Monday, May 30, 2016

Monday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

(II Peter 1:2-7; Mark 12:1-12)

Images of flowers adorn the catacombs as a symbol of the paradisiacal state of the saints.  Today many American Christians will bring flowers to the graves of their loved ones unconsciously honoring the ancient custom.  The first reading from the Second Letter of Peter suggests that God is the source of this practice.

The letter states that God’s “power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion…”  God wants us to remember our dead not with mournful regret but with hopeful longing.  Through Jesus’ resurrection we have the promise of overcoming the separation that death causes.  With good reason we hope that we will be reunited with our loved ones in Paradise.

The reading also provides us a course of action.  We are not only to believe in Christ but also to live like him.  Most of all we are to let our lives be controlled by love.  That is, we are to bear with one another’s faults with joyful affection.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

(I Peter 4:7-13; Mark 11:11-26)

Poets sometimes use physical objects as symbols describing the mind’s inner-working.  For example, when Robert Frost depicts the horseman watching the woods fill up with snow, he means that the man is contemplating the eeriness of death.  Such symbols have been labeled objective correlatives.

The evangelist Mark presents an objective correlative in today’s gospel passage.  He pictures Jesus cursing a barren fig tree as a sign of his disgust with the Temple which he is about to enter.  Mark is indicating that the Temple like the fig tree is doomed because it has not fostered a righteous people.  Jesus will shortly throw the money changers out of the Temple.  More definitively, his death will bring about the tearing of the Temple veil which renders its sacrifices useless.

We should not think of the evangelist and much less Jesus as anti-environmental.  Throughout Mark’s gospel Jesus is at home in nature.  He retreats from the crowds to the mountains.  He spends time by the sea.  He even stands up to the storm.  But Jesus does expect religious people like us as well as sacred places to bring about fruits of righteousness.  

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Memorial of Saint Philip Neri, priest

(I Peter 2:2-5.9-12; Mark 10:46-52)

Faith has been called another way of seeing.  It looks beyond the physical to the spiritual realities that surround us.  It recognizes that our true goals in life are not comfort and pleasure but the joy and peace of God’s kingdom.  It also sees the Church as our help in attaining these goals.  Both readings today convey this message.

When Bartimaeus asks Jesus for sight, he no doubt wants to see colors and shapes like his companions.  Jesus grants him this ability but adds the gift of faith.  With that addition Bartimaeus does not go his own way but joins the community of disciples on the way to eternal life.

In the first reading the presbyter Peter calls the people to look beyond the attractions of the world.  He wants them to forego worldly desires so that they may enjoy the peace of living close to God.  His message serves us well today.  We are to set as our goals not luxury but friendship with both God and neighbor.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Wednesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

(I Peter 1:18-25; Mark 10:32-45)

The woman is taking care of her comatose son.  She has the daunting responsibility of caring for a person in a persistent vegetative state.  She does not complain.  She only wants her other children to grow up with s similar awe of human dignity.  The woman is drinking from the same chalice that Jesus refers to in today’s gospel.

James and John make an especially bold request of Jesus.  They want to serve as his chief administrators in the kingdom that he is inaugurating.  The Lord does not admonish them for their ambition.  He only warns them that the positions they seek entail intense suffering as well as supreme glory.

Nobody should want to suffer.  It is an evil that is rightly avoided when possible.  However, often enough we should engage suffering as both a responsibility and a way to our ultimate goal in life.  When we willingly care for the sick, the aged, and the disabled, we give the same witness that Jesus asks of James and John.  We drink from his chalice.   We secure a place in eternal life.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Tuesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

(I Peter 1:10-16; Mark 10:28-31)

Vatican II underlined what the first reading today proclaims.  Its Constitution on the Church called all Christians to holiness.  Perhaps because people mistakenly think that holiness precludes sexual ecstasy, they recoil at the thought.  But for the great majority of persons, marital love paves the way to holiness.

The reading from the First Letter of Peter points out that holiness is not an outcome of human effort alone but is aided by grace.  It shows how grace -- God’s favor -- is manifest in different ways.  First, it proposes the salvation of eternal life as the goal to which humans are to aspire.  Then it indicates that the Creator is the model of holiness as it quotes the Old Testament, “’Be holy because I am holy.’”

Trouble comes when we want to have our own way.  We insist on maintaining autonomy which makes us, not God, the ultimate ruler of our lives.  We will be surprised to learn that heeding God’s commands produces greater freedom than we can achieve with ourselves in control.