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.

Monday, May 23, 2016

Monday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

(I Peter 1:3-9; Mark 10:17-27)

Scholars doubt whether St. Peter the Apostle actually wrote the letter from which today’s first reading is drawn.  As always, they provide multiple reasons for making such a shocking charge.  First, they ask if a fisherman from Galilee could have written the eloquent Greek of the letter.  Then, they wonder why Peter would write to the churches in Asia Minor where Paul was the principal evangelizer.  Also, they note that the continual reference to persecution bespeaks a time after Peter’s own martyrdom when persecution in Asia Minor was more likely.

Today’s passage demonstrates both the eloquent argumentation of the author and the reference to persecution.  It speaks of “a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus” which is a sophisticated reference to Baptism.  It also refers to the “trials” which the addressees are experiencing as ways to prove their love for Christ.

We should not hastily conclude that a biblical author is not the one purported in the work itself.  At the same time we must recognize that such a charge does not undermine our faith.  The use of a false name as the author of a religious document did not create the scandal in the early Church that it does today.  Writers frequently used the name of a famous personage when they tried to faithfully reflect the ideas of the celebrity.  In any case we are reminded by the Second Vatican Council that Biblical inerrancy does not guarantee the historical accuracy of every detail but the general truth that God has revealed for our salvation.  We see in First Peter an inspiring testimony that we must cling to the promise of salvation which faith in Christ holds.

Friday, May 20, 2016

Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(James 5:9-12; Mark 10:1-12)

One of Jesus’ more radical notions is given in today’s gospel.  His insistence that man and woman form an inseparable union in marriage conflicts not only with Mosaic law but with social convention of time immemorial.  It condemns divorce out of a concern for the weak, usually the woman and often the children of a family.

Today people want to transcend the problems of divorce with court-ordered child support and equal pay for women.  As just as these measures seem, they cannot replace adherence to Jesus’ call for marital fidelity.  Indeed, they beg the question.  One-parent families lack the social integration which children need to grow in virtue.  A man and a woman sharing love provide much more than economic security to their offspring.  They afford the family a palpable model of how God works in the Trinity.

The Church bravely stands for the family as the basic unit in society.  It does so not to hold on to a tradition of the past but to give hope for a more humane future.  Only through stable families will we create a society founded on love’s concern for the good of the vulnerable.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(James 5:1-6; Mark 9:41-50)

Both readings today demonstrate the Scripture’s use of exaggeration for emphasis.  Such language should not be taken literally.  Rather common sense should temper extreme commands and judgments. 

In the reading from the Letter of James the author tells all the rich that they will end in misery.  He implies that everyone with wealth has extorted the poor.  Of course, this position is outrageous.  Still, seeking wealth as the heart’s desire runs the risk of greed and selfishness.  Everyone – the rich, the poor, and persons in the middle – should become “poor in spirit” as the responsorial psalm says.  That is, all people should look to God as their principal resource of sustenance in life.

In the gospel Jesus tells his disciples that if their hand, foot, or eye causes them to sin, they should rid themselves of the organ.  Taken literally, such a command would contradict natural law.  Jesus means to emphasize the necessity that those with authority in the Church must never lead others astray.  Less colorfully we might say the clergy must avoid giving scandal by not misusing community funds, by not walking in places of ill-repute, and by not lusting after any one.