Posted on 06/25/2016 7:49:49 PM PDT by Salvation
13th Sunday - How much does it cost?
Choosing Between Two Goods | ||
|
||
June 26, 2016 - Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
|
||
Father Matthew Kaderabek, LCLuke 9: 51-62When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?" Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village. As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus answered him, "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head." And to another he said, "Follow me." But he replied, "(Lord,) let me go first and bury my father." But he answered him, "Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." And another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home." (To him) Jesus said, "No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God." Introductory PrayerLord, I wish to put aside all distractions and to give you my total focus. I will do nothing more important today than to meditate prayerfully on your goodness and your active role in my life. Though I am unworthy to be in your presence, I trust in your mercy and love. Through this moment of prayer I want to draw closer to you and learn to live more like you. PetitionLord, may the enticements of the world pale in comparison with you.
Conversation with ChristLord, I am distracted by so many things in life. Even though many of them are legitimate. I must learn to keep my eyes focused on you and trust in you. Half-way surrenders do not interest you. You want all of my heart. Help me to give it to you willingly and joyfully. ResolutionI will recommit to living wholeheartedly for God today. Even though certain members of my family are likely to call me a “fanatic”. Or tell me that I’m “getting carried away.” |
June 26, 2016
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading: 1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/062616.cfm
Most of life just drifts along. Day after regular day, the monotony and the routines drone on. We rarely see changes, which is why we celebrate them when they happenweddings, baptisms, even funerals, punctuate the regular rhythm of working, eating, sleeping, living. Yet every once in a while, a divine hand breaks through the humdrum of every day life and seizes our hearts, issuing an urgent and demanding call.
When we were young, discerning the path our life was to take, most of us would have gladly traded places with young Elisha, plowing on his farm in this Sundays first reading. For him, finding Gods call on his life was easy: the wizened prophet Elijah shows up while hes working and personally throws his prophetic mantle around the young man, marking him as his successor. Often our search for Gods plan is not nearly so crystal clear. We must pray, think, listen, learn, ask advice, build relationships and even then, the path itself may be murky. We might only be able to see the next step, or not even that! However, once we do make the essential decisions about vocation, career, state in life and so on, we can reach that equilibrium I mentioned at the beginning, that place where life no longer unfolds as a series of new and exciting adventures and opportunities, but rather as the living out of commitments made long ago, the holding true to the promises we made.
Most of life then, after excavating and laying the foundation, is about follow through. It is about doing what we committed to do with consistency, fidelity, zeal. Follow through does not write headlines. Doing what you said you would do is not exciting to a tabloid. There only infidelity, broken promises and messy problems win fame and attention. One wonders if the divorce crisis in our world would be so intense if the magazines wrote about beautiful, faithful, life-long couples instead of the fourth and fifth divorces of Hollywood celebrities. Elisha, the young man, shows us what real commitment looks like. At first, we find him at his daily work, in the midst of the humdrum, and hes not sitting on his hands. He is working with 24 oxen! The text says twelve yoke and each yoke would involve two oxen. Hes plowing his familys field as efficiently as any modern tractor. Elishas commitment to his work demonstrates his readiness to be called by God to a new kind of work, that of prophetic ministry.
Though Elisha readily does his daily work with fidelity, when the moment of Gods call comes, he is ready to jump on it. His readiness to serve Gods call reminds me of St. Pauls encouragement that we wear symbolic boots which represent readiness for the gospel of peace (Eph 6:15 NAB). Elisha knows who he is and is following through on his daily commitments to his family, but when the prophet comes knocking, he is ready to spring up and take action. He responds to Gods call with a willing and generous heart. To solidify his new commitment to Gods call, Elisha destroys his former means of sustenance, the oxen themselves. He isnt just throwing a barbeque for the neighbors, but putting his money where his mouth is. When he slaughters the oxen, it becomes clear that he is embarking on a new way of life and cannot easily return to the old. This act concretizes his commitment to prophetic ministry.
Yet the call itself comes with a layer of ambiguity. The great prophet Elijah, despite his great success at Mt. Carmel in defeating the prophets of Baal, is now being hunted by the evil queen, Jezebel. It turns out his victory was pyrrhic. Elijah is on the run from Jezebel, cowering in fear, praying for death (1 Kgs 19:4). The Lord has to calm him down and search for a replacement, which he finds in Elisha. The Lord even tells Elijah you shall anoint Elisha to be prophet in your place (1 Kgs 19:16), a clear instruction. Yet when we get to the point where Elijah and Elisha meet, Elijah does not anoint him, but only throws his mantle on him and brings him along as an assistant (1 Kgs 19:21). While Elijah might still be acting out of human fear, God utilizes the prophets possibly mixed motives for his greater purposes. Elisha does eventually succeed Elijah and receives a double anointing (2 Kgs 2:9), so everything turns out in Gods plan.
This story of two prophets, one on the wane, running from Gods call and the other green, inexperienced, yet willing to embrace the call of God whole-heartedly when it comes, offers us a dual portrait of our own experience of relationship with God. When things are new, fresh, exciting, filled with possibilities, it is relatively easy to invest our energies, embark on a new adventure and get on boardlike Elisha was willing to do. Yet after many successes and failures, many years of fidelity and trouble, even persecution, a life of fidelity to God can wear on our human frailty. We can start to coast, take things easy, forget some of our commitments, smooth over the little ways in which we fail to keep our promises, even run from the call of God. When that happens, we would do well to circle back to Elijahs yoke-fire and taste some of that seared oxen flesh, remembering how decisive and complete his commitment to God was and how we too can drop our nets and follow Himbuts ok if you go back to kiss Mom goodbye!
Today, Jesus surprises us by being merciful to those who resist Him and harsh with those who dont. Why?
St. Luke tells us when the days for Jesus being taken up were fulfilled, He resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem. Other translations use the phrase, set His face, to describe this determination, calling to mind how God told the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel to set your face against Jerusalem and preach its evils (see Jer 21:10; Ezek 21:2). Jesus was about to do the very same thing. The words, being taken up, describe His Ascension into heaven after completing the work God had given Him to do. This long journey into Jerusalem from Galilee provides the setting for the rest of St. Lukes Gospel, in which he unfolds the orderly account he wants to give his readers of the life of Jesus (see Lk 1:1-4).
We find that Jesus wanted to enter a Samaritan village, but when the people there found out that He was a Jew traveling to Jerusalem, they refused His visit. This infuriated James and John, who wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume them. They were likely thinking about Elijah, the prophet, who, centuries earlier, had called down fire on messengers from Samaria in a time of great covenant infidelity in Israel (see 2 Kings 1:9-14). Jesus rebuked them for this idea. Why was He merciful to people who refused to even allow Him to enter their village? Was it because they were acting out of their inherited prejudice against Jews, a tradition of hatred that had been handed down for generations? This kind of collective blindness is the sort of invincible ignorance about which the Church speaks in merciful tones, too (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1793). Later, in fact, many Samaritans responded to the Gospel of Jesus, as we know from the Book of Acts. The zeal for revenge in James and John (called by Jesus sons of thunder, with good reason), had Jesus allowed it, would have made this highly improbable. They journeyed on.
Here, St. Luke tells us that men began to individually respond to Jesus. One says, I will follow You wherever You go. Surely this was what He was looking for. However, instead of telling him to join the group, Jesus gives him a warning: Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest His head. Why did Jesus sound so downbeat? Why did He emphasize the rootless life of His followers? Perhaps He saw in this man an eagerness that was more emotion than will. Jesus wanted him to count the cost of true discipleship (see Lk 14:28).
And to another, He said, Follow Me. But he replied, Lord, let me go first and bury my father. Here we see Jesus extending a direct call to a man whose first thought was his family responsibility. Burying a dead parent was an important, noble expression of honoring ones parents. We would expect Jesus to make allowance for it, yet His response seems harsh: Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. We see here a touch of the Semitic hyperbole we frequently see in Jesus teaching (hating mother and father, cutting off an offending hand, plucking out an offending eye, etc.). Jesus is telling this man, whom He desires as His disciple, that as sacred a duty as burying a dead parent is, the need to respond to His call takes priority. The dead, or those who are not going to be disciples, the spiritually dead, can bury the physically dead. A true disciple must be willing to leave everyone, even his fathers home, as Jesus Himself did, to do Gods work in the world.
Finally, another said, I will follow You, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home. This request brings to mind an episode in our First Reading today, when the prophet, Elijah, called young Elisha to be his disciple. He requested permission to say good-bye to his family, too; Elijah granted it. Surely the Jews familiar with this Old Testament story would have been surprised at the severity of Jesus response: No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God. Instead of accommodation, the man gets a warning from Jesus. Why? We must remember that Jesus could read mens hearts. Did He see something more than mere familial sentiment in this mans request to say farewell to his family? Did He see a reason to warn the man against inordinate attachment to anyone or anything that might distract him from his need to follow Jesus wholeheartedly?
These responses from Jesus to men who seemed to desire to follow Him can surprise us if we forget what St. Luke told us in last Sundays Gospel. There, Jesus said that everyone who intends to follow Him must deny himself and daily take up his cross to fulfill that desire. The call to discipleship is radical. We cannot respond to it only out of emotion. It will cost us everything, just as it did Jesus.
To follow Jesus means exactly that.
Possible response: Lord Jesus, I must admit the call to follow You unreservedly in this Gospel makes me uncomfortable. Maybe I am too prone to making excuses. Please heal me.
Here is the story of Elijah calling Elisha, in which we seen how leniency was given to Elishas request to bid farewell to his family before departing for good to be Elijahs disciple and, eventually, successor. We also have an opportunity to see that Elisha did not use this desire for farewell as an excuse to delay his response to Elijahs call. He made a meal of the oxen he had used for plowinga definitive break with his previous vocation if ever there was one! Perhaps this seriousness in Elisha to obey Elijahs call was what earned him the permission to take leave of his family. There was no chance that in saying good-bye, he would begin to have doubts about leaving.
In our Gospel, did Jesus see something different in the man who asked the same favor? Is that why He had to warn him not to look back? Elisha, in his immediate slaughtering of his oxen for the farewell feast he made for his family, showed himself already looking forward to his new life. No looking back for him.
Possible response: Lord, help me not to look back to what might have been once Ive decided its Your will to let it go.
The psalmist writes a prayer of complete abandonment to the will of God. If our other readings stir us to renew our desire to put our Lord first in our lives, these words can help us express that: I say to the Lord, My Lord are You. O Lord, my allotted portion and my cup, You it is Who hold fast my lot! In the flood of things that compete for our attention in any given day, it is profitable for us to sing with conviction, You are my inheritance, O Lord.
Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings. Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.
St. Paul gives us some helpful pastoral direction that touches on our Gospel message. First, he reminds us that when we resolve to put Jesus first in our lives, we are alsoresolving to put our neighbors first, too. See how he says that the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. In his epistle to the Galatians, St. Paul teaches about salvation that comes through faith in what Jesus has done for us and not through works of the law. In other words, we cannot make ourselves good enough for God to save us. Jesus came to do that for us. Now, however, although we dont work our way into heaven, we do work hard at living our faith, because faith without works is dead (see James 2:26). One of the clearest ways we can express our love for God and all He has done for us is to love our neighbor. So, if we find a desire in our hearts to follow Jesus wherever He leads, we can count on Him to lead us into loving those around us.
Second, as we all know, it is hard to love our neighbors! St. Paul explains why: The flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other. Anyone who seriously desires to follow Jesus will find this battle raging inside nearly all the time. It is only with the help of the Holy Spirit that we can live the life to which Jesus calls us.
We should never expect it to be easy, as both Jesus and St. Paul tell us today. Yet we should not miss the encouragement we have because, as St. Paul assures us, if we live by the Spirit, we will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. Hope!
Possible response: Holy Spirit, thank You for making the life of love possible to a sinner like me.
Language: English | Español
All Issues > Volume 32, Issue 4
|
Saint Josemaría Escrivá, Priest
Optional Memorial [In some diocese]
June 26th
Saint Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, opened a new path of holiness in the Catholic Church, teaching that people can become holy by performing their work and daily duties with a Christian spirit.
Principle Source: Daily Roman Missal, Edited by Rev. James Socías, Midwest Theological Forum, Chicago, Illinois ©2003
Collect:
God, our Father,
You chose Saint Josemaría
to proclaim the universal call to sanctity
and apostolate in the Church.
By His example and prayers,
grant that in faithfully carrying out
our daily work in the Spirit of Christ,
we may be formed in the likeness of Your Son,
and together with the most Blessed Virgin Mary,
serve the work of redemption with an ardent love.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. + AmenFirst Reading: Gen 2:4b-9, 15
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up--for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground-- then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.First Reading: Revelation 19:1, 5-9a [In Easter Season]
After this I, John, heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying, "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God."
And from the throne came a voice crying, "Praise our God, all you His servants, you who fear Him, small and great." Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying, "Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure"-- for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
And the angel said to me, "Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb."Second Reading: Romans 8:26-30
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And He who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that in everything God works for good with those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom He predestined He also called; and those whom He called He also justified; and those whom He justified He also glorified.
Gospel Reading: Luke 5:1-11
While the people pressed upon Jesus to hear the word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. And He saw two boats by the lake; but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, He asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when He had ceased speaking, He said to Simon, "Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch." And Simon answered, "Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets." And when they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish; and as their nets were breaking, they beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the catch of fish which they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men." And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.