.^↩
4 Matthew 12:6.^↩
5 Matthew 12:8.^↩
6 Psalm 51:18.^↩
7 Psalm 51:19.^↩

Year I Monday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 1:8-14.22; Ps 124:1-8; Matthew 10:34-11:1

Nine chapters on in the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Jesus engages in a disputation with some of his fellow Jews known as Sadducees, when asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus replies with no hesitation: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37).

It is a bit unusual for Jesus to interact with the Sadducees. Normally, he engaged with the Pharisees. This is not only because there were more of them. I am convinced that he engaged the most with the Pharisees because they were most like him.

Pharisees were what we might call “evangelical Jews.” They were Jews who sought to serve God by adhering to the Law of Moses and encouraging their fellow Jews to do the same. Whenever you hear or read about a Gentile in the Gospels who is either very well-disposed toward the Jewish people and their religion, or who is in the process of converting to Judaism, or who has converted, this is likely due to the efforts of the Pharisees.

What mainly distinguishes the Sadducees is that they did not believe in the resurrection. As those who attended very biblically based Sunday School were taught: because they didn’t believe in the resurrection, they were sad, you see. Sadducees tended to be wealthier Jews with higher social status. They also rejected the oral interpretive tradition of the Torah. Today such Jews are called Karaite Jews. Many do not hold any writings to be scripture apart from the five books that constitute the Torah.

Their main reason for rejecting the resurrection is that nowhere is such a teaching explicitly found in the Torah. Regarding the various Judaisms of his day, Jesus was theologically more aligned with the Pharisees than with any of the others.

My reason for invoking a different passage in my reflection this evening is to show how serious Jesus was about the love of God being “the greatest and the first commandment” (Matt 22:38). Loving God above everyone and everything else is not as easy as it sounds. But it is the one thing necessary. It’s almost a truism to say that loving Jesus more than you love anyone else enables you to love everyone else much more.

A painting of Rabia of Basra (c. AD 714/718-752)

In our time and culture, most of us are thoroughly convinced that we can have it all, we can do it all. This is self-deception, something to which human beings are fatally prone. This is even revealed sometimes in the way we talk about salvation. In our thinking and speaking about salvation, we often fall into the same trap as the one into which the Pharisees fell.

This can be broadly described as mistaking means for ends and turning God’s economy of grace, which is an economy of gift, into an economy of exchange. In short, if your religious practices do not lead you to a deeper love of God and neighbor then they remain just that- religious practices, an empty form, a shell of spirituality.

The latter of these takes the form of believing God will bless me, that is, give me the things I want when I do good and, conversely, believing that God will withhold these things from me when I disobey him. What this ignores, apart from the fact that it shows no theoretical or experiential knowledge of God, is a complaint that comes up in the Psalms and other places in the Old Testament with some frequency. Namely, the complaint that the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper.

Such an observation, sadly, sometimes quite accurate, brings into bold relief the theological necessity of believing in life everlasting. Not only is this not all there is, but what God has in store for those who love him is unimaginable (1 Cor 2:9).

I can think of no better way to express the love we need to have for God than in the words of the holy woman Rabia of Basra, which is in modern-day Iraq, who lived in the eighth century:

My God, if it is from fear of hell that I serve Thee, condemn me to burn in hell; and if it is for the hope of Paradise, forbid me entrance there; but if it is for Thy sake only, deny me not the sight of Thy face (Parabola, Fall 2023, “Saints & Sinners.” “A Holy Life,” by Claud Field: 114-121)

What Rabia and other mystics grasp is that we don’t love God for what God can give us. We love God for himself. As Christians- Rabia was a Shi’ite Muslim (isn't it interesting that, nonetheless, she longs to see the face of God?- a pretty Christian way of speaking)- we can love God because he sent his Son, Jesus Christ.

It is in and through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit that God deigns to share divine life with us. The essence of this divine life, as the Incarnation amply demonstrates, is self-sacrificing love. This becomes awesomely real in the Eucharist, which we are about to receive.

"...knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven"

Readings: Isa 55:10-11; Ps 65:10-14; Rom 8:18-23; Matt 13:1-23

In the lengthy passage from Matthew 13 that is our reading for this Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A of the Sunday Lectionary, I am always struck by Jesus' response to the question he is asked by his disciples. It is the question of why it is that he teaches "them," referring to those who gathered to hear him but were not, at least not yet, his followers, in parables.

The Lord's response to the question posed by his disciples is "Because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted." We mistakenly believe that Jesus' parables are a simple form of teaching. One of the reasons we think this is because we grasp them analogically. How else can they be understood?

Analogy indeed is the very nature of a parable. The Parable of the Sower is certainly analogical, as Jesus' unpacking of it clearly shows. Many of his parables, like that of Luke's Unjust Steward (see Luke 16:1-13), are not quite so straightforward. Because Jesus doesn't always provide us with a breakdown, we sometimes mess up the analogy.

My point is not so much to highlight the fact that parables are often more complex than they are simple, but to focus on the fact that, being Jesus' disciples, we are among those to whom "knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven have been granted." We often take this for granted. It is also easy to misunderstand what this means.

What it does not mean to be granted knowledge of the mysteries of heaven is to possess secret knowledge. While it is gnosis, this knowledge is not to be handled gnostically. In other words, what Jesus reveals through his teaching is not a secret to be kept among the initiated. Rather, this knowledge is to form and inform how those of us to whom such knowledge has been granted live our lives.

To jump from our Gospel to our reading from Romans, the shape and form knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven gives to the lives of Jesus' followers is "the revelation of the children of God." It is for this revelation that the world "groans in labor pains" anxiously awaiting. Living according to the mysteries of God's kingdom is how we respond to our own groaning for the fulfillment of the work God has begun in us by grace. It is to live in expectation, anticipation, that is, in the hope of the redemption of our bodies.

Hope is what our reading from Isaiah is all about. This passage is from deutero- or second- Isaiah. As such, it was written during Israel's Babylonian exile. It is a promise, reassurance from God to his chosen people, who groan with longing for the land God promised to them, who long for home. In this passage, God, through his prophet, reassures them that his promise is true.

Perhaps the deepest mystery of the kingdom of heaven we can know is that God, sometimes despite all appearances to the contrary, is trustworthy. The various fates of the seed scattered by the sower, keeping in mind the analogies Jesus provides us, his disciples, shows, for the most part, how important human freedom and human agency are when it comes to responding to God's word.

Make no mistake, God's word will be fulfilled with or without you. This is good news but it can also be bad news. The full realization of God's kingdom is not child's play. It isn't something that is happening over and above the world, as it were. It comes into being through what happens in the world, good, bad, or otherwise. This is precisely the same way God accomplishes his will in your life- through the everyday things that happen to you. When conceived in this way, everything becomes an opportunity to respond to the word of God.

Year I Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Genesis 28:10-22a; Ps 91:1-4. 14-15ab; Matthew 9:18-26

Our readings this evening point us, again, to what Jesus asks Cleopas and the other disappointed disciple on the road to Emmaus: “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”¹

In our Gospel reading, the inspired author of Matthew intertwines two very dramatic instances: the death of the official’s daughter and the woman suffering from hemorrhages. Understandably, we tend to skip to the end of these stories, to where the hemorrhages are healed, and the little girl is brought back to life. But we do this to our own detriment. What is notable, what is useful for us in our faith life, is that Jesus healed the afflicted woman after she suffered for twelve years, and he brought the official’s daughter back to life but did not prevent her from dying.

In both cases, rising occurred only after death. In one case quite literally and in the other a bit more figuratively. The question for us, as it was for the official and for the afflicted woman, as indicated by our responsorial, is do you trust God, not even when, but especially when things seem to be going badly, when things seem horribly wrong, when you’re desperate?

It almost goes without saying that it is easy to “trust” God when everything is hunky-dory. Let’s face it, trust only really becomes relevant when things take a turn for the worse. Now, this is not to say that God is going rain down suffering upon you to see whether you trust him. He is not. Life in a fallen world, a world in which pain, suffering, and death are realities, takes care of this and then some.

God certainly allows illness, suffering, and even death- at least for now. When Jesus heals, when he raises people from the dead, he reveals the future. When used in Masses for the Dead, Eucharistic Prayer III tells us about this wonderful future God has in store for us, a future secured by the death and resurrection of his only begotten Son:

Grant that he(she) who was united with your Son in a death like his, may also be one with him in his Resurrection, when from the earth he will raise up in the flesh those who have died, and transform our lowly body after the pattern of his own glorious body. To our departed brothers and sisters, too, and to all who were pleasing to you at their passing from this life, give kind admittance to your kingdom. There we hope to enjoy for ever the fullness of your glory, when you will wipe away every tear from our eyes. For seeing you, our God, as you are, we shall be like you for all the ages and praise you without end²

One of the ways we shall be like God is that we will no longer experience pain, suffering, and death. But as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Lord, life’s difficulties persist. Choosing to believe in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, we, too, may have to endure ridicule. People laughed when Jesus said that the girl was not dead but only sleeping. This Good News can seem to many, maybe particularly those who are grieving, mourning, or suffering, too good to be true.

Part of the life of faith is to experience through the events that constitute your life this pattern of dying and rising. The Paschal Mystery is the heart of reality. Experience is how such a belief goes from a theological thesis to reality. To be clear again, God does not cause you to suffer. God does not will or decree that you suffer. But God does allow you to suffer. I realize this can be cold comfort to someone who is suffering.

Some years ago, after a very difficult time in her life, a friend attempted suicide. Spending time with her after her nearly successful attempt, while she is not Catholic but knowing that I am and that I am a deacon, she asked that inevitable and most human of questions about her predicament: Why? I told her that I couldn’t really answer that question. I did tell her I am confident that God uses everything that happens to us to draw us to himself. She replied, “I don’t really care for his methods.” You know what? It’s okay to feel that way at times. In many situations, you would be less than human if you didn’t.

One spiritual practice in too little use today is the practice of uttering short, very short, prayers throughout the day. I can think of no better short prayer to say often than the one given us by the mystic Saint Faustina Kowalska: “Jesus, I trust in You.” I think it’s an especially good prayer to utter when your day goes sideways in an unexpected way or when you find it otherwise impossible to pray.

It's not for nothing that in the Salve Regina, which we recite toward the end of each Rosary, we, Eve’s “Poor banished children,” send the Blessed Mother “our sighs, mourning and weeping” as we make our way through “this valley of tears.”

Above all, keep in mind the key that unlocks not just the meaning of the scriptures we’ve heard today, but the one that unlocks all scriptures, which is expressed well in our Gospel acclamation for this Mass:

Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death
and brought life to light through the Gospel³

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1 Luke 24:26.^↩
2 Roman Missal. The Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer III.^↩
3 2 Timothy 1:10.^↩

"Well, some say life/Will beat you down"

Well, I made 4 of 5 Fridays in June, not a bad reboot. I think I more than made up for it by preaching twice during the week and posting those homilies. My rationale for posting my homilies is not, "Hey, look at what a great preacher I am!" My reasoning is something like, "I spent time and effort prayerfully preparing this and delivered it once. I might as well as post it and, who knows, maybe someone will benefit from it." I don't recycle my homilies.

It's been a nice week. I am home with only my 17-year-old son and our dog. We've cleaned the garage and done a lot of heavy annual yardwork that I had been too busy to get to before now. No little ora et labora, which is a great mode of existence. I have loved the three days of fairly taxing manual labor. I spent July Fourth pretty much by myself. I went to Mass, which was the reason for the homily I posted on Tuesday.

Last night, we went to see Wes Anderson's Asteroid City. I loved the film. There is, arguably, even a theme of resurrection that comes up at the end. I have to say, that Scarlett Johansson was incredible in the movie. She has certainly reached the full flower womanhood- if I am permitted by today's standards to both notice and to say so. There's a lot to this movie. I need to see it again.

Scarlett Johansson as Midge in ‘Asteroid City’. CREDIT: Universal

Looking at my planner last week, I was desperate to find the day when I don't have so many things scheduled moving forward. It turns out that day is this Sunday, 9 July. I will be doing 3 weekday Communion Services while my pastor is away for the next three weeks, but apart from that and preaching one Sunday, nothing over and above what I do routinely- which is more than enough by any sane standard.

I also watched Abel Ferrara's Dangerous Game. Without a doubt, it is Madonna's best performance as an actress. Like most of Ferrara's movies, it is pretty gut-wrenching. But, like a lot of Ferrara's movies, it is also quite deeply Catholic. By deeply Catholic, I mean Catholicism isn't just something added on, or artificially mixed in.

I am also back to Saint Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises and Von Balthasar's annotations of them. Today I ordered Gerald O'Collins' new book on the Spiritual Exercises. Without a doubt, there will be more to follow. Listening to a podcast that was an interview with Dr. Matthew Levering on Von Balthasar. In passing, he hit on something that I think makes Balthasar's work resonate with me deeply. That is the fundamentally Ignatian mode in which he works, which is somewhat voluntarist in nature. Not wholly or full-blown, or necessarily even over-blown.

Our traditio, what is it? I am sure at least one of my two readers is curious. Well, I was struck this week by hearing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Learning to Fly." So that, dear friends, is this week's Friday traditio. Maybe it struck me the way it did because it is quite consonant with Asteroid City.

Fourth of July

Readings: Galatians 5:17-26; Luke 12:15-21

“Give me liberty or give me death,” these words by Patrick Henry have echoed down the years of our Republic. What is liberty, what is freedom for? Liberty is for human flourishing. In scripture Christians are exhorted “Be free, yet without using freedom as a pretext for evil, but as slaves of God” (1 Peter 2:16).

Our readings for this Fourth of July run along these same lines. When Paul opposes spirit to flesh in our reading from his Letter to the Galatians, “flesh” does not mean “body.” The difference between the two is evident in the original Greek. In Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, “flesh” is sarx while “body” is soma, as in our word "somatic," which means pertaining to the body.

Flesh refers to our natural human tendency to put myself, my needs, wants, and desires first, to look out for number one, even if that is to the detriment of others. It is by living according to the spirit that unifies the human person body, soul, and spirit.

As Christians in the United States, like Christians in every nation, our calling, our vocation, is to live by the Spirit, which means according to the Spirit’s gifts, which Paul enumerates. Hence, as Christians first and then as Americans, our concern is not so much making the United States into a "Christian nation" by legislative or judicial fiat as it is to live as Christians in this nation. Evangelization is not and cannot be a political or legislative program. This is why it is fitting that we gather for Eucharist, for thanksgiving, on the Fourth of July.

Living in a free country provides us with a lot of opportunities. This is a good thing. But the multiplication of choice is not what it means to be truly free. Neither is being truly free a function of having as few restraints as possible on human activity. For Christians, true freedom is freedom for loving God and neighbor.

Freedom allows us to discern and then do God’s will. The only free person is the one who, knowing God’s will, does it without counting the cost. As the witness of many saints, especially many martyrs, demonstrates, true freedom, which is interior, does not depend on any particular political arrangement or regime.

The Avenue in the Rain, by Childe Hassam, American impressionist painter, 1917

Over the course of human history nations and empires rise and fall. Over the more than 2,000 years of the Church’s history, countries have come and gone. It is no small thing that the Church is the longest continually functioning institution in the world. As Catholics, we don’t buy into the Puritan myth, either historically or theologically.

Of course, we have the Lord’s promise that the gates of hell will never prevail against the Church. Hence, the primary concern of Christians is maintaining the freedom of the Church to be the Church, the Assembly of God in Christ. This allows the Church to bear the prophetic mantle and to spread the Gospel.

There is nothing wrong with using the freedom we have to pursue our goals and dreams. There is nothing wrong, in principle, with pursuing the American Dream. But we must strenuously resist the “I’ve got mine attitude,” which makes us indifferent or possibly even hostile to those for whom things haven’t worked out so well. As Christians, as patriotic Americans, we take up the challenge of creating, referencing the preamble to our Constitution, seeking to create an ever more perfect union.

E pluribus unum, a Latin phrase found on our paper money, which means bringing the many together as one, is perfectly consonant with our Christian faith. But, as scripture states, “love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). We must receive all we have as a gift from God and, therefore, we must treat it as a trust and put it to use for the common good.

The beginning of Jesus’ teaching in our Gospel is the whole of his teaching in this passage from Luke. As such it is instructive for us: “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”

So, today let us give thanks to God and celebrate the great blessing of living in the United States of America. Let us remember those who sacrificed to establish our country. Let us also commit to using the blessing of freedom to accomplish God’s purposes for our own lives, our country, and for the world.

Feast of Saint Thomas, the Apostle

Readings: Ephesians 2:19-22; Ps 117:1-2; John 20:24-29

Our Gospel today is a shorter version of the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter. It’s the passage that gives Thomas the title “Doubting.” Part of the point of this passage from the end of Saint John’s Gospel is that not seeing is believing.

While Jesus invites Thomas, who doubted the testimony of his fellow disciples, to “put” his finger in the wound of his hand and to “put” his hand into his side, the account does not tell us whether he did so. Our natural assumption, based on what he said to the others beforehand, is that he did. But it would be in keeping with the overall theme of not seeing is believing if he did not.

One thing is clear, as Thomas, even if unintentionally, indicates: the Risen Lord is recognizable by his wounds. Yet, this is not perhaps our expectation. Before we dismiss him too quickly as a doubter, let’s not forget that elsewhere in John’s Gospel, when Jesus sets out for Judah, where he was in danger of being put to death, to visit the grieving sisters of his friend Lazarus who had died, it was Thomas who said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go to die with him" (John 11:16).

When paired with his “doubt” about Jesus being risen, perhaps it’s better to say that while Thomas knew what it was to die with Christ, like what was written about Peter and John after they experienced the empty in our Gospel from John’s Gospel on Easter Sunday, he “did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead” (John 20:9).

There is a connection between this grasping that not seeing is believing. During the Last Supper Discourse, also in the Gospel According to Saint John, Jesus tells those at table with him, “For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). If we keep in mind that the Holy Spirit is the way Christ remains present not just to us in some inchoate way, but remains present among, in, and through us until Christ returns, things become clearer.

Thomas the Apostle on his Apostolic throne

Truly, the mystery of life in Christ, as the Eucharist amply shows, is that Christ can live in you. If Christ did not go and send the Spirit, there could be no Eucharist. In this way, Christ can come to be in you in a profound way, in a way like no other. This is even better than if Jesus were standing right next to you. After all, you cannot see inside yourself, at least not with physical eyes.

Understanding “the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead,” is an experience, a life-changing encounter.

In our Gospel yesterday, Jesus taught the importance of recognizing that it is only by taking up the cross that someone can really be his disciple. But it takes a life-changing encounter, a profound experience, to take up this not so tempting invitation. His encounter with the risen Lord clearly was a life-changing experience for Thomas.

It is a very strong and ancient tradition that Thomas subsequently took the Gospel to India. Our Syro-Malabar sisters and brothers are the Church he founded there. With its primatial see in Kerala, the Syro-Malabar Church is a sui iuris (meaning one of a kind and autonomous) particular church in full communion with the Bishop of Rome.

While tradition is unanimous that Thomas spread the Gospel to India, today is not necessarily an observance of the day of his martyrdom. It depends on which tradition concerning his death you believe. For us Latins, we take 3 July AD 72 to be the date he was killed by a spear on Mount Chennai in India. On this account, his body was interred in Mylapore, India with his relics later making their way to Italy. But the deacon, theologian, and poet, Ephrem the Syrian, states that the Apostle was killed in India and that his relics were taken to Edessa, then a very Christian city which is now in the eastern part of modern Turkey.

Either way, like Peter, like Paul, like James, like most of the original twelve, Thomas became a martyr, that is, a witness to Christ’s resurrection. Paradoxically, it was likely through his martyrdom that he experienced not only dying with Christ but knowing what it means to rise with him. He experienced the truth of the central paradox of our Christian faith: that you lose your life by trying to gain it and you gain your life by losing it for the Lord’s sake.

Year A Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Kgs 4:8-11.14-16a; Ps 89:2-3.16-19; Rom 6:3-4.8-11; Matt 10:37-42

Christianity is a religion of paradox: one God, three divine persons; Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human; Mary, virgin and mother, to name just those that constitute our faith at its most fundamental. Turning to Jesus’ teachings: you win by losing; you can only have it all if you give it all away.

What is a paradox? A paradox is something that seems like a contradiction but is not. Usually showing something is a paradox and not a contradiction requires giving an example. After all, as Wittgenstein insisted, it’s easier to show than to explain.

In our Gospel reading today, the Lord sets forth the central paradox of Christianity. This paradox is demonstrated by the Paschal Mystery of suffering, death, and resurrection. What is this paradox at the heart of Christianity? “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”¹

Note that it is not just a matter of losing one’s life. At some point, we will all die. Blunt, I know, but a given. Memento mori, remembering death, is an important element of genuine spirituality. The Lord teaches that it is losing one’s life for his sake, that is, for the sake of the Gospel- Jesus Christ himself being the good news- that one finds it.

This is not just true in the by-and-by. As anyone who regularly serves those in need can tell you, it happens in the here and now. What this shows is that this paradox, this hard saying, can be verified through experience. Experience is the crucible through which Jesus’ teaching goes from being idealistic hypotheses to what is really real.

When it comes to faith, many people understandably want things simplified. Experience, whether it is in service to others, or the practice of the other two fundamental spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting, is how the abstract is made concrete. Even when it comes to God’s tri-unity or Christ’s true divinity and true humanity, experience is how you really come to grasp these divine realities. Faith that is true is more existential than metaphysical, more experiential than theoretical.

How you lose your life for the Lord’s sake is by embracing the cross. When it comes to redemption, we must experience for ourselves that there is no resurrection without the cross and that the cross without resurrection means pain and suffering have the last word.

Our first reading illustrates this well if we extend it a bit beyond where our reading from the lectionary ends.² In fact, our lectionary reading is a bit misleading. It was no doubt chosen to pair with Jesus' teaching that "Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward."³ Hence, the woman extends generous hospitality to the prophet Elisha and he promises her the blessing of a child. As is often the case in scripture, it's a bit more complicated.

After Elisha tells the hospitable woman she would bear a son, this unnamed and up-until-then barren woman nearly rebuked the prophet. She replied as only one who has dealt with disappointment can: “you are a man of God; do not deceive” me.” This is serious business. Anyway, wouldn’t it be easier to just bring some oil, flour, or grain as a thank-you gift?

Elisha and the Shunamite Woman, by Jacob Symonsz Pynas, 1592-1650

A year later, when Elisha returned, he found this woman cradling a healthy baby boy in her arms. Scripture tells us this child had a healthy start to life. Then, one day, going out to his father in their field, he began complaining loudly about a sudden headache. A few hours after a servant carried him home, the boy died in his mother’s lap. Whereupon she laid his body on the bed in which the prophet slept while visiting.

Without skipping a beat, the now forlorn and perhaps angry woman took one of their donkeys and set off to find Elisha. When the prophet, who was on Mount Carmel, spotted his fellow Shunamite some way off, seemingly worried, he sent a servant to see if everything was alright. It’s easy to imagine that through gritted teeth, she told the servant everything was peachy with her husband and son.

But when she made it to the mountain, throwing herself at the feet of the prophet, she said, recalling her reply to the prophet’s promise of a son, said, “Did I ask my lord for a son?” She had not. “Did I not say,” she continued, “‘Do not mislead me’?” Indeed, she had. It’s easy to understand how she felt: having a son and then losing him suddenly while he was still a child was worse for her than never having children at all!

Cutting the story short, Elisha returned home with her and through his ministrations brought her son back to life. While this is good, it doesn’t erase the anguish she experienced. Just as the hope of resurrection does not stop us from mourning those who have died.

This episode gives us deep insight into what Jesus was referring to when he rhetorically asked his disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And then, "beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scripture.”⁴

Our reading from Romans 6 is a longer version of the epistle from the Easter Vigil. By his description of baptism, the apostle, too, teaches that dying and rising is the pattern of redemption. “If, then, we have died with Christ,” he wrote, “we believe that we shall also live with him.”⁵ This is the post-resurrection take on Jesus’ teaching from today’s Gospel.

Even after his Resurrection, Jesus still bears the wounds of his crucifixion. He will bear these wounds forever. To the Lord, what is most beautiful about you are the wounds you receive for the sake of self-sacrificing love.

Our participation in the Eucharist, at Mass, works the same way it does in Luke’s account of the road to Emmaus. After the liturgy of the word, they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Recognizing him, they immediately set off to tell others about their life-changing encounter with the Risen One.

This is summed up nicely in the Church’s Prayer after Communion for this Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. We pray that “bound to [God] in lasting charity” through “this divine sacrifice we offered and received…we may bear fruit that lasts forever.”⁶

The sacrifice we receive, of course, is Christ in Holy Communion. But the sacrifice we offer the Father, through the Son, by the power of their Spirit is nothing less than ourselves, whole and complete. This is signified by the gifts we bring forward during the Offertory of the Mass. To fruitfully receive Christ body, blood, soul, and divinity, you must offer yourself to God body, blood, soul, and humanity. Otherwise, what we offer God is some inexpensive unleavened wafers and not exactly the finest wine.

Don’t worry, just as the Father transforms our meager gifts of bread and wine into the body and blood of his Son, through the grace of this sacrament, he can transform even a less than total offering of one’s self into an acceptable sacrifice.

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1 Matthew 10:39.^↩
2 See 2 Kings 4:16b-37.^↩
3 Matthew 10:41.^↩
4 Luke 24:25-27.^↩
5 Romans 6:8.^↩
6 Roman Missal. Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Prayer after Communion.^↩