Wednesday, November 26, 2025

 

Wednesday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

(Daniel 5:1-5.13-14.23-28; Luke 21:12-19)

The English poet John Donne wrote a masterful essay known by the phrase “for whom the bell tolls.”  The author takes an everyday experience of hearing a funeral bell toll into a meditation on death.  He says that the death toll should remind people that they too will die to face God’s judgment for how they conducted their lives.  Donne advises all, “… never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”  A similar message is given with “the writing on the wall” in today’s first reading.

The three words, “mene,” “tekel,” and “peres,” are from the ancient Near East language Aramaic.  Each can be used as both a noun and a verb.  Mene as a noun is a unit of weight or currency.  As a verb, it means to count or number. Here it tells King Belshazzar that his days are numbered. Tekel is also a unit or currency.  In addition, it means to weigh.  It indicates to Belshazzar that God has found him weighing little or wanting in virtue.  Peres means a half portion and to divide.  Belshazzar’s kingdom will be divided between the Persians and the Medes.

We can be sure that we are going to die.  As rich as he is, we hope not to die like Belshazzar.  Rather let us live virtuous lives so that God finds us at death worthy of eternal life with Him.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Thursday of the Third Week of Easter

(Acts 8:26-40; John 6:44-51)

“I shall not live until I have seen God, and when I have seen him, I shall never die.”  The seventeenth century mystic John Donne wrote these words to profess not only his belief in the resurrection of the dead but also his wariness about earthly life.  Here, he goes on to say, we see but appearances; in seeing God we will know all things as they truly are.  In today’s gospel Jesus draws a similar distinction between the manna which the ancestors of the Jews ate in the desert and the true bread of life.

The Jews seek sustenance.  They tire from getting up every day to perform back-breaking work just to put bread on the table.  They remember the story of the Israelites being fed with manna and see in Jesus a comparable source of food.  Of course, Jesus knows that they chiefly desire to satisfy their hunger so he challenges them to see all food as only a sign of what gives eternal sustenance.  You have to eat my Flesh, he says, to really have your eternal needs met.  He means that they have to believe in him – to accept that he has come from God and to love each other.

We come to receive the Eucharist.  When it is offered to us, we say, “Amen,” I believe.  We must understand that we are committing ourselves to him.  We believe that he is God and that heeding his command to love – not just in words but with deeds – will lead us beyond our wants into eternal life.

Homilette for Friday, November 13, 2009

Memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin

(Wisdom 13:1-9; Luke 17:26-37)

“Don’t ask for whom the bells toll,” the poet-priest John Donne writes, “it tolls for thee.” Of course, the bells in mind here ring the death march. Although we prefer to put off thinking about it, the hour of our judgment is near. For some of us it will be sooner rather than later that we give account of our lives.

Jesus makes the same point in the gospel today. With an image that might send a chill up a polar bear’s back, he says, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather.” That is, death is part of our lot in life because we have bodies which will one day stop functioning. So, Jesus adjures us, we must prepare ourselves for the inevitable.

Jesus’ prescription for dealing with our mortality deserves attention. We are not to try staving off death indefinitely through art or science. Rather, we are to give ourselves over to death by denying ourselves. We can look toward St. Frances Cabrini as an example. Like Mother Teresa two generations later, Mother Cabrini worked tirelessly to meet the needs of the poor. It is said that parents chided their teenagers when they came home late, “Who do you think you are -- Mother Cabrini walking the streets day and night?” Still we hope that our young will, like her, extend themselves for the good of others.