Friday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Friday, November 14, 2025
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin
(Wisdom 7:22b-8:1; Luke 17:20-25)
Two years ago, a major motion of the life of St. Frances
Xavier (Mother) Cabrini made its debut. A hundred or so years ago Mother
Cabrini was in the United States what Mother Teresa came to signify throughout
the world sixty years later. She worked
untiringly for the poor, in her time mostly Italian immigrants. The movie depicted her as especially capable
of dealing with Church authorities and civic officials for the benefit of children.
Mother Cabrini demonstrated what the first reading today
teaches about wisdom. She was “…intelligent,
holy, unique, manifold, subtle, agile, clear, unstained, certain, not baneful,
loving the good, keen, unhampered, beneficent, kindly, firm, secure, tranquil, all-powerful,
all-seeing, and pervading all spirits…”
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the
knowledge we have lost in information?” T.S. Eliot asked decades before the Information
Age. Wisdom fully develops our human
potential so that we may become saints.
Like Mother Cabrini, we should not just admire it but embody it.
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Memorial of Saint Josephat, bishop and martyr
(Wisdom 6:1-11; Luke 17:11-19)
The Book of Wisdom was most likely written in the city of
Alexandria, Egypt, around the time of Christ.
Today’s reading instructs earthy rulers on the need of wisdom. The passage reverberates with gospel passages. As Jesus told his disciples that more will be
expected from those who are given more (Luke 12:48), Wisdom warns princes, “…the
lowly may be pardoned out of mercy but the mighty shall be mightily put to the
test.”
Judgment in Wisdom is not only found in the hope of earthly reconciling
of accounts between victims and assailants, but also in eternal reckoning. The Book of Wisdom assures the existence of
eternal life. It declared in the passage
read yesterday at mass “…the souls of the just are in the hand of God.” Christ, of course, validated this statement
in his resurrection from the dead.
The warning of Wisdom to earthly rulers applies to most of
us. We may not be leaders of state or heads
of departments, but most of us are given responsibility for others. Teachers are responsible for students; head
nurses for their staffs; and parents for their children. We too will be judged on whether we “walk(ed)
according to the will of God.”
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Memorial of St. Martin of Tours, bishop
(Wisdom 2:23-3:9; Luke 17:7-10)
Today’s gospel sounds counterintuitive. How are we going to
maintain a positive self-image while we claim to be “unworthy servants”? The resolution lies in considering whom we
serve.
In speaking to his apostles, our Lord sees the master-servant
relationship applying to God and His people.
We serve God by our worship and our treating others with the appropriate
love. However, our capacious pride prevents
us from fulfilling these duties.
Therefore, recognizing our limitations, we should be modest about thinking
how good we are. As Jesus says, in
regard to God we are “unworthy servants.”
Yet we are His servants, created in His image with intelligence
and freedom. Even more enhancing, we have
been recreated with divine grace. We like
today’s patron, St. Martin of Tours, can do what pleases our Master. St. Martin, today’s patron left us a legacy of
how we might do this. He exemplified for
us evangelical love for the poor, peaceful nonviolence, and fatherly solicitude
for those in our care.
Monday, November 10, 2025
Memorial of Saint Leo the Great, pope
(Wisdom 1:1-7; Luke 17:1-6)
It was said at the time of his election that Robert Prevost
took the name Leo XIV because of Leo XIII, the pope of great social
consciousness. He also might have had
today’s patron saint in mind. Saint Leo
the Great, the first to take the name, was the most distinguished pope of the
first five hundred years of the Church.
He laid the groundwork for universal papal authority so that future
bishops of Rome could be considered not just successors of their immediate
predecessors but, first and foremost, successors of St. Peter.
In the fifth century many considered the bishop of Rome as only
one of five authoritative Church leaders of the Church. He was given primacy of honor because the Roman
see had been considered the see of Peter, the head of the apostles. However, the eastern church envisioned him (and
still do) sharing authority with the bishops of four apostolic sees of the
East. Rome’s argument for having supreme
authority rocketed with Leo’s contribution to the critical debate over the
humanity of Christ. Some thought that Jesus’ humanity was assumed into his
divinity once he was born. Others
thought what amounts to the opposite.
Leo, assuming an idea that had been already expressed, wrote an excellent
treatise saying that Christ’s human and divine natures were permanently united
-- unmixed and unconfused – in a single person.
His formulation of the issue won the day at the Council of Chalcedon. Eastern bishops recognized that Peter had
spoken through the Roman bishop this time although they withheld recognition
that it was always the case.
Not all popes have been free from error as not all have been
holy men. But all do have the authority
of Peter, the Vicar of Christ. Whether
or not we see things exactly as the pope does, we must take to heart his
teaching and pay him all due respect.