Tuesday, September 3, 2024

 

Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great, pope and Doctor of the Church

(I Corinthians 2:10b-16; Luke 4:31-37)

In today’s first reading St. Paul almost opposes the “Spirit of God” to the “Spirit of the world.”  There are great differences between the two.  The “Spirit of God” promotes love, peace, and understanding, and the “spirit of the world” often advises pleasure, prestige, and power.  But often enough the world, imbued with the Holy Spirit since Christ’s mission on earth, reflects God’s goodness.

St. Gregory the Great recognized that the material world is not bad in and of itself.  He encouraged missionaries to use the vestiges of paganism to evangelize.  As pagan worshipped nature, Gregory condoned processions into the fields to bless natural surroundings.  As pagans kept idols, Gregory admonished missionaries to consider the saints as minor deities worthy of veneration.

We also should not condemn things material.  Objectively, they are neutral.  They may be put to good or to bad uses.  Of course, we want to make good use of everything so that they too may give praise to God.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

(I Corinthians 2:10b-16; Luke 4:31-37)

An American recently wrote an article about her experience living in a community of L’Arche in Italy.  L’Arche pairs people with severe disabilities with more regularly healthy people.  The writer described being alone with Fabio, a deaf mute with a broken face and below average mental capacity.  She said that she and Fabio were in the community chapel gazing at the crucifix when Fabio opened his arms as if he meant to embrace Jesus or, perhaps, in imitation of Jesus sacrificing himself for the world.  After remaining in this pose a while, Fabio turned to embrace the writer – a gesture which invited her into the brokenness of the cross and Fabio’s own brokenness.  The writer too opened her arms and smiled back at Fabio.  She said that she never felt more whole than she did at that moment when Fabio enabled her to experience a touch of Christ’s love for the world.  St. Paul writes of this experience in today’s first reading.

The passage does not mean to criticize true wisdom.  When it speaks of the “spirit of the world,” it is referring to the competition for fame, fortune, and pleasure that drives humans everywhere.  It recognizes the futility of such pursuit and recommends a more authentic spiritual quest.  It advocates putting on “the mind of Christ” which inclines people not to worry about their own needs so much as to assist others with theirs.

Of course, we normally reel at the prospect of such sacrifice.  We want to enjoy as many of the comforts of life as we can afford.  But on deeper reflection we realize that as Christ died on the cross and rose to glory out of love for us so we will share his resurrected life the more we die to self. 

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

(I Corinthians 2:10b-16; Luke 4:31-37)

One college man was telling a companion how he was listening to himself recite the Creed at Mass.  He said rather defiantly “Since when do I believe in everything ’seen and unseen’ (these were the days of the former translation)? “I don’t believe in what is unseen.”  He continued, “Since when do I believe in the Holy Spirit? Where is he?  I don’t believe in him.”  Fortunately, the young man was quite drunk and not completely responsible for the blasphemy.  However that may be, his words belie the Spirit of God to whom St. Paul witnesses in the first reading today.

Paul tells the Christians of Corinth that the rebirth in hope that they have experienced is nothing natural.  Rather it comes from God’s very Holy Spirit.  It is not an illusion because it raised Christ from the dead. Indeed, it will bring about their resurrection when Christ returns in glory.  For now the Spirit brings the community together in love despite differences of age, gender, temperament and national origin.

We find the same Spirit at work today.  It enables us to see the world in a different light.  We are not here to show off our talents so that we might be given a fleeting experience of adulation.  No, the Spirit enables us to serve others in humility that we might enjoy God’s eternal wonder.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

(I Corinthians 2:10b-16; Luke 4:31-37)

Sr. St. John died a prophet. Entering the convent in 1942, she spent most of her years teaching. At first she concentrated on simple messages from catechism and English grammar. As time passed, her lessons touched on more controversial subjects like the needs of the poor and of prisoners. Perhaps Sr. St. John showed her prophetic zeal most when she volunteered to serve with sisters from her congregation in Rwanda just after the massacres there. She returned to the United States to remind Americans that divine love does not come easy but extracts the whole of one’s being: body, soul, and mind. In the first reading today, St. Paul names this kind of sacrifice as having the Spirit of God.

Paul has proclaimed Jesus Christ to the Corinthians by telling how Christ died on the cross as the supreme example of God’s love for the world. Now the Corinthians are being urged to assume that love for their own with exemplary lives in support of one another. They are to stop boasting and bickering, and most of all they must put aside all immoral behavior. They are to live in the Spirit of God that has been revealed to them.

We also are tested every day whether we live in the same Spirit. It is not just our outrage with abortion but, really more critically, our care for our neighbors that shows whether God’s Spirit has become our own.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

(I Corinthians 2:10b-16; Luke 4:31-37)

The Knights of Columbus fraternity has called American Catholic men together for well over a hundred years. Perhaps for that reason and the fact that its membership embraces all classes and kinds the organization is sometimes overlooked. Yet throughout the country and indeed the world, as a recent issue of its magazine demonstrates, Knights distinguish themselves by works of charity.

In the first reading today St. Paul tells the Corinthians that Christians are moved not by the spirit of the world but that of Christ. His spirit assures us that charity is not just an ephemeral human inclination but the mode of living as God’s family. We love one another and assist the needy, as the Knights of Columbus do systematically, because we have become daughters and sons of God in Christ.

Not altogether helpfully, a contemporary way of thinking democratizes God’s family. It is true that all humans are created by God and in God’s image making them in a sense His children, but real membership on God’s family consists of sharing in God’s holy Spirit of love. We see this Spirit in action when people are habitually disposed to the welfare of others and in crisis extend a hand of charity.