The first readings most of this week is taken from the Book of Job, the dramatic story of a just man facing the problem of evil. Job represents all humanity. He’s not an historical figure, but his questions are the questions of us all. Why does God permit evil?
Luke’s gospel this week prepares for Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem which is described in Luke 9:51-18:14. The journey ends in his Resurrection.
A number of important saints are remembered this week in our church calendar. St Therese of the Child Jesus follows St.Jerome, the great scripture scholar. Both are doctors of the church. . One approached the scriptures mainly as a scholar, through the mind. Therese approached them mainly through the heart. This is a good week to check on how we receive God’s word in the scriptures.
On Tuesday we honor the great Archangels, Michael and Rafael, On Friday, we remember the Guardian Angels.
The Philippines celebrates St. Lawrence Ruiz and his companions this week.on Wednesday.
We remember Saints Cosmas and Damian September 26th. Tradition says the two brothers practiced medicine in Syria in the fourth century and were martyred during the reign of Diocletian. They gave their medical services freely to anyone in need, and so followed Jesus’ teaching, “Freely you have been given, freely give. “ (Matthew 10:8) Besides caring for bodily needs they prayed for those they cared for.
The brothers were honored widely from earliest times in the Christian churches of the east and west. In the 7th century mosaic in the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian in the Roman Forum they’re shown as good and faithful physicians being presented to Christ holding their medicine boxes in their hands. A reward waits for them.They’re patrons of doctors, pharmacists, nurses, barbers.
Though there is no exact historical information about them, Cosmas and Damian are examples of holiness. Care for the sick and suffering were an important part of the ministry of Jesus, who often cured them and returned them to their families and communities. In his ministry, Jesus had special care for the sick and suffering. He often showed his concern in miraculous cures that restored them to their families and communities. Those who heal and care for the sick and suffering– whether doctors, nurses, people involved in medical research, caregivers of every kind– follow him in what they do.
Cosmas and Damian remind us health care is more than a job you may– or may not – get paid for. It’s sharing in the divine power to heal. “I was sick and you visited me,” Jesus says at judgment time. Health care is vital to every society and culture.
The scant historical evidence about Saints Cosmas and Damian is more than compensated by their early popularity in the churches of the east and west. Why were they and the churches built to honor them, like that in Rome, so popular?
The church of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Rome stands a few hundred yards away from the Roman Senate, replacing a basilica honoring one of the gods of Rome. It was built in the 6th century by Pope Felix II, a relative of Gregory the Great, at a time when Rome’s economy plunged because of barbarian invasions. Hard times often affect the poor and the sick most.
Was the church a reminder to Rome’s leaders nearby that health care is a basic human right to be prioritized and supported. I think so. Health care is still a burning issue today as we expand our military budgets and pull away from our care of the planet and its poor.
Saints Cosmas and Damian, pray for us.
Here’s a reading that doesn’t need a commentary”
Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!
What profit has man from all the labor
which he toils at under the sun?
One generation passes and another comes,
but the world forever stays.
The sun rises and the sun goes down;
then it presses on to the place where it rises.
Blowing now toward the south, then toward the north,
the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds.
All rivers go to the sea,
yet never does the sea become full.
To the place where they go,
the rivers keep on going.
All speech is labored;
there is nothing one can say.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing
nor is the ear satisfied with hearing.
What has been, that will be;
what has been done, that will be done.
Nothing is new under the sun.
Even the thing of which we say, “See, this is new!”
has already existed in the ages that preceded us.
There is no remembrance of the men of old;
nor of those to come will there be any remembrance
among those who come after them.
Today the Passionists celebrate the feast of St. Vincent Strambi, CP (1745-1824). He was chosen to be bishop of Marcerata during the tumultuous years when Napoleon moved to take over Italy, the papacy and the Catholic Church. Strambi was an heroic supporter of the pope and fought for the freedom of the church.
To understand most saints you have to understand the times in which they lived. They’re antidotes for the poison of their time. Vincent Strambi lived in poisonous, challenging times..
In 1789, following the French Revolution, a Reign of Terror struck the church in France, religious orders were suppressed, priests and religious were imprisoned, exiled, put to death. Word of the terror quickly reached Italy and Rome; the defenseless Italian peninsula would be a likely target for France’s fierce revolution and Napoleon.
Pope Pius VI asked for prayers that Rome be spared, and he called on Vincent Strambi, then acknowledged as Rome’s best preachers, to prepare the people for a blow sure to come. In packed churches and piazzas in Rome Strambi promised that God would not abandon his people. The Roman people gained strength from his words.
In 1796 Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy demanding heavy tribute from the Pope and the Papal States. The murder of the French General Duhot in Rome gave him the pretext for invading the city, deposing and imprisoning the pope and declaring the Papal States a Republic. Religious houses were suppressed, their goods systematically confiscated. Strambi, a well-known opposition figure, fled to Monte Argentario, a Passionist sanctuary on the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1799 Pius VI died in exile. Some historians of the time saw the papacy ended. Pius VI was succeeded by Pius VII who, in 1801, appointed Strambi bishop of Macerata and Tolentino, two important cities in the Papal States along Italy’s Adriatic coast, poverty-stricken from years of political and military turmoil.
The bishops of the Papal States were largely responsible for temporal as well as spiritual affairs and Bishop Strambi became a champion of the poor in his diocese. He lived sparingly himself, without signs of wealth or position. The poor were constantly on his mind. “Don’t you hear the cries of the poor?” he said one day to the treasurer of his seminary, looking out his window.The education of poor children interested him especially and he urged his priests to care for them.
In sermons Strambi constantly looked to the Passion of Jesus for wisdom in the struggles of the time. His devotion to the Precious Blood of Jesus was influenced, at least in part, from reflection on the bloodshed the Napoleonic Wars brought to millions in Europe. Almost 4 million died as warfare rose to a level never seen before. Their blood was precious to God.
On May 5, 1809, after occupying Rome and most of the Papal States. Napoleon declared the region under French control and the temporal power of the pope abrogated. On June 6, 1809 Pius VII placed notices on church doors throughout Rome excommunicating anyone cooperating with the French. July 6, the French general Radet arrested the pope and brought him north to Savona.
Napoleon then demanded bishops sign an oath of loyalty to his new government. Refusal meant exile and imprisonment, signing was an act of disloyalty to the pope.
“I am ready for prison and for death. I am with the pope,” Strambi declared. On September 28,1808 he left his diocese under guard for northern Italy where he remained for 5 years under house arrest.
After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814 the church’s exiled leaders returned. Bishop Strambi returned to his diocese in May, 1814; immediately the pope asked him to come to Rome to preach a nine day “retreat of reconciliation” in late July and early August. Not all met the French invasion heroically.
In 1816 a typhoid epidemic followed invading armies. Food shortages and inflation spread through the bishop’s diocese. He opened hospitals for the dying and sought supplies for his suffering flock.
Physically frail from birth, Bishop Strambi became increasingly ill and found it harder to manage his diocese. By 1814, the world too had changed. The Papal States had no bishops in the long chaotic period of the Napoleonic invasion and new forces demanding change came to power. Strambi recognized it was too much for him.
In 1823 he asked the new pope, Leo XII, to allow him to retire. The pope accepted his resignation on one condition, that he come and live with him as an advisor in the Quirinal Palace, then the pope’s residence in Rome. A local commentator said of the departing bishop: “ He was a man who lived a holy life, giving alms to all and content with only the necessary for himself. We are sorry to see him go, for we lose a good pastor. The cries of the poor are especially loud, for they lose one who cared for and sustained them.”
Vincent died in Rome on January 1, 1824, having offered his life to the Lord in place of that of the pope who was seriously ill.
Pope Leo ordered the process for his canonization 8 days after his death. He was declared a Saint in 1950 and his relics now rest in Macerata, the city where he was a zealous pastor for twenty-two years.
Before becoming a bishop, Vincent was a forceful preacher and catechist of Passionist missions and retreats. He was also the first biographer of St. Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionists.
With the help of the Holy Spiirt, I on my part will do all I can that the living image of Jesus crucified be imprinted in the hearts of each of you. I do this gladly, not counting the cost. I consider myself fortunate to give my lifeblood so that Christ might be formed in you. I can say, like the apostle, that because of my love for you, I want to share with you “not only God’s message, but our very lives, so dear have you have become to us.”
I urge you, then, to look attentively on the Image of the Crucified, the bishop of your souls, on his throne of grace. In that way I shall fulfill my obligation to announce to you the death of the Lord, an obligation arising from my profession in the Congregation of the Holy Cross and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. I shall do all I can to urge you all to fulfill your duty to love him who first loved us, who offered himself on the altar of the cross for us, who shed his blood for us.
( Letter to the people of Marcerata on becoming their bishop)
September 23 is the feast of Padre Pio, the Italian Capuchin friar and a popular saints of modern times. I would say he’s a saint who’s a catechism. He was a stigmatic, who carried the wounds of Christ in his body. Church officials were wary of him; investigation after investigation questioned his credibility, but ordinary people recognized his holiness. To them he was a striking sign of God’s presence in an ordinary human being. Padre Pio taught, not by a book, but by himself.
People were the first catechism. They still are. Where do our printed catechisms come from? They’re recent instruments for forming people in their faith. Martin Luther was the first to compose a catechism in question and answers for ordinary people in the 15th century. In response to Luther, the Dutch Jesuit Peter Canisius composed the first Catholic catechism in 1555 followed by three others afterwards. The Council of Trent directed a catechism be written as a resource for the clergy and that appeared in 1556. Robert Bellarmine later composed an important catechism requested by Pope Clement VIII and after that bishops from all over the world composed catechisms for their people. I can still recite questions and answers from the Baltimore Catechism of my youth.
In earlier times, catechesis was done without relying on catechisms, through preaching, sacraments, the feasts and seasons of the year, and popular piety. People, like Padre Pio, are the most important catechism.
The Second Vatican Council changed the language of the liturgy from latin to the language of the people and revised the liturgical prayers and rites that they better serve as catechesis. Some today want to maintain the primacy of the catechism in catechesis but, while they’re still important, we need to catechize more through the liturgy, sacraments, feasts and seasons, and popular piety. It’s a task of the Second Vatican Council remaining to be done.
Don’t forget people.
In 2006 the bishops of the USA published the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, which interspersed stories of saints and others as examples of the faith expounded in the book. They were acknowledging what we all know: people are better catechisms than books.
Padre Pio reminds us of that today.
This week’s lectionary readings from Luke’s Gospel, chapter 8, focus on the formation of disciples. Luke repeats the parable of the Sower from Mark and Matthew, but instead of the mystery of the rejection of the Seed of Truth, Luke concentrates on the formation of “those who have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.” ( 8:15)
“Lamps on a lampstand; those who see them must see light. They need to take care how they hear.” (Luke 8: 16-18)
Who are the disciples who must care how they hear? The Twelve or the 72 disciples sent out to preach are not the only ones. Jesus preaches the good news of the Kingdom of God through Judea accompanied also by “ the Twelve and some women…” ( Luke 7:51) And there are others too.
In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s church is a community of disciples who “devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.” (Acts 2:42)
In this week’s readings Luke recalls Mary and some family members coming from Nazareth to see Jesus. ( Luke 8:18-19) Early in his gospel, Luke reports that the angel called Mary “blessed among women”. From the beginning she kept “all these things in her heart” . She would “hear the word of God and keep it.” ( Luke 2:51)
This week the compilers of the lectionary have paired Luke’s readings describing the formation of Jesus’ disciples with readings from 1 Corinthians, the struggling church at Corinth.
Jews usually turned away as they passed the customs place where Matthew, the tax-collector, was sitting. But look at our gospel for today:
“As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.”
To celebrate their new friendship, Matthew invited Jesus to a banquet at his house with his friends – tax collectors like himself – and Jesus came with some of his disciples. They were criticized immediately for breaking one of Capernaum’s social codes. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
Jesus’ answer was quick: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words `I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Hardly anything is known of Matthew’s part in Jesus’ later ministry, yet surely the tradition must be correct that says he recorded much of what Jesus said and did. Tax collectors were good at keeping books. Was Matthew’s task to keep memories? Did he remember some things that were especially related to his world?
The gospels say that wherever Jesus went he was welcomed by tax collectors. When he entered Jericho, Zachaeus, the chief tax collector of the city, climbed a tree to see him pass, since the crowds were so great. Did Matthew point out the man in the tree to Jesus, a tax collector like himself, who brought them all to his house, where Jesus left his blessing of salvation? And did tax collectors in other towns come to Jesus because they recognized one of their own among his companions?
Probably so. Jesus always looked kindly on outsiders like Matthew who were targets of suspicion and resentment. True, they belonged to a compromised profession tainted by greed, dishonesty and bribery. Their dealings were not always according to the fine line of right or wrong.
But they were children of God and, like lost sheep, Jesus would not let them be lost.
Pope Francis said he got his vocation to be a priest on the Feast of St. Matthew, when he went to confession and heard God’s call, a call of mercy.
Matthew’s Gospel?
The gospels themselves recall little about Matthew, an apostle of Jesus. We have his name, his occupation and a brief story of a banquet that took place with Jesus and some of his friends after his call. ( Mt 9: 9-13; Mk 2:3-12; Lk5:18-26) As it is, the gospels concentrate on the ministry and teaching of Jesus.
In the early centuries, those who knew Jesus told his story and brought his message to the world. As they died, writings about him gradually appeared, but there are only scarce references to who wrote them. St. Justin Martyr in the early 2nd century speaks of the “memoirs of the apostles”, without indicating any author by name. Later in that century, St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, writing against the Gnostics who claim a superior knowledge of Jesus Christ attributes the gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They are eyewitnesses who really know Jesus firsthand; they have given us their “memoirs.”
Scholars today are less likely to credit Matthew’s Gospel to the tax-collector from Capernaum whom Jesus called. Some of his memoirs perhaps may be there– after all he came from a profession good at accounting for things. But too many indications point to other sources. Why would Matthew, if he is an eyewitness, depend on Mark’s Gospel as he does? Language, the structure of the gospel, the circumstances it addresses, point to a Jewish-Christian area beyond Palestine as its source, probably Antioch in Syria, probably written around the year 8o, after the Gospel of Mark.
Traditions says that Matthew preached in Ethiopia and Persia, but they have no historical basis.
He is remembered as a martyr who died for the faith, but again there is no historical basis.
Better to see Matthew as the gospel and the prayer at Mass sees him: one of the first outsiders whom Jesus called. And he would not be the last..
O God, who with untold mercy
were pleased to choose as an Apostle
Saint Matthew, the tax collector,
grant that, sustained by his example and intercession,
we may merit to hold firm in following you.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
