Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

(II Kings 19:9b-11.14-21.31-35a.36; Matthew 7:6.12-14)

Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, has the intriguing title of “preacher of the papal household.”  His duties include delivering a weekly sermon during Advent and Lent to Vatican officials.  In one Lenten sermon Fr. Cantalamessa advised that people not love others like they loves themselves.  He reasoned that many people are so self-indulgent that they do harm by treating them as they treat themselves.  Although the preacher makes a good point, Jesus’ maxim found in today’s gospel remains valid.

As Jesus indicates, the “Golden Rule” is not his alone.  Different versions of it are found in the sacred writings of most religions and well as the Hebrew Scriptures.  Since everyone wants to be cherished, the rule has been rephrased as “Love others as you love yourself.”  Jesus himself makes this revision in the Gospel of Luke.   The statement takes for granted that we want what is truly good for ourselves -- nothing false, spiteful, or harmful.

A number of years ago there was a controversy about another rule of thumb involving Jesus.  People wondered if “What would Jesus do?” (“WWJD?” was the popular acronym) is a sufficient guide for action.  Some thought it impossible to know what Jesus would do.  Really?  Doesn’t he tell us what he would do when he says, “’Do to others what you would have them do to you.’”

Monday, February 18, 2013

Monday of the First Week in Lent

(Leviticus 19:1-2.11-18; Matthew 25:31-46)

In a reflection on the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., the Preacher of the Papal Household, makes a disturbing realization. He says that we can love ourselves in the wrong way! That is, we can overindulge our appetites or seek misguided goals – vice and not virtue. If we wish these things on others, we do them a disservice. In the gospel today Jesus spells out true ways to show love of neighbor.

Jesus outlines what has become known as the “corporal works of mercy” in a dramatic way. He says that when we feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, etc., we actually are rendering service to him. There is a scholarly debate regarding the deprived people with whom he identifies himself. Are they missionaries who speak in his name or are they all people in dire need? Although those who in all humility bring God’s word to the people bear Jesus within them, it would be rather narrow-minded to limit Jesus’ intent to only these. He came to embrace the whole world in our suffering, and because he is God who cares for those society ignores, he reaches out especially to the poor and helpless.

All human actions should be guided by the virtue of prudence. It may not be wise to give cash to the beggar at the corner. But we can open our hands as well as our wallets to provide for street people. There are a million ways to render assistance to Jesus as he describes himself here. All involve sacrifice. Lent is the time to figure out and to do what we can.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Monday of Holy Week

(Isaiah 42:1-7; John 12:1-11)

When Judas grumbles that the nard used to anoint Jesus might have been sold with the proceeds going to the poor, he commits an error common today and perhaps throughout history. Judas, like many of us, fails to recognize Jesus as a poor person. Marked for immenent death, Jesus suffers a particularly virulent form of poverty for even the rich need time to enjoy the consumption of their wealth.

Jesus tells Judas that the poor will always remain on the earth. In another gospel passage Jesus says that he too will be with his people “always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). We do well to connect these statements with another saying of Jesus perhaps even more familiar, “...whatever you did for one of these least brothers (and sisters) of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). These quotations remind us that Jesus remains among the poor so that if we would treat him well, we must take care of the needy.

The “preacher to the papal household,” Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., considers service to the poor part of true Eucharistic devotion. He writes that in adoration of the Eucharist, Catholics worship Jesus as true God, and in assisting the poor, we worship him as true human. To exemplify Jesus’ close identification with the poor, Fr. Cantelamessa cites a final episode in the life of the famous French Catholic philosopher, Blaise Pascal. As he lay dying unable to keep down even a tiny part of a host as Viaticum, Pascal proposed a workable substitute. He asked that some poor persons be brought into his presence. Since he could not communicate with the Head, he said, then he would “communicate at least with the body.”