Author: DVO

Fr. Rolheiser writes that the Roman Catholic devotional tradition is one of the great complements to theology. This tradition doesn’t trade on critical thinking but on the romantic imagination. It aspires to inflame the heart. Admittedly, this is risky. Feelings can lead us in many directions, but faith without feeling is perhaps the greater danger. The heart also needs its due. Wendy Wright, a theologian at Creighton University in Nebraska, has written a remarkable book entitled: Sacred Heart – Gateway to God. The book chronicles how she was led to faith and how she now sustains herself there: “A layered reality is part of the Catholic imagination. To possess this imagination is to dwell in a universe inhabited by unseen presences – the presence of God, the presence of saints, and the presence of one another. There are no isolated individuals but rather unique beings whose deepest life is discovered in and through one another. This life transcends the confines of space and time…We – and Jesus and the saints – exist in some essential way outside of the chronology of historical time. We have being beyond the strictures of geographical space. And we can sense this now, in the concreteness of our lives.” The Catholic devotional tradition has long helped make us aware of our many-layered universe. We need to continue to employ its imagination if we are to help our fleshy hearts feel what lies inside God’s eternal heart.

St. John Chrysostom writes that we should listen to the Lord’s words and remember that if we are bringing our gift to the altar and remember that our brother or sister has something against us, we need to leave our gift there before the altar and first go and be reconciled with our brother or sister. Then we can come and offer our gift to the Lord. What does this mean? Am I really to leave my gift, my offering, there? Yes, he says, because this sacrifice is offered so you may live peacefully with your brother or sister. So if the attainment of peace with your neighbor is the object of the gift and you fail to make peace, even if you share in the sacrifice, your lack of peace will make this sharing fruitless. Before all else, therefore, make peace for the sake of which the gift is offered. Then you will truly benefit from it. The Son of God came into the world to reconcile the human race with the Father. St. Paul said that Jesus reconciled all things to himself, destroying enmity in himself by the cross. He came to make peace as well. The Lord calls us blessed if we do the same and shares his title with us. He says the peacemakers are blessed, for they shall be called children of God. So as far as human beings can, we must do what Jesus, the Son of God, did and become a promoter of peace for ourselves and our neighbor. Christ calls the peacemaker a child of God. The only good deed he mentions as essential at the time of his sacrifice is reconciliation with one’s brother or sister. That should show us that of all the virtues, the most important is love.

Bishop Barron notes that Protestant theologian N.T. Wright has pointed out that the Old Testament is essentially an unfinished symphony, a drama without a climax. It is the articulation of a hope, a dream, a longing—but without a realization of that hope, without the satisfaction of that longing. Israel knew itself to be the people with the definite mission to become holy and thereby render the world holy. But instead, Israel fell into greater and greater sins, and instead of being the catalyst for the conversion of the world, the world was continually overwhelming and enslaving Israel. In the law God gave to Moses for the children of Israel, God sought to provide a roadmap for their happiness in the Ten Commandments. Yet his chosen people still strayed from him and his desires for them. We can imagine that at some point, God said, “I’m going down there and personally show them how much I love them. Surely if I do that, they will understand and follow my desires for them.” So God sent his Son, Jesus, to show us what his law was really intended to create for humanity through the lived life of his Son. Jesus was the fulfillment of the entire spirit and intention of the mosaic law and all the prophets. When someone asked Jesus, “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” Jesus replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.” The Old Testament law must be interpreted in light of this twofold yet single commandment of love, which is the fullness of the Law: “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is fulfilling the law. Jesus’ life was the preeminent example of this love – a love we are asked to emulate.

Curtis Mitch writes that in the face of the many problems in the world—violence, materialism, poverty, moral relativism—Jesus challenges us to ask, “What can I do to share God’s love in the world?” Christians are called to be light to the world, and the world will be impacted for better or for worse by the way we live our lives. When we as Christians fail to be saints and live the beatitudes and be light, the world suffers. But when we imitate Christ’s love, mercy, and generosity, the world will see our good deeds and glorify our heavenly Father. St. John Chrysostom invites us to ponder what the world would be like if the entire Christian community lived in imitation of Christ: “Assuredly, there would be no heathen if we Christians took care to be what we ought to be; if we obeyed God’s precepts if we bore injuries without retaliation if when cursed we blessed if we rendered good for evil. For no man is so savage a wild beast that he would not run immediately to the worship of the true religion if he saw all Christians acting as I have said.” Jesus had his critics, as did St. Paul and those in the early church. And this continues even today as we see in the lives of people like Mother Teresa, who exemplified living the light and love of Christ to the world. Authentic Gospel living will ultimately shed its light as love conquers all.

I love the process of re-engaging great writers who I have read previously but have allowed dust to collect on their work. While I’ll generally recall where the writer is taking me, I knowingly anticipate the joy that awaits in the unfolding story. Henry Nouwen is one such writer. I love his reflection on The Beatitudes, where he sees Jesus telling us to be like him in the world, reflecting his light and love, and not being a reflection of the world’s ways. “This self-portrait of Jesus at first might seem to be a most unappealing portrait; who wants to be poor, mourning, and persecuted? Who can be truly gentle, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, and always concerned about justice? Where is the realism here? Don’t we have to survive in this world and use the ways of the world to do so? Jesus shows how to be in the world without being of it. When we model our lives on his, a new world will open up for us. The Kingdom of Heaven will be ours, and the Earth will be our inheritance. We will be comforted and have our fill; mercy will be shown to us. Yes, we will be recognized as God’s children and truly see God, not just in an afterlife, but here and now (see Matthew 5:3-10). That is the reward of modeling our lives on the life of Jesus.” Amen, amen!

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. Jesus is telling those gathered and his disciples about the gift of his own body and blood. As Bishop Barron writes, the challenge for the Jewish people is that what they hear Jesus say is akin to cannibalism. “For a Jewish man to be insinuating that you should eat his own flesh and drink his blood was about as nauseating and religiously objectionable as you could get.” But sensing the objection, Jesus does not soften what he is saying. He becomes even more specific, “Amen, amen I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Scripture says, “As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him” (John 6:66). Some scholars say hundreds left him. What the “many” were missing was that Jesus was speaking to them about being the new sacrifice. No longer would temple sacrifices be needed; the unblemished lamb would no longer be the sacrifice. Christ, the lamb of God, who freely gave his life for the salvation of all, became the paschal lamb. Jesus gives us his presence in His Word and his physical self. In the Holy Eucharistic, we are able, 2,000 years later, to receive Christ’s true body, blood, soul, and divinity in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. That is the power of the gift of himself. That is the power of the paschal sacrifice.     

Today’s scripture verse focuses on the “all-in” aspect of the widow’s giving. The Widows Offering story is well known, but we must ask ourselves what it would mean if we similarly gave to our faith community. Fr. Kevin O’Brien writes that to learn the lesson of generosity from the widow in today’s Gospel, we must first notice the widow, which may be the more significant challenge Jesus puts before us. In Jesus’ society, a widow—along with the poor, the child, the sick, the stranger, and the woman—was easily lost in the crowd. Those on the margins of society were overshadowed by the crowd of rich, powerful, and privileged persons. But Jesus notices the widow and sees what she is doing, tossing in her precious coins. Jesus makes the widow the center of attention. The one on the margin is brought to the center. Jesus creates a new way of looking at the world, religion, and one another. The widow challenges us to be more generous with our time, talent, and resources. Jesus challenges us to notice those easily overlooked. In the course of a day, do we see what those on the margins are doing? Do we hear what they are saying? Do we notice who is cleaning up after us, waiting on us, and laboring for us? Do we read about and delve into the plight of those on the edges of our life experience? What we see and hear depends on where we stand. So perhaps the first response to Jesus’ challenge is for us to stand in a different place, at the frontiers where Pope Francis calls us to venture. The view there may be unfamiliar and a little uncomfortable, but the widows and their friends await, ready to teach us something new from where they stand.

To bless the Lord means to praise, exalt, and worship Him. The word “bless” and “praise” are often said interchangeably in scripture, with blessing denoting a higher form of praise. Ashely Crane of St. Vianney writes that the idea of “blessing” is a very common one in Christianity. We ask God to bless us, and we thank him for his blessings. We pray for blessings for others. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “Blessing is a divine and life-giving action, the source of which is the Father” and “From the beginning until the end of time, the whole of God’s work is a blessing.” As St. James says, “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above.” Everything good that we have comes from God—starting with our very existence and the existence of creation all around us and culminating in the gift of God’s divine Self, “the Gift that contains all gifts, the Holy Spirit.” How can I bless or praise God? It takes only a moment to examine our lives and begin to recognize the myriad of ways in which God blesses us. But what does it mean for us to bless God? Does God need anything from us? Can we give him anything that he doesn’t already possess? Well, no. God isn’t lacking in anything, so he doesn’t need anything from us. If he did, he wouldn’t be God. But we need to give something to God. Justice—the virtue that requires us to give each person his due—requires us to offer our sacrifice of thanksgiving to God in return for his many blessings. The kind of blessing we are called upon to offer to God is fundamentally different from the kind of blessing God bestows on us. God’s blessing is something outside of ourselves that he gives to us. When we “bless the Lord,” we offer something from within ourselves to God in response. We use the same word to refer to two distinct (but related) actions. God blesses first, and our blessing of thanksgiving and adoration is always a response.

What does our Gospel verse from Mark mean? Bishop Barron writes that the law is finally about love, and the love of God and neighbor are inextricably bound to one another. We’re wasting our time if we love God but hate our neighbors. When you really love someone, you tend to love, as well, what they love. Well, what does God love? He loves everything and everyone that he has made. So, if you want to love God, and you find this move difficult because God seems so distant, love anyone you come across for the sake of God. We are all called to journey through our days and years, trying our best to realize the reign of God through learning to love. It is the task of a lifetime. The more we mature in love, the closer we are to God. Sr. Pat Kozak writes that this idea of loving in a manner of giving our all to it is worth thinking about or, better yet, praying about. Because loving this way is what the Gospel is all about, what the following Jesus is about. The choice is not gaining or losing but letting go and waking up. It is coming alive with fullness and freedom, filled with a sense of possibility and immanence. And in a moment of pure gift, I suddenly see that everything around me is an invitation, an opening, and that giving over to this loving makes me feel more alive than holding on to my own small and separate self. It’s worth thinking about or, better yet, praying about. To love, as Jesus speaks about, is the task of a lifetime.

Elie Wiesel once said: “Life and death are not separate domains; they meet in us, though not in God. It is possible to live with death: all one needs to do is to turn one’s back on living. It is possible to be dead and not know it.” It is possible to be dead and not know it, to be asleep and still think we are awake, bitter as an enslaved person, and still believe we are loving. Physical death, for most of us, comes last. First, there is a long series of other deaths of crucifixions. In this, too, we follow the pattern of what happened in Christ. Christ came as God’s perfect image, the most precious, sensitive, and extraordinary human being ever. It was that uniqueness and goodness which was crucified. It is that which still gets crucified in us. It is precisely in those areas of our lives where we bear God’s image perfectly, where we are most precious, most sensitive, and most special, and that invariably gets crucified. What’s calloused, tough, homogenized, survives, living on, helping us go through Life’s motions: our automatic pilot in death. Our infidelities, our lack of gratitude, our lack of prayer, our propensity to misunderstand and to hurt each other, our need to lie and rationalize, and our excessive self-preoccupations occur primarily because of what’s best in us, the image of God that lies frozen (assets we cannot touch). Our poverty and bitterness come from that. And so, we begin to settle for second best. We live on, far from fully alive, on automatic pilot, the Christ in us lying in the tomb, what’s most precious in us frozen under bitterness. Every spring, a warm sun reappears, and nature and ourselves are given the opportunity to unthaw, to resurrect, to leave behind us a string of empty tombs, to let our crucified hopes and dreams be resurrected so that, like Christ, our lives will radiate that, in the end, everything is good, reality can be trusted, love does triumph over apathy and hatred, togetherness over loneliness, peace over chaos, and forgiveness over bitterness. God is not God of the dead but of the living. Trust in His love and embrace Life. – Fr. Ron Rolheiser