Twelfth Sunday of the Year - 2023

Commentary on Today's Scriptures

12th Sunday of the Year

.

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2023

In this Sunday's 2nd. Reading from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans we read: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us . . .  while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son . . .”  But why did Jesus have to die to save us? Could God not say from heaven: “Your sins are for given; come now and enter heaven and eternal life”? The problem with that is it fails to understand the nature of our intellect and free will, and the nature of sin; the power it holds over our souls. People in the bondage of sin are so by choice, and can no longer hear God’s voice from heaven. "Son of Man, you live in a rebellious house that has eyes to see, but they can't see, and ears to hear, but they can't hear, since they're a rebellious house. Jerimiah 12:2.  . . . so that, "'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'" Mk 4:12 Let me offer an analogy. A person goes partying one night … becomes intoxicated … gets into a car and drives away at high speed … fails to negotiate a turn in the road … roles the car and ends up in the ditch, injured and hopelessly pinned in the over-turned car. Then the car becomes engulfed in flames. That person cannot save themselves, they are going to die a horrible death – and it is totally their fault. Now a stranger comes on the scene, climbs into the burning vehicle and calls to the trapped man, "here, take my hand, I can save you!" The rescuer frees the trapped person and pushes him out of the car to safety; but this can only be done in a way that makes the rescuer unable to get out himself … therefore, he must die in place of the trapped person. It’s the only way to save the one hopelessly trapped do to the choices they made. Sin entraps our souls and binds us to its deadly way, traps us in the state of eternal separation from God, from God’s truth, from eternal life. (Trapped like the person in the flaming car.) God must come to where the sinner is; first to break Satan’s hold over us by incarnating, making himself visible and recognizable on our terms. Then, one-on-one, offering us mercy, convincing us to reject sin and to accept forgiveness. Then God must lead us out of our hell of ignorance into the light of truth. Jesus, the Son of God is the only one who can do this. He must become one of us, to be with us where we are. That is the only way we can hear God’s voice. Satan tries to drive Jesus away from rescuing us by the threat of the Cross. He fails. Jesus’ love for us is greater than any fear Satan can employ, even death itself. Satan’s hold is broken, it remains for us to listen to the Voice of forgiveness and follow him out. We say Jesus died for my sins on Good Friday. Perhaps we more accurately should say, Jesus died BECAUSE of my sins. Because by my free choice I willing followed Satan into the hell of separation from God’s truth, it is only by Jesus entering into my death situation, to meet me there and convincing me of his love, can Jesus save me. Only from the Cross can we hear; “This day you will be with me in Paradise."

Corpus Christi - The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Two months ago, in the liturgy of Holy Thursday we celebrated the institution of the Sacred Eucharist, the Mass. Today’s feast of Corpus Christi, was established to create a feast focused solely on the Holy Eucharist emphasizing the joy of the Eucharist being the body and blood of Jesus Christ through the mystery of Transubstantiation. The origins of this feast began in Liège, a Belgium city, toward the end of the 12thcentury. In the city there were groups of women, known as the Norbertine canonesses, who lived together and devoted their lives to prayer and to charitable works. One of them, Juliana of Liège, had a vision of Christ in which she was instructed to plead for the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi. The vision was repeated for the next 20 years but she kept it a secret. When she eventually relayed it to her confessor, he relayed it to the bishop. So in 1246 the Bishop ordered a celebration of Corpus Christi to be held in the diocese each year thereafter on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Pope Pius V revised the General Roman Calendar and Corpus Christi was one of only two "feasts of devotion" that he kept, the other being Trinity Sunday and it remains to this day. This feast is all about the real and true presences of Jesus, body, soul, and divinity in the elements of the Eucharist. This has been a part of the Church’s belief beginning from the Last Supper but understanding just how this happens has been a developing work over time.  The Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 spoke of the bread and wine as "transubstantiated" into the body and blood of Christ and this was later elaborated on by St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as other medieval theologians. In the end in remains a Divine mystery to our understanding. Martin Luther was not a fan of the Feast of corpus Christi. He wrote: "I am to no festival more hostile ... than this one. Because it is the most shameful festival. At no festival are God and his Christ more blasphemed, than on this day, and particularly by the procession. For then people are treating the Blessed Sacrament with such ignominy that it becomes only play-acting and is just vain idolatry." He also rejected the theology of transubstantiation. So what of this mystery of the real presence today and devotions to the Blessed Sacrament? Many remember the time when Mass could not be said after 12 noon. So during Lent, on Wed. Fri. and Sun. evenings devotions with benediction of the blessed sacrament was norm. Exceptions to this restriction began with Pope Pius XII, and with the new liturgy of the 60’s evening mass was common. So in Lent Mass replaced devotions in most parishes. The Mass and the reception Holy Communion rightfully hold the highest place in our devotion, but other forms of Eucharistic devotion have an important place in deepening our communion with Christ. At the heart of today’s feast of Corpus Christi is the wondrous mystery of Jesus’ real presence, body, soul, and divinity in the elements of the Eucharist. May we never lose sight of this. May our devotion to this mystery grow ever stronger.

.

Trinity Sunday - 2023

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” You may have notice from time to time, while watching TV, usually a live event where a crowd is gathered, someone in the back ground holding up a sign with this written on it, just these numbers,  "3:16". If you have not made the connection - it refers to this text of scripture, which is chosen as the gospel reading for this feast of the Most Holy Trinity. Clearly, someone, at a grass roots level, is taking advantage of the TV exposure to evangelize. One might wonder how effective this effort might be, but if you google just the numbers "3:16" you are taken immediately to the bible passage. No doubt there are those who consider this as an unwelcome intrusion of another's religious belief into an nonreligious public event. In other words, "... didn't ask, not interested, keep your religion to yourself". But by virtue of our baptism, we as Catholics have a mandate and responsibility to be Evangelists. Pope John Paul II, in 1983, first exhorted the Church to undertake the mission of a New Evangelization in his encyclical, Redemptoris Missio. The Holy Father, described three situations requiring three unique approaches to Evangelization: 1.       Evangelization to the nations: This is a situation where “Christ and his Gospel are not known.” 2.       Evangelization of Christian communities: This is the ongoing evangelization of those “fervent in the faith.” 3.       New Evangelization: “where entire groups of the baptized have lost a living sense of the faith, or even no longer consider themselves members of the Church, and live a life far removed from Christ and his Gospel. In this case what is needed is a ‘new evangelization’ or a ‘re-evangelization.’” The new evangelization pertains to a very specific group of people: fallen-away Christians. For most Catholics in the western world, we see the need for this type of evangelization all around us. Everyone knows someone who was once baptized but who no longer practices the faith. In a previous post on evangelization I quoted Archbishop Richard Smith, bishop of the diocese of Edmonton who described evangelization this way.  It has two main components, WORD and SIGN, and both are necessary together. Word alone cannot convey the full message of the Good News, because people may not take from the words we use the same meaning that we intend to communicate. Bishop Smith gave this example. ·         When we use the word joy people often hear pleasure, ·         truth is heard as opinion, (we hear a lot about “alternate facts” these days), ·         conscience is heard as feeling, (morality comes from the way you feel), ·         justice is heard as vengeance. But when our words are accompanied by a corresponding sign, gesture, personal witness, then what we mean to say is made clear. Remember, one who says one thing and does another is called a hypocrite.  Now in today's society the promotion of religious belief and practice is often met with intolerance and rejection. How is the evangelist to react?  Saint Gregory the Great offers this direction - with the meekness of Job. Whoever is mocked by his friend, as I am, shall call upon God, and he shall hear him. A weak-minded person is frequently diverted toward pursuing exterior happiness when the breath of popular favor accompanies his good actions. So he gives up his own personal choices, preferring to remain at the mercy of whatever he hears from others. Thus, he rejoices not so much to become but to be called blessed. Eager for praise, he gives up what he had begun to be; and so he is severed from God by the very means by which he appeared to be commendable in God. But sometimes a soul firmly strives for righteousness and yet is beset by men’s ridicule. He does what is admirable, but he gets only mockery. He might have gone out of himself because of man’s praise; he returns to himself when repelled by their abuse. Finding no resting-place without, he cleaves more intensely to God within. All his hope is fixed on his Creator, and amid all the ridicule and abuse he invokes his interior witness alone. One who is afflicted in this way grows closer to God the more he turns away from human popularity. He straightway pours himself out in prayer, and, pressured from without, he is refined with a more perfect purity to penetrate what is within. In this context, the words apply: Whoever is mocked by his friend, as I am, shall call upon God, and he shall hear him. (Job 12:4) For while the wicked reproach the just, they show them whom they should look to as the witness of their actions. Thus afflicted, the soul strengthens itself by prayer; it is united within to one who listens from on high precisely because it is cut off externally from the praise of men. Again, we should note how appropriately the words are inserted, as I am. There are some people who are both oppressed by human mockery and are yet deprived of God’s favorable hearing. For when the mockery is done to a man’s own sin, it obviously does not produce the merit that is due to virtue. The simplicity of the just man is laughed to scorn. It is the wisdom of this world to conceal the heart with stratagems, to veil one’s thoughts with words, to make what is false appear true and what is true appear false. On the other hand it is the wisdom of the just never to pretend anything for show, always to use words to express one’s thoughts, to love the truth as it is and to avoid what is false, to do what is right without reward and to be more willing to put up with evil than to perpetrate it, not to seek revenge for wrong, and to consider as gain any insult for truth’s sake. But this guilelessness is laughed to scorn, for the virtue of innocence is held as foolishness by the wise of this world. Anything that is done out of innocence, they doubtless consider to be stupidity, and whatever truth approves of, in practice is called folly by their earthly wisdom. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Here is a link to Dr. Brant Pitre's video on the Trinity - LINK