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God’s Work

(Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34)

A farmer’s wife once told me that the only legalized form of gambling in her state was farming. Jesus, on the other hand, presents farming as an act of faith. The seed is planted and is mysteriously transformed as determined by the creator to produce fruit and shade. It is God’s work. Such is the Kingdom of God.

None of this would have been lost on the communities around La Salette in 1846. Farming was their life, and now more of a gamble than ever, with the failure of both staples of their diet: wheat and potatoes.

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Receive the Holy Spirit



Scripture says:

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. [Jesus] said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:19-23, Jesus appears to the Apostles).

When God created the first human, “the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). Here Christ breathes on his disciples to give them a new life – his own life through the gift of his Spirit. What we are witnessing here is a new creation, the birth of life.

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All Things to All

(Pentecost: Acts 2:1-11; Galatians 5:16-25; John 15:26-27, 16:12-15)

Our title today is taken from 1 Corinthians 9:22, where St. Paul writes, “I have become all things to all, to save at least some.” But, compared to the Holy Spirit, St. Paul’s claim is empty.

After the second reading there is a ‘sequence,’ the poem, Veni Sancte Spiritus. Here the Spirit is described as “source of all our store,” meaning that all spiritual gifts come from him. In one verse, he is “grateful coolness in the heat;” later, we pray that he will “melt the frozen, warm the chill.” In other words, the Spirit comes always with the gift that is needed.

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Sent to Live Out a Gospel of Joy


In this section of St. John’s gospel – chapter 17, verses 11-19 –Jesus prays to the Father, saying:

Untitled 1John the Evangelist, from the Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany by Jean Bourdichon (1457–1521)“And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you.

“I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely. I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.

“They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”

This passage does not only show us Christ preaching love. It reveals the very love of Christ's soul. it shows what Christ meant by love of neighbor. In modern terms, these verses show us the incarnation of a relationship in the God made human. The Lord sees himself leaving his disciples and he asks the Father to love them and protect them as he did while he was with them.

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Why Me?

(Seventh Sunday of Easter: Acts 1:15-26; 1 John 4:11-16; John 17:11-19)


Why does God choose a particular person for a particular purpose? The Bible doesn’t say that Ruth, or Moses, or David, or even Mary was better than anyone else. They were God’s chosen instruments, prepared by him for a special role.

In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we see the same reality of choice, as “the lot fell upon Matthias” to make him a “witness to the resurrection.” The time had come to replace Judas. The disciples reduced the number of candidates to two, and then God chose between them.

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Ouch!

(Fifth Sunday of Easter: Acts 9:26-31; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8)

Untitled 1The Conversion of St. Paul by Benjamin West (c. 1786)
After Saul encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, he remained blind, and had to be led by hand into the city. The Lord sent a certain Ananias to pray over him and restore his sight. Ananias objected, “I have heard from many sources about this man, what evil things he has done to your holy ones;” but Jesus answered, “I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.”

In our first reading we see what Jesus meant. Saul is at first shunned by the Christians of Jerusalem; and even once he is accepted by them, the former persecutor is himself persecuted and must flee.

Saul, later known as Paul, would go on to produce abundant fruits of grace. But, as a new branch on the vine of Christ, he had to be pruned. Ouch! that hurts!

No one can be said to enjoy this part of discipleship, but it is inescapable. In the message of Our Lady of La Salette, her first words after calling the children to her, are, “If my people refuse to submit…” Submit? Ouch! No , thank you.

But when St. John tells us to love in deed and in truth, isn’t he saying fundamentally the same thing? It is easy to utter loving words, but putting love into practice puts serious demands on us. We are to love one another as Jesus commanded us.

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Thomas – Imperfect Faith

 
(Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31)
The end of Chapter 4 of the Acts of the Apostles paints a picture of the first Christians as a perfect society. Chapter 5, however begins with the story of a couple who tried to perpetrate a fraud on the community, and Chapter 6 describes quarrels over the distribution of the donations brought to the apostles.

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God Speaks to the Sinner

(Fifth Sunday of Lent: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33)

My child, you have no idea how important it is to me that you allow me to forgive you. Please don’t put it off. Now is the acceptable time.
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Calvary Triptych by Justus van Gent (1410-1480)

Is there something from the distant past that you have never been able to confess? Now is the acceptable time.
Come now, let us set things right. Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow. They will be totally washed away in the blood of my only Son, who willingly offered himself up for you. Through his suffering, through his obedience, he has paid the full price of your redemption.
He is like the grain of wheat. When he died, he brought forth abundant fruit, to be shared by all. The free banquet of grace awaits you.

I would like nothing better than to place my Law within you and write it on your heart. Just think! It would then be the most natural thing in the world for you to live in my love and to please me.

With age-old love I have loved you; so I have kept my mercy toward you. With your permission and humble cooperation, I will remove your sins from you as far as the East is from the West. Or, if you prefer, I will cast them into the depths of the sea. Surely you must understand the delight it gives me to do so.

Remember what my Son said: “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.” That individual glorious source of joy—that could be you!

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To Know Christ Jesus and Be a Friend of God

Untitled 1Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle on the Way to Damascus by Caravaggio (1571-1610)
Scripture says:
“… I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
“It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ [Jesus]. I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:8-14).

It is entirely possible to be left stone cold before some of the most stunning passages of the Bible. We have a case in point in today's reading from Philippians. "Likewise to know Christ and the power flowing from his resurrection." Relative to this text I must confess that my own personal "ice-age" lasted until quite recently. The heart of the question lies in the words "to know Christ".

What does it mean “to know Jesus”?

We are not saying to "know about Christ", or "to know of him. Just to know him. This means far more than knowing him through your brain, more than quoting from memory every parable he ever told, every word he ever said, every miracle and every act he ever performed. All this is knowing about Jesus.

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An Urgent Message

(Third Sunday in Ordinary Time: Jonah 3:1-10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1-14-20)
Over the centuries, well over a hundred dates have been predicted for the end of the world, by an interesting variety of persons: St. Martin of Tours, Pope Sylvester II, the artist Sandro Botticelli, Martin Luther, Christopher Columbus, and a host of other famous or unknown prognosticators. Not one of those prophecies has been fulfilled. The most recent date predicted was just four months ago!
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Jonah enters into that category. He was a true prophet, sent by God, to proclaim to the Ninevites that their time was up. But in Chapter 4 of the Book of Jonah, the prophet blames God for sending him on a fool’s errand. He knew all along, he claims, that he would fail and God would relent of the punishment he had threatened.

St. Paul writes that time is running out. Mary at La Salette says: “If my people refuse to submit, I will be forced to let go the arm of my Son. It is so strong and so heavy, I can no longer hold it back.” Both seem to speak with a certain threatening urgency.

We can say that Mary at La Salette was hoping for the same sort of failure that Jonah suffered. She did not want her predictions of famine and the death of children to be fulfilled. She offered an alternative. It is never too late! Transformation is always possible.

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