Year 1 Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 32:15-24.30-34; Psalm 106:19-23; Matthew 13:31-35

While it’s important to understand what the Church means by “Ordinary Time,” it’s also necessary to recognize that, for most of us, most of life is lived in ordinary time, that is, ordinary in the normal sense of the word. In other words, most of our lives do not consist of tremendous highs and deep lows, peaks and valleys. We usually live somewhere between these poles. At least for me, a Monday in late summer is about as ordinary as it gets.

Even so, we live in a society that seems to wage war on the ordinary and the small. This is easy to detect in the language we hear, read, even sometimes use. Specifically, the use of superlatives, interjections, and exclamations. Growing up, excessive use of interjections, exclamations, and superlatives was discouraged in both speaking and writing.

To wit: when everything is “magnificent,” nothing is magnificent. When everything and everyone are “the best,” nothing is the best. In religious terms, the demise of the word “awesome” is lamentable. When everything is awesome, nothing is awesome. Our God is an awesome God, but this golden calf is pretty awesome too!

Everything, it seems, must be either terrible or superb, the worst or the best. We’re having none of this in between, ordinary nonsense. This is even true of faith and religious experience. Our first reading today, the story of the golden calf from the Book of Exodus, shows us the origin of this impulse. Let’s just say, its origin isn’t divine.

After lamenting to God that he fears those who seek to take his life, the prophet Elijah (considered the greatest of the Old Testament prophets) was directed “to stand on the mountain before the LORD.”¹ As he stood on that mountain, Elijah experienced a wind so strong that it broke rocks, but God wasn’t in the wind. He then felt an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake. Next, there was a fire, but God wasn’t in the fire. Finally, there was what is best translated as “a light silent sound.” God was in this “silent sound.” We can bear the contradictory language because a more or less immediate experience of God is not really communicable through words, no matter the language.

Mustard seeds

Day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year, encountering God is mostly just paying attention. As a colleague used to sarcastically remark: “Ninety percent of situational awareness is knowing what is going on around you.”

You don’t have summon God like genie. You don’t have to impose a preconception to find God. No matter where you’re at and regardless of your circumstances, God is always already there.

The spirituality given to the Church through Saint Ignatius of Loyola founder of the Society of Jesus (a.k.a. the Jesuits), whose feast we observe on Thursday, is best summed up in the phrase “Finding God in all things.” Finding God in all things is an invitation to look for and find the triune God in every circumstance of life, not just in explicitly religious activities like prayer, going to Mass, and not just in private, solitary moments (though certainly in all of these, just not limited to them).

All of this is built on the conviction that God is everywhere present and, while invisible, can be “found” in all aspects of creation and in every circumstance of life, even in, maybe especially in, the small things that occur during life’s ordinary times.

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1 See 1 Kings 19:10-13.^↩

Persist in prayer

Readings: Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138:1-3.6-8; Colossians 1:12-14; Luke 11:1-13

At root, our readings for this Sunday are about prayer. Listening, we learn about the importance not just of prayer in general but of petitionary prayer that is intercessory in its orientation. To be clear, by petitionary prayer, I refer to petitioning God for specific intentions. By intercessory prayer, I mean petitioning God on someone else's behalf.

In our day, there seems to be a loss of the belief in the efficacy of prayer. Why pray? It doesn't change anything. Even many genuinely pious people seem to focus merely on accepting whatever happens as God will, which they assume is predetermined. Why seek to cut against the grain of how reality seems to be working?

Now, don't get me wrong. We do need to learn how accept all things from God. This is no easy task. For many, it is crushing and understandably so. It's very important to grasp that not all outcomes are directly willed by God. God sometimes permits things without willing them to realize some some greater good. Let's never lose sight of the fact that God is in the resurrection business. God brings life from death and always seeks to do so, causality notwithstanding.

The question I always come away with after reading about Abraham's petition to God on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah is, What if he had persisted with God down to one? I realize that this opens a can of theological worms. Let's bracket those concerns and persist with the question what if? Would the cities have been spared had Abraham been more persistent?

If we take the Gospels as we should, which is as God's revelation because these texts accurately hand-on Christ's teachings, it is clear that we should be persistent in our prayers not only those for others but those made on our own behalf. Jesus' teaching is clear: persist! Keep asking, keep petitioning, keep praying. How many years did Saint Monica pray for her son, Augustine? Don't let up. The Lord is telling us in very practical terms how to pray.

Lest you think our reading from Colossians has no bearing on our readings from Genesis and Luke (great effort being made during Ordinary Time to harmonize the Old Testament reading with the Gospel), it has a lot of bearing. To wit: we become children of the Father through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. This happens in baptism when you were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You were reborn in baptism as a child of God. Not only were you reborn in baptism, you died, were buried, and rose with Christ to new life. Life, death, and love, as all of us seem to know intuitively, are intricately interwoven.

It pleases our Father to give you the Holy Spirit. It pleases Him to hear and answer the prayers of His children. So, don't pray by throwing up some half-digested desire. Recollect yourself, gather up all that is in your heart, consider the needs of people you know, pay special attention to those who have asked for your prayers. Then, pray to God, asking directly for what you want.

As the late Herbert McCabe, OP, wrote about prayer:

Our stance in prayer is not simply, or even primarily, that of the creature before the creator but that of the Son before the Father. At the most fundamental level, the level which defines prayer as prayer, we receive from the Father not as creatures receiving what they need to make up their deficiencies, but as the Son eternally receives his being from the Father¹

Summarizing McCabe's take on prayer, Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist, provides an important insight:

Fr. Herbert McCabe, O.P., used to say, that it is necessary to pray for what you really want— not to dissemble your desires. Distraction often comes, because we dissemble and do not recognize what we really want. And because at the beginning of spiritual life, our desires are often stupid and pointless, our prayers too will be stupid and (apparently) pointless. But those who persevere in prayer will find that God transforms their desires. And the more they are transformed, the more the stupidity and pointless will give way to a real communion with God²

Nonetheless, returning to McCabe, it is important to recognize "All our prayer is, in a very precise sense, in Spirit and in truth. For us to pray is for us to be taken over, possessed by the Holy Spirit which is the life of love between Father and Son."³

One of two things: keep praying, pray and then pray some more or start praying and then keep praying. Trust that will transform you through prayer. Also trust that God hears and answers prayers. This is experiential, not systematic, not doing x number of repetitions of A will inevitably result in B. Such nonsense is, far from being scientific, is superstitious.

Maybe in your prayer life you need to clear the deck and begin again. It's okay, as Father M. Louis said of the spiritual life, "We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners all our life!"⁴

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1 Herbert McCabe, O.P., God Matters (London: Continuum, 2005), 220.^↩
2 Ibid.^↩
3 Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., "Prayer Begins in Pointlessness and Stupidity," Church Life Journal, 27 June 2018.^↩
4 "Thomas Merton/Always Beginners"^↩

Music, a movie, and more music

You'd have to live under a proverbial rock to not know that Ozzy Osbourne died this week. Why such a big deal? It's a great question.

Ozzy's career began when, along with three other guys from Birmingham, England, he formed a band. Originally called "Earth," for reasons that seem to vary, they changed their name to "Black Sabbath." Black Sabbath was the English title of an Italian horror movie. The film's Italian title was I tre volti della paura (i.e., Three Faces of Fear). It featured the word tre because the film is comprised of three different stories: "The Drop of Water," "The Telephone," and "The Wurdulak."

Year 1 Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 14:5-8; Exodus 15:1-6; Matthew 12:38-42

In ministry circles there are sometimes mentions of what is called “practical atheism.” As Catholics, our category for this would be material atheism, which is opposed to formal atheism. Formal atheism is the conscious and explicit renunciation of belief in God.

Material atheism can be the result of what pastor and author Steve Cuss describes as “a gap between what we believe about God and what we experience from God.”¹ This often results not in people formally renouncing belief in God, but believing God won’t, or perhaps can’t, or, worst of all, doesn’t want to help in concrete ways with life’s inevitable challenges and setbacks.

In short, someone believes in God who made everything from nothing and who can do all things and yet there are things s/he has asked God to do that God hasn’t done. Now, one can be glib and simply say something like, “Maybe it’s for the better or to realize a greater good that God didn’t do what you asked Him to do,” even when what God was petitioned for appears, from an objective standpoint, to be a good thing.

Of course, such an answer is logically possible. It makes sense and, I guess, can be helpful for some people some of the time. But logical possibilities do not amount to ground truth. Plus, cliches and platitudes tend to wear thin pretty quickly.

In his most recent work, Cuss addresses what he sees as three gaps. But there is only one that has bearing on our readings: “I believe God is with me, but I can’t see Him.”² This seems to be the case both with the Israelites in our first reading and the scribes and Pharisees in our Gospel.

In our reading from Exodus, seeing Pharoah and his army rapidly closing in on them, the people say to Moses, with no little biting sarcasm:

Were there no burial places in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert? Why did you do this to us? Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Did we not tell you this in Egypt, when we said, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? Far better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness³

The scribes and Pharisees in our Gospel are refreshingly straightforward, saying: “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”⁴ Especially in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus’ attitude toward His own miracles can best be described as ambiguous. He seems to be keenly opposed to simply being seen as a miracle worker, a magician of sorts. Hence, the Lord replies to this direct request by saying it is an “evil and unfaithful generation” that seeks a sign.⁵ Note, He does not say He will give no sign. Rather, He points to the sign of Jonah, by which, of course, He points to His resurrection.

In his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, Fydor Dostoevsky observed:

It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles… and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact⁶

In our Gospel, Jesus is telling the scribes and Pharisees who He is. He more than implies that if they do not believe now, they will not believe even when He rises from the dead. By “unfaithful,” He means they lack faith, despite Who is addressing them, speaking words of life and truth.

The Gentiles of Nineveh, who believed and repented in response to Jonah’s preaching, and the Gentile queen of Sheba, who sought Solomon’s wisdom, will "condemn" them for their lack of faith and their infidelity to the Law and the prophets. As the Israelites were saved at the last minute, those who believe the sign of Jonah are not merely saved in the end but are already saved.

I get it, sometimes it doesn’t feel like you are already saved. Nonetheless, you are! When it comes to the expectation gap between what you believe about God and what you may experience from Him, this verse from a song by the late Rich Mullins, “Hard to Get,” helps me attend to the sign of Jonah:

What I really need to know
Is if You who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time?
We can't see what's ahead
And we cannot get free from what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screamin' in my ears
All these words of shame and doubt, blame and regret
I can't see how You're leading me
Unless You've led me here
To where I'm lost enough to let myself be led⁷

Like the Israelites following Moses, following Jesus, even when it’s hard to see where He’s leading you, is the path to the Promised Land, where He "will wipe away every tear from our eyes."⁸

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1 Steve Cuss. The Expectation Gap: The Tiny, Vast Space between Our Beliefs and Experience of God, pg.1. ^↩
2 Ibid.^↩
3 Exodus 14:11-12.^↩
4 Matthew 12:38.^↩
5 Mathhew 12:39.^↩
6 Fydor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov, Book I, Chapter V. ^↩
7 Rich Mullins, "Hard to Get."^↩
8 Roman Missal. The Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer III when said as part of Masses for the Dead.^↩

Choosing the better part

Reading: Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15:2-5; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42

Today's readings contain a lot. It's one of those Sundays when perhaps the readings are too rich, too deep, too full. Both the Old Testament reading and the Gospel feature a meal. Both feature service and preparation of the meal. Of course, since it is the source and summit of our faith, this quite naturally and rightly prompts some thoughts about the Eucharist.

In our Gospel, the one serving complains to the Lord about her sister who is just sitting there, listening to Him. Jesus gives a beautiful "No" to Martha's request that He tell Mary to get up and go help her. He says no by pointing out that Mary has chosen the better thing to do and that He won't deprive her of it. In other words, He isn't going to tell Mary "Get up and go help your sister." Prayer and contemplation matter greatly.

Christian worship and service should be rooted in prayer and contemplation. The fact prayer and contemplation are often not the wellspring of liturgy and ministry is as obvious as it is sad. The Lord Himself gives us the priority. Wheher you're comfortable with it or not, the Lord calls you to have deeply personal relationship with Him.

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Johannes Vermeer, 1655

By the very nature of our vocation, deacons are Marthas. In fact, both times the word "serving" appears in verse 40 of the tenth chapter of Luke, it is a translation of the Greek verb meaning "to deacon," that is, "to serve" (first diakonian- literally Martha was "pulled about through service" and diakonein- literally her sister "left" Martha to be the only one "serving").

It's easy when serving as deacon of the Mass to get caught up in what needs to be done, ensuring what needs to happen happens when its supporse to happen, etc., while trying to stay a step ahead. Even so, how a deacon moves, when he moves, the body labguage of his movement should reflect a genuine diaconal spirituality, which, like any genuinely Christian spiriuality, must be rooted in prayer.

Because we live a culture and society that values doing over being all of us Marthas virtually all the time. This is one reason why the practice of lectio divina is vitally important. For deacons, along with Liturgy of the Hours, the Holy Rosary, and the Examen, lectio divina is a vital spirtual discipline.

In my view, especially reflecting on Eucharist and prayer, the key phrase from today's readings is found neither in the Gospel nor in the reading Genesis, Rather, it is found in our reading from Colossians: "Christ in you." Not only is Christ in you (in me) "the hope for glory," it is "the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past." It is this mystery all Christians are called to reveal through our lives.

Christ comes to be in you (in me) by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is precisely why Jesus ascended and then sent the Spirit. Otherwise, He could be close to you but not in you. Before the Lord comes to be present in you through your reception of the Holy Communion, He makes Himself present in you aurally by the proclamation of Sacred Scripture. The Word is to become flesh in and through you and me. This is what makes the Church Christ's Body.

“No we didn’t light it…”

I don’t know about where you live, but here along the Wasatch Front of the Rocky Mountains the dog days of summer have arrived. It is hot. I’ve never been a huge fan of the heat but as I grow older, it hits me harder.

Utah is a desert. I live in a kind of high desert. Because it is a desert, there isn’t much humidity. When it hits 100°, the observation, true though it be, “but it’s a dry heat” ceases to have much meaning. Everything is very dry, despite having an extended and decently wet spring season. A summer rainstorm would be lovely.

Now that we’re some weeks past the summer solstice, the days are getting noticeably shorter. There is what I can only describe as a turn that takes place about the third week of August, when it cools down a bit, the shadows grow longer, and daylight hours are evidently shorter.

As always, there is a lot I could comment on. Increasingly, I find it’s better not to do so. I am reading a book that is most helpful: Every Thought Captive: Calm the Mental Chaos That Keeps You Stuck, Drains Your Hope, and Holds You Back. I am only about halfway through it but so far it is a book that is helping me tremendously. I may write more about it in due course (I may not).

Another indication that we’re in the dog days is the drop-off of readership for my posts. I kind of rode the wave after Pope Francis’ death, the conclave it prompted, and election Pope Leo XIV. The intensity of my engagement surprised me.

These days, most of my thinking is going into preaching and into leading an adult formation discussion group I am leading. We are discussing Pope Saint John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of its promulgation. I began this series of sessions by taking an in-depth look at Magisterium with an eye toward situating papal encyclical letters in this milieu.

Getting back to the thought that there is a lot going in our chaotic world and my resistance to add to the cascade that promotes doom scrolling, this week I heard Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” As I listened, I thought, “Boy, talk about a song that could use an updated version for the twenty-first century!” Our traditio, as you might guess, is “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” The unique cover does it for me today because it shows how the song might updated. Enjoy!

Memorial of Saint Kateri Tekawitha

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

Christianity is a religion of paradox. One God in three divine persons. Fully divine and fully human. Virgin and mother. As so it goes. In our Gospel for this evening, the Lord sets forth what is, at least existentially, Christianity's central paradox: you save your life by losing for His sake.

As to the most fundamental paradox- that of the Most Holy Trinity- what makes the three divine persons one God is love. In Greek, agape, which refers to self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Divine revelation tells us that "God is love" (1 John 4:8.16). Losing one's life for Christ's sake and that of the Gospel can only be done by and through agape, which is kenotic (see Philippians 2:5-11).

Today the Church in the United States celebrates the Memorial of Saint Kateri Tekawitha. Saint Kateri ("Kateri" being a variant of the name Catherine was her baptismal name) was a member of Mohawk tribe. Tekawitha, which apparently means she who bumps into things, is her Mohawk name.

She is known in popular Catholic piety as the Lily of the Mohawks. For Catholics, the lily is associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary. Being born 1656 and having died in 1680 of smallpox, Saint Kateri lived her entire life in the seventeenth century.

Saint Kateri Tekawitha, Used under a Common Use License

At age 19, Tekawitha converted to Christianity. Shortly afterwards, she took a vow of perpetual virginity. She lived the remaining nearly five years of her life in a Jesuit settlement near present-day Montreal, Canada. Along with another Native American convert- Marie Thérèse Tegaianguenta- Kateri attempted to begin a Native religious order for women. The Jesuit missionaries rejected their idea.

One of these missionary priests, a certain Father Cholonec, wrote down what Kateri said about her virginal consecration: “I have deliberated enough. For a long time, my decision on what I will do has been made. I have consecrated myself entirely to Jesus, son of Mary, I have chosen Him for husband, and He alone will take me for wife.”

While Kateri was never formally consecrated a virgin by a bishop, the Jesuits described her in early biographies as the slightly erroneous “first Iroquois virgin,” by which they meant first Native American virgin. She is the patroness of the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins. She was declared a saint by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.

Saint Kateri Tekawitha is one of four protagonists in Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers, which kind of builds on the paradox from our Gospel- you win by losing. Saint Kateri Tekawitha remains a beautiful witness to just what the Lord means in today’s Gospel as a woman, as a Native American, and as a Christian.

Year C Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

In our reading from Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people that God’s commandments are not too complex to understand and carry out. Our reading from Colossians reminds us that God has not given us the Law but His Son through whom and for whom everything that exists was made. It is through the blood of Christ, shed on the cross, that God reconciles all things to Himself, making peace- restoring shalom, bringing about communion. As the Church, this constitutes our mission.

Like God’s commandments, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan is not difficult to grasp. The Lord tells this parable, which is unique to Luke, in response to the question, “And who is my neighbor.”¹ There was no dispute about the requirement to love one’s neighbor. This is made explicit in the Law about which Moses was speaking. See Leviticus 19:18 for proof.

It seems that the scholar with whom Jesus was engaging understood the imperative to love his neighbor even as he loved himself. What he seems unclear about is just who his neighbor is. Who is it that I am commanded to love as I love myself. I don’t know about you but when it comes to myself, I got a whole lotta love.

In Spanish the word for neighbor is vecino. This is closely related to the English word “vicinity.” This points to the reality that far from being an abstract concept, your neighbor is someone in proximity to you, someone in your vicinity. Just as it is easy to love humanity because “humanity” is an abstraction but difficult to love that jackass over there, it is easy have neighborly feelings toward people far away for whom I can do little or nothing but hard to help the person who crosses my path who may need some assistance.

A statement like that inevitably elicits responses that start with “But…” An illustration may help. Once C.S. Lewis was walking along with a friend. As they walked, a street person approached and asked them for help. While Lewis’ friend continued walking, ignoring this plea for help, Lewis stopped and gave the man all the money in his wallet. When he caught up with him, this friend asked Lewis, “What are you doing giving him your money like that? Don't you know he's just going to go squander all that on ale?” After a moment’s pause, Lewis responded with “That's all I was going to do with it.”²

Now, is it good to be discerning in such situations? Absolutely. But we can find ways to assist those in need, whether it is giving them a bit of money or, if in the vicinity, offering to buy them food or providing them with something to drink.

It is also good to support organizations in our local community that assist our literal neighbors who are in need. The Bountiful Food Pantry is a great example of just such an organization. Of course, there are others. You don’t need to fly half-way around the world to spend a little time with the Missionaries of Charity, when the Daughters of Charity and others are helping those in need right here and who can always use assistance in their activities.

The Arrival of the Good Samaritan at the Inn, by Gustave Doré

In considering the Parable of the Good Samaritan, it might be useful to translate it to our milieu as Catholics in Utah. And so, we might rework it as something like the Parable of the Good Mormon, or to be more neighborly, the Parable of the Good Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; a mouthful, I know. Repurposed, it might go something like this:

A Catholic was headed to the Cathedral of the Madeleine to participate in the annual Chrism Mass. As she made her way from the Trax Station up South Temple to the Cathedral, she was assaulted, beaten, robbed, and left on the sidewalk unconscious. A Catholic priest came along and, seeing her on the sidewalk, crossed to the other side or the street to avoid her, maybe thinking something like, “Another drunk or junkie. This city is going downhill.” Besides, as a diocesan Consultor, he couldn’t be late for the Chrism Mass. Then along came a Catholic deacon (Levites are often associated with deacons) who, like the priest, crossed the street to avoid her. He had to make the Chrism Mass because he was presenting the oil to be consecrated for use in the sacrament of the anointing of the sick to the bishop.

Finally, along came a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was headed to Temple Square for a concert. Seeing the beaten and unconscious woman, she stopped, knelt, sought to revive her and, succeeding, gave her some water, rendered preliminary first aid, called emergency services, and stayed with her until the paramedics and police arrived on the scene, ensuring she was in good hands and the on way to the hospital. All of this made her miss the concert and she was to be a soloist.

Retelling the parable in this way, I think, gives us a better idea of how it probably would’ve struck this scholar of the law and Jesus’ other Jewish hearers. In a letter written to the bishops of the United States back in February, Pope Francis, seeking to correct a defective understanding about who my neighbor is wrote:

The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan"³

Indeed, this parable is a provocation. It’s meant to provoke us for (pro) your vocation or calling, received in baptism, strengthened by confirmation, reaffirmed in penance, and nurtured by the Eucharist.

And so, as regards our repurposed version of the Lord’s parable, which of those three (i.e., the priest, the deacon, the Latter-day Saint) was a neighbor to the one beaten and left for dead? That this is a rhetorical question only shows that Moses was right: it isn’t rocket science! Let’s go, then, and do likewise.

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1 Luke 10:29.^↩
2 Gary Hoag, “Give to Street People?,” in Christianity Today, January 2011, Vol. 55, No. 1, pg 60. ^↩
3 Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the United States of America, sec. 6. 10 February 2025​.^↩

"But soon, the world had its evil way"

It's late Friday but it's still Friday. So, today calls for a traditio, does it not? Given the late hour, while I have a lot on my mind and in my heart, I don't have many words to share.

L to R: Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums), Tony Iommi (guitar), Ozzy Osbourne (vocals)

Last weekend there was a quite an event in Birmingham, England. Called "Back to the Beginning," this event culminated with the orignial line-up of Black Sabbath playing live together for the last time. Four working class guys from Birmingham formed Black Sabbath in the late 1960s: Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward. It is no exaggeration to say that Black Sabbath invented heavy metal and heavily influenced goth rock and a lot of post punk bands. With its influence stretching across a number of genres, Black Sabbath is a seminal band.

Sabbath's "War Pigs," in my opinion, remans the best anti-war song ever written. With its beyond memorable opening lines: "Generals gathered in their masses/Just like witches at black Masses." The first quarter of the twenty-first has been a time of ceaseless war.

After a quarter century of war, there seems no end in sight. We seem quite confortable with bellicose butchery. Or, as is more likely case, it's that the "news," such as it is, as defined by comedian Bill Burr: "Here's a bunch of shit that happened that you can't fix." At least for me, that's where music comes in.

"Back to the Beginning" was a day long festival. It was an event. I remember in the early '80s laying on the floor of my friend's room listening to Black Sabbath albums. In this regard, their album Master of Reality stands out in my mind. I can't say that I'm a heavy metal devotee- though I do like a lot of metal bands past and present.

Black Sabbath, though largely viewed as either creators and/or pioneers of heavy metal, transcend this genre. A lot of early English post-punk, which emanated from the same working class roots in industrial cities as Sabbath's Birmingham- I think particularly here of Joy Division- no doubt took some inspiration from Black Sabbath.

Our traditio is the Black Sabbath's bluesy ballad "Changes," which was released on their 1972 album Vol. 4. The music was written by Iommi and the lyrics by Butler. Our traditio, however, is an intense cover by the late soul singer Charles Bradley. I find Bradley's cover deeply moving. Yungblud did a quite decent cover of this song at "Back to the Beginning."

Year 1 Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Genesis 28:10-22a; Psalm 91:1-4.14-15ab; Matthew 9:18-26

There are few things in life that can challenge one’s faith like sickness and death. In today’s Gospel, we encounter both. Rather than lose faith, both the father whose daughter just died and the woman suffering from hemorrhages demonstrate what faith is and show us how faith leads to hope.

The understandably distraught dad is convinced that if Jesus can just “lay” His hands on the dead girl she will live. Similarly, the woman who had suffered twelve years with what was likely menstrual bleeding felt all she needed to do was touch the Lord’s cloak and she would be healed. Neither one had much reason for optimism: the man’s daughter was dead, and the woman had suffered more than a decade with her chronic health problem.

I think it’s just fine that faith in these kinds of circumstances presents more as desperation than optimism. Hope is what remains when optimism runs out. This woman and this man both believed in Jesus. It seems the distraught father believed both in the Lord’s power to raise his daughter from the dead and in His willingness to do so. This woman, on the other hand, certainly believed in Jesus’ power to heal but perhaps thought she wasn’t significant enough to bother Him with her problem.

Imagine her surprise when, as she touched the tassel on his cloak, the Lord turned and “saw” her, told her to have courage, and affirmed “Your faith has saved you.”¹ You see, she was significant to the Lord and He cared about her problem. Don Francisco, an early Contemporary Christian Music artist wrote a song entitled “Closer To Jesus.” In it, he sings about this woman, whose story is also conveyed in Saint Luke’s Gospel:

Now the story 'bout touching
The hem of His garment
Nearly everybody knows
But that woman was healed
By her faith in God
And not by Jesus's clothes²

It’s very often the case that it is in facing desperate circumstances that we turn to Jesus. This is complicated by the reality that the Lord doesn’t always do what I desperately want Him to do. But trust in God, which is what faith really amounts to, isn’t about knowing that God will always do my bidding.

Trusting God certainly means casting your cares on Him and leaving the outcome to Him knowing that He cares for me. Trusting God means recognizing that God’s ways are not always my ways, as painful as this is at times. Not getting what you want doesn’t mean you your faith is somehow deficient. Confident that God makes all things work for the good of those who love Him,3 accepting God’s will no matter what it is it what it means to have faith. Hope is the flower of faith.

Don’t wait until you’re in dire straits to place your trust in Jesus. It is one thing to believe what Jesus can do but another thing entirely to learn how He does what He does. Trust Him by daily talking to Him, sharing with Him your cares and concerns, your joys and your sorrows.

“Courage,”⁴ as the Lord exhorted the woman in today’s Gospel. Ask Him directly for you want. This means knowing what you want and having some idea as to why you want it. It involves risk. It means making yourself vulnerable.

Be consistent and persistent in your prayers. Remain open to God’s will, which can and often does change how you pray about something. Like the grieving father and chronically sick woman, be bold. In our skeptical age, we sometimes lack such boldness. This is to our detriment.

Recently, I listened to rock legend Alice Cooper share his faith in Christ. When asked by the interviewer, “Who is Jesus you?”, Cooper replied:

He's the core of everything. He's life itself. He is the Light. You know, I mean it's if we don't all revolve around Christ, then we're way I out in space somewhere. He draws you in. He's the Light. You're drawn to that Light. And it's nothing you can explain in words, you know? It's something that happens to your heart, where all of a sudden you realize Who this is. And you realize, oh my gosh, I'm not worthy of this ... And yet, still, being hung on the cross He knew your name. He knew my name. And that made me go, “How can I not believe in this?”⁵

It’s a safe bet that the two people in our Gospel today did not have a well-developed theological understanding of Jesus’ identity but, like Cooper, they were drawn to the Light and realized, through experience, just Who this is.

---

1 Matthew 9:22.^↩
2 Don Francisco, "Closer to Jesus."^↩
3 Romans 8:28.^↩
4 Matthew 9:22.^↩
5 See YouTube, “Alice Cooper: A Testimony of Finding Purpose Through God's Grace.”^↩

"Thy kingdom come..."

Readings: Isa 66:10-14c; Ps 66:1-7.16.20; Gal 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-2.17-20

God's plan will not be thwarted. His kingdom will come. His will will be done. Not only will God's kingdom only be constituted by those who do God's will, it will be inhabited by those who will what God wills. And so, act in the mighty power of God.

According to Paul, "the kingdom of God is not matter of talk." But neither is it, according to him, merely a matter walk, as it were, "but of power" (1 Cor 4:20). The word "matter" does not appear in the original Greek. Hence, "The kingdom of God not in word but in power" is a more straightforward and, I would say, accurate translation.

What is God's power? Well, God is power. God is power because God is love. This is so because God's very nature is love- agape. Agape is self-giving, self-sacrificing love. God's kingdom is brought about by the power of love, it is love, the kind of love given by the Father in the giving of His Only Begotten Son. To love as Christ loves is the power of the kingdom.

To experience the love of God in Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit. As the apostle insists elsewhere: "the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit" (see Romans 14:17). It is a matter of the heart.

The "Israel of God" to which Paul refers in our reading from Galatians is coextensive with the Jerusalem we heard about in our reading from Isaiah. Both are references to God's kingdom; Paul's in the here and now and Isaiah's, even though in context it is about Israel returning from exile- in the eschatological future.

In our Gospel, Jesus commissions and sends out seventy-two disciples. It is a test of their discipleship, of their apprenticeship with the Master. Seventy-two is the product of 12x6. Seven being the number of completion means six leaves us one short of completion. One way to understand and appropriate this is that God's kingdom will not be complete until the Lord returns. In the meantime, as His disciples, we seek make God's kingdom a present reality.

Let's be clear, the Church, even now, is not coextensive with God's kingdom. This is true even we extend the Church to include all the baptized, many of whom are not Catholic. Indeed, we should extend the Church in that way. We cannot determine the extent of God's kingdom present in the world. As we sing in the beautiful hymn Ubi Caritas- Ubi caritas et amor, ubi caritas, Deus ibi est- "Where charity and love are found, God is there."

Note that the hymn does not give a list activities, In harmony with Sacred Scripture, it is a matter of the heart being conformed to Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Caritas, the root of our English word "charity," is the Latin word used to translate agape. As I am writing this, the lyrics to the Rush song "Closer to the Heart" pop into my head. That's how we sail "into destiny."

One's name is not "written in heaven" because one performs mighty deeds in the name of the Lord. You can perform marvelous deeds because your name is written in heaven. Note that Jesus, in our Gospel, "sent" out the seventy-two. He sent them out ahead of Him. Their mission was to prepare His way. Our mission now is no different than the one the Lord sent the seventy-two: to prepare the way of the Lord as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of Savior, Jesus Christ.

At long last, the Church's long season of Ordinary Time, lasting until Advent, has begun. As these readings show, there is nothing ordinary about his (or any) time. So, while it is perfectly alright to spend time relaxing, recuperating, and resting, time is too precious to be killed. Liturgically, "Ordinary" refers to ordering. During this time, time is ordered Sunday by Sunday, Lord's Day by Lord's Day, each one bringing us closer to Jesus' Most Sacred Heart (or leading us farther away?).

"Hey, baby. It's the fourth of July"

Today the United States celebrates Independence Day. It is the 249th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. With that document the thirteen contiguous colonies of North America declared that collectively they were no longer part of the British empire. Following closely on the heels of this declaration was the War of Independence, also known to those of us in the U.S. as the Revolutionary War.

Today, no doubt, a lot will be written about the U.S. Constitution. 17 September, however, is Constitution Day. Because it was on 17 September 1787 that the United States Constitution was signed. This was a bit more than four years after the Treaty of Paris between Great Britain and the newly formed United States of America was signed. It was by signing the Treaty of Paris that Great Britain recognized the United States as a sovereign nation, thus reliquishing all claims and ending the American War of Independence. Between 1783 and 1787, the charter of the new nation was much-maligned Articles of Confederation.

Like the Bible for many American Christians, for a lot of (the same) people the Constitution serves a totemic purpose. In other words, the more someone invokes the Constitution (or the Bible), the less likely they are to know what's in it. But today is not Constitution Day. It is not Memorial Day. It is not Veteran's Day. It is not Armed Forces Day. It is Independence Day. The Declaration of Independence remains the seminal document of the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence is our nation's ur document.

Fourth of July, by Childe Hassam, 1916

The heart of the Declaration of Independence is constituted by the following:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

The assertion that there are rights that precede the state and that those rights are granted by God is a bold assertion. Certainly, it is a bolder assertion now than it was 249 years ago. According to the Declaration, securing these rights is why governments exist.

First among these rights is the right to Life. Without this right, other rights don't really matter. What does it mean to be free and happy if you're not alive? Safety, as the document notes, is necessary for Happiness. These are the founding principles of the United States. While most if not all of the founders likely had a more restrictive view of the things they declared than we now have, the Declaration of Independence nonetheless provides a framework within which a more expansive view of these principles can be worked out, like the words found in the Consititution's preamble about forming "a more perfect union."

Far from being a call to permanent revolution, the Declaration goes on to insist that "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes." War, as General Sherman asserted, is hell. Most revolutions find nations worse off than they were before, even if in different ways.

I am okay with incomplete thoughts today. Like many, I worry about the future of our country. We are in crisis and, in my view, have been for the past several decades. What we're experiencing now is a culmination of sorts. One thing about a crisis according to its medical meaning- "a moment during a serious illness when there is the possibility of suddenly getting either better or worse"- is that afterwards things are never the same; maybe better, maybe worse.

When it comes to politics and political engagement, I have benefitted greatly by reading Michael Wear's book The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life. Yesterday, I listened to an interview with Michael on Steve Cuss's Being Human podcast. I am going to transcribe a portion I found very relevant:

There's this term by this professor at Tufts, Eitan Hersh, "political hobbyism." A political hobbbyist, if you asked them if they were burnt out by politics, they'd say "Yes." But if you said, "Oh, well, have you been going to too many housing meetings... or have you been knocking on too many doors?" They'd say, "No, I haven't done any of that. But I did spend five hours on Reddit last night really tearing into this argument that I don't like." In other words, they're producing political content, but they're not acually participating in politics itself. They feel a kind of responsibility but they're channeling it through means that are sorta most accessible to them. And frankly, the most gratifying

Dopamine is a helluva a drug.

Our traditio, "4th of July," is a song by one of my favorite all-time bands, X. As stated in a nice article on this song, X has "produced a series of albums with broader mainstream appeal [than other L.A. punk bands of their era], including one with a perfect song for America's birthday."

Happy Fourth of July!