Thursday, September 15, 2016

Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows

(I Corinthians 15:1-11; John 12:25-27)

In both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels Jesus calls those who mourn “blessed.”  Who these people are is not clear in either account.  Are they those who mourn their sins?  Or perhaps they share the sorrows of the people around them suffering loss of one kind or another?  Today we celebrate Mary, the woman of sorrows.  There can be little doubt why she grieves.  Her son Jesus has died on the cross.  No mother takes the loss of a child that she has birthed and raised easily.  Losing such a perfect son as Jesus is that much more difficult to bear.

We too have lost someone special at the cross.  We did not know him then but from all that we have learned about him since, our loss is also deep.  He was like an older brother who, if he were here in person, would guide our way and support our weakness.  Then how could Jesus tell us that our time to rejoice?  Can we sustain such contrary failings for long?

We are to rejoice because Jesus is actually among us.  As St. Paul proclaims in the first reading, he has risen from the dead.  He is present in the care we give to the poor.  He is present when we hear the gospels and all the thoughts which echo them.  Most of all, he is present in the Eucharist which gathers us in love to provide us his physical body and blood. 

The Christian perspective has a dual focus.  It misses seeing Jesus as he walked upon the earth and waits anxiously for his promised return.  At the same time it rejoices to find him present in many ways beneath the surface of everyday life.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

(I Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 7:36-50)

A woman was giving testimony to her faith.  She talked of her father.  “A hard man,” she called him.  She said that he taught his family that religion is for the weak.  He scolded them not to have any part of it. Rather than take refuge in religion he desired that they become self-reliant.  From observing many needy people coming to church, it may seem that the man’s harsh criticism of religion is on target.

But such as perspective cannot account for what St. Paul writes in the first reading.  Paul himself was as tough a person as they come.  His body was no doubt covered with wounds from the beatings he endured for his faith.  More importantly – indeed, what is all important – he provides a list of people who saw the risen Lord Jesus.  It is specific and extensive.  It cannot be fanciful because Paul himself – oddly enough, he intimates – encountered him.  These appearances assure Christians that faith is not in vain.  Indeed, the appearances fill believers with the yearning to meet Christ in death.

The Church is for both the weak and the strong.  It brings people together to support one another.  It teaches us that self-reliance is an illusion of the strong.  It enables us to find the image of Christ in the weak.  Finally, it shows us that by loving one another, we imitate the resurrected Christ, testify to his living presence, and prepare ourselves to meet him in the end. 

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Saints Andrew Kim Tae-gon, priest and martyr; Paul Chong Ha-sang, martyr; and companions, martyrs

(I Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 7:36-50)

In this time of execution in the name of religion we are reminded today that Christians have suffered martyrdom in every age and throughout the earth. Saints Andrew Kim, Paul Chong, and many companions were killed for being Catholic Christians in Korea less than two hundred years ago. Their story includes a tribute to lay people who evidently had brought Christianity to Korea at least a generation before. When French missionaries arrived in 1836, they found the faith rooted in several communities.

Andrew Kim’s father was a Korean official who converted to Christianity. Eventually he too died a martyr for practicing his faith in a land where it was forbidden. Andrew became the first native Korean to be ordained a priest. In his early twenties when he returned to Korea to minister to his people, he was tortured and beheaded at the age of twenty-five. His dying testimony reflects the hope of the resurrection that St. Paul proclaims in the first reading today. Andrew said: “My immortal life is on the point of beginning. Become Christians if you wish to be happy after death.”

Living in western societies, we cannot accept tranquilly the news that Muslims would execute innocent people because of the flimsiest of relations to the producer of a libel movie. Both actions are regrettable although the first deserves greater condemnation than the second. Still Christ compels us to pray for and not to damn the perpetrators. His innocent suffering brought him to the resurrection and won for us the grace to love our enemies.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Memorial of Saints Cornelius, pope, and Cyprian, bishop and martyr

(I Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 7:36-50)

Albert Camus, the twentieth century French existentialist, wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus that suicide is the most important philosophical question. First and foremost, he opined, one should decide whether life is worth living before bothering to think about any other thing. In a similar vein, it might be said that the most important religious question for us Christians is whether Jesus rose from the dead. We might suspend every other article of faith until we address that issue.

In the first reading today Paul faces the question head-on. He tells us not just that Christian witnesses have testified to Jesus’ resurrection since it presumably happened, but also that he personally, and quite unlikely, saw the risen Christ. He admits that the vision was a special grace and that it completely turned around his life.

Reading the letters of St. Paul, we feel like he is a contemporary. There is no stiltedness to his words or lack of sensibility in what he says. Rather, he writes as honestly and passionately as Rachel Carson in The Silent Spring or John Steinbeck in Travels with Charlie. The witness of these letters, confirmed by Paul’s enduring multiple hardships to proclaim it to others, reassures us that Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is no fiction. He rose to give us, like he gave Paul, the grace to conquer sin in our lives and to survive the death that is to come.