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.^↩