Reading I Responsorial Psalm GospelPosted on 10/23/2003 5:51:27 AM PDT by Salvation
Reading I Responsorial Psalm GospelReading I
Rom 6:19-23
Brothers and sisters:
I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature.
For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity
and to lawlessness for lawlessness,
so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness.
But what profit did you get then
from the things of which you are now ashamed?
For the end of those things is death.
But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God,
the benefit that you have leads to sanctification,
and its end is eternal life.
For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6
R (Ps 40:5) Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Blessed the man who follows not
the counsel of the wicked
Nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on his law day and night.
R Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
R Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Not so the wicked, not so;
they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
For the LORD watches over the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked vanishes.
R Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Gospel
Lk 12:49-53
Jesus said to his disciples:
"I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
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Perfection does not consist in consolation, but rather in the submission of our wills to God-- above all in trials and suffering.
--
St. Henry Suso
| Thursday, October 23, 2003 Meditation Luke 12:49-53 After dinner, Bill and his wife sat chatting with his pastor. During the conversation, the pastor said, “Bill, I often speak of you as the most faithful practicing non-Catholic in our parish. Why have you never become a Catholic?” Bill thought for a moment and said, “Because you never invited me. Besides that, none of my family or Catholic friends ever invited me.” How many people are there today like Bill who don’t have a relationship with the Lord because no one has invited them?
Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.” How better could Jesus’ passion for inviting people into the kingdom of God be expressed? It can be very tempting to settle for a “me-and-Jesus” kind of faith—the kind where we fulfill our responsibilities by attending Mass and putting a little money in the collection basket each week. But when Jesus invites us to be his disciples, he is asking for more than this. He wants our commitment to him to take priority over everything else in life. He wants to make us so excited about what he has done for us that we simply cannot help but share that excitement with the people around us.
How many people do you know, or at least know about, who are not practicing their faith as members of a community of Christians simply because no one has invited them? Witnessing through word and deed is not always easy in a society where religious values are not a priority. But if we love Jesus and let his love pierce our hearts, we will learn how to rise above the world’s standards and bring to it the good news that has so changed our lives. The first goal in the United States bishops’ document Go and Make Disciples is “To bring about in all Catholics such an enthusiasm for their faith that, in living their faith in Jesus, they freely share it with others.” This is the challenge set before all of us. Let us commit ourselves to passing on to others the good news of the kingdom so that no one will have to say, “You never invited me.”
“Come, Holy Spirit, and set our hearts afire with the desire to spread the gospel. May we all become living witnesses to you and the power of your kingdom.” |
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This is a painting of St. John of Capistrano, whom the famous mission in California is named for. The painting was commissioned by Blessed Junipero Serra for the mission church. St. John was a Fransican friar who converted many Jews, preached against the heretical Hussites, and helped reform the Conventual Franciscans. But among his greatest acts was when he personally led an army against Muslim invaders in Eastern Europe near Belgrade in 1456, using a force only one-tenth the size of the Muslim army. The Christian forces defeated the Muslims on the feast day of St. Mary Magdalen.
The painting is the featured work of art in the October issue of Magnificat magazine.
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Very inspiring story.
He died on October 23, 1456 and is the patron of military chaplains.
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The ancient world was thickly populated with gods. Those open-minded Romans actually collected as many as they could find and enshrined them all in a special building that still stands today, the Pantheon (meaning “all gods” in Greek).
The Israelites ran into quite of few of these idols. There were the animal gods of the Egyptians. Then there were the fertility gods of the Canaanites, worshiped through ritual prostitution. Then there was Moloch, the god of the Ammonites, who demanded the sacrifice of infant children. Joshua chapter 24 is all about the Israelites making a conscious decision to serve the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, instead of these idols. After all, they knew you had to serve one god or another.
We, unfortunately, are not wise enough to know this. Many of us in the 21st century think that we are autonomous and run our own lives, thank you very much. But the abortion holocaust proves that the spirit of Moloch is alive and well on planet earth. And while fertility is not in style, one look at our entertainment industry shows us that sex makes the world go round. Bob Dylan tried to point this out in a song that said “it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but your gonna have to serve somebody.”
So a conscious decision is required. But the decision is not a one-time deal. It has to be renewed again and again. The Israelites said yes to Yahweh’s proposal in Ex 19 and accepted the wedding band of the 10 commandments. But 40 years later, facing new challenges and new idols, they had to recommit themselves at Shechem.
Really, the relationship between us (the church) and Christ is a lot like a marriage. That’s what Ephesians 5 is about. The union is intimate. He binds himself to care lovingly for us as for his own body, nourishing us with Word and Eucharist, cleansing us in baptism and penance. We for our part, trusting in His love, submit to his direction. He’s not just our savior, He’s our Lord. We obey and serve Him. This is a permanent, lasting relationship. Therefore it has to be renewed on a daily basis.
All the characters in the gospel reading had once made a decision to follow Jesus. But when faced with Jesus’s hard teaching on the Eucharist, it was just too much for many of them. They hadn’t bargained for this. (Notice, by the way, that Jesus doesn’t chase after them and say “wait a minute — I was just speaking symbolically!”). They were quintessential “heretics.” The word heresy means “choice” — picking and choosing only those doctrines that fit into my comfort zone and don’t threaten my idols.
In the early centuries of the Church, the nature of true discipleship was manifested very dramatically in the baptismal ceremony. On Holy Saturday night the catechumens would gather in the baptistry. The first thing they would do is face West, the place where darkness swallows up the sun each night, and repudiate Satan, the old master. After this divorce decree, they turned to the East, the direction of the rising sun, and professed their vows to be faithful to their new triune spouse. After passing through the water, they were led into the church, draped in white robes and holding candles in what St. Cyril called a nuptial procession. There, after confirmation, they enjoyed the wedding feast of the Eucharist. Every Sunday thereafter they remembered their baptism as they once again partook of the wedding feast. And every day they were encouraged to renew their vows by repeating the sign that was first traced on their foreheads on that special day, the sign of the cross, their wedding band.
C.S. Lewis once wrote a fantasy that I highly recommend, called the Great Divorce. Our greatest temptation is the illusion that we can have peaceful coexistence in our lives between good and evil, God and idols. The reality is that they are mutually exclusive. If we compromise and try to serve both, our life will be a chaotic battleground and we’ll be the casualties.
Words of Encouragement
Title: Dismantling the Progress Machine! Author: Mark Shea Date: Thursday, October 23, 2003
Lamentations 3:40 Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the LORD!
Bob destroyed himself, his marriage, his children and his happiness with overwork. Why? Because he had to pay the bills on the yacht he couldn't afford. Why? Because he bought the yacht to prove he'd Made It and parting with it meant Defeat. Why? Because owning a yacht felt like being a millionaire. Why? Because millionaires often own yachts and this symbol therefore mattered enormously. Why? Because Bob vowed in college he'd be a millionaire. Why? Because Bob's rich jerk of a roommate in college reminded him (though he never articulated it to himself) of his older brother and Bob had vowed to switch his major to business (like the roommate's major) in order to get rich faster than the roommate (rather than stick with photography which he loved but would not get rich at). Why? Because back in third grade Dad remarked at the dinner table that Bob's older brother was a better chess player and Bob could learn if he'd watch him. His brother had smiled at him gloatingly, and Bob then and there had made an inner vow to defeat his brother in every competition. Why? Because back when he was four, Bob's brother had stolen the chip dip from the fridge and managed to make it look like Bob had done it. Bob had never forgiven that sin. And because of that refusal to forgive that long forgotten, trivial grudge, Bob's "progressed" to a ruined marriage, a hellish job, and children whose lives are devastated by his rages and his weeks immersed in work. Moral: It is not progress to make a little bad choice and then spend years (sometimes a lifetime) reinforcing and elaborating an immense psychological, physical and moral defensive mechanism to protect that (often forgotten) choice. Progress, in such a case, is to admit that our elaborate mechanism isn't working and to take it apart, piece by piece, and give it all back to God till we arrive at the central sin that we have been guarding and incubating like a cancer at the core of our being.
Stop Trusting Day Care to Do What Only Parents Can 10/23/03
By Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
An author and former university professor of economics says there is no such thing as a single parent.
Dr. Jennifer Morse, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, says when individuals talk about a single parent, what they really mean is an unmarried parent. Morse believes that no one can raise a child completely by himself or herself.
Pointing out that most so-called "single" parents have the help of an employer to provide income and the help of a daycare to provide child care, Morse says the difference between a "single" mother and a married mother is only in the nature of their relationship with their helpers.
"The difference between the unmarried parent and the married parent is that these two people who are helping the so-called single mother take care of her child are commercial relationships — businesses that have no personal, individual relationship with the mother. They don't have any commitment to her and have no particular reason to care how she and her child are actually faring," she says.
Morse says since single mothers are dependent on their employers and daycare providers, they are not really any more free or independent than a married stay-at-home mom would be. In fact, the researcher often tries to point out the fact that people are never as independent as some would like to believe.
Dr. Morse is the author of Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work. In that book, the author notes that the human race could not survive beyond a single generation if every person truly acted as if he were unconnected to any other person. But she is critical of the tendency of many modern parents to ignore the all-important issues of relational connectivity with their own children.
The former university economics professor says when unmarried parents or married parents who both work outside the home search for a professionally run daycare to provide their child-care needs, they fail to realize that those needs can and should be met at home.
Morse finds it somewhat hypocritical when some parents voice concerns about daycare's child-adult ratio, which is regulated carefully by most states, but still choose that option over the home situation, where the parent-child ratio can allow a parent — who has a relational bond with the child rather than a financial one — to concentrate on giving children the attention they need and deserve.
"The fact of the matter is that most families have far fewer children than the average day-care center," Morse says, "so it's kind of crazy if you think you're going to have one or two children so you can give them lots of individual, personal attention, and then you go and pop them off into a daycare, which has far more kids in it than any family would ever have," she says.
Morse feels this reasoning is "a little bit contradictory," and yet she says that is what a lot of modern parents end up doing — allowing day care centers to address children's needs that could be better met at home.
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