We Are Constantly Striving

The response of Junipero Serra and his followers to the call to share the Gospel is a complex reflection of who we are and have always been as a Church: a sinful yet holy people constantly striving to follow God’s will as best we can in light of our weaknesses and our strengths, with both our blindness and our zeal to be missionary disciples of Jesus Christ. As we follow the Camino of Saint Junípero Serra today, let us work for healing, lamenting what went wrong in the past and acknowledging the real pains that remain. But let us also recognize the heroism of great men and women, native and Hispanic, who sanctified the missions of California and bear witness to their history.

–from Saint Junipero Serra's Camino: A Pilgrimage Guide to the California  Missions

Archbishop calls for immigration reform, launches campaign

The conversation about our borders growing louder in San Antonio, with one archbishop is getting involved saying this is about more than just border security.

Members of the San Fernando Cathedral are collecting signatures, helping the archdiocese kick off a new campaign to change the current border battle.

A Sunday church service, charged with politics to discuss what Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller says is a bigger issue.

"We want to launch a campaign that will support comprehensive immigration reform." Garcia-Siller said.

Using a hero for many, to help teach a few more.

"We will be inspired today by the life and legacy of Cesar Chavez..." Garcia-Siller said.

And to change a national narrative, while promoting his side of the debate.

"Just to say that everyone who comes as a refugee a migrant is a bad person that is not right..." Garcia-Siller said.

Conservative Commentator George Rodriguez says breaching the border is not a broad topic.

"It's no better than somebody entering your home uninvited, you need to know who they are, you need to invite them, you need to be prepared for them,” said Rodriguez, “We need a border that vets people that come into the United States that controls who is going to enter and who is not."

While the archbishop agrees.

"If someone will be truly a big problem because a person has been involved in crime, we need to protect our country." Garcia-Siller said.

With one exception.

"But not at the expense of punishing people." Garcia-Siller said.

And one hope for the future.

"That we, be able with our leaders to welcome and respect the dignity of children and parents who are coming this way as refugees." Garcia-Siller said.

The church next week inviting 170 parishes plus Catholic Universities and Schools to sign postcards about immigration reform, and send them to legislators, the Archbishop also said they already have a commitment for 11,500 hundred signatures from one place alone.

Deacon Steve's Homily for Friday, July 6th

We have been hearing from the Prophet Amos this week and our first reading today from the bible sounds very close to what we heard this past Monday.  Amos lived during a time when there was a surge in prosperity around him.  As a result, he saw that there was a great and growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor.  That is an interesting observation considering he lived in the 8th century B.C. 

To try and put some perspective on that, I did some looking on what the income differences between the wealthy and the poor were in 1960 compared to today.  Needless to say, there were so many charts that track different aspects of the whole thing, it became a little daunting to zero in on one that would tell the story of our times.  But it was clear to me that the saying “the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer” is true.  It seems that it was true for Amos back them. 

It should be a little unsettling to us thinking about the disparity in wages and the impact that has on families just barely getting by from paycheck to paycheck in a society with so much wealth as we have.  Anyway, this is not a homily on economics.  You get the point. 

What Amos was concerned with was dishonesty.  Just like on Monday, the wealthy show a lack of respect for human beings.  Greed seemed to be woven into the fabric of the daily lives of people.  One group taking advantage of another and so on.

The call of Matthew we hear today in the Gospel follows the account of the healing of the paralytic at the beginning of Chapter 9.  The same Jesus who forgave the sins of the paralytic also sought out sinners such as those who surrounded Matthew and his tax collector friends.  He extended grace to all, group by group.

This call to Matthew did not require him to abandon his friends that were associated with the work of tax collection, even though they we tangled up in the very corrupt and unjust tax system of the day.  Rather, Matthew apparently remained in conversation with former coworkers in order to make their daily work more just and generous.  Here, in this aspect of the story, is a very important lesson for us.  The call to discipleship is not a divine summons to flee the political or economic world, but to transform it.  We should imagine Jesus with our friends and coworkers and similar conversations.

The other important message here is Jesus’ use of the word “mercy”.  In context, this means kindness and concern for the well-being of neighbors.  Look at how Jesus was thinking – care for the tax collectors as part of God’s people.  Jesus, the great reformer of Israel, invites these tax collectors back into the Jewish community within which they were to show care and concern for their poorer fellow covenant members.  He is, in essence, showing us the priority of community.  Something for us to think about today.

Pope on Saving Earth: Let Us Think of Lord’s Instructions to St Francis of Assisi to ‘Go and Repair My House’

Pope Francis Addresses International Conference Saving our Common Home and the Future of Life on Earth

JULY 06, 2018 DEBORAH CASTELLANO LUBOV

Here we can think back on the call that Francis of Assisi received from the Lord in the little church of San Damiano: “Go and repair my house, which, as you can see, lies in ruins”. Today, the ‘common home’ of our planet also needs urgently to be repaired and secured for a sustainable future.

Pope Francis stressed this at the opening of the International Conference Saving our Common Home and the Future of Life on Earth, held on the third anniversary of the Holy Father Francis’ Encyclical Laudato si’, in the Vatican’s New Synod Hall from July 5-6, 2018, noting there is a real danger that we will leave future generations only rubble, deserts and refuse.

He expressed his hope “that concern for the state of our common home will translate into systematic and concerted efforts aimed at an integral ecology.”

“May Saint Francis of Assisi,” the Holy Father prayed, “continue to inspire and guide us on this journey, and may our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope.”

“After all,” the Pope underscored, “that hope is based on our faith in the power of our heavenly Father.”

“He, ‘who calls us to generous commitment and to give him our all, offers us the light and the strength needed to continue on our way.

“In the heart of this world, the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is always present. He does not abandon us, he does not leave us alone, for he has united himself definitively to our earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new ways forward. Praise be to him!” (ibid., 245).”

Pope Francis concluded, imparting his Apostolic Blessing and asking those present to pray for him.

Here is the Vatican-provided text of the Pope’s address:

Your Eminences,
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

I welcome all of you assembled for this International Conference marking the third anniversary of the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ on care for our common home. In a special way, I would like to greet His Eminence Archbishop Zizioulas, because he and Cardinal Turkson together presented the Encyclical three years ago. I thank all of you for coming together to “hear with your hearts” the increasingly desperate cries of the earth and its poor, who look for our help and concern. You have also gathered to testify to the urgent need to respond to the Encyclical’s call for change, for an ecological conversion. Your presence here is the sign of your commitment to take concrete steps to save the planet and the life it sustains, inspired by the Encyclical’s assumption that “everything is connected”. That principle lies at the heart of an integral ecology.

Here we can think back on the call that Francis of Assisi received from the Lord in the little church of San Damiano: “Go and repair my house, which, as you can see, lies in ruins”. Today, the “common home” of our planet also needs urgently to be repaired and secured for a sustainable future.

In recent decades, the scientific community has developed increasingly accurate assessments in this regard. Indeed, “the pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world” (Laudato Si’, 161). There is a real danger that we will leave future generations only rubble, deserts and refuse.

So I express my hope that concern for the state of our common home will translate into systematic and concerted efforts aimed at an integral ecology. For “the effects of the present imbalance can only be reduced by our decisive action, here and now” (ibid.). Humanity has the knowledge and the means to cooperate in responsibly “cultivating and protecting” the earth. Significantly, your discussions have addressed some of this year’s important steps in this direction.

The COP24 Summit, to be held in Katowice, Poland, in December, could prove a milestone on the path set out by the 2015 Paris Agreement. We all know that much still needs to be done to implement that Agreement. All governments should strive to honour the commitments made in Paris, in order to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. “Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility, above all on the part of those countries which are more powerful and pollute the most” (ibid., 169), and we cannot afford to waste time.

Along with states, local authorities, civil society, and economic and religious institutions can promote the culture and practice of an integral ecology. I trust that events such as the Global Climate Action Summit, to be held from 12-14 September in San Francisco, will provide suitable responses, with the support of citizens’ pressure groups worldwide. As I observed, along with His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, “there can be no sincere and enduring resolution to the challenge of the ecological crisis and climate change unless the response is concerted and collective, unless the responsibility is shared and accountable, and unless we give priority to solidarity and service” (Message for the World Day of Prayer for Creation, 1 September 2017).

Financial institutions, too, have an important role to play, as part both of the problem and its solution. A financial paradigm shift is needed, for the sake of promoting integral human development. International organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank can encourage effective reforms for more inclusive and sustainable development. It is to be hoped that “finance… will go back to being an instrument directed towards improved wealth creation and development” (BENEDICT XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 65), as well as towards care for the environment.

All these actions presuppose a transformation on a deeper level, namely a change of hearts and minds. In the words of Saint John Paul II: “We must encourage and support an ‘ecological conversion’” (Catechesis, 17 January 2001). Here the religions, and the Christian Churches in particular, have a key role to play. The Day of Prayer for Creation and its associated initiatives, begun in the Orthodox Church, are beginning to spread among Christian communities throughout the world.

Finally, dialogue and commitment to our common home must make special room for two groups of people at the forefront of efforts to foster an integral ecology. Both will be at the centre of the next two Synods of the Catholic Church: young people and indigenous peoples, especially those from the Amazon region.

On the one hand, “Young people demand change. They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded” (Laudato Si’, 13). It is the young who will have to face the consequences of the current environmental and climate crisis. Consequently, intergenerational solidarity “is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us” (ibid., 159).

Then too, “it is essential to show special care for indigenous communities and their cultural traditions” (ibid., 146). It grieves us to see the lands of indigenous peoples expropriated and their cultures trampled on by predatory schemes and by new forms of colonialism, fuelled by the culture of waste and consumerism (cf. SYNOD OF BISHOPS, Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology, 8 June 2018). “For them, land is not a commodity but rather a gift from God and from their ancestors who rest there, a sacred space with which they need to interact if they are to maintain their identity and values” (Laudato Si’, 146). How much we can learn from them! The lives of indigenous peoples “are a living memory of the mission that God has entrusted to us all: the protection of our common home” (Address, Puerto Maldonado, Peru, 19 January 2018).

Dear brothers and sisters, challenges are not lacking! I express my heartfelt gratitude for your efforts in the service of care for creation and a better future for our children and grandchildren. Sometimes it might seem too arduous a task, since “there are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected” (Laudato Si’, 54). Yet “human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start” (ibid., 205). Please continue to work for “the radical change which present circumstances require” (ibid., 171). For “injustice is not invincible” (ibid., 74).

May Saint Francis of Assisi continue to inspire and guide us on this journey, and “may our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope” (ibid., 244). After all, that hope is based on our faith in the power of our heavenly Father. He, “who calls us to generous commitment and to give him our all, offers us the light and the strength needed to continue on our way. In the heart of this world, the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is always present. He does not abandon us, he does not leave us alone, for he has united himself definitively to our earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new ways forward. Praise be to him!” (ibid., 245).

To all of you I impart my blessing. And please, remember to pray for me.

Thank you!

Pope to Migrants: ‘With Respect for Culture & Laws of Country That Receives You, May You Work Out Together the Path of Integration’

Pope Celebrates Mass for Migrants in St. Peter’s Basilica on Fifth Anniversary of Pope Francis’ Visit to Lampedusa on July 8, 2013

JULY 06, 2018 DEBORAH CASTELLANO LUBOV

‘With respect for the culture and laws of the country that receives you, may you work out together the path of integration.’

Despite technically being on ‘summer break,’ Pope Francis said this during the Mass he wished to celebrate for Migrants, at the Altar of the Chair, in St. Peter’s Basilica today, July 6, at 11 a.m. The news of the Mass–which coincided with the fifth anniversary of the visit of Pope Francis to Lampedusa on July 8, 2013–was announced by Director of the Holy See Press Office, Greg Burke, in a statement earlier this week.

The Mass was a time of prayer for the deceased, for the survivors and for those who assist them. Approximately 200 people were present, including refugees and caregivers. While always free, participation was reserved for those with tickets.

In his homily, the Holy Father called for treating migrants as Jesus had treated the poor and disadvantaged, but also stressed that migrants ought to be properly integrated.

Noting he wished to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his visit to Lampedusa with them, who represent rescuers and those rescued on the Mediterranean Sea, he said: “I thank the rescuers for embodying in our day the parable of the Good Samaritan, who stopped to save the life of the poor man beaten by bandits. He didn’t ask where he was from, his reasons for travelling or his documents… he simply decided to care for him and save his life.”

To the rescued, Francis reiterated his solidarity and encouragement, noting he is “well aware” of the tragic circumstances that they are fleeing.

“I ask you to keep being witnesses of hope in a world increasingly concerned about the present, with little vision for the future and averse to sharing. With respect for the culture and laws of the country that receives you, may you work out together the path of integration.”

Pope Francis concluded, saying: “I ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and to stir our hearts to overcome all fear and anxiety, and to make us docile instruments of the Father’s merciful love, ready to offer our lives for our brothers and sisters, as the Lord Jesus did for each of us.”

Here is the Vatican-provided text of the Holy Father’s homily:

“You who trample upon the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land… Behold the days are coming… when I will send a famine on the land… a thirst for hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:4.11).

Today this warning of the prophet Amos is remarkably timely. How many of the poor are trampled on in our day! How many of the poor are being brought to ruin! All are the victims of that culture of waste that has been denounced time and time again. Among them, I cannot fail to include the migrants and refugees who continue to knock at the door of nations that enjoy greater prosperity.

Five years ago, during my visit to Lampedusa, recalling the victims lost at sea, I repeated that timeless appeal to human responsibility: “ ‘Where is your brother? His blood cries out to me’, says the Lord. This is not a question directed to others; it is a question directed to me, to you, to each of us (Homily, 8 July 2013). Sadly, the response to this appeal, even if at times generous, has not been enough, and we continue to grieve thousands of deaths.

Today’s Gospel acclamation contains Jesus’ invitation: “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). The Lord promises refreshment and freedom to all the oppressed of our world, but he needs us to fulfil his promise. He needs our eyes to see the needs of our brothers and sisters. He needs our hands to offer them help. He needs our voice to protest the injustices committed thanks to the silence, often complicit, of so many. I should really speak of many silences: the silence of common sense; the silence that thinks, “it’s always been done this way”; the silence of “us” as opposed to “you”. Above all, the Lord needs our hearts to show his merciful love towards the least, the outcast, the abandoned, the marginalized.

In the Gospel we heard, Matthew tells us of the most important day in his life, the day Jesus called him. The Evangelist clearly records the Lord’s rebuke to the Pharisees, so easily given to insidious murmuring: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’” (9:13). It is a finger pointed at the sterile hypocrisy of those who do not want to “dirty the hands”, like the priest or the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan. This is a temptation powerfully present in our own day. It takes the form of closing our hearts to those who have the right, just as we do, to security and dignified living conditions. It builds walls, real or virtual, rather than bridges.

Before the challenges of contemporary movements of migration, the only reasonable response is one of solidarity and mercy. A response less concerned with calculations, than with the need for an equitable distribution of responsibilities, an honest and sincere assessment of the alternatives and a prudent management. A just policy is one at the service of the person, of every person involved; a policy that provides for solutions that can ensure security, respect for the rights and dignity of all; a policy concerned for the good of one’s own country, while taking into account that of others in an ever more interconnected world. It is to this world that the young look.

The Psalmist has shown us the right attitude to adopt in conscience before God: “I have chosen the way of faithfulness, I set your ordinances before me” (Ps 119,30). A commitment to faithfulness and right judgement that all of us hope to pursue together with government leaders in our world and all people of good will. For this reason, we are following closely the efforts of the international community to respond to the challenges posed by today’s movements of migration by wisely combining solidarity and subsidiarity, and by identifying both resources and responsibilities.

I would like to close with a few words in Spanish, directed particularly to the faithful who have come from Spain.

I wanted to celebrate the fifth anniversary of my visit to Lampedusa with you, who represent rescuers and those rescued on the Mediterranean Sea. I thank the rescuers for embodying in our day the parable of the Good Samaritan, who stopped to save the life of the poor man beaten by bandits. He didn’t ask where he was from, his reasons for travelling or his documents… he simply decided to care for him and save his life. To those rescued I reiterate my solidarity and encouragement, since I am well aware of the tragic circumstances that you are fleeing. I ask you to keep being witnesses of hope in a world increasingly concerned about the present, with little vision for the future and averse to sharing. With respect for the culture and laws of the country that receives you, may you work out together the path of integration.

I ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and to stir our hearts to overcome all fear and anxiety, and to make us docile instruments of the Father’s merciful love, ready to offer our lives for our brothers and sisters, as the Lord Jesus did for each of us.

Becoming Fathers and Mothers

What are we going to do when we get home? When the two sons of the parable of the prodigal son both have returned to their father, what then? The answer is simple: they have to become fathers themselves. Sons have to become fathers; daughters have to become mothers. Being children of God involves growing up and becoming like God. Jesus doesn’t hesitate to say this: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate.” (See Matthew 5:48 and Luke 6:36). How? By welcoming home our lost brothers and sisters in the way our Father welcomed us home.

Scripture Speaks: Giving Life to the Dead

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives life to the living dead and to the literally dead.  What is common to both healings?

Gospel (Read Mk 5:21-43)

St. Mark gives us a story within a story in this account of Jesus and two people for whom He worked miracles of healing.  The story begins with a desperate father, Jairus.  His daughter was gravely ill, to the point of death.  Casting all propriety aside (he was, after all, a “synagogue official”), he fell at Jesus’ feet and “pleaded earnestly with Him.” Jairus was confident that if Jesus would only lay His hands on the child, she would “get well and live.”  Jesus, along with a large crowd of onlookers, “went off with him.”

Then begins another story. In that large and pressing crowd was a woman “afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years.”  She had wasted all her money on doctors who could not cure her. In fact, she “only grew worse.” Her condition also meant that she was ritually unclean (see Lev 15:25-30).  This would exclude her from full participation in the covenant life of Israel.  Knowing this, we understand why she resolved to quietly touch the hem of Jesus’ garment in her  hope to be healed.  She feared ritually contaminating Him, so she did not touch His skin.  She likely never dreamed of asking Him to touch her.  This woman—sick and getting sicker, impoverished, and living as an outsider among her own people—was as good as dead, even though she was alive.  Imagine her hollow, empty existence.  It must have been a daily struggle for her not to give up hope.  Was she already at that point when “she heard about Jesus”? At this time in His public ministry, Jesus was drawing great crowds.  Something in what the woman heard in the buzz about Him made her seek Him out.  When Jairus approached and fell as Jesus’ feet, she must have been close enough to hear their exchange and see the compassion that set Jesus on His way to the dying child without delay.  In spite of all the years of sickness, all the dashed hopes, and the general impossibility of the situation, this woman had faith.  She believed that Jesus was the answer to her problem.    She trusted that He could restore life to the shell of existence she lived.  She acted on her faith; just touching His cloak healed her.

To her great shock, Jesus knew immediately “that power had gone out from Him.”  The woman thought she could be a nameless face in the crowd, an anonymous recipient of some life force that emanated from Jesus.  Not at all!  He wanted to meet the person who had such faith in Him.  He wanted the crowd to know her, too.  So, ignoring the ridicule of the apostles (“You see how the crowd is pressing upon You, and yet You ask, ‘Who touched me?’”), Jesus sought her out.  She was terrified, fearing that her willingness to break the ritual law against contact with a woman like her would now be exposed.  Nevertheless, instead of bolting from the scene, “she fell down before Jesus and told Him the whole truth.”  The confession did not lead to condemnation.  On the contrary, Jesus restored her, cured, to the covenant community. Calling her “daughter,” a term that referred to her covenant status as God’s beloved child, Jesus announced before everyone that her faith had now made her clean and given her the peace she surely had not known for twelve long years.  Although physically not dead, this woman received true life from Jesus. She is an icon of all of us who, for whatever reason and for whatever length of time (twelve years or twelve hours), feel that we are the living dead.  Our only hope is Jesus.  To reach out and grasp at Him—a glance toward heaven, a loving touch of a crucifix, a request of prayer from a friend, the recitation of a Scripture verse—puts us in the same place of faith as this frightened woman.  She teaches us that our best response to a deadening numbness that can overtake us is to fall down before Jesus (as Jairus did, too) and tell Him the whole truth.  At that instant, our lives can be restored to us.  Jesus wills it.

So, what about Jairus during all this hubbub?  Can we imagine his impatience and growing anxiety in this delay?  Then word comes that his greatest fear has come to pass: “Your daughter has died.”  How this father’s heart must have shriveled upon hearing these dread words.  Jesus immediately addresses the father’s temptation:  “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”  The woman with a flow of blood feared what Jesus would do (expose her to the crowd); the father feared what Jesus wouldn’t do (heal his daughter). Jesus got to the bottom of their fears: have faith.

When they arrived at Jairus’ house, Jesus announced that the “commotion and weeping” over the child’s death was inappropriate:  “The child is not dead but asleep.”  Again He had to endure ridicule—this time from the crowd, not the apostles. Ignoring it again, He went in to the child and took her hand.  Earlier the woman with hemorrhages had broken the ritual law against contact with her; now Jesus breaks it by touching the dead.  Then, He commanded her to “arise”  (a term so suggestive of resurrection).  The twelve years of exuberant child-life were restored to her (as the twelve years of lost life were restored to the woman).  This left the crowd “utterly astounded.”

We can’t miss the meaning of these two intertwined stories. Whether it our own life that is ebbing away, for whatever reason, or the life of someone we love, our only hope is faith in Jesus.  He came to give us life:  “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). “Abundant” life, of course, means eternal life, a life that begins now, by faith in Jesus; it is life that not even death can destroy.

What can these stories teach us today about that life?

Possible response: Lord Jesus, please help me meet the fears that will taunt me today with the faith that can conquer them.

First Reading (Read Wis 1:13-15; 2:23-24)

“God did not make death.” The Book of Wisdom reminds us that God designed us for life—real life.  “For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of His own nature He made him.”  No wonder Jesus performed so many life-giving miracles!  God does not want us to be either the living dead or the eternally dead. We need this bracing straight talk from time to time, don’t we?  We allow our circumstances—our real pain and suffering—to frighten us into thinking that God somehow “rejoice[s] in the destruction of the living,” when this Scripture clearly tells us that He does not.  How foolish!  In the Gospel, Jesus demonstrates that He is on our side.  He is forus.  It is only the devil’s envy that whispers death into our hearts.  It is only when we join the devil’s “company” that we “experience it,” too.

What can Wisdom teach us today?

Possible response: Heavenly Father, thank You for designing us to be imperishable.  Forgive me for the times I have suspected You are against me.

Psalm (Read Ps 30:2, 4-6, 11-13)

The psalmist rejoices in God’s good gift of life:  “O Lord, You brought me up from the netherworld; You preserved me from among those going down into the pit.”  He knows that in life there is often real suffering and sorrow, but these are only temporary:  “At nightfall, weeping enters in, but with the dawn, rejoicing.”  It is joy, not grief, which is eternal.  When the psalmist writes, “You changed my mourning into dancing,” he sounds like Jesus in the Beatitudes:  “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Through His work on the Cross for us, we know that suffering can never have the last word over our lives.  Therefore, we can confidently sing, “I will praise You, Lord, for You have rescued me.”

Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings.  Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read 2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15)

To understand this reading, we must know its context.  St. Paul here is writing to the troubled Corinthian church.  It was a community born as a result of his preaching, but, although the various members had many charismatic gifts, they were bogged down in controversies, divisions, and even immorality.  Their spiritual growth in virtuous love had been stunted.  These problems were occasions for St. Paul’s several epistles to them.

In our passage today, St. Paul writes about an earlier intention they had formed to make a material donation to the impoverished church in Jerusalem (where there had been a famine) but had not yet done.  The Corinthians could actually afford to follow through on their intention.  St. Paul seeks to motivate them by reminding them that Jesus, “though He was rich, for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich.”  Jesus left the glory of Heaven that was His, making Himself humble and small in His humanity, for our sakes.  He returned to that glory, of course, but He took us along with Him. St. Paul hopes the generosity of Jesus in spiritual things will be an example to the Corinthians to be generous in material things as well.

How does this passage relate to our other readings?  St. Paul uses the example of Jesus’ selfless love for others to spur the Corinthians on to love as He did.  In our Gospel, Jesus is an example of how God’s love is for us, not against us.  Even in the midst of some ridicule, Jesus offered life and healing to those in desperate need of it.  Can His example help us to do likewise?  Can our faith in Him help make up what is lacking in the faith of others? Can we make a deposit of trust in God’s love in the bank accounts of those whose faith is fragile or impoverished?  Perhaps our “abundance at the present time should supply their needs.”

Possible response: Lord Jesus, I know You desire me to follow Your example of generosity, both spiritually and materially.  Help me watch for opportunities to live that way today.

Gayle Somers is a member of St. Thomas the Apostle parish in Phoenix and has been writing and leading parish Bible studies since 1996. She is the author of three bible studies, Galatians: A New Kind of Freedom Defended (Basilica Press), Genesis: God and His Creation and Genesis: God and His Family (Emmaus Road Publishing). Gayle and her husband Gary reside in Phoenix and have three grown children.

Francis de Sales: Five Steps Good Morning

The mental activity described here is a shortened version of what St. Francis de Sales says of the morning exercise in his Introduction to the Devout Life. While its five parts appear at first to be rather detailed, this exercise is not intended to be painstaking or time-consuming. Rather, it can and should be done briefly, yet fervently, as a way to focus our thinking about the day that beckons.

Since the preparation makes provision for all our actions, we will make use of it according to varying circumstances. By this means we will endeavor to be disposed to carry out our activities competently and commendably.

To complete this exercise each morning takes a bit of practice. When and where we do this preparation will depend greatly on what else is going on around us (our varying circumstances). But no matter what these circumstances require is this prayerful preparation that St. Francis de Sales begs readers of the Introduction to the Devout Life “never to omit this exercise.” For many of us, it will be possible to find a time and place to do this exercise (e.g., during the extended look in the bathroom mirror while shaving or hair-styling, or while the morning coffee is brewing).

Like every other aspect of getting ready in the morning, this exercise has an eminently practical purpose — namely, to help us do well those things that we have to do anyhow! That is why life coaches, leadership gurus, and spiritual masters of varying traditions all recommend the conscious consideration of our daily duties and responsibilities as the best place to start on the quest to become the person we want to be.

In the Salesian tradition, that consideration necessarily includes God, which makes this morning exercise more than just a highly successful but secular habit (e.g., in the mold of Steven Covey enterprises). The Salesian preparation is decid­edly spiritual, because it “makes provision for all [our] actions” not only as entries on a calendar but as expressions of God’s will for us during this particular day. It renders the entirety of our day as consisting of occasions for the practice of virtue, and thus commendable activities for which we need to be competent in a spiritual way.

Step 1: Invocation

We will invoke the help of God, saying:

Lord, if you do not care for my soul, it is useless that another should do so. (Ps 127:1)

We will ask him to make us worthy to spend the day with him without offending him. For this purpose, the words of the psalm may be helpful:

Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Your good spirit will guide me by the hand on level ground (Ps. 143:10), and your divine majesty by its inexpressible love and boundless charity will give me true life.

As with all things spiritual, we begin by asking for divine grace to help us. Doing so situates the exercise in its rightful realm as prayer and not merely planning. We make this prayer by acknowledging God’s benevolent providence: his “care for my soul,” his “good spirit,” his “boundless charity” — all expressed with personal regard for me and my life. In response to this divine goodness toward us, we put our entire day into a transcendent context and intend to spend the day faithfully with God, in and through the immanent things we have to do. Envisioning what those things are constitutes the next step.

Step 2: Foresight

This is simply a preview or conjecture of all that could happen during the course of the day. Thus, with the grace of Our Lord, we will wisely and pru­dently anticipate occasions which could take us by surprise.

Taking a mental glance at the day’s calendar, we preview what awaits us in terms of places to go and things to do and people to see. Here we activate the insightfulness of Salesian spiritual­ity — namely, that the responsibilities of our personal vocation constitute the real place where we act out the devout life.

But this conjecture involves more than simply pondering our to-do list for the day. As an act of prayer, this foresight considers our daily tasks as occasions for living out our Faith or, conversely, as occasions that might tempt us to do otherwise. In the familiar words of corporate strategic planning, we envision “opportuni­ties” and “threats,” but here they are to be considered in terms of our being a disciple of the Lord this day. To live that discipleship well, we take the next step.

Step 3: Plan of Action

We will carefully plan and seek out the best means to avoid any faults. We will also arrange in an orderly fashion what, in our opinion, is proper for us to do.

Each day, indeed all of human life, is fraught with tempta­tions, and we all have our faults. In this intersection of the secular and the personal, we come up against roadblocks to devotion, potential obstacles to living a life of charity carefully, frequently, and promptly. In the Salesian planning process, we deal with these first.

If we can foresee problematic situations we are likely to face at some point in the day, we can better prepare “to avoid any faults” there and instead to respond as God would have us do. Perhaps we will encounter someone we know to be annoying. Perhaps we will be especially challenged by some task. Perhaps we will have to endure something particularly trying. Each of these moments in our day holds the possibility of vice or virtue, which is why determining how we will respond requires care­ful planning on our part. The goal here is to envision these episodes ahead of time so as not to be caught off guard when they happen.

Thus readied for any temptations that may threaten our devo­tion, we should also prepare for those potentially positive oppor­tunities to serve God well. In all these considerations, we simply put into our minds an idea about how we should or should not act. Whether our plans come to fruition is another story! But as the day begins, we make it our intention to avoid vice and to practice virtue — not in general, but according to the concrete situations that actually await us. That intention is the founda­tion of the next step.

Step 4: Resolution

We will make a firm resolution to obey the will of God, especially during the present day. To this end, we will use the words of the royal prophet David:

My soul, will you not cheerfully obey the holy will of God, seeing that your salvation comes from him? (Ps. 62:2)

Surely this God of infinite majesty and admittedly worthy of every honor and service can only be ne­glected by us through a lack of courage. Let us, therefore, be consoled and strengthened by this beautiful verse of the psalmist:

Let evil men do their worst against me. The Lord, the king, can overcome them all. Let the world complain about me to its heart’s content. This means little to me because he who holds sway over all the angelic spirits is my protector. (Ps. 99:1)

This article is from a chapter in Live Today Well.

To be effective, the foregoing considerations of how to live this day well cannot be mere data points or calendar entries. Here, the practical dimension of Salesian spirituality empha­sizes the need to move beyond knowledge into the realm of the will. Our actions arise from our choices and decisions, which ultimately are what will make us into the persons we desire to become.

Thus, the saint exhorts us to “resolve firmly” to live according to God’s will. Making a resolution is all we can do at this point, since the day’s activities are still in the future. But resolve we must; otherwise, our preparation remains nothing but nice ideas or hopeful wishes.

To make a resolution is to make a decision, and decisions get us going. To go in the right direction, we align our decisions with what we have come to see as God’s holy will for us this day. After all, if the destination of our devotion (and our life) is union with God, we begin to reach that eternal objective by uniting ourselves to the divine will in the human reality of the present. This we can do cheerfully! The day will still have its challenges, to be sure. But by bringing faith to the responsibilities we have to face this day, we can be consoled and strengthened, knowing that a loving and merciful God remains at our side.

But before we set foot out the door, one final step remains.

Step 5: Recommendation

We will entrust ourselves and all our concerns into the hands of God’s eternal goodness and ask him to consider us as always so commended. Leaving to him the complete care of what we are and what he wants us to be, we will say with all our heart:

I have asked you one thing, O Jesus, my Lord, and I shall ask you again and again, namely, that I may faithfully carry out your loving will all the days of my poor and pitiable life. (Ps. 27:4; 40:9)

I commend to you, O gracious Lord, my soul, my life, my heart, my memory, my understanding, and my will. Grant that in and with all these, I may serve you, love you, please and honor you forever. (Ps. 31:6; Luke 23:46)

Entrusting ourselves — this is the final step because it is the ultimate act of faith. We have done all that we could do at this point (preparing and resolving). Now we recognize that all our concerns are best left in bigger hands, hands whose providential power knows no limit, whose mercy envelops us with “complete care.” We cast ourselves into God’s loving grasp with regard to our personal identity (“who we are”) and our vocational destiny (“what he wants us to be”). The verses of the psalm, or whatever aspiration we choose to use, serve both to effect this recom­mendation (a prayer) and to provide confidence (a grace) as we now begin the day.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from Fr. Dailey’s Live Today Well: St. Francis de Sales’ Simple Approach to Holiness, which is available from Sophia Institute Press. 

Fr. Thomas Dailey, O.S.F.S. is founder and director of the Salesian Center for Faith and Culture at DeSales University, and also holds the University’s St. Louis Brisson Chair in Salesian Spirituality.

The Beauty of the Soul

Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. –Rom 1:20

We learn and come to know what is invisible through our senses. We know the invisible through the visible. God, Who is invisible, immaterial, and hidden from our senses, reveals something of Himself in creation. In Thomistic terms, we say a cause can be known through its effects, albeit in a limited way.

Something spectacular about humanity, the crown of visible creation, is that it mimics God with its creativity. We don’t create as God creates—not even the angels do that—but we do reveal something hidden in our artistic creations. The artist reveals something of his soul in his work. The invisible life of the soul takes on a sensible form in the art. The visible effect reveals something of the invisible cause.

In the magnificent city entrusted to Our Lady of Good Air, Buenos Aires, hides a marvelous artistic work, the Basilica of the Blessed Sacrament. Some attribute the work to the Salesian priest Ernesto Vespignani, others to the Parisian architects Coulomb and Chauvet. What is certain is that the unity, harmony, and radiance of this work flows from its center: the sublime monstrance holding the Eucharist.

Reflecting on this marvel, we can appreciate what is seen and what is unseen. The Basilica is beautiful in its own respect, composed of marble, glass, and precious metal. Yet, it is an effect of a hidden cause, the artistic creativity of the architects and patrons. It is important to note that an effect is never greater than its cause. We can extend this important principle to also say that an effect is never more beautiful than its cause. The human soul is far more beautiful and precious than any of its created works, including this Basilica.

The porteños of the city refer to the Basilica as a templo, which is a happy term for a Catholic church. God dwells Eucharistically in this temple, and He also dwells spiritually in the temple of a graced soul.

Do you not know that you are temples of the Holy Spirit? (1 Cor 6:19)

Any artistic work, architectural or otherwise, that is centered on God can begin to reveal the beauty of the soul in which God dwells. This is something “into which angels longed to look” (1 Pt 1:12).

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Dominicana and is reprinted here with kind permission. 

By Irenaeus Dunlevy who was born he youngest of four children n Columbus, Ohi. e grew up in the ural outheast suburb of Canal Winchester. ter leaving the area for college, his family joined the ominican arish of St. Patrick’s in Columbus. e received a Bachelor and Masters of Architecture from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University nd practiced for a religious architecture firm in the DC area. Br. Irenaeus entered the Order of Preachers in 2013.

Have Confidence in God, Even in Difficulty

Saying we have faith in God when life is going smooth is easy. When serious troubles are not a threat, confidence in God isn’t hard. The test is to check our faith when the waves of adversity are crashing against us.

From my own experience, as a wife of 15 years and mother of eight children living on one income, life has been a challenge in multiple ways. With the financial state of our national economy over the last eight plus years, we’ve had scary times. We’ve gone through a major job loss before and now, well, here we are again.

I am tempted to be worried, to despair even. The challenge my husband faces in finding a job that will support our large family close to the village we recently bought a home in, will be very hard. I could list many negatives against us, but I’m not going to. Honestly, the greatest temptation I have is to ask why I’m not worrying and freaking out.

I have confidence in God now because He has always helped us through hard times. I can look back and see how my worrying, anger, questioning and living without peace never helped a situation; it only made life for me and my family worse. Every time we have faced hardships or uncertainty, whether it be losing a job, finding a place to live, hoping for a home of our own, health problems, hard pregnancies, relationship issues, through everything that we all go through in life, God has been there, giving his grace and help. Often right at the last minute, but always just in time.

It also helps that this job loss happened at the end of Pascha (Easter) season. Having just witnessed the Resurrection of Christ after journeying through the terrible events of Holy Week, I cannot help but have joy, hope, and confidence that Christ has destroyed death and all will be well.

Of course I have temptations to anger, worry and despair. When I do, I ask myself, “‘When has God let you down before?’ ‘When have any of us gone hungry?'” I think of the birds and the lilies of the field, (Mt 6:25-34) and the ten heads of hair in my family, and how our Father in heaven knows just how many hairs there are on each (Mt 10:29-31). I know He will not abandon us or cease caring for us.

This doesn’t mean I believe in a health and wealth gospel. When reflecting on Jesus’s life and His mother’s, one can never imagine Jesus came to make us a rich church! I recently read Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness. She made me ponder on Christ being poor, about Holy Poverty. Dorothy Day said, “When we meditate on our Lord’s life we are meditating on our own. God is to be found in what appears to be the little and the unimportant. Don’t look back 1900 years. Look around us today.” Any trials that I must endure are not done alone, but with Jesus Christ who has already born all suffering.

I’m sure it was providence that I read Dorothy Day just before my husband was laid off. Oh how funny God can be! Dorothy made me question the standards that I have, what I think is success, what I long for and trust in. Many times in my life, my measurements have been closer to the world’s standards then to our Lord’s who said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt 6:19-21).

As Christians we cannot say we believe this life is passing quickly and is only a preparation for eternity and then live like this world is all we have. Or say we believe God is a loving Father who will provide for our needs and then worry when life is not going as we want. We cannot live in the moment with God and also in the future; in a state of worrisome doubt. We cannot pray for God’s will to be done and then, when our will isn’t done, freak out!

I pray for God’s will in my life and in my family’s life. I entrust my children to God and know they are His children before they are my husband’s; before they are mine. I ask Him to lead us according to His will. Now I am given the opportunity to mean what I pray, to have childlike confidence in my Father, to let Him lead us according to His will.

Learning to have confidence and peaceful surrender to God’s care and will hasn’t come easily and certainly I have moments of struggle but no longer days or weeks of despair, which I have felt in the past. I have learned that faith and hope are gifts of grace from God, gifts that begin to be opened to us with the act of our will. It’s all about synergy with God. We give our little mustard seed or widow’s mite of will and in turn He gives us the grace we need. Then we can say with St. Paul, “And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10).

The Christian life isn’t easy. Jesus told us, “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it (Mt 10:38-39).” I know these trials are part of the daily cross we must bear, and that means it is what is best for us and will lead to eternal life. I look back on life and see moments and trials that seemed devastating and hopeless as great times of growth, healing, and resurrection. Already I see God answering recent prayers (like the one for more faith)! I know this doesn’t mean everything will turn out like I hope (even Jesus didn’t want to endure crucifixion and the sorrow the  Theotokos went through seeing her son tortured and killed was soul piercing (Lk 2:35). Yet, we know what seemed like Satan’s great triumph, what appeared to be a meaningless end to a short innocent life, was the greatest hour and victory, the last darkness before the true light would save us all. My favorite song during Pascha is the one to the Theotokos that says:

The angel exclaimed to her, full of grace: “Rejoice, 0 Pure Virgin; again I say, rejoice! Your Son is risen from the grave on the third day and has raised the dead. Let all nations rejoice!

Shine in splendor, O new Jerusalem! For the glory of the Lord is risen upon you, O Sion; sing with joy and rejoice! And you, pure Mother of God, rejoice in the resurrection of your Son.

From these trials new life will come, one way or another. I have confidence that all will be well in Gods time and according to His will. I know Jesus Christ has made all things new and resurrection will follow each and every cross all the way to eternity.

When struggling with your own crosses and difficult times, I encourage you to pray for faith and hope and give God your will and see what He will do. When prayer doesn’t come, because you’re drowning in fears and cannot find the words, cry out and ask the Holy Spirit to teach you to pray and to pray within you. “But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom 8:25-27).

By Jessica Archuleta who blogs at www.everyhomeamonastery.com where she and her husband share their experience of being Monastic Associates (oblates) of Holy Resurrection Monastery located within walking distance of their home. She and her family moved across the country to St. Nazianz, Wisconsin (a small Catholic village in the middle of beautiful farm country) after the monks had to make the move themselves. She is a Romanian Greek Catholic (Byzantine), a homeschooling mother of nine amazing and fun loving children and often learns more about love and life from her kids than she could ever teach them. You can find Every Home a Monastery on facebook and Pinterest.

What is a Gospel-Centered Life?

Posted by Richard Goodin, OFM 

In today's consumer-driven world, there are many ways for you to live your life. Maybe some of the avenues you've taken have led nowhere. But what if God is calling you to take a road less traveled? This is exactly what happened to Richard Goodin, OFM. God knocked on the door of his heart—and Friar Richard opened it.

In this week's Friar Friday video, Father Richard shares his story. Enjoy!

The One Thing We Can All Do Today

JUNE 30, 2018 BY COLLEEN C. MITCHELL

Last week, I wanted to shut the world off for a while. Like off. Power it down. Not just step away from social media, or create quiet space in my life. Like make it stop spinning because clearly we are off our axis and out of control. We need to get a grip. The immigration crisis raged. I edited our community’s newspaper for the black community and read about the seemingly never-ending water issue in Flint, Michigan. In that same paper, there is an article about families in my own community who have been displaced by an apartment fire and have yet to see the organizations who are supposed to be advocating for them make any progress on resolving their crisis. A friend went to the doctor thinking she needed her gall bladder out and ended up in a biopsy to diagnose lymphoma. Another friend dared to hope in a new pregnancy even as she sat in the terror of another loss. And then she bled. And then she saw a heartbeat.

There is so much brokenness. So much pain. So much to be outraged about. So much to scream and rail against in this world marred by our sin and our sickness and our depravity. And then there are the tiny slivers of hope. The fluttering heart of humanity beating ever so steadily under it all. The reason we keep looking beyond the ugly and fighting for what is good and true. The reason we care that the Kingdom comes in our garbage heap of a world. That we hold on to the belief that God can bring light to our darkest places. The reason we don’t give up and power down and turn ourselves off even when we wish the world would take a break from itself for a while.

As a writer, I’ve been questioning what my moral obligation is when a crisis of justice blows up in our society and demands a Christian response. As we gather to shout from the rooftops that tearing children from their parents is never, ever okay, but I see last summer’s crisis in Flint still raging and no more voices clamoring on their behalf, I wonder if raising my voice in moral outrage in a flash of a moment is enough. Am I truly creating a more just world that way? And if where I land in that line of questioning is somewhere between “yes” and “no” with a red flashing warning sign that I am dangerously close to slipping firmly off the ledge into the chasm of “no”, how do I balance the lever and right myself?

I think action on behalf of the marginalized and oppressed is certainly part of the answer. Doing tangible things to support the people on the ground with access to the people who need us to cry out on their behalf. Checking my own privilege and quieting my own yelling in order to elevate the voices of the people who truly need to be heard but have no platform for it is another.

And then there is the one thing I can do right now. And again tomorrow. And again the night day. It doesn’t require that I have money to donate. It doesn’t require that I engage on social media. It doesn’t require that I craft an articulate response to social crisis and then defend to inevitable trolls who will come at me. It just requires that I be still long enough to be honest with myself. At the end of the day, our call as Christians is to reconcile a broken world to the Good News of the Gospel. To live as witnesses to the difference Christ makes in the way we respond seeming hopelessness.

And the way I can best and most actively do that is to heal my broken self. To make a firm effort to bring less brokenness to a world that is already broken enough. To be a better version of myself tomorrow than I am today. To bring more Jesus than sinfulness with me when I enter the fight for justice. Maybe the way I power the world down is to myself on silent long enough to hear the still, small voice that calls to me. To stop searching for the moral imperative in the violent noise around me, lay down my stone, and search my own heart in the remaining silence. Maybe I recognize my own agonizing thirst and the sin that brings me to the well parched in the midday sun, and drink the life-giving water before I run back out to share the message. Maybe I let Jesus tell me the things I’ve done rather before I point out all the ways “they” are ruining humanity.

If I truly want the world to be a better, more just place. If I want to reconcile the pain of a broken humanity to the hope of the Kingdom come, my best and first course of action is to reconcile my own broken humanity to that hope and bring a better, more just version of myself to the fight. I can’t turn the world off while I do it. But I can turn my gaze inward long enough to remember the axis on which it spins is hope. And its hope is in me. In you. In us. How can I right my heart so it spins less wildly and more in tune to heartbeat of the God who is Love?

Pope to rich: Stop trampling on the poor, including migrants and refugees

According to Pope Francis, the only “reasonable response” to the challenges presented by contemporary migration is “solidarity and mercy,” less concerned with political calculations and more with an equitable distribution of responsibilities.

Quoting a passage from the Bible, the pontiff on Friday said that “the days are coming” in which God will “send a famine on the land… a thirst for hearing the words of the Lord” upon all those who “trample upon the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land.”

Many of the poor, Francis said, are trampled on today.

“How many of the poor are being brought to ruin! All are the victims of that culture of waste that has been denounced time and time again,” including migrants and refugees who “continue to knock at the door of nations that enjoy greater prosperity.”

Pope Francis’s words came at a private Mass he led in Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica, not on the main altar but in the one known as the Altar of the Seat of Peter, located behind the main altar, allowing for smaller ceremonies. Some 200 people, including migrants and those who work with them, were in attendance.

A just immigration policy, the pontiff said, “is one at the service of the person,” and is capable of providing solutions that can ensure “security, respect for the rights and dignity of all; a policy concerned for the good of one’s own country, while taking into account that of others in an ever more interconnected world.”

Francis also said that even though God promises freedom to all the oppressed, “he needs us to fulfil his promise.”

“He needs our eyes to see the needs of our brothers and sisters. He needs our hands to offer them help. He needs our voice to protest the injustices committed thanks to the silence, often complicit, of so many,” he said, before listing several “silences,” including the silence of common sense and that silence which justifies injustice because “it’s always been done this way.”

Commenting on a passage from the Gospel of Matthew read during the Mass, Francis said that in it Jesus rebukes the Pharisees, pointing his finger at the “sterile hypocrisy of those who do not want to ‘dirty the hands’, like the priest or the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan.”

“This is a temptation powerfully present in our own day,” he added. “It takes the form of closing our hearts to those who have the right, just as we do, to security and dignified living conditions. It builds walls, real or virtual, rather than bridges.”

The Mass was celebrated to mark the fifth anniversary of the pope’s first outing outside of Rome, which took place July 8, 2013. On that occasion, he visited the southern Italian city of Lampedusa, considered one of the entrance doors for the thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing Africa and the Middle East towards Europe.

Explaining his decision to make Lampedusa the destination of his pastoral visit, the pontiff said back in 2013 that the reports of the deaths of desperate people trying to reach a better life that had been like “a thorn in the heart.”

His trip came at the start of the summer months when the Lampedusa, just 70 miles from Tunisia, was seeing a steady flow of rickety and unsafe boats arriving on its shores, a reality that continues today, made even more precarious by decisions from the governments of Italy and Malta to close ports to rescue boats that save many of these migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, which Francis has described as the “Maremortum.”

The Argentine pontiff, a son of Italian immigrants himself, has made the care for those forcibly displaced one of social cornerstone of his pontificate, opening the doors of Vatican property to several migrant families, including the three Syrian families he brought with himself from the Greek island of Lesbos to Italy, as part of a humanitarian corridors initiative.

Speaking in Spanish during his homily on Friday, Francis said that he had wanted to mark the fifth anniversary with “rescuers and those rescued on the Mediterranean Sea,” to thank the former for “embodying” the parable of the Good Samaritan, “who stopped to save the life of the poor man beaten by bandits. He didn’t ask where he was from, his reasons for travelling or his documents… he simply decided to care for him and save his life.”

Addressing the migrants, the pontiff said he “reiterate my solidarity and encouragement, since I am well aware of the tragic circumstances you are fleeing.”

He also urged them to remain “witnesses of hope,” in a world that has little vision for the future, hoping that “with respect for the culture and laws of the country that receives you, may you work out together the path of integration.”

Hymn of the Week: 'Holy God, We Praise Thy Name'

This most familiar of Catholic hymns serves as our recessional this weekend — and I doubt there are many in the pews who don’t know it.

Its history is interesting — and it turns out its popularity in the United States owes much to immigration:

The German Catholic priest Ignaz Franz (de) wrote the original German lyrics in 1771 as a paraphrase of the Te Deum, a Christian hymn in Latin from the 4th century. It became an inherent part of major Christian ceremonial occasions, mainly as a conclusion song. Due to its memorable melody and theme it is one of the most popular hymns and prevalent in German-speaking communities.

As a result of the German emigration in the 19th century, the song became known in the United States and was translated to English by Clarence A. Walworth in 1858, except verse 7 (translated by Hugh T. Henry), which accounted for its wide spreading around the country.

On the initiative of Johann Gottfried Schicht, the hymn also became part of Protestant hymnals, but was widely neglected for a long time due to its perceived status as a “spiritual folksong” in the Age of Enlightenment. Only in the 20th century was it fully accepted by Protestants, though shorter and altered versions are often sung (occasionally two verses were completely replaced by the New Apostolic Church).

The hymn became also part of military hymnbooks where it was considered as a song of thanksgiving. The military hymnal of the Evangelical Church of 1939 added a conclusion verse which praised the Führer Adolf Hitler. The hymnal of the so-called “German Christians” (1941) was named after the song and contained a version which was “purified of Jewish elements” and adjusted to the Nazi ideology.

The content of the song can be divided into three parts: a hymnic part about God the Father (verses 1-4 in the English version, 1-5 in the German), a similar one about God the Son (verses 5-7 in English, 6-8 in German), and a series of petitions (verse 8 in English, 9-11 in German).

In the region of Upper Silesia in Poland, this hymn is performed in loose Polish translation (“Ciebie, Boże wielbimy”), replacing “Ciebie Boga wysławiamy” by Franciszek Wesołowski which is officially sanctioned as a Polish version of Te Deum (so called “Millenial Te Deum”) by Polish Episcopal Conference, and widespread in other regions of the country. It is usually performed in 4/4 metre instead of traditional 3/4 tempus perfectum.

The words of all the verses (the last few are probably unfamiliar to most people):

Check out the superb version above, performed by the Irish Philharmonic Chorus in 1996.

1. Holy God, we praise Thy Name;
   Lord of all, we bow before Thee!
   All on earth Thy scepter claim,
   All in Heaven above adore Thee;
   Infinite Thy vast domain,
   Everlasting is Thy reign.

2. Hark! the loud celestial hymn
   Angel choirs above are raising,
   Cherubim and seraphim,
   In unceasing chorus praising;
   Fill the heavens with sweet accord:
   Holy, holy, holy, Lord.

3. Lo! the apostolic train
   Join the sacred Name to hallow;
   Prophets swell the loud refrain,
   And the white robed martyrs follow;
   And from morn to set of sun,
   Through the Church the song goes on.

   4. Holy Father, Holy Son,
   Holy Spirit, Three we name Thee;
   While in essence only One,
   Undivided God we claim Thee;
   And adoring bend the knee,
   While we own the mystery.

   5. Thou art King of glory, Christ:
   Son of God, yet born of Mary;
   For us sinners sacrificed,
   And to death a tributary:
   First to break the bars of death,
   Thou has opened Heaven to faith.

   6. From Thy high celestial home,
   Judge of all, again returning,
   We believe that Thou shalt come
   In the dreaded doomsday morning;
   When Thy voice shall shake the earth,
   And the startled dead come forth.

   7. Therefore do we pray Thee, Lord:
   Help Thy servants whom, redeeming
   By Thy precious blood out-poured,
   Thou hast saved from Satan’s scheming.
   Give to them eternal rest
   In the glory of the blest.

   8. Spare Thy people, Lord, we pray,

   By a thousand snares surrounded:
   Keep us without sin today,
   Never let us be confounded.
   Lo, I put my trust in Thee;
   Never, Lord, abandon me.

Check out the superb version above, performed by the Irish Philharmonic Chorus in 1996.

How We Long for the Face of God

As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

— Psalm 42:1–2

There is a “vital anguish,” as Heidegger calls it, for God in this earth, where humans bear the weight of deprivation, loneliness, and longing for the One most needed. The great Étienne Gilson says, “By intelligence the soul is capable of Truth; by love it is capable of the Good; its torment arises from the fact that it seeks it without knowing what it is that it seeks and, consequently, without knowing where to look for it.”

There is a universal eagerness to remove the obstacle, the veil that covers the supernatural world from natural perception. To see God ought to be the highest aspiration of all human beings. This is why the saints, men and women of God, make their own the words of the psalmist: “Thy face, Lord, do I seek.”

“Hide not thy face from me” (Ps. 27:8–9). God is the goal of the inquisitive mind, the will that is eager to love without limits, and the restless heart.

A Natural Longing

The psalmist tells us: “One thing I ask the LORD, and I seek after: to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4). Very conscious of the fact that man was created to see the First Principle, St. Augustine wrote: “Lord, I have been created to contemplate You, and I have not achieved that for which I was created!”

“A longing for God,” as Karl Adam beautifully expressed, “is the natural dowry of the human soul, its immortal jewelry, the most illuminating of the sparks of the divine love which are shed on human nature.” St. Josemaría attests that “the desire for God comes from the deepest recesses of the heart of man.”

The thirst for God is common to all because we were made by God and for Him. The restlessness of the heart, the desire for eternal happiness, for fulfillment, to love and to be loved, is nothing but the thirst for the veiled God. It is a thirst that only He can satisfy.

St. Thomas Aquinas ended his celebrated hymn “Adoro Te Devote” with these lines: “Jesus, for the present seen as through a mask, give me what I thirst for, give me what I ask: let me see your glory in a blaze of light. And instead of blindness give me, Lord, my sight.”

“Hunger for God,” wrote Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, “cannot be satisfied in this world, and so we seek complete union in eternity.”

This common anguish on earth is reflected in the antiphon of Lauds of the Saturday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, which asks the Lord to illumine those who sit in darkness and under the shadow of death. It expresses the feeling experienced in this world while awaiting the light of His vision in the life hereafter. This longing in the midst of shadows, as experienced by countless persons, including great saints such as St. Teresa of Jesus and St. John of the Cross, has been called the dark night of the soul. St. John of the Cross wrote in the first stanza of his Spiritual Canticle: “Where have you hidden, beloved, and left me with my grieving?”

Alfonso Aguiló recounts how, in 1956, Mother Teresa of Calcutta told the archbishop of that city, “I want to be an apostle of joy.” But by a mysterious disposition of Divine Providence, she sometimes carried her apostolate of cheerfulness in the midst of an unbearable dryness: “Occasionally,” she said, “the agony of God’s absence is so great, and alongside it the vivid desire for the Absent is so profound, that the only prayer that I am still able to recite is ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in you. I will satiate your thirst for souls.’”

The Thirst for God

St. Teresa said: “O my delight, Lord of all created things and my God! How long must I wait to see You? What remedy do You provide for one who finds so little on earth that might give some rest apart from You?”

Together with the longing for the life to come, St. Josemaría had very much in mind our remaining tasks on this earth. In a meditation he gave in 1972, he said:

Every instant of our lives has an eternal meaning. My children, this world is passing; it is not in our hands. We cannot waste time, which is short. We must really set ourselves to the task of personal sanctification and of our apostolic work. The Lord has entrusted it to us; we must spend it faithfully, loyally, and administer it well. We must use the talents we have received with a sense of responsibility

During our earthly exile, we experience both the need for the Almighty and the deprivation of the vision of Him. This makes for suffering. Endowed only with the poor and partial vision of things, we have a nostalgia for the lost Paradise and a deep, intuitive longing for Heaven, where the total vision is to be found. Man was made for that; his entire being pines for that! He was created for Heaven. Hence, in this earthly exile, his deepest vital anguish, his most insatiable thirst can be satisfied only by the discovery, the loving encounter with the now secluded Lover. The psalmist says it clearly: “The Lord is my light and my salvation” (Ps. 27:1).

“Hide not thy face from me,” exclaimed King David (Ps. 143:7), and Psalm 89 echoes this anguish: “How long, O Lord? Will thou hide thyself forever?” (v. 46).

This article is from a chapter in Why God Hides.

The longing for the Lover grows hand in hand with contemplation. Now we see Him under obscure images, for “it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

That deep desire for God, found in our hearts and experienced in varying degrees, can be articulated by the expression “Maranatha! Come, Lord, Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20) and by those words that our Lord Himself taught us: “Thy kingdom come!”

With God’s help, man manages to remove, as it were, bit by bit, the veil covering the shielded Lover. In so doing, he experiences great joy and consolation. This is not surprising, for the Creator made man for the light, not for darkness. They make their own this saying of St. Paul: “For He is our peace, He has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2:14).

Lukewarm persons feel annoyed by the present situation. In their inability to see the Lord and the other persons of the supernatural world, they seek an excuse for their lack of faith. They ask: “Where is God? Where can He be found? Is He hiding somewhere?” They argue that they could be vibrant and dedicated to the Ultimate Being, were He not so remote and concealed.

The cause of the deepest longing that man has — this vital anguish — is the need for God. This need is coupled with the fact that He is outside of man’s sense perception. Since He is a Spirit without any matter, He cannot be seen.

But the Almighty looks at man with infinite care and love. As the inspired psalmist sang: “The Lord looks down from heaven, he sees all the sons of men; from where he sits enthroned he looks forth on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the hearts of them all, and observes all their deeds” (Ps. 33:13–15).

Different Ways of Longing for God’s Vision

There are different manners of wanting to see God. One is the way of the person who is tired of living “in expectation.” He wants evidence to satisfy his mind, which tells him that there must be Someone behind everything — in the wonders of nature, for example. He does not want to trust, for to believe in God always implies trusting Him. He is curious about the identity of that Someone but is uncomfortable about not being able to perceive Him with his senses. He blames the Maker for not manifesting Himself. The situation could be compared to the case of one who smells something burning and goes out anxiously to find what is causing it. Annoyed because he does not see the flames, he says, “There is no fire!”

A different way of longing for the Lover’s face is found in the individual who believes in God. He is eager to see Him because he is in love with the secluded Lover and is eager to see Him, as all love-struck persons are. This is the case, for instance, of St. Teresa of Jesus, who, toward the end of her life, kept repeating: “Jesus, it is about time that we see each other!”

In both cases there is desire, even impatience, to see the Lord, but only in the second instance is the motive a good one, for it is prompted by faith, hope, and love.

To Cross the Barrier

The desire to know the future with certitude is universal. It includes eagerness to unveil the mystery of life. It shows itself in a longing to penetrate the divide that separates not only today from tomorrow but also this temporal world from the next, the human from the divine. Superstitious beliefs such as the horoscope are related to this desire.

In the last moments of a dying person, when someone — a doctor or a nurse — says, “He or she is gone!” it is likely that a question comes to mind: “Gone? But, where?” In those moments, the reality of the gulf, the partition that separates this world from the next, is keenly felt; and death appears as a jump from this world to the other world behind the partition.

If the desire to see the concealed Father is universal, scholars devoted to the study of the things of God — theologians — could be expected to experience this yearning in a special manner. Along these lines, Benedict XVI said: “For me, theology is the attempt to get to know the Beloved better.” In the pope’s mind, theologians are to undertake not just a cold, scientific research concerning the Supreme Being but a loving search for the shielded Lover.

The saint of Avila had dealt with the Divine Lover for many years through the veil that separated her from Him. She had eagerly waited for the moment in which the veil would be removed and the view would no longer be obstructed.

From the earliest times human beings have looked at Heaven as their lost Paradise. The hearts were made for happiness, but they remained deprived of vision and fulfillment as a consequence of sin. St. Augustine pointed to our anguished situation when he wrote, “We are created for You, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

In Shadows Only

In dealings with persons of the supernatural world, there are two main characteristics. One is the discomfort due to not being able to see face-to-face the person one is talking to. The second comes in handy: the certainty that the interlocutor is truly there, a certainty based on faith.

These two combined give rise to a semi-light, a chiaroscuro, a state of affairs that may be called “seeing in the midst of shadows.” It is the vision characteristic of the journey on earth that, while illumined by faith and reason, strikes a sharp contrast with both the perfect light of Heaven and the total darkness of Hell. This uncomfortable condition creates a yearning for the Beatific Vision in the Eternal Day, as well as a dread of the perpetual Night of Hell.

Not a Lonely Search

The search for the Living Lord is a very personal endeavor. It is a task assigned to each person individually and in a nontransferable way. Each one has to engage in this search. And yet, thanks to the sterling Communion of Saints, it is an accompanied affair. The Triune God is the most interested; He is the one who decreed this present exile that will determine man’s future status in eternal life. The Lord always helps in the search and in the finding.

God the Father has the interest of an infinitely loving Father for the well-being of His children. God the Son has the interest of a Redeemer who wants to see the fruits of His costly Redemption. God the Holy Spirit is witnessing man’s free response to His unceasing work of sanctification.

The Blessed Mother, Mary, follows the pilgrim steps of her children too, as no other mother would do on earth. Joseph does the same as the Virgin does, as do the angels and the souls in Purgatory, to the extent that God gives them power to do so.

The entire Church on earth also provides continuous assistance, sending (as St. Josemaría was fond of saying) arterial blood, which provides oxygen to the cells. This is done mostly in the form of anonymous prayers and sacrifices coming from countless fellowmen.

There is also the guidance of the legitimate shepherds, the pope, the bishops, and priests, as well as the edifying and warm encouragement provided by brothers and sisters in the Faith, most especially relatives and friends.

Therefore, it is not a lonely search. Because he communes with God’s family in the company of witnesses, the Christian’s call has a wonderful ecclesial and social dimension.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a chapter in Why God Hides, which is available from Sophia Institute Press By Fr. John Portavella

Fr. John Portavella earned a doctorate in Canon Law from the University of Santo Tomas (the Angelicum) in Rome. He was ordained in 1959 for the Opus Dei Prelature. He is currently doing pastoral work at the University of Asia and the Pacific in Pasig City, Metro Manila.

You Alone Lord, Know What this Day Has Contained

 Words of St. Faustina ---

+"When one is ill and weak, one must constantly make efforts to measure up to what others are doing as a matter of course.

But even those matter-of-course things cannot always be managed.

Nevertheless, thank You, Jesus, for everything, because it is not the greatness of the works,

but the greatness of the effort that will be rewarded.

What is done out of love is not small, O my Jesus, for Your eyes see everything.

I do not know why I feel so terribly unwell in the morning; I have to muster all my strength to get out of bed, sometimes even to the point of heroism.

The thought of Holy Communion gives me back a little more strength. And so, the day starts with a struggle and ends with a struggle.

When I go to take my rest, I feel like a soldier returning from the battlefield.

You alone, my Lord and Master, know what this day has contained."

 From her Diary of Divine Mercy

Saint of the Day: Maria Goretti

(October 16, 1890 – July 6, 1902)

Saint Maria Goretti’s Story

One of the largest crowds ever assembled for a canonization—250,000—symbolized the reaction of millions touched by the simple story of Maria Goretti. She was the daughter of a poor Italian tenant farmer, had no chance to go to school, never learned to read or write. When Maria made her First Communion not long before her death at age 12, she was one of the larger and somewhat backward members of the class.

On a hot afternoon in July, Maria was sitting at the top of the stairs of her house, mending a shirt. She was not quite 12 years old, but physically mature. A cart stopped outside, and a neighbor, 18-year-old Alessandro, ran up the stairs. He seized her and pulled her into a bedroom. She struggled and tried to call for help. “No, God does not wish it,” she cried out. “It is a sin. You would go to hell for it.” Alessandro began striking at her blindly with a long dagger.

Maria was taken to a hospital. Her last hours were marked by the usual simple compassion of the good—concern about where her mother would sleep, forgiveness of her murderer (she had been in fear of him, but did not say anything lest she cause trouble to his family), and her devout welcoming of Viaticum, her last Holy Communion. She died about 24 hours after the attack.

Alessandro was sentenced to 30 years in prison. For a long time he was unrepentant and surly. One night he had a dream or vision of Maria gathering flowers and offering them to him. His life changed. When he was released after 27 years, his first act was to go to beg the forgiveness of Maria’s mother.

Devotion to the young martyr grew, miracles were worked, and in less than half a century she was canonized. At her beatification in 1947, her 82-year-old mother, two sisters and a brother, appeared with Pope Pius XII on the balcony of St. Peter’s. Three years later at Maria’s canonization, a 66-year-old Alessandro Serenelli knelt among the quarter-million people and cried tears of joy.

Scripture Speaks: A Prophet in His Own Town

Jesus drew large crowds as He preached throughout Galilee, healing many who sought His help.  What was the reception when He visited His hometown?

Gospel (Read Mk 6:1-6a)

St. Mark tells us that early in Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, He visited His “native place.” Everywhere He went, He left a trail of “utterly astounded” people (see Mk 5:42).  However, when He arrived at the synagogue in Nazareth, the reception was decidedly different.  His preaching “astonished” those gathered, but their amazement moved in a surprising direction.  “Where did this man get all this?”  They were not impressed that one of their own had great wisdom and wrought “mighty deeds.” No, they were skeptical that someone they knew so well, someone whose whole family was well known to them, could suddenly show up and claim to be Somebody.  In fact, His remarkable change from being simply “the carpenter” to a miracle-working prophet was just too much for them.  They flat out didn’t believe Him.  Consequently, He was only able to cure “a few sick people,” because there was no one else who asked for His help.  Jesus knew He was taking His place in the long line of prophets in Israel’s history, each one of which was “not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house,” yet the lack of faith in his Nazareth neighbors still “amazed” Him.

What caused those who were best acquainted with Jesus to refuse to believe in Him?  This question is well worth pondering, because it gets us to the heart of the mystery of salvation.  The people in the Nazareth synagogue could not imagine that an ordinary fellow, one who plied his trade as a carpenter and moved in and about among his kinsmen in town, could be anyone special in God’s plan.  Surely a prophet (much less the Messiah) would not seem so much like them.  Surely there would have been signs along the way—during His childhood, His adolescence, His hours in His workshop—that He was one to keep an eye on.  Nobody expects ordinary flesh and blood to be able to address the extraordinary problems of ordinary flesh and blood.  We can just about feel the incredulity in their comments recorded by St. Mark.  In effect, they told Jesus:  “Sorry, but You are way too human to be of any importance to us.”

Yet, that is the key. The Incarnation, foretold as early as Gen 3:15 (and that’s early), meant that onlya human could be the One to make a difference for us.  Only One like us, living like we do, could take our place in the work of reconciliation between God and man.  The hardened human heart, full of pride and ego, resists this idea.  Sinful man has bought into the devil’s lie that we are weak, fickle, and not to be trusted.  That explains why the devil preyed on man and woman in the Garden.  His strike against them would be his strike against God. However, it was God who dreamed man up, created him in His own image and likeness, and destined him for fellowship with the Blessed Trinity.  Imagine the devil’s shock when he discovered that God would undo His enemy’s work through a woman and her Son.  Through flesh and blood.  Through the carpenter of Nazareth.

We need to know about this human tendency to reject human salvation through human beings.  We face it in our own day.  We see the world’s incredulous reaction to the Gospel’s claim that Jesus is the only way to salvation and to the Church’s claim to be the sacrament of the salvation He won for us.  The world, knowing our history so well, can’t imagine that God would be working out His miraculous plan of redemption through us.  We see it in ourselves, too.  Can God be answering my prayers for my salvation through my very human spouse? My human children?  My human co-workers?

Let us take this Gospel warning seriously so that it cannot be said of us that we have amazed Jesus by our lack of faith.

Possible response: Lord Jesus, help me see You in the humanity around me.  That’s always the last place I look.

First Reading (Read Eze 2:2-5)

We have to wonder if, when Jesus faced resistance to His prophetic work in Nazareth, He had the prophet, Ezekiel in mind.  The Lord sent Ezekiel, hundreds of years before Jesus lived, to “the Israelites, rebels who have rebelled against Me.”  God warned him that the people to whom he was being sent were “hard of face and obstinate of heart.”  Nevertheless, Ezekiel was to faithfully proclaim God’s word to them.  He was not to depend on their response to measure his success.  “Whether they heed or resist…they shall know that a prophet had been among them.”

Perhaps these words gave Jesus comfort as He encountered Nazareth’s lack of faith.  He was not the first to face this kind of resistance; He was also not the last.  Recall that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told the crowd:  “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you…Rejoice and be glad…for so men persecuted the prophets before you” (see Mt 5:11).

“Rejoice and be glad”? Is this possible?

Possible response: Heavenly Father, I know I’m quite capable of being “hard of face and obstinate of heart.”  Please grant me Your Spirit’s docility today.

Psalm (Read Ps 123:1-4)

These words give us a simple, concrete prayer for those times when our choice to obey God makes us the object of resistance and scorn (just like Ezekiel and Jesus).  The psalmist resolves to keep his eyes onlyon the Lord:  “As the eyes of servants are on the hands of their masters…so are our eyes on the Lord our God.”  We can see that what causes the psalmist to have this single-minded vision is the resistance of those around him:  “Our souls are more than sated with the mockery of the arrogant, with the contempt of the proud.”  Doing God’s will can bring us into conflict with those who are full of rebellion and ridicule.  Our response cannot be to fight back.  Instead, we can cry out with the psalmist:  “Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, pleading for His mercy.”

There is no better place for us than in this kind of humility and dependence.  That is why Jesus told us in the Beatitudes to “rejoice and be glad” in our persecutions for His sake.  In our next reading, St. Paul explains how we get there.

Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings.  Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read 2 Cor 12:7-10)

In the epistle, St. Paul tells us about his own experience of finding God’s mercy to be adequate to our need, no matter what causes it.  Here, he speaks of “a thorn in the flesh,” given to him to prevent him from being “too elated” over the “abundance of revelations” God had given him.  We don’t know for sure what this “thorn” was—illness, some kind of personal failure, opposition from others, etc.  We do know that God allowed the devil to use it against Paul.  Did the devil mean it for good?  No, the devil never wills the good, but God, Who is greater than the devil, sometimes allows evil in order to draw good from it (see CCC 268, 273, 1508).  Can that really work?

St. Paul answers this question.  God allowed him to be beaten by this “thorn” in order to lead him to humility and dependence (remember, the “abundance” of revelations to him could have tempted him to think he was somebody special).  It took time for him to understand this, of course.  “Three times I begged the Lord…that it might leave me.”  However, God wanted St. Paul to understand that His grace “is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”  As frustrating and baffling as this idea can seem to us, St. Paul tells us it doeswork:  “Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ.”  Why would anyone be “content” with these awful things?  “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

How counter-intuitive is this??  Yet, this is exactly what Jesus proved to be true, beginning in Nazareth, with the scoffing resistance of His neighbors, all the way to the Cross, when His own people had Him crucified.  He became completely weak and utterly dependent on God—and He conquered!

It turns out that the truly human way God has of saving the world is for us to live the truly divine way of self-sacrifice.  We should never tire of pondering this; perhaps if we take it to heart, we will not take offense to it.

Possible response: Lord Jesus, please teach me to be willing to be weak so that I can be strong in Your grace.

Gayle Somers is a member of St. Thomas the Apostle parish in Phoenix and has been writing and leading parish Bible studies since 1996. She is the author of three bible studies, Galatians: A New Kind of Freedom Defended (Basilica Press), Genesis: God and His Creation and Genesis: God and His Family (Emmaus Road Publishing). Gayle and her husband Gary reside in Phoenix and have three grown children.

Jesus’ Homecoming

Over the last two Sundays, the gospel of Mark has been making it abundantly clear that Jesus is indeed God Almighty, ruler of the world and lord over life and death. But this week we come to a story that leaves us scratching our heads. Jesus goes to his own native place, and receives less than jubilant reception.  “They found him too much for them.” That may not be so surprising to those of us accustomed to family life.  But what does come as a shock are these words: “He could work no miracle there . . . so much did their lack of faith distress him.”

Wait a minute. I thought that Jesus was God and therefore omnipotent. Wouldn’t it be admitting that he is not God to say that he was unable to work miracles in a given place?

Hardly. God’s exercises his power only in a way befitting his nature. God is a lover, not a rapist.  He seeks to give his love to those who freely accept it and open their hearts to him. He refuses to violate the wishes of those whom he has created in his image and likeness, who possess intellect and free will. He directly controls the wind and the waves through a word of simple command, for wind and waves are inanimate forces. But with regards to human beings, he makes himself available and waits for an invitation. That invitation whereby we ask him to come into our lives and calm our interior storms is called faith.

Faith is not, therefore, an emotion. It is not about an inner assurance, a feeling of confidence that is free of all shadow of doubt or fear. It is rather a decision, sometimes made with knees knocking. It is a yes that gives God permission to work in our lives and rearrange the furniture if he so chooses. That means blessing, healing, salvation and miracles. But it also means yielding to his will, his plan, his timetable. And of course, that is the part we don’t like. What will others think of me? Will I still be able to spend Saturday nights the way I’ve always spent them? I work hard for a living and deserve to be able to blow off some steam! Will I still be able to hang out with Joe, or to live with my girlfriend?

Sometimes we are not really happy with the way things are, but at least they are familiar. We know what to expect. We are in control, or at least we think we are. Faith means handing over control, and that scares us. We are free to say no, and quite frankly we often do. Sometimes we say no in small ways–we only let God take us so far. Sometimes it’s a very firm “no”, that shuts God completely out of our lives.

This is the sort of “no” that Jesus encountered during his visit to Nazareth, and which the prophets before him often encountered from the people of Israel.

So if Jesus was divine and therefore all-knowing, why did he bother to go to Nazareth at all?  For the same reason that God sent Ezekiel to the Israelites and told him in advance that they’d resist. The Lord wanted to take away all excuses. God loved his people enough to offer them every opportunity for the healing and deliverance that they prayed for. He called their bluff, so to speak. Jerusalem pleaded for deliverance from the Babylonians and the people of Nazareth probably prayed for healing for Uncle Jacob or food for the town orphans. But in both cases when God showed up, ready to pour out his gifts, they didn’t like the packaging and rejected the terms.

At the last judgment, when our lives flash before our eyes, we’ll be reminded of the times that God made a house call and we slammed the door in his face. I say it’s time to apologize, unbolt the door, and roll out the red carpet.

image: Fidelis Sporrer [CC BY 3.0 ], 

Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio writes from Texas.

God & The Work For God

Because of your infinite love for me, Lord, you called me to follow you, to be your child and your disciple. 

Then you entrusted me with a unique mission that has the same requirements as every mission: that I be your apostle and witness. 

Still, my experience has taught me that I confuse these two realities: God and God's work. 

God gave me the responsibility to carry out certain works- some sublime and others more modest; some noble and others more common. 

And so, with a commitment to pastoral work in parishes and with young people in schools, with artists and laborers, in the world of the press, radio, and television, I gave my entire energy to everything and poured out all my abilities. 

I did not spare anything, not even my life. But, while I was so passionately immersed in action, 

I met the defeat of ingratitude, the refusal to collaborate, the incomprehension of friends, the lack of support from leaders, illness and infirmity, insufficient resources ... 

And, then when I happened to enjoy success, when I was the object of everyone's approval, praise, and affection, 

I was suddenly transferred to another position. So there I was, dazed, groping about as if in the dark of night: Why, Lord, are you abandoning me? I do not want to desert your work I want to complete it. 

I must finish building the Church ... Why do others attack your work? Why do they withdraw their support? 

Kneeling before your altar, close to the Eucharist, 

I heard your answer, Lord: 

"It is me you are supposed to be following, not my work! 

If I will it, you will finish the work entrusted to you. 

It matters little who takes over your work after you; 

that is my business. 

Your business is to choose me!" 

from Prayers of Hope—Words of Courage by Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận pp. 116-117