Sabbath Rest - Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time (Heb 4:1-5, 11)

When God established the original covenant with Adam, the sign of the covenant was the Sabbath.  God spent six days building creation.  God "rested and refreshed" on the seventh day.  

The idea of honoring the Sabbath carried forward with the new covenants with Noah and Abraham; and it was eventually codified in the covenant with Moses in the form of the third commandment of the Ten Commandments.  Keeping the Sabbath (or the Lord's day) holy continues to be an important aspect of the new and everlasting covenant Jesus established with His Church.

The bottom line is that by honoring the Sabbath we honor God, His work of creation, and His savings actions.  It is an opportunity to retreat from worldly concerns and the forms of servitude through which work, money, and other worldly concerns can attempt lay claim on us.

There are two points I would like to focus on for us to keep in mind as we attempt to honor the Sabbath in our faith life.

First, we need to make sure we are included in the covenant God has with His Church.  Jesus initiates the new and everlasting covenant through His divine nature, and Jesus responds to this covenant through His human nature.  Somehow, we need to participate in the response of Jesus.  This occurs through our active participation in the Mass and our reverent reception of the Eucharist.  As Jesus said, "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."  This is why it is imperative to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation, and why the Church makes Mass attendance obligatory to the faith.  Objectively speaking, if we are not attending Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and/or we are not receiving the Eucharist at least during the Easter season, then we are not included in the covenant God established with the Church to be the means of our salvation.

Second, we are called to step away from worldly concerns and allow ourselves and others to rest and refresh.  This is where we have to do a bit of an examination of conscience.  Do we spend our Sundays running errands, catching up on unnecessary work, and being absorbed in worldly concerns as opposed to being attentive to how God is operating in our life?  The Chief Information Officer of the company I work for recently challenged us to block 90 minutes on our calendar to step away from our work to do something nice for someone else.  What if we took that attitude in terms of how we plan to spend our time on Sunday and how we give honor to the Lord?  Is there an opportunity to spend 90 minutes after Mass reconnecting with God, self, and others?  Are there opportunities to spend that time purposefully practicing one or more of the Corporal or Spiritual works of mercy?  How is God calling you to spend your Sunday?  

Ultimately, Jesus is trying to lead us to spiritual perfection, and it is in how we love God, self, and others that we ultimately find our fulfillment and true happiness.  Properly honoring the Sabbath will help to free us from the worldly pressures and anxieties of life.  This will enable us to better hear how the Lord is calling us in our spiritual journey.

Time to Get to Work - Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (Mk 16:15-20)

 I find this week of the liturgical calendar to be one of the most interesting and inviting, yet also one of  the most challenging of the Church year.  We wrap up the Easter season by celebrating the Ascension of our blessed Lord into heaven, and begin the transition from the Easter celebration, through Pentecost, and on into Ordinary time.  Just imagine what the the Apostles were feeling, after all they experienced with the passion, death, and resurrection of our blessed Lord and now His triumphant ascension into heaven.  On top of that, they have been promised power through an outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and have been entrusted to continue Christ's mission through the Catholic Church.  Let's face it, there is nothing ordinary about that.  Yet, here we are...spiritually speaking, the same transition, the same challenge, the same mission, and yes, the same promise of power and the same promise of the Holy Spirit.

As we listened to the Gospel today, the last command Jesus gave the Apostles before ascending into heaven was, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).  Since that time, the bishops of the Catholic Church,  who are the successors to the Apostles, along with the priests and deacons have continued the mission that Christ gave to the Apostles.  

Yet, we would be in err if we didn't recognize the rightful responsibility of the laity to actively participate in the mission of the Church as well.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen famously declared that it would not be the bishops, nor the priests, nor the religious that save the Catholic Church (Word on Fire).  He firmly believed that it would be the active participation of the laity that is key to the success of Christ's mission on Earth.  

In his encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium, which is latin for Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis reminds us that the mission of the Church is evangelization and that each of the baptized are called to actively participate in this mission (Evangelii Gaudium, 120).  He goes so far as to say that authentic faith involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it (Evangelii Gaudium, 183).

Yet, St. James reminds us, faith without works is dead (James 2:17).  In a world of distractions, conflicting priorities, and consistent busyness, a deep desire simply is not enough.  Pope Francis goes on to say that it is no longer possible to claim that religion should be restricted to the private sphere and that it exists only to prepare souls for heaven (Evangelii Gaudium, 182).  We have to begin to step outside of ourselves to experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit around us.  We must be an active participant in the mission of the Church reaching out to our neighbors, especially the poor, and introducing them to the fullness of Christ in the Catholic Church.

Does this sound like a daunting proposition?  Fear not!  As we read today in the letter to the Ephesians, Jesus gives grace to individuals in His Church for the continuance of the mission Christ gave to the Catholic Church (Ephesians 4:7,12).   Just as the Holy Spirit was poured upon the Apostles to give them the grace to help them in their missionary work.  So to, the Holy Spirit will provide all the grace we need to fulfill how we are called to participate in the mission.  

There are several principles we can follow to more fully participate in a missionary community and truly witness to Christ through faith, hope, and love.

Always trust that our blessed Lord takes the initiative in any evangelical opportunity (Evangelii Gaudium, 24).   We just need to step with Him.  Even if an evangelical effort appears to fail, we can trust Jesus will bring about the good He intended to bring out of the effort.

Be patient with and responsive to the needs of others.  Offer appropriate support when the oppportunity arises (Evangelii Gaudium, 24).  Jesus was clear that He wants us to  feed the  hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, cloth the naked, and visit the ill and imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-40).  We need to be open to the people Christ sends into our lives for us to journey with them in their struggles, helping introduce them to Christ and His Church as we service to them.

Be concerned with bearing fruit through our efforts for the good of others (Evangelii Gaudium, 24).  The ultimate act of love of neighbor is to bring them closer to Christ through the Sacramental life of the Church, especially the Eucharist.  Jesus even said, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” (John 6:53).  We need to be responsive to opportunities to invite our family, friends, and neighbors to the heavenly banquet our blessed Lord prepared for us at the Mass.

Take the time to be joyful and rejoice often  (Evangelii Gaudium, 24).  Pope Francis reminds us, “an evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral (Evangelii Gaudium, 10).”  We should always be mindful of the attitude we project when evangelizing.  He encourages us to “recover and deepen our enthusiasm, that delightful and comforting joy of evangelizing, even when it is in tears that we must sow” (Evangelii Gaudium, 10).  One of the best ways I know to do this is to always find something to be grateful for and help others to be grateful as well.

Be flexible and reach out often (Evangelii Gaudium, 28).  Pope Francis reminds us “the parish is the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God’s word, for growth in the Christian life, for dialogue, proclamation, charitable outreach, worship and celebration (Evangelii Gaudium, 28).”  Find ways to increase our active participation in the Mass and other liturgical celebrations.  Be open to opportunities to join small faith groups and other parish committees.  Additionally, participate in parish outreach programs to inactive parishioners, home-bound parishioners, and the like.   4-H groups teach “that which we keep for ourselves, we lose; but that which we give away, we keep.”  They do this by getting out of themselves by helping someone else.  They call it the Joy of Service (4-H).  The same axiom applies to our spiritual lives.   If we want to continue to consistently experience the joy of the Gospel, we must regularly participate in the evangelical mission of the Church by getting outside ourselves and reaching out to someone else.

Continue to improve as an evangelizer (Evangelii Gaudium, 28).  Pope Francis reminds us “a missionary heart never closes itself off, never retreats into its own security, never opts for rigidity and defensiveness. It realizes that it has to grow in its own understanding of the Gospel and in discerning the paths of the Spirit, and so it always does what good it can, even if in the process, its shoes get soiled by the mud of the street (Evangelii Gaudium, 45).”  It is important that we continue to grow in our understanding of the Gospel and the faith.  Some examples of how to do this is to study scripture, read good books related to the faith, join a small faith discussion group, work with a spiritual director, and the like.

Seek to abandon complacent attitudes  (Evangelii Gaudium, 33).  There is an old axiom, if you are not moving forward, you are falling behind.  No where is that more true than our spiritual life and how we evangelize.  Ideally, we are continually growing closer to the Lord and helping those the Lord places in our life to continually grow closer to Him as well.  Do we have an increased awareness of God's presence in our life and how He interacts with us compared to the past?  Do we see an increased display of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in our lives compared to the past?  Do you find others seek you out for advice and support more than in the past?  If not, now may be the time for us to challenge our spiritual status quo.  This can be done by reaching out beyond our comfort level in service to others.  Spiritual direction and small faith groups may also be a help.

As we enter into ordinary time, it is important that we embrace the evangelical mission Christ gave the Apostles in our Gospel reading today.  These principles may help us better participate in the mission.

Structure helps me to incorporate these types of principles into my life.  If that is true for you, tt may be beneficial to more fully embrace the timeless practice of making every Friday a day of self-denial and penitential witness in memory of the Lord’s ultimate sacrifice for us (Fast).  Historically, this was a requirement for the Church whereby the faithful abstained from meat every Friday through out the entire year.  Since Vatican II, the requirement to abstain from meat was lessened to only Friday's during Lent.  However, we are still encouraged to take up some work of self-denial by free choice on Friday's outside of Lent (Fast).  I propose that we take meaningful action to use our time, talent, and/or treasure on Fridays to help the evangelical mission of the Church.  Such an exercise can be an excellent way to participate in this call for self-denial and facilitate spiritual growth.

If after employing these principles into our spiritual lives, we still struggle with feeling the joy of the Gospel...if we still find the mission of the Church overwhelming, I recommend participating in a Spiritual Gifts Inventory seminar.  These seminars, conducted by the Catholic Renewal Center, help attendees discover their spiritual gifts and offer some ideas on how to use those gifts in the service of our blessed Lord.  They are a wonderful resource that can help us to better understand how Christ is calling us to more fully participate in the mission.

A final thought, the Apostles and disciples spent nine days in the upper room following the ascension of the Lord until the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  They spent these nine days in prayer, which is where early Christians got the idea for prayer novenas.  They prayed about their fears and concerns, surrendering them to the Lord.  They prayed to be able to participate in the mission and accept the challenge the Lord gave.   They prayed for the coming of the Holy Spirit.  They prayed that their hearts would be open to receive the Holy Spirit when that promise was fulfilled.  They prayed that they may have the courage and the strength to follow the Holy Spirit.  They prayed to surrender their life and their will to the Holy Spirit in that His will, as opposed to their will, would be done.

I ask that you consider spending this week reflecting on the upper room.  Imagine yourself in the upper room with our Blessed Mother and the Apostles.  Allow yourself to hear the prayers they are praying.  Allow yourself to experience the emotions they were feeling after all they had experienced with the passion, death, and resurrection of our blessed Lord and His triumphant ascension into heaven.  Allow yourself to experience the anticipation they must have felt over the promise of the Holy Spirit, and perhaps the anxiety they may have felt over the impending mission.  Allow these emotions to become your own emotions.  Pray that your heart will be opened for the fullness of the Holy Spirit and pray for a personal Pentecost in your life.  Pray that the Holy Spirit will help you hear God's calling for you, give you power, and lead you in your work on the mission the Lord has given us.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth.

Let us now take this intention to the alter as we prepare to receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord and Savior.

Family Tradition - Thursday of the Third Week of Advent (MT 1:1-17)

Whenever we read the genealogy of Jesus, I am reminded of the important lessons that we can learn from the stories behind the names in His ancestry.  The Gospel reading today, not only serves to present the lineage of Jesus, but can also represent the major heroes and milestones of Salvation History in the Old Testament, encompassing nearly 2,000 years and includes the ancient Patriarchs and the Exodus, the high Kingdom of David and Solomon, the split of the Kingdom into two, the Babylonian Exile, and the struggles of the postexilic community to restore the land.

Among the lessons we can learn from our spiritual ancestors are reminders that God is in control and has a divine plan, that God can use sinners and those that are seen by the world as “unremarkable” to make His will manifest, that God has an unerring capacity to bring light out of the darkness, and that God ultimately acts in and through His covenant with us.

When God established His covenant with Abraham, He set forth a plan of salvation that continued to evolve over time as the people of Israel continued their pilgrimage through Salvation History.  Sometimes, the light of salvation can be difficult to see, but we can see God's promise endure through the many challenges Israel faced.

The genealogy shows us God's providence endures through time.  Take for example Ruth.  Ruth was an outsider from Moab that had married an Israelite husband.  Her husband and sons died and she decided to move to Israel with her mother-in-law.  After some time  in Israel, she met Boaz, whom she later married.  Their child, Obed, is the grandfather of David, the great King whom God had ordained to rescue Israel from the Palestinians and establish the Davidic kingdom, which is a foreshadow of the Messianic kingdom established by Christ.  To say Ruth was “unremarkable” to the world (and even to Israel as a community) is an understatement.  Yet, she is a particularly important piece of the overall plan God put together.  The same is true in our own lives.  As “unremarkable” as we may feel at times, God has a plan for us that has important consequences for Salvation History.  

David, himself, was quite “unremarkable” as a simple shepherd boy.  In fact, he was nearly overlooked when Samuel was searching to anoint the next king of Israel.  Yet, David has a more remarkable lesson for us to be mindful of.  Many of us have sins in our past (maybe even sins we are still struggling with today), sins that might leave us feeling like we aren't good enough to serve God.  Yet, we must remember that David, the greatest King of Israel, was a murderer and an adulterer.  Even with those mortal sins in David's life, David was still God's anointed one and God did great things through him.  We, too, have been anointed by God by virtue of our baptism and confirmation.  If we, like David, truly repent of our sins and live within the context of the covenant (which for us, is to live the sacramental life of the Church), God will do great thing through us as well.

After the heights of the Kingdom during the reign of David and Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel split into two and eventually fell to the Babylonian empire.  The Babylonian exile is among the darkest periods of Salvation History.  It is a time of great persecution and suffering of God's people.  It is during this period that we read of forced worship of pagan idols, persecution, and the abandonment of the faith.  It is during the Babylonian exile that we hear the story of the three men cast into the fiery furnace and the story of the mother that witnessed the martyrdom of her seven sons prior to her own martyrdom.  

The Babylonian exile should remind us that there are consequences when we start to become lax in our faith life, when we do not make our best effort to understand God's will and  we make choices that are not proper to living within the context of the covenant.  

As we reflect on the Advent season, we should also take consolation of the more positive message we can receive from the Babylonian exile.  No matter how dark the Babylonian exile was, God was able to bring light out of the darkness.  

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace, God delivered them and used the situation to remind the faithful of His mighty wonders; that His kingship is an everlasting kingship, and His dominion endures through all generations.  Further, when the mother witnessed the martyrdom of her seven sons prior to her own martyrdom, the Lord used it as an opportunity to remind us to hope in the eternal life that is born of serving the Lord and living within the context of the covenant.  

These examples, along with many others, show that God uses the dark periods of Salvation History to produce heroes of the faith.    God raises these heroes within the context of the covenant.  God raised the Judges in the Mosaic covenant, and similarly He raised the Church Fathers in the Messianic Covenant.  God raised prophets (like Elisha) and kings (like Josias) to meet the specific needs of His people at those respective times of Salvation History.  Similarly, God rose specific leaders in the Church, such as St. Francis De Sales and Pope Clement XI.  It is through the covenant, which for the the Messianic covenant is the sacramental life of the Church, that we are granted the grace to face the challenging times of our day, the grace allow God to transform us into the heroes needed to make His plan manifest, and the grace to allow God's light to shine through us into the darkness.   

Advent offers us an opportunity to reflect on our full spiritual heritage and open our hearts to what God is calling us to be.  It is an opportunity to repent of any sins that may hold us back from our full spiritual potential and to renounce any lies that we may not be good enough or somehow too “unremarkable” for God to use us.  It is an opportunity to embrace the holy silence that we may better recognize how God is working through us and around us, even in what seems to be the darkness of the world.  It is a time to re-embrace the everlasting Messianic covenant that Jesus shed His blood to establish; most especially in the true presence of His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist.  It is a time to fully surrender our will to God and remember that He has a plan that “justice shall flourish in His time, and fullness of peace for ever”.  Everyone in the genealogy of Jesus had an important role in making His plan manifest.  Similarly, every baptized Christian also has an important role in making His plan manifest.  What is your role?