Nov 30: The Call to Discipleship

Duccio di Buoninsegna: The Calling of Peter and Andrew

Feast of Saint Andrew, Apostle
Gospel: Mt 4:18-22

“As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea--for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people (NRSV, Mt 4:18-19).’ ”

Father, your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, began his public ministry by calling those disciples who would be close to him, gathering them to join with him in preaching the good news of the kingdom of God. It is these same disciples who, with Mary Magdalene and the holy women, would also be the first to experience him at Easter and sent as apostles to announce his resurrection to the world.

Father, just as Jesus called his disciples, so you call each and every one of us. You call us into existence in our mother’s womb; call us to be human beings sharing your divine life. The call is renewed then at each moment of our existence. We are ever called out of our past, out of ourselves, to grow more fully in your divine life at each moment. That call continues throughout our physical life on earth and then into the world to come. Because your life in which you challenge us to grow is inexhaustible, Lord, your call to us is without end. Your call to us, Lord, is what defines human existence.

Jesus’ disciples left everything they had, even their work, their homes and their families, to follow Jesus. Your call to us all, Lord, is equally demanding. Not many will leave work, home or family, but to accept the challenge of living a life that is at once human and divine means that you, Lord, must be the center and focus of all that we do. Everything must be organized around your very life offered to us, in which we are called to grow further at every moment. Our life’s projects, our deepest loves and relationships, can only have meaning, Lord, as they receive that meaning from you.

Father, as we celebrate today the Feast of St. Andrew, apostle, may we be sensitive to your calling us at every moment of our lives ever to grow in your divine life and may we always respond with Andrew’s enthusiasm as he left all to follow Jesus.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 29: Faith Abounds

Caspar Luiken: The Faith of the Centurion

Monday of the First Week of Advent
Gospel: Mt 8:5-11

“Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (NRSV, Mt 8:10b-11).”

Lord God, faith is saying “yes” to the gift of your divine life that you offer to us. It is a matter of placing our trust and confidence in your promise. For all of us who recognize the fullness of your presence and revelation in Jesus Christ, it is our acceptance of him that unites us into a community of faith, the Church.

But surely, Lord, faith extends beyond the confines of the Church. Indeed your invitation goes out to all of humanity. All who say “yes” to you, with whatever understanding, live in faith and partake of your life. In fact, it is the very acceptance of that divine life within our mother’s womb, made possible by your power given to us, that makes us to be human beings. Lord God, you are Love, and whoever manifests love is by that very act a sharer in your divine life. Wherever love abounds, divinity is also present filling the lives of those who serve one another.

Lord, faith is often identified with the acceptance of certain truths concerning you but there are those who truly live in faith who are not sure of your existence and who even deny it. Their puzzlement and even their seeming rejection of you is sometimes a matter of being confused by the distortions of your image that we who are explicit believers present to them. If love is the manifestation of your presence, Lord, the agnostic and the atheist are often the very ones, prompted by a true faith that goes unrecognized, who show us the better way and challenge explicit believers to abandon the hypocrisy that frequently tinges our lives.

Lord God, Father, help us to uncover faith in you where it is least expected, to encourage its growth in all of our sisters and brothers, and to grow in faith ourselves by making a deeper and fuller commitment to you as we meet your challenge to new life in every moment.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 28: Now is the Moment to Wake

Michelangelo Buonarroti: Awakening (The Slave)

First Sunday of Advent
Reading II: Rom 13:11-14

“Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers (NRSV, Rom 13:11).”

Awake, Awake, Paul writes to the Church in Rome. These words, Lord God, were written almost 2000 years ago and have been read over and over again down through the centuries. Each time that they are read or proclaimed aloud, they are understood, not only as an historical appeal, applicable to a particular situation now long past, but also, Lord, as a lively challenge proper to this very moment, to here and now. It is not, Father, that these words have gone ignored over the ages. The history of your Church, the history of all religious people, indeed of all humanity, is filled with countless individuals who have responded enthusiastically to Paul’s words, even among so very many who have heard the same invitation in other ways. But somehow, even when there has been response, however serious and full of commitment, the call to awake from sleep continues to resonate and to summon in every moment of human existence.

The philosopher Plato held that all of learning is remembering. He taught that the human soul pre-exists the body and, when joined to it in this world, that the soul “forgets” all that it knew in its earlier life. The story of human existence, for Plato, is the story of gradually remembering everything that had been known before, a gradual “re-awakening.”

Lord God, I know well that, before my birth, I did not pre-exist with you in eternity. Rather I first encountered you in my mother’s womb as, in the power also received from you, I said “Yes” to the gift of human and divine life. In that gift of life I also heard you speak to me your one word that is your being. That one word, spoken once and for all, continues to be heard in the depth of my being at every moment of my life. It is this same one word that in each moment calls me forth out of my past into the freedom of the future which is my destiny with you. No matter how fully I may give myself in response to the challenge of the moment, you, Lord God, my Father, are always there ever calling me forward.

That is why, Lord, Paul’s call to awake rings true in this moment as it did when the Christians of Rome first read his letter so many centuries ago. All of human existence is not as Plato argued “remembering” but rather it is “awakening” to a word heard by every human being at the first moment of existence and continuously heard at ever moment but only gradually understood. That one word, Lord, like your very being, is inexhaustible. Hopefully, we shall all grow in it forever and ever, an awakening that will go on and on without end.

Lord God, as the Church begins this Advent season in preparation for the celebration of the birth of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that this holy time may be for everyone a time of continuous awakening and that all of us may ever grow in your life and power, now and throughout all eternity.

Alleluia. Amen.

Nov 27: Only One Thing Matters

Martin Luther (?): Jesus Teaching his Disciples about the Coming End

Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Lk 21:34-36

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life (NRSV, Lk 21:34a).”

Lord God, when we look within to understand more fully the one message that you speak to all of us, there is no assistance for us better than the preaching of your Son Jesus who said “yes” to you fully, with all of his being. When we seek to do your will, Father, Jesus warns us not to be distracted by idle pleasure or by any of the anxieties of this world. Over and over again, Jesus instructs us that there is only one thing that matters and that is the coming Kingdom. Choose God and his kingdom first and all else will be given to you.

Jesus told the rich young man to sell all that he owned and to give it to the poor. Jesus recognized that the rich young man was ready to give his life to you, Lord God, provided he could also keep his wealth. Jesus said “No,” there was only one reality that mattered. Choose God first and then order the remainder of one’s life, including the use of one’s money and possessions, under that one choice.

Again, there was the disciple who was ready to follow Jesus but . . . first . . . he had to bury his father. Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead.” Again, there is only one reality that matters. Always choose you, Lord God, first, then under that choice, and ordered by it, do what is required, bury one’s father, love one’s spouse and children, use one’s wealth and possessions.

For Jesus, and hopefully for us as well, Lord, there is only one path. It is simple and direct. The journey to you, Lord, that Jesus directs us along, is not accomplished first of all by giving up of spouse and family, by abandoning this world, by abstinence and fasting, or by acts of penitence. No, all is accomplished rather by simply accepting the gift of your life, Lord God, into our own and making you the center and focus of everything that we do and everything that we are. All else follows from that according to our circumstances in life.

Having once accepted your reign, Father, and living under it, we shall then bury our parents, love those in our care, use our wealth and possessions wisely and well. Different choices will be made in different circumstances. Some will marry; some will not. Fasting and acts of penance will become not ends in themselves but possible ways of keeping us focused on the one choice, the one reality, that matters, you, Lord God, and your coming Kingdom.

Jesus told his friend Martha, rushing hither and yon preparing the meal for her beloved guest, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.” In the midst of all of our efforts to live our lives well, help us, Father, to make that one reality, you, our Lord and our God, the center and focus of our lives.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 26: Our Destiny: Not Only a New Heaven But a New Earth

Alonso Cano: St. John's Vision of the New and Heavenly City, Jerusalem

Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading I: Rev 20:1-4, 11—21:1-2

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (NRSV, Rev 21:1-2).”

Father, we are grateful to everyone who has helped us to understand the one word that you always speak to all of us. The Neo-Platonists of the first centuries of the Christian era have taught clearly and well that we have our origin in you and are called to return to you. For them, however, it is merely a journey of the spirit. The body is to be left behind. Aristotle, recovered by Christendom only in the 13th century, also placed the emphasis on the rational soul, the immaterial aspect of human reality.

Lord, in coming to a deeper understanding of our relationship with you and of your word spoken to us, help us return to our Hebrew roots that we might better grasp the reality of who we are. Before the Greeks who divided us into two parts, soul and body, or even two principles, as St. Thomas stressed in his reading of Aristotle, the Hebrews understood human beings always in their entirety, standing whole before you their God, challenged to say “yes” to you with all of their being. Our destiny, for the Hebrews, involved all that we are, not just some higher spiritual principle with the body sometimes dragged along as an afterthought.

On the road to Damascus St. Paul experienced your son Jesus Christ risen from the dead in the totality of his being, in the language of the Greeks in both his soul and his body. This is what Paul taught to the Church in Corinth when it had erroneously concluded that our destiny involved only the soul, the spiritual dimension of our being. Resurrection, Paul taught, is in the body but a body transformed from a reality of the old world into something completely new.

Father, help us to recover what the Hebrews learned from you long ago, that everything that you have created is good. The physical body is not weakness. It is not shadow existence. It is not to be left behind. Above all, let us resist the ancient Persian Zoroaster and his later disciples who have taught that the body is even darkness and evil, to be fought against.

Help us, Lord our God, in the vision of John, to recognize that our destiny with you involves everything that we are and indeed everything that we have made or done, that nothing that is us in any way will be lost. Help us to look forward with great hope to the creation, not only of a new heaven, but also of a new earth, that we might dwell with you and all your beloved in the new and heavenly city, Jerusalem.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 25: The Adoration of the Lamb

Jan van Eyck: The Ghent Altarpiece (Detail)

Thursday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading I: Rev 18:1-2, 21-23; 19:1-3, 9a

“ ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb (NRSV, Rev 19:9a).’ ”

Lord God, how precious the lamb was to our spiritual ancestors who were, we believe, the first to recognize and acknowledge you. They were traveling shepherds and the lamb was their livelihood. The lamb was what was most precious to them. When they sought your favor or your protection on their ongoing journey in search of pasture, they would offer you an unblemished gift, a lamb from the flock. It was offered, killed, cooked and eaten, a sacred meal, Lord, that you shared with them. The blood from the sacrificed animal was smeared on their tents as a reminder to you that they were your grateful people.

When the Israelites, Lord, rehearsed their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, what better way to remember it than by recalling a special meal that they celebrated the night before their departure, not that time in search of pasture, but of freedom. A lamb was offered to you, then slain and eaten in your presence, its blood smeared on the doorposts of the house. It was the precious lamb that brought them out of slavery and eventually into the freedom of the land.

The lamb for your people, Lord, symbolized your saving presence in their lives. It was the lamb that bound the people to you.

In your Son, Jesus the Christ, we who believe recognize that there is no need for an intermediary between you and us, no need for sacrifice offered over and over. In Jesus, in whom we believe that you have become one of us, we are immediately united to you. In Jesus, we recognize that there is no need to sacrifice the lamb, taken out of the flock, because you, Lord our God, take upon yourself our humanity and you, yourself, die with and for us.

We come to understand all of this through Jesus your Son and our brother. That is why we call him the true Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That is why, as we live our lives fully in the present moment, we look forward also to that great feast when all will be reconciled, Lord God, with you. Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Alleluia. Amen.

Nov 24: Not a Hair of Your Head will Perish

Fra Angelico: The Blessed Dancing on the Way to Paradise (Detail from the Last Judgment)

Memorial of Saint Andrew Dung-Lac, priest and martyr,
and his companions, martyrs
Gospel: Lk 21:12-19

“You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls(NRSV, Lk 21:17-19).”

Heavenly Father, I believe that I can always find you by turning within myself because you graciously dwell there in all your glory. But, because of my sinfulness and the limits imposed by time and space, it is not possible for me to comprehend the fullness of your gift and all that you require. We who are the community of the faithful, The Church, understand that the plenitude of your revelation is found most clearly expressed in the mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ whose “yes” to you is total. Jesus truly is for us the Way, the Truth and the Life. The Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has recorded in Holy Writ, for all of humankind, its belief in the Lord Jesus. Of all four gospels, the last one written, the one attributed to John, speaks most eloquently to us of your glory, Father, made manifest in Jesus.

In John’s gospel, Jesus’ passion and death are his hour of glory. Jesus’ suffering and death are completely transfigured by his divine life. Jesus on the cross is not victim but victor. Father, the message of the Holy Spirit for us in the gospel of John, is that the life and power made manifest in Jesus, is also given to us that we may share in it. We too need never be victimized by our adversaries. We too need never surrender to death that is our undoing. Physical pain and physical death may be our lot because of the human condition but with your life to strength us, as it strengthened Jesus, we can be the victors as well in every circumstance. The life and power from you, Father, that we make our own, can also transfigure us so that pain and suffering will be unable finally to touch us and physical death will become a welcomed passage to a deeper and fuller life, with all the saints, in you, Father, with the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Alleluia. Amen.

Nov 23: He Will Judge the World

Michelangelo Buonarroti: The Last Judgment (detail)

Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Responsorial Psalm: 96:10, 11-12, 13

“He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with his truth (NRSV, Ps 96:13b).”

Every moment, Lord, from that very first moment in my mother’s womb, you challenge me with the offer of growth in your divine life that I might become something new. Every moment for me is judgment.

The past falls way. It is no longer. It is what I choose now, in the moment, in response to your gift, that makes me what I am. There is “yes” and “no” and degrees of “yes” and “no.” You, Lord, give me the power and the opportunity to choose but I make the choice. I am responsible. Finally Lord, I am the one who passes judgment on myself, and I do it in every moment. In your one act that is your being, Lord, that judgment is confirmed and you call me out of the moment to something better.

I am grateful to you, Lord, for forgiveness, freely offered if only I accept it. You do not hold my past sins against me. No payment is required. My sins are forgiven and gone, not to be weighed up against me on another day. In each moment then I am exactly what I make myself to be in response to your grace.

It is my prayer, Lord, at the final moment of my physical life, my life here on earth, that, freed by your forgiveness from a past that drops away, I shall embrace your divine life with all the strength that you give to me, a choice that will then be mine through all eternity.

Alleluia. Amen.

Nov 22: The Widow's Mite

Gustave Doré: The Widow's Mite

Memorial of Saint Cecilia, virgin and martyr
Gospel: Lk 21:1-4

“ ‘She out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on (NRSV, Lk 21:4b).’ ”

Lord God, your Son Jesus challenges us in all of his preaching to make you and your coming kingdom the center and focus of everything that we are and everything that we do. The widow is not giving of her surplus but of her livelihood. She is giving her very self. Nothing less is required of us. It is only the act of total giving of self to you, Father, that can give meaning to our lives and the divine life that you share with us.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 21: To Reign is to Serve

Hugo van der Goes: The Calvary Triptych (central panel)

The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King
Gospel: Lk 23:35-43

“There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews (NRSV, Lk 23:38).’ ”

Lord God, how often I wonder what life with you in eternity will be like. I dare not with James and John ask for a place of honor but the answer which Jesus spoke to them is equally the answer for everyone: All he has to offer is a cup of suffering. For those of us who look to be honored, Jesus, your Son, chides us: "For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

Today, Father, we celebrate the closing of the liturgical year with the Solemnity of Christ the King. Jesus is indeed king but in a very new and different meaning of the word. For Jesus, to reign is to serve and he challenges us all to share in that reign and to follow him.

Pontius Pilate had the inscription, “This is the King of the Jews,” placed on the cross over Jesus’ head. Your evangelist Luke well describes the kingship of your Son Jesus in focusing our attention on the power and healing that went out from him to all of those around him. Jesus comforts the women of Jerusalem who had come out to mourn over him. He prays for those who nail him to the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” He comforts the good thief, promising to take him to paradise, and moves the pagan centurion in charge of the Roman guard to proclaim his innocence.

Father, your son Jesus invites all of us to share his kingship and that means to place ourselves, as he did, in the service of others. The gift of your divine life which you offer us at every moment is a gift not to be hoarded up but to be shared. We are truly a royal priesthood when your goodness and love, shared freely with us, goes out from us to all of our sisters and brothers.

Alleluia. Amen.

Nov 20: Death is not Undoing but Passage

William Blake: The River of Life

Saturday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Lk 20:27-40

“Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection (NRSV, Lk 20:36).”

Lord, it is only because of the sin of the world compounded by our own personal sinfulness that death has become the enemy. It is because of the confusion and misunderstanding that sin brings into our lives that death appears to be our undoing.

Even in the experience of your Son Jesus resurrected, his disciples first concluded that it was you, Father, who had snatched him from the jaws of death and raised him to new life.

How difficult it is for us to grasp the truth even when it is thrust upon us. You speak your one word in the depth of our being in every age and to every person and still so much of your truth manages to elude us. It took much prayer and reflection for the early Church to realize that Jesus was not snatched from death but that he indeed rose from the dead through his own power, the divine life that you, Father, share with him and the Holy Spirit, and indeed through the great mystery of your love for us, that you share also with every human being who will accept it.

Lord God, you offer us a share in your divine life from the first moment of our lives. It brings with it much power. It is because of this life given to us that we are creatures who can not only know but also give ourselves to one another, and to you, in love.

You challenge us, Lord, to make you the center and focus of our lives. The destiny to which you call us is eternity with you. Death then is not our undoing but that necessary passage from this world to the next, a passage that we are able to make through our own power because the life that you give us is then taken up by us and becomes our own.

At every moment of our lives, Lord, you challenge us to let go of what we have been up to that moment to grow in the gift of your life ever offered to us. This lifetime of letting go and new and fuller acceptance, even though it is sometimes marred by selfishness and sin, is finally climaxed in the ultimate act of faith by which we must literally let go of everything that we have made of ourselves in this world in order that we and all that we have touched may have a new birth.

Death then Lord is not undoing but climax. The acceptance of death is the final summation of everything that has gone before and the passage to an even richer life with you.

Father in heaven, in John’s gospel, Jesus speaks of his death as his coming hour of glory. Strengthen me that I too may embrace the end of my physical life as an hour of glory for me as well. Help me to live each remaining minute as a preparation for that final moment on earth, in the knowledge that the resurrection to which I look forward has already begun here and the power to accomplish it is mine, given to me from on high.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 19: As with the Temple, So with the Church

El Greco: Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple

Friday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Lk 19:45-48

"Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written, 'My house shall be a house of prayer;' but you have made it a den of robbers (NRSV, Lk 19:45-46).’ "

Lord God, for your Son Jesus the Temple was the center of the people’s worship. And so Jesus was unrelenting towards the money changers and merchants operating in the Temple precincts, whose activities he saw as blasphemous. Father, your Church, which Jesus has left to us, is our center of worship. Each of us has his own prayer life, but it is as Church that all of us, a people, gather to worship you. Over the centuries, just as we as individuals have so often failed the challenge to live truly holy lives, the Church as the gathering of the faithful has also failed, allowing itself to be taken over by the “money changers and merchants.” Not that the problem has always been a matter of economics or even of political power. Each age seems to have brought its own temptations to which we have all too often succumbed, the crusades, the excesses of the Inquisition, conflict with the positive sciences, to name a few.

During this past century, Lord, your Church began a period of aggiornamento, not only of updating but also of reform. For the first time the Church began to recognize itself as not only having a history, a story, but also of being an historical reality called to interact with the world, helping to transform the world by its mission of evangelization, but also, in the process, of being transformed itself.

Father in heaven, you alone are absolute. You are one and unchanging, beyond spatial and temporal limits. But your Church exists in the world which is conditioned by space and time. It is limited by the here and there, by yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Lord God, you speak one word to each of us, spoken from all eternity, but heard in time and rehearsed as best we can in the Church. The great temptation of the Church in many ages but especially in our own era is not that of economic greed or political power. It is rather to deny that we are a people in history, a people on pilgrimage toward you, our only true future. The temptation is to sense, in this way or that, that we have already arrived at our goal, that the truth, because it has already been spoken by you, Lord, once and for all, is now totally within our grasp. The temptation is to take a formula of the Church, often solemnly stated, as the final expression of your absolute truth rather than one more stage on the journey, one more sharing in the absolute truth which is you alone. The temptation is to conclude that since the Church, Lord, is your gift to the people, that the form which it takes in this age is its final form and that further and new expressions of life and ministry rooted in the gospels are not possible.

Yet new understanding of your truth and new forms of ministry are only to be expected as we in the Church continue to move forward to you. We ask you, Lord to bless us on our march.

Lord, as we read the Gospel, we are sometimes confused by the force with which Jesus struck out at those undermining Temple worship. With your help may we recognize the seriousness of our finding a clearer understanding of what the Church is, the form that she must take for our time and the gospel message as it needs to be spoken in today’s world. And then, we pray, Lord, that, with minds open to the Spirit’s guidance towards new and further change, we will find in you the courage to place ourselves in your service.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 18: All are Called to be Priests

Albrecht Durer: The Lamb Who Has Been Slain

Thursday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Reading I: Rev 5:1-10

“ ‘You have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth (NRSV, Rev 5:10).’ ”

Father Almighty, as great as you are in your infinite and awesome majesty, humankind has always been aware that you are approachable. However, we do not always realize with clarity the one word that you have reveal to each of us from our first moment: that you are so very close to us, that you challenge each and everyone of us at the depth of our being with the offer of divine life. Nevertheless, even though we have often not recognized fully your immediate presence, we have always chosen some among us to represent us to you, to go apart to bring you our gifts in supplication and to return with your favor. These persons we call priest and pontiff (pontifex: bridge-builder).

To one among us, our Lord Jesus Christ, we have given the title high priest in a special sense. We give him this name not because we recognize him as one who, in a super-eminent way, goes apart from the people to represent us to you but because in him we have finally become aware that all of us have direct and immediate access to you, that it is not necessary for some of us to go apart to plead our cause. In Christ we have learned that no pleading is necessary because you, Lord God, initiator of all things, are the first to speak, the first to act, and you offer yourself to us, your forgiveness and your very life. It is for us merely to accept and share it with one another in acts of love and kindness.

Yes, Jesus Christ is the high priest, but in new and different ways: In one sense because Christ has abolished the priesthood in making clear that the priest as bridge-builder is unnecessary; in another sense that we come to understand that with him we are all priests, called to stand in the divine presence not merely on this occasion or that but to live in it forever.

The priest is mediator. We pray sincerely, dear Lord, that we, by accepting the gift of your life into our own, may also mediate it, share it, with one another through deeds of love.

We pray also for bishops, presbyters and deacons among us that they may be faithful to the laying on of hands and that in leading us in divine worship may help us realize more fully that with Christ we are all a royal priesthood.

Alleluia. Amen.

Nov 17: The Moral of the Parable of the Ten Pounds

Matthaeus Merian the Elder: The Parable of the Ten Pounds

Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, religious
Gospel: Lk 19:11-28

“He said to the bystanders, ‘Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.’ (And they said to him, “Lord, he has ten pounds!”) ‘I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away (NRSV, Lk 19:24-26).’ ”

Lord God, wherever I am, whatever I am doing, in each moment I stand in your presence. You call me, regardless of everything else, to let go of what I have been up to this moment that I might say “yes” to you, that I might grow in the gift of your divine life. It is this challenge that defines every moment of my life, indeed defines my very life. This is what it means to be a human being: to be called by you to say “yes” ever and ever again and to grow constantly in you.

In thus calling me to yourself in every moment, Lord, you are not summoning me to abandon the world in which I live, but rather to choose you first above all else and then to order family and friends, work and possessions, in fact everything that I am and everything that I do, around you. Thus all finds its meaning in you, and only in you. Without you as the focal point of existence everything that could be so meaningful can only become the source of disharmony and confusion.

Lord, you offered me your life for the first time in my mother’s womb but you did not want me to rest content with that gift as I first received it. To rest secure in your life, I must grow in it ever more deeply, even turning back to you each time that I am distracted by sin. Growth upon growth through all eternity, that is the destiny to which you call me, Lord. And so Jesus said, “To all those who have, more will be given.” If I turn from you, Lord, and instead make some creature the center of my life, even for it is a person worthy of great love and devotion, discord will fill everything that I am and go out to those around me. Thus continued Jesus, “From those who have nothing [From those who have not chosen God], even what they have will be taken away.”

Lord God, strengthen me to make you and your coming kingdom the center and focus of my life and everything that I do that I may grow, and always continue to grow, in true riches that will then abound to all of my sisters and brothers.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 16: It is God Who Calls Us to Come

Nicholas Papas: Zacchaeus in the Sycamore Tree

Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Lk 19:1-10

“When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today (NRSV, Lk 19:5).’ ”

Lord God, how often I cry out to you in my need. I beg you to come to my assistance. I am ready, even hopeful, that you will take over in my life and act for me, act in my place, if only things would be right for me.

How forgetful I am, Lord, that you are the source of all, that it is you who begin everything that is. When I pray to you, begging for your help, it is finally not I who pray, but rather your Holy Spirit living within me. It is the Holy Spirit who cries out within me, whose prayer I then make my own.

It is the Spirit’s own prayer but the words that are uttered, suggested by my own weakness or lack of understanding, are mine. And how they fail the divine inspiration that prompts them.

Such misunderstanding. I act as if the pray is begun with me when it is your own Spirit who has empowered the prayer. I pray for you to come into my life and help me when you are there already, even when I have rejected you in sin, always pressing in upon me at the depth of my being, challenging me to accept ever more fully your divine life and power.

You are there from the beginning in my mother’s womb and you never leave me. If I am a human being, it is because of your divine presence and the offered gift of your grace. It is not you but I who must “come,” accepting the gift which you always offer to me.

In my desperation, Lord, I often beg you to take over in my life and act for me. But your love for me is too great. You have called me to freedom and you never limit or suspend that freedom. What you do for me, and for all of your children, in every moment, is to offer a greater share in your divinity. As I accept that life into my own, it becomes truly my life and empowers me to act in the true freedom of the children of God.

Even before I pray, and even if I were never to pray, you are always there calling me to “come,” to accept the gift that you offer.

In the midst of life’s pains and difficulties, in the midst of my own sinfulness, there is only one deliverance, the acceptance by me of your divine life offered at every moment, an acceptance that will enable me to transform in freedom even the darkest of moments into salvation and light.

Jesus called the tax collector Zacchaeus to come down from the tree that he might visit Zacchaeus’ home, break bread and share life.

Finally it is not we, Lord God, who call you. In your son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, it is you, Lord God, who call every one of us to accept you and to share your life with you.

Alleluia. Amen

Nov 15: The One Word of God Spoken to Us All

English Apocalypse (1250 A.D.): The Angel Testifies

Monday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Reading I: Rev 1:1-4; 2:1-5

"The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place; he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw (NRSV, Rev 1-2).”

Lord God, all who have accepted your gift of divine life and live by that life, hear your word spoken to us. All are called to be a holy priesthood; all have direct access to you in your Son, Jesus Christ. Still, although in faith we accept that you speak to all of us your one word, even as you share your very life with us, we are so filled with awe that often we draw back as if it were not possible.

We are like Abraham who, in speaking to you, Lord, saw only three strangers. Or Jacob who, in life struggle with you, was convinced it was merely an angel. Or, Isaiah who, when he finally realized that you, Lord, were speaking to him, could only accept it in terms of a vision of your majestic presence within the temple precincts surrounded by six-winged seraphs. And even then his first response was not, “Here am I. Send me,” but rather “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips!"

Heavenly Father, you are the One. You are unchanging, in full possession of your being. Humankind has a history, a here and there, a now and then. Hopefully, this history is always moving towards you, the one true future. But you, Father, do not have a history because you just are. You do not act here and there, now and then. You just act. Your act is your being; your being is your act. You simply are who you are.

In your one act that is your being, you speak one word, one ever present word, spoken once and for all.

Father, because you do not have a history but are ever present, the word you speak, because it is spoken once and for all, is not a gradual revelation. But we who live in history hear that word according to our time and place, according to our state of grace or lack of it, according to our enlightened ability to understand or our misunderstanding.

It is because we live in history, Lord, that there is a story to salvation, and an apparent gradual unfolding of revelation. It is because we live in history that we find this insight here and another there, one now and a different one later.

In your Son, Jesus Christ, the end has come. Jesus Christ hears clearly and understands fully. He mediates this truth to us. We struggle to make it our own, bit by bit, as we continue to wend our way through history towards you, our final goal.

Your servant John sat on the Island of Patmos, it is written, and came to an understanding of the final days. He says in the opening lines of the Book of Revelation that the message was brought to him by an angel from God. Oh, how little even the holiest and wisest among us understand. Only a few verses later John will proclaim that we are all a kingdom of priests. Yes, we are a kingdom of priests with direct access to you, Lord our God. Help us, in Jesus Christ, to realize that for those of us who live your life, the truth is given. We need not wait for an emissary from on high. It is given from the beginning of creation and for each of us it is given from the womb.

Because we are creatures who live in history we must grow gradually in the truth even as we are called to grow constantly in divine life. There are many to help us: Jesus himself; what the sacred writers have written; what the community of the faithful, the Church, believes and teaches; not to forget the wisdom of all of our sisters and brothers, even those who say that they cannot believe.

Lord, as I seek always to grow in your life, I must yearn as well to grow in understanding of who you are and what you call us all to become. Strengthen me to seek out the wisdom of the ages from the Church and the world around me, but call me first and foremost to turn inward to the depth of my being where I shall find you, closer to me than I am to myself, speaking your one word as you share your life with me.

Alleluia. Amen.

Nov 14: Our Strength Comes from the Lord

Paolo Uccello: St. Stephen Defending his Faith in Jesus Christ

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Lk 21:5-19

“This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict (NRSV, Lk 21:13-15).”

Father in heaven, I first accepted the gift of your Holy Spirit while still in my mother’s womb. When? No one can be sure. Certainly by the time that I was capable of surviving on my own outside the womb. Perhaps when the brain was physically developed enough to support consciousness. Still only on the verge of personhood, and in the absence of language and logic, it was in your same power as giver of the gift that the “yes” was spoken from my mother’s womb, the “yes” that transformed what had been merely physical human life into the life of a new human being sharing already in your divine life. Spoken in the power of your Holy Spirit, yet it became my own personal “yes,” the first of my life. Since that moment, you, Lord, have been calling me forward to you, challenging me in your Spirit to say “yes” over and over again that I might grow constantly in the divinity that you share with all human beings and make manifest in all of creation.

To be a human being is always to live in your saving presence. It is grace, more than reason, that defines humanity. I am human, Father, because you constantly offer me your life even when I reject the gift. In sin I may reject that divine presence but I cannot remove myself from it. That is the horror of sin: to reject what I am fundamentally at the heart of my being.

Lord, when, in my mother’s womb, I received from you the gift of being a human person sharing in your divine life, I, likewise in the power of the Holy Spirit, deep within me, in the very gift of divine life, heard you speak a word to me. Just as you offer your divine life to every human in every time and every place, so in that gift you speak to all the same one word, revealing yourself once and for all and calling everyone to you as to one's only true future.

This is the same one word that you spoke to our first parents, to Abraham and Moses, to all of the prophets, and indeed to every person. We all hear this word differently because of who we are and where we are on the journey towards you who are our future. In Jesus Christ that word is fully heard and shared with us.

Because we are not only spiritual beings but also material beings living out our earthly lives in history, so much of what we learn is communicated through the senses. The world which we share with others is largely a world that we can see and touch and manipulate. But, Lord God, the true fount of knowledge is not outside of us, a knowledge that has to be acquired through the senses. No, true wisdom is found within by listening to your one word spoken constantly to us from that first moment in our mother’s womb, the same one word that you speak to all of your daughters and sons, to every human being.

At all times I can arrive at a greater understanding of self which is finally determined by my relationship with you, Lord, not first of all by experience in the world, nor by reason alone, but principally by a careful inward listening to the one word that you, Father, speak to me and to all.

This is the word, hopefully ever more fully grasped and understood, that will give me the strength that I need in all of life’s situations, especially the most difficult, when your enemies press in upon me. Then your truth, more clearly comprehended than ever before, will confound your enemies and bring me closer to you who are the source and destiny of everything that I am.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 13: Prayer Changes, not God, but the Person who Prays

Paul Gauguin: A Breton Woman at Prayer


Memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin
Gospel: Lk 18:1-8

"Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart (NRSV, Lk 18:1)."

Lord God, you are the unchangeable One, yet we cry out to you to come to our assistance, to grant us favor after favor, to overcome our ills and satisfy all of our needs. Still you remain the One who cannot change, who cannot respond to what we ask of you because to respond would make you other than who you are in your ever-present now. Your act is identical with who you are, the unchangeable One. From all eternity, in the same one act, you pour out your Holy Spirit upon us.

It is we who pray, not you, who must respond. It is we who must change. Our prayers to you which give you praise and glory and thanksgiving must also sensitize us to accept that one gift which you give to us in every time and place, a share in your own divine life. That gift of life always brings with it forgiveness for our sins if we will only accept it. It also brings with it power to transform ourselves and the world around us.

In our prayer to you, O Lord, we are often concerned about the needs of others, their spiritual and temporal needs. You offer your life to all. We who pray must learn to accept it ourselves and mediate it to others even as they mediate it to us. The power to overcome the ills of world is given. It has always been given. In our prayer all of us who are human must learn to accept the one gift which you, Lord, pour out upon us. All of us together must learn to use the gift of your divine life to grow mutually in you as we overcome evil in the world. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nov 12: Every Moment is the Saving Moment

Cornelis van Haarlem: The Deluge

Memorial of St. Josaphat, bishop and martyr
Gospel: Lk 17:26-37

"Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them (NRSV, Lk 17: 26-27)."

O Lord, our God, we are surrounded on all sides by events that threaten. No moment is secure. Nature menaces us with storm and flood, or again with drought and famine. We are terrorized by many of our fellow humans, some of whom are even ready to sacrifice their own lives to bring about our undoing. Still, we are often our own worst enemies ignoring the plight of our sisters and brothers and too frequently adding to it. But, in the midst of it all, Lord, you are always there with your life and power that transform every instant into the saving moment in which we can accept your divine life and grow in it more fully. There is no time or place in all of history that is deprived of your gracious presence.

True, there are moments when you seem to be absent from our lives but it is always our sinfulness or misunderstanding that blinds us to your presence. We are the ones who turn away from you, not you from us.

What separates us who are human from the rest of creation is that in every moment you are ever present to us offering us your grace if only we would accept it. It is indeed this grace that is offered which constitutes us as human beings even when we refuse it and turn away from you.

O God most loving, you are present to us in many ways that make visible and tangible your offering of self, but even the absence of these tangible signs cannot deprive us of your gracious presence for you are with us in all times and all places.

Help us, Lord, our God, to say “yes” to your presence that we may turn threat into hope and death into life, your own divine life. Help us, in saying “yes” to you, that we also share this saving grace with all of our sisters and brothers.

Alleluia! Amen