We’re reading at Mass from the long portion of Luke’s gospel describing Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem–chapters 9,51-18,14. One sentence dominates this part of Luke’s gospel. “Follow me,” Another sentence we hear repeatedly: “Don’t look back.”
Notice how Jesus’ miracles on this journey help people stuck in one place move on. So, he cures the ten lepers confined outside a village in Samaria and sets them free. “Stand up and go,” Jesus says to them. (Luke 17,11-19) The blind man begging beside the road outside Jericho seems doomed to sit there forever. Jesus immediately gives him his sight and getting up he “followed him, giving glory to God.” {Luke 18, 35-43)
“Follow me,” Jesus says on his way to glory, but not all hear. Leprosy and blindness aren’t the only things stopping them. In Luke’s journey narrative; lots of things get in the way..
In Lot’s day, Jesus says, “they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting , building on the day Lot left Sodom.” It was time to see beyond these things and get going, but Lot’s wife looked back instead of looking ahead. Fixed on life she knew, she’s frozen there, and she’s.not the only one.
Jesus gives other examples in Luke’s journey narrative. The rich fool building bigger barns, (Luke 12,16-21) the rich man absorbed in himself and his riches, (Luke 16, 19-31) the man absorbed in a lawsuit with his brother, (Luke 12,13-15) the disciples absorbed in maneuvering politically for first place.(Luke 18,15-17) How can they make the journey?
Jesus returns often to another theme that’s a remedy for our lack of faith. Pray constantly, he says. Never stop praying, for prayer opens your eyes and your mind and your heart. Prayer gives us the grace to take up our cross each day and follow him.
The feast of the Holy Rosary is a good time to reflect on this centuries old Christian prayer. Many people may have a rosary, but where did it come from, and what about praying the rosary?
The icon pictured above was brought home from the Holy Land in the 6th century by a pilgrim who visited the holy places where Jesus was born, died and rose again. It was folded into a travel bag and placed in a honored place on returning home. The pilgrim was probably well-off to afford such a souvenir. Historians say there are many like this brought by pilgrims after the Holy Land was opened to Christians in the 4th century.
The icon pictures two great mysteries of Jesus. His birth and his death. Mary appears in both presentations. In the first, she holds on her lap the One who created her, yet he is her Son. In the second, she stands at his side as he goes to his Father and her Father. Mary knows the mysteries of his life, death and resurrection better than any other creature.
Pilgrims to the Holy Land saw Mary as their guide. She made them aware of the promises of Christ. The rosary, much simpler in form than the icon, is a way of remembering the promises of Jesus with Mary as our guide.
When we take a rosary in our hand we remember Mary, the mother of Jesus. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” we say, words the angel said when he came to her in Nazareth. She comes with her grace to us now.
Mary believed the words of the angel at Nazareth. She believed in the One who was conceived in her by the Holy Spirit. She raised him as a child. She knew the great things he did. She was with him when he was put to death on a cross and rose from the dead. Mary kept all these things in her heart. Now she shares those mysteries with us.
When we ask her to pray for us now, she does, by leading us of the mysteries of her Son, whom she knows so well. She knew them first through the joys and sorrows of faith. “How can this be?” she said more than once. She believed then, she helps us believe now.
Mary helps us to believe in the promises of Christ, her Son. From her place at his side, she calls us to come to that feast Cana foretold, a feast of unending joy, where death is no more.
“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
When we pray the rosary It doesn’t matter if we know all the prayers or get them exactly right. The rosary is a flexible prayer. With Christmas, there are the joyful mysteries when the angel came, when Mary visited Elizabeth, when the Child was born and she raised at Nazareth..
During Lent and Fridays through the year she leads us into sorrowful mysteries that pierced her heart. At Easter and all the Sundays of year she shares the glory of the Risen Jesus and promises are meant to best ours.
Pope John Paul recommended we join the luminous mysteries to the traditional joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. Jesus was baptized; he went to Cana in Galilee for a wedding feast. He was transfigured on the mountain and taught patiently in the towns of Galilee. He gave himself as bread broken for us to eat and wine to be drunk.
Pope John Paul called the rosary a “school of Mary.” She is a good teacher who intercedes for us with her Son.
Here’s St. Bernard speaking of her:
“The child to be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God, the fountain of wisdom, the Word of the Father on high. Through you, blessed Virgin, this Word will become flesh, so that even though, as he says: I am in the Father and the Father is in me, it is still true for him to say: ‘I came forth from God and am here.’
By nature incomprehensible and inaccessible, invisible and unthinkable, God wished to be understood, to be seen and thought of.
But how, you ask, was this done? He lay in a manger and rested on a virgin’s breast, preached on a mountain, and spent the night in prayer. He hung on a cross, grew pale in death, and roamed free among the dead and ruled over those in hell. He rose again on the third day, and showed the apostles the wounds of the nails, the signs of victory. Finally in their presence he ascended to the sanctuary of heaven.
Wisely meditate on these truths; rightly recall the abundant sweetness, given by the fruits of this priestly root. And Mary, drawing abundantly from heaven, will cause this sweetness to overflow for us.”
The Feast of the Holy Rosary entered the Roman calendar in the 16th century when the Ottoman Turks were repelled at the borders of Europe. The victory was ascribed to divine intervention and trust in Mary’s prayers. In 1572, the year after the battle, Pius V established the Feast of “Our Lady of Victories” , later changed to “Our Lady of the Rosary”.
The Rosary helps us know Jesus and the power of his resurrection.
The three readings from the Book of Jonah in our lectionary this week from Monday to Wednesday are pictured in the early painting from the catacombs above, from right to left. Jonah is thrown from the boat, swallowed by the whale, then asleep under the vine in Nineveh after the city’s conversion. From the beginning Jonah is a prophet who doesn’t understand God’s plan, yet he fulfills it. In fact, Jonah seems unchanged by the amazing things that happened to him.
At first Jonah refuses God’s command to call the great city of Nineveh to repentance. He sees no sense to it. Then, thrown overboard by sailors, he’s swallowed up by a whale that deposits him on the beach at Nineveh.
He finally preaches in the great city and it repents. But in the end, Jonah’s angry. He doesn’t seem to appreciate what God has done. He remains a very small-minded, unchanged man.
Jesus uses the story of Jonah in the gospel as a sign of the power of the resurrection. The resurrection is God’s power at work. It’s not human power, God’s power is at work. God raises Jesus from the dead, but God also raises up people like Jonah, who don’t altogether grasp God’s plan, they’re not perfect, they’re weak even till the end.
Pictures of the story of Jonah are common in the Christian catacombs in early Rome, where they’re found over the remains of someone deceased. The whole story is usually there, from Jonah getting thrown off the boat, to being swallowed up by the whale, to Jonah sitting in the shade of the vine.(see above)
Early Christians recognized the wisdom in the stories of the Jewish scriptures much more than we do today, so you wonder if they saw themselves and their loved ones who passed on in the Jonah story.
Most of the people in the catacombs were ordinary Christians, not all heroic saints. They were conscious of their weak faith as citizens of this great city, but they also recognized the power of Jesus Christ who, in his resurrection, brought life even to those of little faith.
Since their founding in the mid 1800s, the Passionists have given the church a variety of saints and blessed. St. Paul of the Cross, a preacher and mystic, St. Vincent Strambi, a holy bishop during the Napoleanic Suppression, Blessed Dominic Barberi, a fervent missionary to England, St. Gabriel Possenti a young Italian saint who died in his early 20s, Blessed Eugene Bossilkov, a martyr bishop under the Communists in Bulgaria in the 1950s.
October 6th we honor Blessed Isidore de Loor 1881-1916, from the Flemish part of Belgium, who entered the Passionists as a lay brother at 26.
The opening prayer for a feast usually indicates why a saint or blessed is honored.
Lord God, in Blessed Isidore’s spirit of humility and work you have given us a life hidden in the shadow of the Cross. Grant that our daily work be a praise to you and a loving service to our brothers and sisters. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
A life hidden in the shadow of the Cross. That’s Isidore. He was a humble, hard worker all his life. . He spent the first 26 years of his life working the family farm in Vrasene, Belgium, with his parents, brother and sister. Farming was tough at the time, demanding long hours and offering little to show for it. The agricultural sector in Belgium was near collapse. Yet, Isidore praised God and served his brothers and sisters through hard continuing work.
Prayer was the hidden power in his life. Isidore taught catechism in his parish; prayed at local shrines and made the Stations of the Cross daily. He wanted to enter religious life, but delayed till his brother Franz was free from a call-up for military service and could keep the family farm going.
Entering the Passionists as a brother, Isidore took on whatever responsibilities they gave him to do. At first, they told him to be the community cook. “Before I dug the earth, planted seed and harvested crops, now I cut vegetables, put them in pots on the stove and cook them till they’re ready,” he told his family. Whatever his work, he saw it as God’s will and a way to serve.
In 1911, cancer developed in Isidore’s eye and it had to be removed. He was not cancer free, the doctors said, cancer eventually would take his life. God’s will be done, he said.
As his strength declined, he became porter at the monastery door. World War 1 was beginning and German troops invaded Belgium. The frightened people who came to the monastery found support in the quiet faith of “Good Brother Isidore”.
In late summer 1916 Isidore’s health worsened. He died of cancer October 6, 1916, as German troops occupied the area and some were billeted in the monastery itself. He was buried quietly; his family and religious community were not allowed to attend. Yet, he would not be forgotten.
When the war ended, people came to the “Good Brother’s” grave. Cures from cancer and other illnesses occurred. They recognized a holy man who worked and prayed each day and served his brothers and sisters. A friend of God, hidden in the
October 4th is the Feast of Francis of Assisi. A large statue of Francis with arms outstretched stands facing the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. If you face the the basilica from behind the statue, you might think the saint was holding up the church in his arms. And that’s what he did: Francis raised up a church that was falling down
We need to see saints in the light of their times as they met the needs of their day. Chesterton called saints “God’s antidotes for the poison of their world”.
What was poisoning Francis’ world? Twelfth century Italy’s economy was booming when Francis was born. His family was among its new rich merchant class. As a young man he had everything money could buy, but then, as now, money could be a poison.
Italy’s cities, often at war, fiercely competed with one another, fighting for power.. It was the time of the crusades and everything was settled through force of arms.
It was a time too when the church had become weak and in need of reform. Before Francis, saints like Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) and popes like Gregory VII (1015-1085) and Innocent III (1160-1216) sought renewal and change. The church was looking for a saint.
And so when Francis of Assisi came with twelve disciples to see the pope in Rome about reforming the church in the summer of 1220, he came at the right time. They say that the pope had a dream the night before that St. John Lateran, the mother church of Christendom, was falling down and a young man resembling the 28 year old Francis came to hold its walls up.
The pope asked Francis what would he do and Francis replied with three verses of scripture. The first was from the gospel of Matthew in which Jesus says to the young man ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’(19,21) The second from Luke’s gospel in which Jesus sends his disciples out saying “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic.”( 9,3) The third from Matthew: Jesus says, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross.” (16,24)
The pope was a good judge of people and, sensing the grace of God in Francis, told him to live those gospel teachings, sending him on his way. Francis and his companions started a movement that spread like fire throughout Europe.
Francis made Jesus’ teachings his own. He embraced poverty, not just renouncing the rich lifestyle that he was born into, but renouncing any way that led to power. For example, he never became a priest or a bishop or a pope, because they were positions of power fought for and sometimes paid for in his day.
He did not want a monastery or a religious order as a base of power. Saints like St. Bernard and St Norbert before him thought monasticism was the way to bring about church reform, but Francis wanted a life style where you had nothing, “no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic.” He distanced himself and his movement from the religious institutions of his day, because he feared them becoming places of power.
He took the gospel teachings literally and lived them literally. His renunciation of power became an antidote to the poisonous attraction to power that crippled his world and his church. He imitated the “Son of Man” a poor man who said to his followers the “foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”
Like the Son of Man, who suffered and died on a cross and rose again, Francis experienced the mystery of the cross and was blessed by it.
Remembering him, we might pray: God send us saints to deal with the poison of our time.
“Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future.”
Pooe Leo began an important conference in Rome October1 on the environment with that question posed by Pope Francis ten years ago in his letter Laudao si’.Looks like many of the countries of the world, especially the USA, are turning away from that question. We are absorbed in our wars and political fights.
“ Our Sister Earth cries out, pleading that we take another course. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years. Yet we are called to be instruments of God our Father, so that our planet might be what he desired when he created it and correspond with his plan for peace, beauty and fullness.
The problem is that we still lack the culture needed to confront this crisis. We lack leadership capable of striking out on new paths and meeting the needs of the present with concern for all and without prejudice towards coming generations. The establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable; otherwise, the new power structures based on the techno-economic paradigm may overwhelm not only our politics but also freedom and justice.
It is remarkable how weak international political responses have been. The failure of global summits on the environment make it plain that our politics are subject to technology and finance. There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected. Any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented.”
Pope Francis, Laudato SI 54-55
Today at the Vatican Gardens outside Rome evironmental leaders of the world gathered to answer that question: Are we caring for our common home?
One thing to notice about this conference, which involved artists,scientists, politicians, business people, ordinary people. Pope Leo sat among them, not before them, as if to signify their equal task in the care of the environment. They bring an equal wisdom to the challenge of caring for the earth. It’s not just the task of religious people, or a pope. It’s a common task for a common good.
St. Thèrése put two titles to her name after she became a Carmelite nun. She holds those two titles in this photo. One was Thèrése of the Child Jesus, the other was Thèrése of the Holy Face of Jesus. She wished to be known by these two titles: Thèrése of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.
The titles came from religious experiences she had. The first occurred on Christmas day, 1886, when she was 13 years old. Shorlty afterwards, she had an experience of the Passion of Jesus, which took place one Sunday of the next year, when she was 14. She describes the two experiences in chapter 5 of her autobiography. Her experience of the Passion of Jesus involved a murderer.
“One Sunday, looking at a picture of Our Lord on the Cross, I was struck by the blood flowing from one of the divine hands. I felt great sorrow when thinking this blood was falling to the ground unnoticed. I was resolved to remain in spirit at the foot of the Cross and to receive the divine dew. I understood I was then to pour it out upon souls.
The cry of Jesus on the Cross sounded continually in my heart: “I thirst!” These words ignited within me an unknown and very living fire. I wanted to give my Beloved to drink and I felt myself consumed with a thirst for souls. As yet, it was not the souls of priests that attracted me, but those of great sinners; I burned with the desire to snatch them from the eternal flames.”
At the time a notorious murderer, Pranzini had been condemned to death and refused to see a priest. Thèrése was deeply affected by the sensational story and asked Jesus, “feeling that I myself could do nothing,” to be merciful to him. She had Mass offered for him, she begged God’s mercy.
Afterwards the newspaper reported a priest offered Pranzini a crucifix as he went to his death and he kissed it fervently three times. Thèrése believed her prayers were answered “Then his soul went to receive the merciful sentence of him who declares that in heaven there will be more joy over one sinner who does penance than over ninety-nine just who have no need of repentance!”
For Thèrése the Passion of Jesus was a sign of God’s mercy. His words “I thirst,” were more than an expression of physical thirst, they expressed his desire to show a merciful love to the world.
The teen age girl’s experience reminds us that God’s graces can come to anyone, at any time. The experience left her with a lasting conviction, “I myself can do nothing.” One of her prayerbooks carries a remembrance of her experience.
The proper prayers of the Mass for the feast of a saint often tell us about the saint and the graces we find in them. The prayers for the Feast of St. Therese do just that:
“The Lord led her and taught her
and kept her as the apple of his eye.
Like an eagle spreading its wings
he took her up and bore her on his shoulders.
The Lord alone was her guide.” (Entrance antiphon)
Therese saw herself as loved by God, she was the apple of God’s eye. Jesus alone was her guide. No matter how close she was to her family or her religious community, Jesus was her teacher and guide. In her autobiography she speaks of herself as a little bird hardly able to fly, but she has the desires, the heart of an eagle, and she prays that God give her wings. God gave her what she sought. “Like an eagle spreading its wings, he took her up and bore her on his shoulders.”
In the Collect, the opening prayer of the Mass for her feast, we ask God to “lead us to follow trustingly in the little way of Saint Therese, because God invites those who are humble, little ones, into his kingdom:
“O God, who open your Kingdom
to those who are humble and to little ones,
lead us to follow trustingly in the little way of Saint Thérèse,
so that through her intercession
we may see your eternal glory revealed.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.”
In the prayer over the offerings we say:
“As we proclaim your wonders in Saint Thérèse, O Lord,
we humbly implore your majesty,
that, as her merits were pleasing to you,
so, too, our dutiful service may find favor in your sight.
Through Christ our Lord.”
Therese insisted as she began writing her autobiography that her life, not her accomplishments, proclaimed the wonders of God. As we bring ourselves to God in the bread and the wine, we proclaim God’s goodness to us in Jesus Christ. We give thanks to the Lord, our God.
After communion we remember what Jesus taught, so that he accomplish his teaching in us:
“Thus says the Lord:
Unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
In the prayer after Communion we pray:
“May the Sacrament we have received, O Lord,
kindle in us the force of that love
with which Saint Thérèse dedicated herself to you
and longed to obtain your mercy for all.”
We know how much this saint loved God. She also reached out in love to the whole world as God’s merciful love does. We ask the Lord to “kindle in us the force of that love”, to love him and love others with his merciful love.
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