Friday, October 23, 2009

THIS WEEK

We are going to start a new series this week It will focus on the various social outreaches of Holy Name Province of the Franciscan Order. You have already been introduced to St. Francis Inn in Philadelpia. this week we bring you FrienSt.Francis Friend of the Poor. This ministry started in 1980 and has as its mission giving shelter to the chronically homeless. At present their are four residences in mid-town Manhattan. The web site is a graphic presentation of the ministry. To get to the site click here
THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE YEAR

MONDAY OF THE THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 13:10-17)
The desire to be in control is one that is very deep within us. The dangerous aspect of this desire for people who are trying to live good lives is that it is often masked with the desire to do good. For good people the blatant, greedy and cold control of another is very seldom something to be contended with. What does happen, however, is the more subtle almost unconscious desire to control.
In today's gospel we have the Pharisees trying to control. The law was there "power base"...as long as they could rely on the Law they were in control. The law was good but all of a sudden it became the means to protect themselves. Jesus knew what He was doing when He cured the woman. He was being who He was, He was being true to Himself and not worrying about the controls which others would place on Him. I do not think He worked the miracle to prove who He was rather He worked the miracle because He was who He was.
To be controlled is not to be true to oneself, to control is to deny a person the right to be who they should be.


TUESDAY OF THE THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 13:18-21)
What is the Kingdom of God? Jesus uses something like twenty parables in an attempt to explain its meaning. Anytime that many examples have to be used we know that we are not in an easy subject. The Kingdom is wide. It is so wide that even Jesus' imagination was stretched to explain it.. One good definition of what it is a deep loving relationship with the Father. This is what Jesus came to proclaim and to invite us to enter...this love relationship with the Trinity.
This relationship is alive....and because it is alive it grows.
The image of the fig tree comes to mind. It is an image of the Church which is the kingdom on earth but at the same time because we all possess the kingdom it is an image of who we are.
The birds coming to nest. Nice, soft image but at the same time do we feel within ourselves the potential to be places of rest for other people. To put into a logical syllogism: We are the kingdom made present to the world
The Kingdom is a place of rest, of comfort
Are we places of rest for people

WEDNESDAY OF THE THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 13:22-30)
Conversion is an ongoing process. Today's gospel reminds us of one thing very powerfully: just as the people in the Gospel were physically near the Lord they were far from Him. The language which is used, eating and drinking together, is language of intimacy and yet something was missing. For us, it comes down to not how often we eat and drink with the Lord , which may be all the external acts of the faith which we do...but are they leading to a deeper relationship with Him, conversion.
The people in today's Gospel were quite satisfied with the nice friendly Jesus...they missed His message completely. They were so busy talking while they were in His company that they could not listen...the harshness of the Lord's words: I do not know where you come from...tell us how important a priority He places on this turning to Him. It is what binds us to Him.
The new heart which He wants to create within us is the point of identification with Him. When He says: I do not know where you come from ...He is saying that they do not know where He comes from.

THURSDAY OF THE THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 13:31-35)
How sad Christ must have been when he said these words? Looking down over Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives he saw the city which should have received Him the most...but He was refused. The thing which impresses me though is the prayer is focused not on Himself but on Jerusalem..
.His sadness is not self-centered, they refused me therefore I am sad, no His sadness is directed at the fact that Jerusalem did not accept the good which was offered her. If we define sadness as the lack of a perceived good then the absence of the good than was not inside of Jesus but what was lacking in Jerusalem. He was sad not because of personal rejection, but rather because people were not being all they could or should be.
As I read this I had to ask myself the question: what makes me sad? I have expectations on how other people should treat me, this is the good thing I want. When it is not forthcoming do I "get down"....am I sad when a desired dream is lost. once
again I become the reason for sadness. I came to the conclusion that by knowing what makes me sad I come to an understanding of how selfish I really am.

FRIDAY OF THE THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 14:1-6)
.A very important function of being a disciple is to make sure that we are asking people questions. A while back I received a very nice coffee mug from a friend. The inscription is a motto for us all: keep smiling, it makes the other guy wonder what you have been up to. Hidden behind these words is the fact that by smiling a question is raised, as one of my friends use to say: part of being a disciple is to ask questions that knock the socks off of people.
The real clue is that it is our way of life which has to force people to ask questions. It was the lives of martyrs which forced people to wonder "what they were up to" and people of good faith looked for an answer and were drawn to the Lord.
Jesus did something good, and he asked the question....the Pharisees could not answer....goodness confounded them. If nothing else they were forced to see life in a different way or that someone else was seeing life in a different way. Doing good always makes people wonder, sometimes friendly sometimes not so friendly.
A few years ago a group of people started to feed the homeless living on the streets of Tokyo. This was a good thing but it caused so many people to wonder. It had never been done before .....it was not supposed to be done...by doing it in the face of a lot of misunderstanding and at times antagonism eventually the awareness that there was a problem seeped into the mentality..now a lot of people are doing things. A good was done, it raised a question.....our good deeds do not go to waste. We may not see the result but God does...isn't that all that matters.

SATURDAY OF THE THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 14:1.7-11)
My thought on this passage is very brief.....Our Lord wants His disciples to be polite. So obvious yet look around the world and see how impolite people are....lack of "thank yous" and "pleases"....how everyone is so anxious to get served first...how many times conversations are unnecessarily interrupted.....just the way people speak to one another....maybe Jesus is just reminding us of the simple ordinary polite things which go to make life so much nicer.

Monday, October 19, 2009

THIS WEEK

In the social justice area I have printed a prayer for social justice. This prayer along with the Peace Prayer give us a good spiritual foundation for involvement.
One of the themes of this week's scriptural reflections is greed. Over the last year we have all been exposed to it.
VOX POPULI...would appreciate comments from our readers. Something like letters to the editor. May cover timely subjects i.e. health care or a personal experience. Please keep the remarks to one paragraph...
+Social Justice Prayer+Almighty and eternal God, may your grace enkindle in all of us a love for the many unfortunate people whom poverty and misery reduce to a condition of life unworthy of human beings.Arouse in the hearts of those who call you Father a hunger and thirst for social justice and for fraternal charity in deeds and in truth.Grant, O Lord, peace to souls, peace to families, peace to our country and peace among nations. Amen
TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR

MONDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12: 13-21)
Greed takes on many forms and the Lord reminds us to beware of each and everyone of them. One form of greed is the one with which we usually associate it. A person always seeking more and more. The person who looks at life and asks the question: what can I get out of it?... the person who is constantly living to make more and to have more.
Another type of greed....one who is always fighting for his or her rights. Today's gospel is a good example of this. The man who asked Jesus to intercede apparently had a right to the inheritance. Jesus takes this as an opportunity to speak of greed...as much as to tell us that demanding what is owed one may be a type of greed. He is telling us that at times we have to surrender even what is due us in justice or we stand the danger of having our judgment clouded and our hearts closed.
Another type of greed is what I call the greed of "wanting". Someone once told me that greed is not measured so much by what a person has as by what a person wants. These "wants " take on all the different shades that our personalities have. They can be merely physical wants, they may be emotional or they may even be spiritual. In all cases what distinguishes greed from others is that we forget the spiritual side of our existence. The real sin in greed is that it causes a blindness.
We become blind to God, to others and even to ourselves. The possessions, the things we want capture our hearts and we become incapable of seeing beyond the boundaries of our own little world.
Blindness in scripture is the same as having no faith. Our Lord's command to beware of greed is a warning that faith can be covered over and even suffocated by material possessions and the desire for them. He warns us many times about the desire that we all have for riches of one sort or another and how dangerous it is if we really want to live in His kingdom.

TUESDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:35-38)
Quite obviously the master, in today's Gospel, is the Lord and we are the servants. As I read this Gospel the question which kept coming to mind was: what does the Lord want? or more precisely: how does He want me to wait? Waiting seems to imply that we lack something and are waiting for it to happen. It seems to me that by very definition to wait means there is an incompleteness. A hope not yet attained, a dream still in the future, a pain not over.
So much of our time is spent waiting...we have to wait on line to buy food, to see the doctor, to get on an airplane. We wait for the big day when we shall see an old friend again, we wait for the baby to be born, and there comes a time in life when we wait for death....
Is it wasted time? Do we look at it as just a necessary evil before we get what we want? Our Lord gives us an important lesson about waiting.
It is a time of activity(make sure there is oil) it is a time of responsibility(cinctures)it is a time a joyful anticipation, not just sitting. Waiting is not simply to keep an eye on the future (when will the line end) but to enjoy the moments before. Strange and marvelous things happen as we wait.

WEDNESDAY OF THE TWENTY- NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:39-48) Common sense and the living of the Gospel. All Jesus is doing is giving a brief lesson in common sense. The good servant because he sits back and thinks acts in accord with the reality of the situation (the master shall return)the bad servant does not reflect, reacts to the present and consequently acts not in accord with reality.
This "common sense" however must be faith motivated. We as human beings are too prone to make mistakes. The bad servant would, as he was acting, probably say that he was acting according to common sense. The master was late so why not make the best of it. The good servant, on the other hand, trusted in the master's returning. When we act according to common sense the trust in the Lord must be the foundation. His word should be the light before us .
Christian "common sense" goes beyond the purely pragmatic. The pragmatic "common sense" does not take into consideration the master's return. That is, it does not take into consideration the place of God. Christian, on the other hand, will always take the totality of the situation into mind, that means bringing God into the equation of life. This faith filled common sense leads to great things. Anyone reading the Gospel for today would see Our Lord's message quite clearly. The Gospel is just simple God inspired common sense.

THURSDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:49-53)
The Gospel rings with a sense of immediacy... " how I wish" " what anguish I feel till it is over"....there is a sense that the Lord wants things to happen right now. Then He speaks of peace...at first these words seem so harsh...can you imagine going into a room a saying: I have come to start an argument. That is bad enough but to say it shortly after having proclaimed peace would make it even worse. This is what Jesus did. How do we resolve the paradox?
Is Christ the King of Peace? Yes. His mission is to establish peace. The peace he wants to establish, however, is the unity between God and creation. He wants to and is working in the world to, bring about the order which should exist between God and creation and between all the different parts of creation. To do this He must face up to a peace which is really not peace. Complacency, comfort with the way things are...a spiritual sleepiness which dulls the conscience. We all like to be comfortable within ourselves...the unfortunate thing is that many times this comfort is not based on good values but on any value which would do away with an internal conflict. This is the peace which Our Lord has come to disrupt.
In a real sense to be really comfortable and at peace within ourselves we have to go through the sometimes painful process of letting the sword of the word of God penetrate our hearts. It will cause some discomfort because no one likes to surrender that which gives them peace...that is until something better has been offered . One of the problems of today is that in so many cases people have attained this comfort, this peace, and have closed themselves off to the peace which only the Lord can give.

FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:54-59)
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the world. It seems to me that in many cases our thinking stops short of where we are supposed to be going. Perhaps, in today's Gospel Our Lord is simply inviting us to ask all the questions we are supposed to. St. Thomas More said: always ask one more question. We have to ask: how is the Spirit moving in the world today? In all the world situations which are against the Gospel; war, genocide, abortion , greed....does this mean that the Spirit is not present there. One of the most difficult things for me to do is to look at a situation where man's inhumanity to man is apparent and say that in some way the Spirit of God is working there. Sometimes , as a matter of fact most of the time, I do not know the answer. I do not know the "how" but I do know that God ignores nothing and that in some way all things will be brought together to fulfill His plan.

SATURDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR(Luke 13:1-9)
Commitment tempered by compassion is the message for today. Our Lord is not wishy-washy, nor does he expect His disciples to be wishy-washy. He certainly does not His disciples to be blown about by every wind that comes into the world. He expects them to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and to make judgments accordingly. He wants them to be convinced. At the same time He realizes that this commitment exists in a vessel of clay. They will make mistakes. Sometimes the vision will become cloudy. They may loose their way. It is at this time that the compassion of the Lord shine forth. He understands weakness.
Compassion demands that follower of the Lord begins again. Compassion is healing, it heals the weight of humanity. Being healed it encourages us to grow, and never to become complacent.




TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR

MONDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12: 13-21)
Greed takes on many forms and the Lord reminds us to beware of each and everyone of them. One form of greed is the one with which we usually associate it. A person always seeking more and more. The person who looks at life and asks the question: what can I get out of it?... the person who is constantly living to make more and to have more.
Another type of greed....one who is always fighting for his or her rights. Today's gospel is a good example of this. The man who asked Jesus to intercede apparently had a right to the inheritance. Jesus takes this as an opportunity to speak of greed...as much as to tell us that demanding what is owed one may be a type of greed. He is telling us that at times we have to surrender even what is due us in justice or we stand the danger of having our judgment clouded and our hearts closed.
Another type of greed is what I call the greed of "wanting". Someone once told me that greed is not measured so much by what a person has as by what a person wants. These "wants " take on all the different shades that our personalities have. They can be merely physical wants, they may be emotional or they may even be spiritual. In all cases what distinguishes greed from others is that we forget the spiritual side of our existence. The real sin in greed is that it causes a blindness.
We become blind to God, to others and even to ourselves. The possessions, the things we want capture our hearts and we become incapable of seeing beyond the boundaries of our own little world.
Blindness in scripture is the same as having no faith. Our Lord's command to beware of greed is a warning that faith can be covered over and even suffocated by material possessions and the desire for them. He warns us many times about the desire that we all have for riches of one sort or another and how dangerous it is if we really want to live in His kingdom.

TUESDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:35-38)
Quite obviously the master, in today's Gospel, is the Lord and we are the servants. As I read this Gospel the question which kept coming to mind was: what does the Lord want? or more precisely: how does He want me to wait? Waiting seems to imply that we lack something and are waiting for it to happen. It seems to me that by very definition to wait means there is an incompleteness. A hope not yet attained, a dream still in the future, a pain not over.
So much of our time is spent waiting...we have to wait on line to buy food, to see the doctor, to get on an airplane. We wait for the big day when we shall see an old friend again, we wait for the baby to be born, and there comes a time in life when we wait for death....
Is it wasted time? Do we look at it as just a necessary evil before we get what we want? Our Lord gives us an important lesson about waiting.
It is a time of activity(make sure there is oil) it is a time of responsibility(cinctures)it is a time a joyful anticipation, not just sitting. Waiting is not simply to keep an eye on the future (when will the line end) but to enjoy the moments before. Strange and marvelous things happen as we wait.

WEDNESDAY OF THE TWENTY- NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:39-48) Common sense and the living of the Gospel. All Jesus is doing is giving a brief lesson in common sense. The good servant because he sits back and thinks acts in accord with the reality of the situation (the master shall return)the bad servant does not reflect, reacts to the present and consequently acts not in accord with reality.
This "common sense" however must be faith motivated. We as human beings are too prone to make mistakes. The bad servant would, as he was acting, probably say that he was acting according to common sense. The master was late so why not make the best of it. The good servant, on the other hand, trusted in the master's returning. When we act according to common sense the trust in the Lord must be the foundation. His word should be the light before us .
Christian "common sense" goes beyond the purely pragmatic. The pragmatic "common sense" does not take into consideration the master's return. That is, it does not take into consideration the place of God. Christian, on the other hand, will always take the totality of the situation into mind, that means bringing God into the equation of life. This faith filled common sense leads to great things. Anyone reading the Gospel for today would see Our Lord's message quite clearly. The Gospel is just simple God inspired common sense.

THURSDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:49-53)
The Gospel rings with a sense of immediacy... " how I wish" " what anguish I feel till it is over"....there is a sense that the Lord wants things to happen right now. Then He speaks of peace...at first these words seem so harsh...can you imagine going into a room a saying: I have come to start an argument. That is bad enough but to say it shortly after having proclaimed peace would make it even worse. This is what Jesus did. How do we resolve the paradox?
Is Christ the King of Peace? Yes. His mission is to establish peace. The peace he wants to establish, however, is the unity between God and creation. He wants to and is working in the world to, bring about the order which should exist between God and creation and between all the different parts of creation. To do this He must face up to a peace which is really not peace. Complacency, comfort with the way things are...a spiritual sleepiness which dulls the conscience. We all like to be comfortable within ourselves...the unfortunate thing is that many times this comfort is not based on good values but on any value which would do away with an internal conflict. This is the peace which Our Lord has come to disrupt.
In a real sense to be really comfortable and at peace within ourselves we have to go through the sometimes painful process of letting the sword of the word of God penetrate our hearts. It will cause some discomfort because no one likes to surrender that which gives them peace...that is until something better has been offered . One of the problems of today is that in so many cases people have attained this comfort, this peace, and have closed themselves off to the peace which only the Lord can give.

FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:54-59)
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the world. It seems to me that in many cases our thinking stops short of where we are supposed to be going. Perhaps, in today's Gospel Our Lord is simply inviting us to ask all the questions we are supposed to. St. Thomas More said: always ask one more question. We have to ask: how is the Spirit moving in the world today? In all the world situations which are against the Gospel; war, genocide, abortion , greed....does this mean that the Spirit is not present there. One of the most difficult things for me to do is to look at a situation where man's inhumanity to man is apparent and say that in some way the Spirit of God is working there. Sometimes , as a matter of fact most of the time, I do not know the answer. I do not know the "how" but I do know that God ignores nothing and that in some way all things will be brought together to fulfill His plan.

SATURDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR(Luke 13:1-9)
Commitment tempered by compassion is the message for today. Our Lord is not wishy-washy, nor does he expect His disciples to be wishy-washy. He certainly does not His disciples to be blown about by every wind that comes into the world. He expects them to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and to make judgments accordingly. He wants them to be convinced. At the same time He realizes that this commitment exists in a vessel of clay. They will make mistakes. Sometimes the vision will become cloudy. They may loose their way. It is at this time that the compassion of the Lord shine forth. He understands weakness.
Compassion demands that follower of the Lord begins again. Compassion is healing, it heals the weight of humanity. Being healed it encourages us to grow, and never to become complacent.
TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR

MONDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12: 13-21)
Greed takes on many forms and the Lord reminds us to beware of each and everyone of them. One form of greed is the one with which we usually associate it. A person always seeking more and more. The person who looks at life and asks the question: what can I get out of it?... the person who is constantly living to make more and to have more.
Another type of greed....one who is always fighting for his or her rights. Today's gospel is a good example of this. The man who asked Jesus to intercede apparently had a right to the inheritance. Jesus takes this as an opportunity to speak of greed...as much as to tell us that demanding what is owed one may be a type of greed. He is telling us that at times we have to surrender even what is due us in justice or we stand the danger of having our judgment clouded and our hearts closed.
Another type of greed is what I call the greed of "wanting". Someone once told me that greed is not measured so much by what a person has as by what a person wants. These "wants " take on all the different shades that our personalities have. They can be merely physical wants, they may be emotional or they may even be spiritual. In all cases what distinguishes greed from others is that we forget the spiritual side of our existence. The real sin in greed is that it causes a blindness.
We become blind to God, to others and even to ourselves. The possessions, the things we want capture our hearts and we become incapable of seeing beyond the boundaries of our own little world.
Blindness in scripture is the same as having no faith. Our Lord's command to beware of greed is a warning that faith can be covered over and even suffocated by material possessions and the desire for them. He warns us many times about the desire that we all have for riches of one sort or another and how dangerous it is if we really want to live in His kingdom.

TUESDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:35-38)
Quite obviously the master, in today's Gospel, is the Lord and we are the servants. As I read this Gospel the question which kept coming to mind was: what does the Lord want? or more precisely: how does He want me to wait? Waiting seems to imply that we lack something and are waiting for it to happen. It seems to me that by very definition to wait means there is an incompleteness. A hope not yet attained, a dream still in the future, a pain not over.
So much of our time is spent waiting...we have to wait on line to buy food, to see the doctor, to get on an airplane. We wait for the big day when we shall see an old friend again, we wait for the baby to be born, and there comes a time in life when we wait for death....
Is it wasted time? Do we look at it as just a necessary evil before we get what we want? Our Lord gives us an important lesson about waiting.
It is a time of activity(make sure there is oil) it is a time of responsibility(cinctures)it is a time a joyful anticipation, not just sitting. Waiting is not simply to keep an eye on the future (when will the line end) but to enjoy the moments before. Strange and marvelous things happen as we wait.

WEDNESDAY OF THE TWENTY- NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:39-48) Common sense and the living of the Gospel. All Jesus is doing is giving a brief lesson in common sense. The good servant because he sits back and thinks acts in accord with the reality of the situation (the master shall return)the bad servant does not reflect, reacts to the present and consequently acts not in accord with reality.
This "common sense" however must be faith motivated. We as human beings are too prone to make mistakes. The bad servant would, as he was acting, probably say that he was acting according to common sense. The master was late so why not make the best of it. The good servant, on the other hand, trusted in the master's returning. When we act according to common sense the trust in the Lord must be the foundation. His word should be the light before us .
Christian "common sense" goes beyond the purely pragmatic. The pragmatic "common sense" does not take into consideration the master's return. That is, it does not take into consideration the place of God. Christian, on the other hand, will always take the totality of the situation into mind, that means bringing God into the equation of life. This faith filled common sense leads to great things. Anyone reading the Gospel for today would see Our Lord's message quite clearly. The Gospel is just simple God inspired common sense.

THURSDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:49-53)
The Gospel rings with a sense of immediacy... " how I wish" " what anguish I feel till it is over"....there is a sense that the Lord wants things to happen right now. Then He speaks of peace...at first these words seem so harsh...can you imagine going into a room a saying: I have come to start an argument. That is bad enough but to say it shortly after having proclaimed peace would make it even worse. This is what Jesus did. How do we resolve the paradox?
Is Christ the King of Peace? Yes. His mission is to establish peace. The peace he wants to establish, however, is the unity between God and creation. He wants to and is working in the world to, bring about the order which should exist between God and creation and between all the different parts of creation. To do this He must face up to a peace which is really not peace. Complacency, comfort with the way things are...a spiritual sleepiness which dulls the conscience. We all like to be comfortable within ourselves...the unfortunate thing is that many times this comfort is not based on good values but on any value which would do away with an internal conflict. This is the peace which Our Lord has come to disrupt.
In a real sense to be really comfortable and at peace within ourselves we have to go through the sometimes painful process of letting the sword of the word of God penetrate our hearts. It will cause some discomfort because no one likes to surrender that which gives them peace...that is until something better has been offered . One of the problems of today is that in so many cases people have attained this comfort, this peace, and have closed themselves off to the peace which only the Lord can give.

FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:54-59)
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the world. It seems to me that in many cases our thinking stops short of where we are supposed to be going. Perhaps, in today's Gospel Our Lord is simply inviting us to ask all the questions we are supposed to. St. Thomas More said: always ask one more question. We have to ask: how is the Spirit moving in the world today? In all the world situations which are against the Gospel; war, genocide, abortion , greed....does this mean that the Spirit is not present there. One of the most difficult things for me to do is to look at a situation where man's inhumanity to man is apparent and say that in some way the Spirit of God is working there. Sometimes , as a matter of fact most of the time, I do not know the answer. I do not know the "how" but I do know that God ignores nothing and that in some way all things will be brought together to fulfill His plan.

SATURDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR(Luke 13:1-9)
Commitment tempered by compassion is the message for today. Our Lord is not wishy-washy, nor does he expect His disciples to be wishy-washy. He certainly does not His disciples to be blown about by every wind that comes into the world. He expects them to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and to make judgments accordingly. He wants them to be convinced. At the same time He realizes that this commitment exists in a vessel of clay. They will make mistakes. Sometimes the vision will become cloudy. They may loose their way. It is at this time that the compassion of the Lord shine forth. He understands weakness.
Compassion demands that follower of the Lord begins again. Compassion is healing, it heals the weight of humanity. Being healed it encourages us to grow, and never to become complacent.
TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR

MONDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12: 13-21)
Greed takes on many forms and the Lord reminds us to beware of each and everyone of them. One form of greed is the one with which we usually associate it. A person always seeking more and more. The person who looks at life and asks the question: what can I get out of it?... the person who is constantly living to make more and to have more.
Another type of greed....one who is always fighting for his or her rights. Today's gospel is a good example of this. The man who asked Jesus to intercede apparently had a right to the inheritance. Jesus takes this as an opportunity to speak of greed...as much as to tell us that demanding what is owed one may be a type of greed. He is telling us that at times we have to surrender even what is due us in justice or we stand the danger of having our judgment clouded and our hearts closed.
Another type of greed is what I call the greed of "wanting". Someone once told me that greed is not measured so much by what a person has as by what a person wants. These "wants " take on all the different shades that our personalities have. They can be merely physical wants, they may be emotional or they may even be spiritual. In all cases what distinguishes greed from others is that we forget the spiritual side of our existence. The real sin in greed is that it causes a blindness.
We become blind to God, to others and even to ourselves. The possessions, the things we want capture our hearts and we become incapable of seeing beyond the boundaries of our own little world.
Blindness in scripture is the same as having no faith. Our Lord's command to beware of greed is a warning that faith can be covered over and even suffocated by material possessions and the desire for them. He warns us many times about the desire that we all have for riches of one sort or another and how dangerous it is if we really want to live in His kingdom.

TUESDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:35-38)
Quite obviously the master, in today's Gospel, is the Lord and we are the servants. As I read this Gospel the question which kept coming to mind was: what does the Lord want? or more precisely: how does He want me to wait? Waiting seems to imply that we lack something and are waiting for it to happen. It seems to me that by very definition to wait means there is an incompleteness. A hope not yet attained, a dream still in the future, a pain not over.
So much of our time is spent waiting...we have to wait on line to buy food, to see the doctor, to get on an airplane. We wait for the big day when we shall see an old friend again, we wait for the baby to be born, and there comes a time in life when we wait for death....
Is it wasted time? Do we look at it as just a necessary evil before we get what we want? Our Lord gives us an important lesson about waiting.
It is a time of activity(make sure there is oil) it is a time of responsibility(cinctures)it is a time a joyful anticipation, not just sitting. Waiting is not simply to keep an eye on the future (when will the line end) but to enjoy the moments before. Strange and marvelous things happen as we wait.

WEDNESDAY OF THE TWENTY- NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:39-48) Common sense and the living of the Gospel. All Jesus is doing is giving a brief lesson in common sense. The good servant because he sits back and thinks acts in accord with the reality of the situation (the master shall return)the bad servant does not reflect, reacts to the present and consequently acts not in accord with reality.
This "common sense" however must be faith motivated. We as human beings are too prone to make mistakes. The bad servant would, as he was acting, probably say that he was acting according to common sense. The master was late so why not make the best of it. The good servant, on the other hand, trusted in the master's returning. When we act according to common sense the trust in the Lord must be the foundation. His word should be the light before us .
Christian "common sense" goes beyond the purely pragmatic. The pragmatic "common sense" does not take into consideration the master's return. That is, it does not take into consideration the place of God. Christian, on the other hand, will always take the totality of the situation into mind, that means bringing God into the equation of life. This faith filled common sense leads to great things. Anyone reading the Gospel for today would see Our Lord's message quite clearly. The Gospel is just simple God inspired common sense.

THURSDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:49-53)
The Gospel rings with a sense of immediacy... " how I wish" " what anguish I feel till it is over"....there is a sense that the Lord wants things to happen right now. Then He speaks of peace...at first these words seem so harsh...can you imagine going into a room a saying: I have come to start an argument. That is bad enough but to say it shortly after having proclaimed peace would make it even worse. This is what Jesus did. How do we resolve the paradox?
Is Christ the King of Peace? Yes. His mission is to establish peace. The peace he wants to establish, however, is the unity between God and creation. He wants to and is working in the world to, bring about the order which should exist between God and creation and between all the different parts of creation. To do this He must face up to a peace which is really not peace. Complacency, comfort with the way things are...a spiritual sleepiness which dulls the conscience. We all like to be comfortable within ourselves...the unfortunate thing is that many times this comfort is not based on good values but on any value which would do away with an internal conflict. This is the peace which Our Lord has come to disrupt.
In a real sense to be really comfortable and at peace within ourselves we have to go through the sometimes painful process of letting the sword of the word of God penetrate our hearts. It will cause some discomfort because no one likes to surrender that which gives them peace...that is until something better has been offered . One of the problems of today is that in so many cases people have attained this comfort, this peace, and have closed themselves off to the peace which only the Lord can give.

FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:54-59)
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the world. It seems to me that in many cases our thinking stops short of where we are supposed to be going. Perhaps, in today's Gospel Our Lord is simply inviting us to ask all the questions we are supposed to. St. Thomas More said: always ask one more question. We have to ask: how is the Spirit moving in the world today? In all the world situations which are against the Gospel; war, genocide, abortion , greed....does this mean that the Spirit is not present there. One of the most difficult things for me to do is to look at a situation where man's inhumanity to man is apparent and say that in some way the Spirit of God is working there. Sometimes , as a matter of fact most of the time, I do not know the answer. I do not know the "how" but I do know that God ignores nothing and that in some way all things will be brought together to fulfill His plan.

SATURDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK OF THE YEAR(Luke 13:1-9)
Commitment tempered by compassion is the message for today. Our Lord is not wishy-washy, nor does he expect His disciples to be wishy-washy. He certainly does not His disciples to be blown about by every wind that comes into the world. He expects them to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and to make judgments accordingly. He wants them to be convinced. At the same time He realizes that this commitment exists in a vessel of clay. They will make mistakes. Sometimes the vision will become cloudy. They may loose their way. It is at this time that the compassion of the Lord shine forth. He understands weakness.
Compassion demands that follower of the Lord begins again. Compassion is healing, it heals the weight of humanity. Being healed it encourages us to grow, and never to become complacent.




THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE YEAR

MONDAY OF THE THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 13:10-17)
The desire to be in control is one that is very deep within us. The dangerous aspect of this desire for people who are trying to live good lives is that it is often masked with the desire to do good. For good people the blatant, greedy and cold control of another is very seldom something to be contended with. What does happen, however, is the more subtle almost unconscious desire to control. In today's gospel we have the Pharisees trying to control. The law was there "power base"...as long as they could rely on the Law they were in control. The law was good but all of a sudden it became the means to protect themselves. Jesus knew what He was doing when He cured the woman. He was being who He was, He was being true to Himself and not worrying about the controls which others would place

Sunday, October 11, 2009

THIS WEEK


ASSISI...a very simple slideshow of Assisi. the show has two objectives:1: to give people who will never have an opportunity to go to Assisi to at least see some of the shrines. 2: nothing can take the place of being there but perhaps this simple show will help you to walk with Francis.

SOCIAL JUSTICE....an excerpt from an editorial printed in America magazine

Scripture reflections...

I would like to start something similar to "letters to the editor." If anyone has anything which they would like to contribute please send it in. Keep it to a paragraph...
Renewing the Earth

Although the Bishops acknowledge the scientific uncertainty and controversy surrounding concerns for accelerated rates of climate change, diminishing biodiversity, deforestation, and the implications of widespread dependencies on fossil fuels, they nonetheless identify environmental integrity as a moral imperative for today. Elsewhere, arguments for a right to development, particularly for the nations of the “third world,” have increasingly been tempered by concerns for long and short term environmental costs. Thus, Catholic social teaching increasingly promotes sustainable development, i.e., "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (Brundtland Commission, 1987).
The Bishops acknowledge that Catholic social thought does not contain a fully developed ecological ethics. Still, the Judeo-Christian tradition (which they admit has sometimes been used to justify human exploitation of the earth) contains rich resources for the promotion of ecological responsibility. For example, the Hebrew Scriptures describe creation in terms which give rise to a demand for right-relation, not only between persons, but between the human and non-human in creation. The Bishops go on to identify seven core principles or themes in CST in service of ecological conversion:
a God-centered and sacramental view of the universe, which grounds human accountability for the fate of the earth;
a consistent respect for human life, which extends to respect for all creation;
a worldview affirming the ethical significance of global interdependence and the common good;
an ethics of solidarity promoting cooperation and a just structure of sharing in the world community;
an understanding of the universal purpose of created things, which requires equitable use of the earth's resources;
an option for the poor, which gives passion to the quest for an equitable and sustainable world;
a conception of authentic development, which offers a
TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR


MONDAY OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:29-3
"the sign of Jonah" the immediate reaction to this is the story of Jonah spending three days in the belly of a whale...when we read the story of Jonah, however, this is not the sign that he gave to the people to whom he preached. The sign of the book of Jonah, is the warm reception to conversion that the Ninevites gave to his preaching....the sign of Jonah is the new heart which looks to God.
Once again my thoughts are turned to listening. The people in Nineveh had to listen, their hearts had to be open. But why did they listen?
The reason I ask this question is because good old Jonah was not very convinced of what he was preaching. Scripture tells us that Nineveh was a rather large city that took about three days to get across, Jonah made the journey in one day. It seems as though Jonah went through the streets on the equivalent of an ancient bicycle. He did not really preach to the people has much as he ran through the streets trying to get the job done as quickly as possible. The impression he gave was of someone not very interested in his job.
Ordinarily these are very difficult people to listen to and practically impossible to respond to. If the messenger isn't convinced the message usually does not get through. If a car salesman had the same amount of conviction and enthusiasm about his product as Jonah did, you more than likely would not buy it.
So what we have as a sign is a weak instrument, Jonah, but pointing out that even with the weak instrument God accomplishes what He wants. Now the disciple is convinced and does have enthusiasm...but is also very weak. There are times in preaching the Gospel that we do have a headache, that our nerves are not what they should be, there are times that as we preach about charity the patience which is the mark of charity is not present. We are reminded that the sign of the power of God is the very weakness of the messengers He chooses. We should always try to be worthy messengers, this goes without saying.....but remember also that the gift is in a vessel of clay.

TUESDAY OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:37-41)
Do not be surprised at what happens in side the Christian community. Luke was speaking about the Christian community. The Pharisees are not the enemies of Christ who also appear in the Gospels but rather people who claim to believe in Him. The message, for most of us at least, is one of constant reflection.
We can get spiritually lazy. We do nothing bad, as a matter of fact we may be doing a lot of good things, Going to Mass, saying the Rosary, being involved all Church activities, and even have consecrated our lives to the Lord. But if we are not careful all these things, as good as they are, can become stumbling blocks. Our relationship with the Lord is measured by what we do rather than who we are. The people in today's Gospel, all did the "good things". Yet the problem is they were not being what their actions said they should be. "to be" is an attitude of the heart. Eventually, the difference between my heart and what I do will come out.
I used to be afraid of the Pharisee lurking within me. Perhaps even denying his existence...to do, to accomplish...to identify what I did with who I am. To acknowledge his existence was the first step, to trust in the healing power of the Lord was the next....the final step, to rejoice in the great things the Lord can do.


WEDNESDAY OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11: 42-46) Every year around Christmas time I become very busy. This "business" is not the result of the ordinary pressure of the season but rather because I manage to find work. The reason for this is that writing Christmas cards is a very difficult thing for me to do. I manufacture things to do just to avoid the task of sitting at my desk and doing what I am supposed to do. I hide behind the cover of "being busy." I always manage to get an exceptional amount of work done during this season, but doing what I am supposed to do escapes until the very last moment.
Simple example, but getting caught up in doing things and taking consolation in the fact of how much we are doing without every asking the question: is this what I am supposed to be doing? Sometimes the "busyness" which we get captured into can be a draw back to doing our task. To set up a list of tasks to be accomplished on a given day, to have some sort of program, is good common sense. But they are not meant to stifle but to give us freedom for the intrusion of God into our lives.
The Pharisees in today's Gospel always did more than they had to. People were probably awed at how much tax they paid. This was the manufactured work. They never got around to writing the Christmas cards (mercy and love) which they were supposed to do.
"put burdens on people" expectations are good. We have to have a goal to shoot at and we also have to have expectations of other people. To have a feeling that people do not expect anything of you is devastating. It takes the joy away from life, and leads to a state of inertia. There is a two edged sword here. We can not make the expectations "impossible"....they have to be realistic. This means whether it is the expectations we place on ourselves or on other people they must be based on acceptance of the other person. To make them too high will lead to frustration to make them to low leads to an emotional and psychological boredom.

THURSDAY OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:47-54) Who are the prophets today? Probably never before has this question been so important. The reason for its importance is that there are so many who are being proclaimed as prophets that without a discerning eye we can be very easily led astray and what is worse we may even " kill" the real prophets. This phenomena was present right from the beginning of the Church...the false teachers were accepted and the prophets sent by God persecuted. Paul is constantly warning his people of the "false teachers". Just because something is popular, just because the majority of people believe it, just because it seems to be politically correct, is no indication that we are dealing with true prophets.
If we are to find the true prophet look to the one who says things which causes him to considered "obnoxious" by certain people, if we are to find the true prophet look for the one who says things which are not popular nor politically correct. The true prophet's voice breaks through darkness, but darkness does not give up without a fight. It is always darkest before the dawn almost like night does not want to surrender. So it is with the light of the prophet. It meets the wall of anger, fear, covered by terms such as: irrelevancy, out of date. If we are not very careful we may find ourselves also building the tombs of the prophets...but they will rise, and their voices will not be snuffed out by the darkness.

FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:1-7) Yeast makes things grow. A little yeast will make bread. Growth is important. If something does not grow we can say it is dead. But to grow in the correct way, that is the trick.
The human body is a good example of growth. The baby grows , the muscles become larger, the limbs extend, but the person is the same. Nothing is added are taken away...we can say that the finger on the hand of someone 60yrs.old is the same as the finger that person had when he was born.
In growing in our life of faith the same continuum must be honored. The faith we had when we were 8yrs.old must deepen, must be applied to our daily lives in a different way, the implications must become deeper, but it will still be the faith I had as an 8yr.old.
Two problems arise. One is that unlike our natural bodies which grow with or without us willing it, the relationship with Christ may stay at the level of the 8yr.old. Unfortunately, this happens many times. Our relationship with Christ (faith) stands the danger of being irrelevant because we make faith judgments on life from that perspective. Natural growth, emotional, psychological, take place but faith growth is left far behind.
The other problem is that growing in the correct way. The yeast which nourishes our relationship with the Lord must be the good yeast of the Gospel, the sacraments and the teaching of the Church. These are the hands and feet we were born into our life of faith with and they must be recognizable when we are mature or else our growth has gone amiss.
There is almost a paradox....we cannot solve the problems of a mature person with the answers we learned many years ago and at the same time we cannot solve these problems without the continuity of those answers. Those answers learned many years ago were the foundation upon which the recognizable house has been built.

SATURDAY TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 12:,8-12)
How do I acknowledge or deny the Lord? By overtly saying "I do not believe", I affirm Him by saying: I believe and by living that way. This, to use a big word, is the transcendental. In everyday life I have found that this affirmation or denial takes on different meaning.
It is the affirmation of Christ as King in all of creation, "all creation is full of your glory" it is the denial of this. It is the affirmation that each and every individual is in some way united to the Lord and must be treated as such....I deny Christ when I deny His presence in all people. I acknowledge Him when I look at history as the ongoing process of the revealing of His plan for us...I deny Him when I look at history as just a number of events with no ultimate end...I acknowledge Christ when I see Him as the center and that all things are tending towards Him. I deny Christ when the things of this world become either ends in themselves or just things to be used .
I deny the Holy Spirit when I close my heart to the need for forgiveness. It isn't that forgiveness is ever denied us it is just that we do not want it. God does not turn from us it is that we have turned from God. God always gives the gift of forgiveness but like every gift we can say no.

Monday, October 5, 2009

This Week

This week, once again our social justice is focused on health care...it is an obligation to know what our representatives are voting for.
This week's scripture begin with the parable of the Good Samaritan. A good parable to challenge ourselves into asking the question: do I stop along the way?
Coming up: a slide show of Assisi. This is a work in progress.
Hope you enjoy.....

Catholics mobilize to help victims of disasters in Asia, South PacificBy Catholic News ServiceJAKARTA, Indonesia (CNS) -- Catholic aid agencies geared up to help victims of a series of disasters in Asia and the South Pacific as victims of quakes, tsunamis and typhoons braced themselves for more.Even as staff from Catholic charitable agencies in Indonesia were headed out to assess damage from a magnitude 7.6 earthquake that hit Sumatra Island Sept. 30, another quake of magnitude 6.8 hit. Similarly, in the South Pacific, residents who experienced a Sept. 29 earthquake and subsequent tsunami felt another quake Oct. 1.And in the Philippines, where more than 270 people died in and around Manila from Typhoon Ketsana, officials in the southern island of Luzon remained on alert for Typhoon Parma, expected to hit land Oct. 3 with winds of more than 125 mph.Much of the aid was being coordinated by Caritas, the Catholic Church's network of charitable aid agencies, although religious orders, lay communities and organizations, and Catholics at the parish level were doing what they could to help the victims.Indonesian government officials said Oct. 1 that more than 750 people died in the first earthquake, but they expected that casualties could surpass the 5,000 dead from a May 2006 quake.A team from Caritas Indonesia, known locally as Karina, was dispatched to assess the situation, reported the Asian church news agency UCA News."Based on their report, Karina will immediately arrange to send medical workers and volunteers and material aid," Father Paulus Sigit Pramudji, head of Caritas Indonesia, told UCA News Oct. 1.Thousands of homes, public buildings and facilities were severely damaged. UCA News reported that a multistory, Catholic-run, foreign-language school collapsed, trapping many students in the debris.The Indonesian branch of the Sant'Egidio Community, an international lay Catholic association, was collecting tents, blankets, mats, mosquito nets, medicines, generators, food, drinking water and clothes."We will immediately send a team with the aid to Padang to help the victims," Eveline Winarko, head of Sant'Egidio in Indonesia, told UCA News.In the South Pacific, nearly 140 people on Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga were killed after a magnitude 8 undersea earthquake at dawn Sept. 29 set off a series of four giant waves. Two days later, a magnitude 5.5 quake hit.Caritas Samoa collaborated with the National Disaster Team and the Red Cross to coordinate a plan for the tsunami response. It was also cooperating with a local Catholic school and other members of the community to respond to the emergency, said a statement.Earlier in September, Caritas in Samoa hosted other Caritas members from the Oceania region for a conference that included a trial run for a tsunami response. The tsunami destroyed the center on Upolu Island in which those meetings where held, Caritas said.The director of Caritas Samoa, Puletini Tuala, said the first concern was to gather the people and lead them to higher ground, then to assist with shelter and assess other needs.That's exactly what a group of Salesian nuns in Lepua, American Samoa, did after the first quake. Salesian Sister Margaret Bentley, provincial in Melbourne, Australia, which is responsible for Samoa, said the nuns sheltered and entertained about 200 preschool and elementary students for the day.In New Zealand, where Samoans form the largest Pacific ethnic group, parishes around the country held prayer services for victims and their families and friends. A spokeswoman for the New Zealand Catholic bishops' conference said its Caritas agency expected to join the wider Caritas network in Oceania to help provide relief for the tsunami victims.Caritas officials in Australia were working with the international network -- including the U.S. bishops' Catholic Relief Services -- to coordinate aid for distribution by Caritas Samoa and Caritas Tonga.The Baltimore-based CRS also was working in the Philippines and Vietnam to help victims of Typhoon Ketsana, or Ondoy, as it was referred to in the Philippines."They're calling this the Katrina of the Philippines," Luc Picard, CRS country representative in Manila, told Catholic News Service Sept. 28.In a statement, the Caritas office in the Philippines said it was initially providing aid to a total of 10,000 families, or 50,000 people. Included in that amount was help from CRS and Development and Peace, the Canadian Catholic bishops' international aid agency.The Knights of Columbus also pledged aid to help the typhoon victims.Brian Caulfield, editor of Fathers for Good, an initiative of the Knights of Columbus, said in a blog posting that his wife's family was caught in the flood. He said his in-laws live a block from the river and said they had seen flooding that brought "8 feet of water into the house. With Ketsana, however, the water rose to 20 feet, forcing my in-laws to the second-floor bedrooms, then onto the pitched roof.""With the water now touching the roof and the rain still slashing with 50-mile-per-hour winds, they were afraid of being washed away," Caulfield said. In order to survive, his wife's family created a raft out of a rope and bamboo poles to get to a neighbor's house, which was located on higher ground, he said.END
Copyright (c) 2009 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250
Senate Committee Addresses Some Issues On Affordability, Fails To Correct Abortion Problems And Immigration Concerns, Say Usccb Officials
WASHINGTON— Officials of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) saw mixed results when the Senate Finance Committee completed voting on amendment to its proposed health care reform bill this week.
In a recent letter to the Senate, the USCCB had called for improvements in the bill to meet the bishops’ key criteria for genuine health care reform: protecting life and dignity, affordability, and inclusion of immigrants. For the text of this letter see www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/2009-09-30-healthcare-letter-senate.pdf.

Twenty Seventh Week of the Year


MONDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 10:25-37)
The parable of the Good Samaritan, is one of those passages in Scripture which are etched into the psyche of all who read the Word. There is something about this parable which touches the heart strings of all who read it...inside of it we see ourselves.
Why did the priest and Levite pass the man? Was it because they were indifferent to the suffering, was it because they felt we have nothing to do with this man, because of just cold heartiness....I think not. I think the reason they passed by was because of fear. The wounded man was bleeding. If the priest or Levite, according the law, came into contact with this blood they would become ritually unclean. This they did not want, so they chose the safe way. The Samaritan, on the other hand, did not have to worry about this, he was free. This parable is about much more than doing good, it is about the freedom we must have to do that good.
Work, things that we are responsible for, some good plans that we may be working on, an assignment given us by a superior....these are all good or at least indifferent. To be a good Samaritan does not merely mean did we help someone...this can as a matter of fact be a rather simple thing to do. A good Samaritan is one who is called on to make a judgment about the norms by which he or she acts. Is there the freedom to be present to and respond to those who are in need.

TUESDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 10:38-42)
The story of Martha and Mary. The teaching of Our Lord on prayer begins here. We will be going , in the following days , into the Our Father , trust and some basic attitudes towards prayer. In this passage Our Lord is telling us about listening in prayer. How necessary it is just at times to sit at his feet and quietly open the ears of our hearts and let His word come in. In that silence He reveals Himself to us.
If I may there is another aspect of this story which has always attracted me. It is the fact that a teacher, Jesus, would be teaching a woman. In our day this is a part of the story which we would probably not even avert to. In Jesus' time for a teacher to have a woman sit at his feet, a sign of being a disciple, was radical. Something new which must have caused some people surprise. It was not done.
Jesus always seems to be doing things like this. It is almost like He is deliberately trying to get peoples attention. Doing good on the Sabbath, picking wheat, eating with the publicans...even the men He called to be His apostles...He challenged people to think beyond the safe, secure boundaries and to look beyond...in this simple scene of Mary at this feet Jesus is opening up a new world.

WEDNESDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:1-4)
The first thing which comes to mind in praying this prayer is the absolute poverty we have before God. It is an overpowering thought that the Good God permits a weak human being to look up and say "Father". It would be so safe if all I could do would be to be able to think about God. This in itself is something to marvel at....but God is not satisfied with that. He wants a conversation with us, communion.
It is all pure gift...we use expressions such as: my prayer, I am going to pray....as though it was our work. We take possession of a gift and deny by our attitude that it is pure gift. No one can look to God except those whom He permit s. No one can enter into this conversation except those whom He invites ...we respond to this gift, to the invitation...but the initiative is from God. He, as my mother used to remind us, grabs us by the back of the neck and lifts us to Him before we can go to Him.

THURSDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:5-13)
Many years ago I worked in a small country parish in Japan. There was a kindergarten attached to the Church. During the summer months when the children were let out at 11:30AM there would be at least one child who would want ice-cream. The little shop outside the gates of the Church was the source of this temptation.
It being so close to lunch time, no matter how much the child cried the mother would not give in. However, most mothers did come prepared with some sort of little cookie. Usually this would not alleviate the child's need, the crying would continue...only ice-cream. The mother would be forced to pick the child up without ice-cream and without cookie and carry him or her away.
I often reflected on those scenes and said to myself: that is the way I act in front of God. Crying for what I think is good for me, seeing nothing else but the ice-cream, and missing the gifts which He is giving me.

FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:15-26)
To attribute to the devil the work of God....what a blasphemy
They saw marvelous things happening, things they could not explain...devils being defeated...the blind seeing what is the meaning of all this? Why didn't they say: this is the work of God....why did they have to say: the work of the devil?....fear, perhaps....maybe there is something inside of people that makes evil more comprehensible than good....isn't it true that evil, no matter what form it may take, almost captures us.
We do not have to exert too much energy, psychic or emotional to grasp the reality of evil...but good, we either let it go by like a summer breeze or else take it for granted.
Heaven and earth are indeed full of the glory of God....the disciple is asked to proclaim that glory...to announce the marvelous workings of God.

SATURDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:27-28)
The other day I got involved in a discussion about relevancy, one of the many buzz words of this day and age. We came to the conclusion that not everything in the Gospel is relevant to " all of the people all of the time "...life cycles are different.
I need to hear different things at different times
Mary is a good example of someone who was not afraid to listen to the new things. She did not stop listening at the Annunciation, she listened to the Gloria on Christmas night, she listened to "a sword shall pierce your heart", she heard her son say " I must be about my Father's business" finally, "woman behold your son".....she listened and she came to understand and to live her vocation.
Our lives with Christ are always deepening...our lives change...Christ wants to speak to us where we are...He wants us to respond where we are...in the quiet of our hearts to listen...having heard to act on the Word.