We will be reading from St.Paul’s 1st Letter to the Thessalonians this week and ending our reading from the Gospel of Matthew. Next Monday, the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time we begin the Gospel of Luke.

! Thessalonians was written early on, during Paul’s 2nd missionary journey with Silvanus and Timothy. Written about 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the letter is Paul’s first  letter and the first writing of  the New Testament.  

Paul’s message to the people of Thessalonika can be summarized in a sentence.  “ For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (Thes. 4:14)

In his letter Paul commends the Thessalonians, who are mostly Gentiles. They received Paul’s message through the power of the Holy Spirit,  not just through Paul’s words.  Paul’s converts are experiencing strong opposition from Jews as well as from their own people, who seem to portray Paul and his companions as religious peddlers trying to profit from a gullible audience.

Paul mentions  the persecution going on in Judea. In this week’s gospel readings  from Matthew Jesus denounces in strong terms the scribes and Pharisees who oppose him.   Commentators believe Matthew’s gospel may well describe the opposition Jesus’ followers faced after his death and resurrection, as well as what he faced in his lifetime. Perhaps this is why the compilers of our lectionary put these two readings together?

Paul assumes the final coming of Jesus will occur in his own lifetime, but the day is unknown. It will come as a “thief in the night.” ( 1 Thes 5: 1-2) Instead of focusing on the last days, Paul tells the Thessalonians to live today. The same theme is repeated in Matthew’s gospel this week. (Thursday)“Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.” It will come like a thief.

(Matt 42:22-41)

Year by year our liturgy takes us through readings from the Old and New Testaments, the same feasts and celebrations of saints, the same prayers. Why the repetition?

The liturgy calls for deep reading. Deep reading is different than the quick reading we do looking up facts.

Facts only take us so far. “What time is it?”and “What’s the meaning of time?” are different questions. One can be answered right away, the other calls for a journey of reflection. If we hear ourselves say “I know this already” as we approach the 1st Letter to the Thessalonians and the Gospel of Mathew——our readings this week—-we close a door to wisdom. 

The liturgy is a daily bread. We learn little by little at its table. We’re slow learners. We forget. So we need to read the same scriptures and say the same prayers and celebrate our familiar saints. “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” We are called to deep reading.

We hear God’s voice in our lectionary readings this week and till next Tuesday from Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians. It’s the earliest writing of the New Testament, taking us back to the church at its beginnings. Thessalonians provides four readings for morning and evening prayer so this is a good time to deepen our understanding of this book of scripture.

What have we to learn from those chapters of Matthew we read from this week? What can Monica and Augustine, saints we celebrate this week, have to say? “From their place in heaven they guide us still.”

Ai will probably be recreating 1st century Thessaloniki soon, but in the meantime I found this recent YouTube presentation, an interesting introduction to the world St. Paul and his companions entered on their journey to this city in Macedonia. Like other cities Paul visited, it was on the main road to Rome.

St Rose of Lima is the first saint of the Americas to be canonized. She’s the patroness of Peru, the Philippines and the West Indies. Her feast is August 23.

By all accounts Rose was extraordinarily beautiful from her birth. Her family, seeing how attractive she was, gave her the name, Rose. They probably envisioned a good marriage for her, improving their own fortunes, for her family struggled to make ends meet. 

But Rose, influenced by the example of St. Catherine of Siena, wanted to enter give her life to God and devote herself to a life of prayer. Her family forbade it and in spite of their opposition Rose began a life of prayer and penance at home. She was a religious rebel.

Her penances seem excessive to us today. For one thing, she minimized and disfigured her physical beauty instead of enhancing it. Instead of fine clothes she wore the simple habit of a Dominican tertiary. She shunned Lima’s social life, which prized beautiful women, for a life of prayer and fasting. Instead of cultivating influential friends, she took care of the poor and the sick. She gave herself to the poor.

When she died at 31, thousands came to her funeral at Lima’s cathedral and miracles were reported by those who prayed for her intercession.

Facing great opposition, St. Rose of Lima followed a call from God.  She resisted an arranged marriage by her family, probably supported by Dominican theologians who, following the decrees of the Council of Trent, told her she had the right to choose marriage on not. 

She herself learned something more: troubles bring suffering, but they also bring an increase in God’s grace. Here’s the saint speaking for herself:

“Our Lord and Savior lifted up his voice and said with incomparable majesty: “Let all know that grace comes after tribulation. Let them know that without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace. Let them know that the gifts of grace increase as the struggles increase. Let them take care not to stray and be deceived. This is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to heaven.”

When I heard these words, a strong force came upon me and seemed to place me in the middle of a street, so that I might say in a loud voice to people of every age, sex and status: “Hear, O people; hear, O nations. I am warning you about the commandment of Christ by using words that came from his own lips: We cannot obtain grace unless we suffer afflictions.

“We must heap trouble upon trouble to attain a deep participation in the divine nature, the glory of the children of God and perfect happiness of soul.”

That same force strongly urged me to proclaim the beauty of divine grace. It pressed me so that my breath came slow and forced me to sweat and pant. I felt as if my soul could no longer be kept in the prison of the body, but had burst its chains and was free and alone and going swiftly through the whole world saying: 

“If only we would learn how great it is to possess divine grace, how beautiful, how noble, how precious. How many riches it hides within itself, how many joys and delights! Without doubt they would devote all their care and concern to winning for themselves pains and afflictions. No one would complain about his cross or the troubles that come.” (Office of Readings, St. Rose of Lima)

St. Rose of Lima is honored in the Chapel of the Peruvian Saints in the Cathedral in Lima, Perus, along with St. Martin de Porres, St. Francisco Solano, and St. John Macias.

Jesus spent most of his ministry in the Jewish towns near the Sea of Galilee, but in today’s gospel he and his disciples travel about 25 miles north to Caesarea Phillipi at the foot of Mount Hermon. It was gentile territory, a center of Roman power, with shrines to Roman and Greek gods.

As he often does, Jesus uses what’s at hand to teach, and so here in a center of Roman power he asks his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

They reply, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter said in reply,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus said to him in reply,
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”

This is one of those gospels people have argued about over the centuries. “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.” What mission  does Jesus give Peter? 

Some say Peter represents all of Jesus’ followers who are  “living stones” “rocks” on which his church is built. Every believer’s a rock. Some say Peter is the disciple Jesus chose, along with Paul, to bring about the birth of his church during a time of its separation from Judaism. So it was  only a temporary mission. 

Catholics see this gospel promising something more enduring. Jesus will provide guidance for his church through the centuries through the successors of Peter, the popes, the bishops of Rome.

That promise of Jesus still stands. God sends leaders, shepherds, guides, to teach and lead his people on our journey. We have the witness of popes through the centuries.

Yet, our first reading from the Prophet Isaiah invites us to see that promise is more than a promise  to Peter and the popes. 

Whether in the world or in the church, we will have the leaders we need to bring about God’s kingdom. We will never be without leaders God promises them.

That’s important to remember today, when there is so much cynicism about leadership of every kind, whether it’s the leadership of popes or priests, or parents, or teachers, or politicians. Can anyone lead us into the future? So many today give up on stakeholders in the future. So many give up on becoming parents, or teachers or even politicians– people who look to the future. So many give up on our world.

The promise Jesus makes to Peter applies to all people trying to better our world. In fact, it applies to us all, for we all have a gift for making the world better. God will give us the wisdom and strength to keep our world on its journey to become God’s kingdom. 

Today, we pray for Pope Leo,  that he continue to be a rock leading our church.

Some criticize him today for taking too much on. He’s traveling too much, they say, he’s getting into issues he doesn’t know much about, like artificial intelligence, immigration, capitalism, climate change. He should stay in his own lane.  Let him stay home and take care of the church.

Look again at our gospel today, where Jesus makes the promise of leadership to Peter, in Caesaria Philippi, a Roman stronghold. Not a safe place to begin a church, a new venture. But that’s the world Peter is called to be a rock. That’s the same kind of world Leo is called to be rock.

He will not have to stand alone, or build alone. Jesus promises to his Bread of Life. Jesus calls us too to live in the world that’s ours, however frightening it can be, and build his church. We won’t stand alone either. He is also our Bread.

August 21st is the Feast of St. Pius X.

Eamon Duffy in his fine study of the popes, “Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes”, describes St. Pius X as a pope who looked forward and looked backward. His pastoral reforms of the liturgy, his encouragement of frequent Communion and reform of church prayers, for example, anticipated many of the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. In fact, he promoted the beginnings of the modern liturgical movement.

His fear for the integrity of church doctrine, on the other hand, slowed the church in adapting itself to a changing world. Like us all, popes have their strengths and weaknesses. Even saints have their strengths and weaknesses.

The pope’s reflection on the psalms, found in our liturgy today, reveals his love for the psalms, which are such an important part of our liturgy.

The psalms teach us how to pray. They provide a way to praise God and the words to bless God. 

“The psalms have also a wonderful power to awaken in our hearts the desire for every virtue. Athanasius says: Though all Scripture, both old and new, is divinely inspired and has its use in teaching, the Book of Psalms, like a garden enclosing the fruits of all the other books, produces its fruits in song… The psalms seem to me to be like a mirror, in which the person using them can see himself and the stirrings of his own heart; he can recite them against the background of his own emotions. 

Augustine says in his Confessions: How I wept when I heard your hymns and canticles. Those voices flowed into my ears, truth filtered into my heart, and from my heart surged waves of devotion. Tears ran down, and I was happy in my tears.

Who could fail to be moved by those many passages in the psalms which set forth so profoundly the infinite majesty of God, his omnipotence, his justice and goodness and clemency, too deep for words, and all the other infinite qualities of his that deserve our praise?

Who could fail to be roused to the same emotions by the prayers of thanksgiving to God for blessings received, by the petitions, so humble and confident, for blessings still awaited, by the cries of a soul in sorrow for sin committed? 

Who would not be fired with love as he looks on the likeness of Christ, the redeemer, here so lovingly foretold? His was the voice Augustine heard in every psalm, the voice of praise, of suffering, of joyful expectation, of present distress.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Artificial Intelligence, Ai, is here. It’s taking what archeologists and historians have found and  reconstructing places like Babylon, Nineveh, Jerusalem and Rome; we can see what daily life was like in those cities, what the streets were like, the buildings, what the people looked like, how the society functioned in the time of Jesus and the prophets. It gives us a fresh look at history.

I’ve been learning more about the world Ezekiel lived in from Ai reconstructions.. 

Many scholars think Ezekiel was a priest from Jerusalem taken with other priests and Jewish leaders as slaves to Babylon. Most of his writings are addressed to Jews enslaved there.

Babylon’s rulers then were building the biggest and most impressive city in the world, and so after capturing Jerusalem they brought a large number of Jerusalem’s leading class to Babylon as slaves. Why Jerusalem’s leading class ? Because they had already built a luxurious city in Jerusalem.They built fine houses;  they knew where to go to for the finest goods and foods. They were builders and developers of a city.

They did it, however, as earlier prophets like Nahum and Haggai tell us, by exploiting the poor. Now they themselves were slaves. The Babylonians brought many conquered peoples to the city for the back-breaking work of digging canals and carrying bricks, but they brought the Jewish leading class for  another role: they were experienced builders. 

In Wednesday’s reading this week Ezekiel speaks to the Jewish exiles, not to praise them for their building skills, but to remind them they were Israel’s failed shepherds:

 “Thus says the Lord GOD: Woe to the shepherds

of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!…You did not strengthen the weak nor heal the sick nor bind up the injured. You did not bring back the strayed nor seek the lost, but you lorded it over them harshly and brutally.”

Let’s not see Ezekiel’s critique  limited to Jewish leaders:  he’s criticizing all rulers, all leaders, all shepherds who make themselves gods, especially at the expense of the poor. He’s careful in his criticism. He avoids the  rulers of Babylon. Instead he criticizes the king of Tyre, who stands for them all. Anyone claiming absolute power over another makes himself a god.

The Babylonians tried taking away the identity of their slaves by forbidding them from keeping their idols and worshipping their gods. Only Marduk, the Babylonian god. was to be worshipped. They tried to make the Jews Babylonians. 

In our final readings this week Ezekiel leaves his critique of the shepherds for a promise of the future for his own people in exile.  God offers mercy and a vision of a renewed kingdom 

“ For I will take you away from among the nations, gather you from all the foreign lands, and bring you back to your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts.” Thursday)

Dry bones, littered on the ground, will rise. “Prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord GOD: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and have you rise from them.” (Friday) 

Floods of living water will flow over Jerusalem. “And I saw that the temple was filled with the glory of the LORD. Then I heard someone speaking to me from the temple, while the man stood beside me. The voice said to me: 
Son of man, this is where my throne shall be,
this is where I will set the soles of my feet;
here I will dwell among the children of Israel forever.” (Saturday)