Seventeenth Sunday of the Year - 2023

A woman purchased the 11.5-inch-long (29 centimetres) "lunar sample return bag" for $995 in February 2015, at an auction held on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service in Texas. Turns out it was actually the very bag Neil Armstrong used to bring back moon rocks from the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing.  The bag had been on loan to a museum whose curator ended up in count and the bag grouped in with other items was ordered to be put up for auction. Realizing its authenticity, NASA went to court to try to get it back but were unsuccessful. The woman eventually auctioned it off through Sotheby’s for $1,812,500 million dollars. A few years ago, a valuable painting by the Canadian folk artist, Maud Lewis, discovered at the New Hamburg Thrift Centre, run by the Mennonite Central Committee of Ontario. It was sold at auction for $45,000.00. Here you have a couple of examples of “Pearls of Great Price” being discovered and making someone very rich. (Before the Covid-19 restrictions) it was quite common for people to head out on a Saturday or Sunday morning to go hunting through garage sales and flee markets, looking for one of those “pearls of great price”.  And some of those folks may have walk right past a church, with its doors wide open in welcome, not realizing that inside that church there is a “True Pearl of Great Price” – the one Jesus is referring to in today’s gospel, the Pearl that can be had at no cost and who's value cannot be calculated. Churches are once again opening their doors. Yet, the fact remains that the numbers are few who value the great treasure they hold – that it is there at the Eucharistic table one encounters Jesus, who invites those seeking true treasures to find a personnel relationship with Him, as He gives Himself in this sacrament; bringing the gift of Salvation and Eternal Life. But this “Pearl of Great Price” must be carefully guarded, for we must never forget that there is a Thief on the prowl, everywhere today, seeking to steal away our Precious Gift – and many today have lost their “Pearl of Great Price” to Satan’s thievery and deceit. That safe place, where we keep our gift secure, is to be found in the practice of daily, personal prayer, together with a strong bond of ecclesial union within parish life. Alone, we are no match for the master Thief.  Now that garage sales are again in full swing you may get an invitation from a friend some Sunday, to join them on a garage sale/flee market hunt. And you may like to join them. But you, in turn, might also invite them to join you on your Sunday visit with Jesus, in his House of Treasures, where they too might find the Pearl of Great Price.

Sixteenth Sunday of the Year - 2023

A spiritual application of this image of the enemy sowing "weeds" can be found in St. Ignatius'  Rules for discernment for the second week of the Spiritual Exercises. He explains that when a soul has experienced the grace of conversion and healing during the first week of the retreat the Evil One obviously has been unable to prevent this from happening. It will be necessary for the Evil One to change his tactics. The Spiritual Exercises explains it this way. It is characteristic of God and His Angels, when they act upon the soul, to give true happiness and spiritual joy, and to banish all the sadness and disturbances which are caused by the enemy. It is characteristic of the evil one to fight against such happiness and consolation by proposing fallacious reasonings, subtilties, and continual deceptions. God alone can give consolation to the soul without any previous cause. It belongs solely to the Creator to come into a soul, to leave it, to act upon it, to draw it wholly to the love of His Divine Majesty. I said without previous cause, that is, without any preceding perception or knowledge of any subject by which a soul might be led to such a consolation through its own acts of intellect and will. If a cause precedes, both the good angel and the evil spirit can give consolation to a soul, but for a quite different purpose. The good angel consoles for the progress of the soul, that it may advance and rise to what is more perfect. The evil spirit consoles for purposes that are the contrary, and that afterwards he might draw the soul to his own perverse intentions and wickedness. It is a mark of the evil spirit to assume the appearance of an angel of light. He begins by suggesting thoughts that are suited to a devout soul and ends by suggesting his own. For example, he will suggest holy and pious thoughts that are wholly in conformity with the sanctity of the soul. Afterwards, he will endeavor little by little to end by drawing the soul into his hidden snares and evil designs. When the enemy of our human nature has been detected and recognized by the trail of evil marking his course and by the wicked end to which he leads us, it will be profitable for one who has been tempted to review immediately the whole course of the temptation. Let him consider the series of good thoughts, how they arose, how the evil one gradually attempted to make him step down from the state of spiritual delight and joy in which he was, till finally he drew him to his wicked designs. The purpose of this review is that once such an experience has been understood and carefully observed, we may guard ourselves for the future against the customary deceits of the enemy. The spiritual life is a dynamic life, either prospering and expanding, or stagnate and in decline. It is the desire of the Lord that we continue to grow in the works of holiness but we have an enemy at work trying to prevent this from happening. Only God is holy. "The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works. Ps. 145:17" We do not design holiness, we imitate it. Therefore, the Christian life is a learning process, we learn from the Lord what is holy and we conduct our lives accordingly. Our job is to learn how to listen, how to recognize the Lords voice, how to distinguish the Lord's truth from the evil one's deceits. "I can do nothing on my own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. Jo. 5:30” This is why the practice of the prayer of discernment or the prayer of examine is so important to the spiritual life. This prayer may take different forms. An excellent resource for this prayer can be found on Ignatian Spirituality web site. Here is the LINK

Fifteenth Sunday of the Year - 2023

Once again the gospel text presents us with the Parable of Sower. Today we have Matthew's Account – Mark and Luke also include this teaching. Jesus presents the Word of God as the "Good Seed" the sower sows, and describes the different soil conditions the seed lands upon. Is there a way we could re-imagine this scene Jesus uses so as to see it in the context of our religious experience today? For instance, how might we interpret, in practical terms, the different soils, different religious conditions, into which the seed falls? And what identity might we give to the good seed that is sown? We could interpret the seed as the grace-to-believe placed in one’s soul at baptism, and the different soil conditions as the different religious environments that a newly baptized encounters today. So the soil is us, us Catholics, our Christian families, our parishes, our diocese, all of us Catholics that make up the Church today, we are that soil. Here it is necessary to recall Pope John Paul II’s teaching in his papal document on Catechesis - #19 link, where he points out that a newly baptized is given this grace, this seed of faith, potentially. [ the capacity to believe placed within them by Baptism and the presence of the Holy Spirit ] Now the recipient must grow and develop and become an informed, committed follower of Jesus – the question then is how will the faith of this newly baptized do. So let’s look at the four soil conditions as four different religious environments a newly baptized child faces. First condition is the Harden Path; o   For all practical purposes, religious practice by those who surround the newly baptized is dead – no one goes to church. In this case, baptism itself may not even happen. If does it, there is no hope of it ever to growing. The seed of faith lies dormant. Second condition is the Shallow Soil; o   There is some religious practice to which the newly baptized is exposed – Christmas and Easter Mass – maybe first communion, maybe even confirmation but little more. Whatever little faith that one may have begun with, withers and fades away from lack of support Third condition is the Choking Weeds; o   The newly baptized may have the early start of family support but as that one moves on to begin their own life, they find themselves surrounded by a world of strong and conflicting values; where religious practice is viewed as worthless. They are surrounded by constant negative experiences toward religion – no friends with whom to share faith – immersed in a secular culture that has no room for believers. Fourth condition is the Good Soil; o   A newly baptized, born into a family of strong, active faith, exposed to a healthy parish experience, guided by mature religious instruction and advice – this seed of faith comes alive and takes on a strong faith life of its own. It survives to become a strong, practicing Catholic.

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Fourteenth Sunday of the Year - 2023

There are many in the world today who believe in God – Jews and Muslims for instance. So how are we to understand Jesus teaching in today’s gospel which seems to suggest only Christians can know God? The answer is found in two key words that Jesus uses – “knows” and “Father”.  To know someone implies person-to-person encounter. The word here is “gnosis”. I know for a fact that Justin Trudeau is the prime minister of Canada. I have been given a lot of information about him through other’s reports, but I cannot claim to really “know” him until I meet him, interact with him, spend time with him, experience him personally. The second key word Jesus uses is “Father”. To know God as your Father is profoundly more significant than knowing there is a God. Imagine someone who grew up never knowing their father – separated for some reason – then one day it happens, a man comes and stands in front of him as another says, “James, here is your father that you do not know.” James may know a lot about what fathers are to other people, but now he knows his father, and begins a whole new life with his father. When Jesus says these words: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him." This is what he means by "knows" – real, encounter, person-to-person, filial, tender, intimate, loving. The Hebrew word for Father is “Abba”. One of my scripture teachers told a story of how this word Abba, hit home for him. He was visiting the Holy Land, and was in a busy marketplace. A little child was there with his father, shopping. Then the little boy lost sight of his father, and began to call out, “Abba, Abba, Abba, Abba, Abba”, (father, father, father,) – “here my son, here I am”, the father replied. It was then that the teacher appreciated in an intimate, personal way what Jesus meant by “… knowing the Father.” We are like lost children who don’t know our true Father, our tender, loving and protecting Father, until that graced encounter, when Jesus says to us, “come now, look and see, here is Abba, your Father”.  Do you know your Father, your heavenly Father? Is He your Abba, your loving, protecting, life-giving Father? If not, then ask Jesus to help you to know the Father as he knows him.  At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Matthew 11:25-27

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Thirteenth Sunday of the Year - 2023

If ever there was someone who wanted to put you to the test about your Christian faith, today's gospel text would make a perfect weapon. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate their father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even their life itself, cannot be my disciple.” So your Jesus wants you to hate your family – it says so right here. Now if you reply by saying that Jesus didn’t really say that or mean that, you create a whole lot of trouble for yourself. Would that not be true of anything the gospels quote Jesus as saying? Perhaps a little parable might help us here. Suppose you belonged to a family of a non-Christian religion. Your father is a strong, devote believer and he strictly demands that you follow this same religion and all its beliefs and practices. One day you come and announce that you are going to become a Catholic; you believe that Jesus is the son of God and that the Catholic Church is the true way to follow Christ. Your father tells you that if you do this, he will disown you, strip you of your inheritance and nothing more to do with you. And so you leave. In other words it is all or nothing. In today's society, the worst thing you can do is promote hate. Hate crimes are of the worst kind of evil. Here Jesus is using hyperbole; which is an exaggerated statement or claim not meant to be taken literally. Like when Jesus said “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell.” Mk. 9:43 Jesus is not teaching hate, but he is teaching unconditional love. To be his disciple Jesus wants our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind with all our strength. The problem we face in the Church today is mediocrity – "I like some of the things the Church teaches but certainly not everything". In Matthew’s account of this issue Jesus is warning that to follow Him unconditionally will have its challenges.  “A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Mtt. 10:36 Jesus wants our whole heart - first and above all. Half-hearted faith will never last in today's world. It slowly drains away until it is all gone. The choice is now in our hands. Dr. Brant Pitre has an excellent commentary on today's gospel passage. Go To: . . . LINK . . .