Category Archives: Religion

Wise Words for Today:Ezekiel 24:1-11

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In our first readings for yesterday and today at Mass, the Prophet Ezekiel ( 24,1-11) has some wise but hard words for secular and religious leaders. St. Matthew’s gospel today about the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20,1-16) has some lessons for ordinary people too.

Yesterday Ezekiel spoke against the King of Tyre for making himself a god. Clever, successful, sure of himself, the King of Tyre sits on the throne that belongs to God alone. He will be pulled from his throne and put to a violent death. 

Remember, though, Ezekiel is a Jewish exile in Babylon. He’s really speaking, not about the ruler in Tyre, but about the ruler in Babylon. Leaders like him shouldn’t make themselves gods. Only God is king over all. That’s true today as well as then. 

Today, Ezekiel excoriates the shepherds of Israel, the Jewish religious leaders, who gouge their sheep for their own benefit. Woe to these shepherds, the Lord says.

Notice that God doesn’t say he will replace the shepherds with other shepherds. God himself will be their shepherd.

 “Thus says the Lord GOD: I swear I am coming against these shepherds. I will claim my sheep from them and put a stop to their shepherding my sheep …I will save my sheep… I myself will look after and tend my sheep.”

There’s no sign that God gives up on his people in our reading. In fact, God becomes more engaged than ever. He comes when times are bad. “I myself will look after and tend my sheep.” The Lord is our shepherd.

The gospel reading from Matthew about the workers in the vineyard may also say something to us today. First, it says the owner of the vineyard is looking for a harvest. He wants it, it’s close to his heart, and so he calls laborers, as many as he can get, at any time he can get them. 

God wills a kingdom to come.

The laborers ( they’re us) have their own ideas how it will come. They want to control the way things are done. They have fixed ideas and dispute the owner of the vineyard. He’s not fair, they say. Actually, he’s far more generous than their ideas make him to be.

Keep looking at the Word of God. Far wiser that what you hear and see on CNN, Fox, CBS, the New York Times, ABC. or Facebook, or Twitter…..

Little Prayers

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Little prayers are just that–the small, taken-for-granted prayers we pray all the time. Like “Amen.” How many times do we say that word in prayer? Usually we end all our prayers with it.

What does it mean? I suppose we could say it means “yes” in English. “Si” in Spanish or Italian. “Ya” in German. If you look it up in the dictionary, you find it traced back into the Greek and then to the Hebrew. Amen means “so be it”; a strong “yes,” and it’s been part of the language of our faith for centuries.

Here we are in the 21st century using a word generations before us have used; we draw on the faith of generations before us to say, “Yes, I believe,” “Amen” to God’s word to us and our word to God.

“The Lord be with you,” “And with your spirit.” Another little prayer, wishing that God be with us and bring us together in faith. We can trace that little prayer back generations too.

Little prayers can give us a way to express what we can hardly put into words or understand. Besides words, they can also be simple gestures, like the Sign of the Cross; they can be moments of listening or seeing and waiting in silent attention before God.

Psalm 123 describes a servant waiting and watching before her mistress.

“To you I lift up my eyes,
you who dwell in the heavens.
My eyes like the eyes of slaves
On the hand of their lords.
Like the eyes of a servant
On the hand of her mistress,
So our eyes are on the Lord our God
Till he show us his mercy.”

Little prayers can be a cry or even tears. You often hear that kind of prayer in the psalms:

“I cried to you, Lord, and you heard me,” the psalmist says in Psalm 30.

Remember the simple cry of the Canaanite woman: “Have pity on me, Son of David…Please, Lord” (Matthew 15:21).

Little prayers are important, they’re not little at all.

Week 20: Readings and Feasts

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Readings in our lectionary this week are from chapters 19-23 of Matthews Gospel. Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem after his ministry in Galilee. On the way he faces increased opposition from the Pharisees and the Sadducees. His words are directed to them, but they are also directed to the church of his time, which may have its Pharisees and Sadducees as well. 

The rich young man seems drawn to follow Jesus, but he goes away sad, “for he has many possessions.” (Monday} His departure and Jesus warning about the lure of riches causes his disciples to ask if anyone can be saved. Jesus answers “Nothing is impossible with God” and he promises his disciples “everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters
or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life.” (Tuesday}

Matthew’s reading about the laborers in the vineyard reminds us that the mercy of God is unpredictable. (Wednesday}

The readings from Ezekiel end this week with a picture of the temple where God dwells, free from the political abominations of men. Before the temple was like the private chapel of the king. Now God is king.

St. Bernard is an important saint we celebrate this week. His preaching moved so many people to follow Jesus Christ. His devotion to the gospel gave him words of wisdom. Bernard’s life and preaching was ” flooded by the splendor of the divine Word.” (Thursday}

St. Pius X promoted the liturgy as the prayer of the church. The popes today are following him, (Friday)

Following the Feast of the Assumption, we celebrate Mary crowned as Queen of Heaven on Saturday.

20th Sunday A: A Woman’s Strong Faith

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For today’s homily, please play the video below:

Where did the Feast of the Assumption come from?

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Mary’s Tomb, Jerusalem

We celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven August 15th. It’s the most important feast of Mary in the church’s calendar. Where did it come from?

There’s no account of Mary’s death or assumption into heaven in scripture. An account in the apocryphal body of literature called the Transitus Mariae, popular in the Christian churches of the east from the 5th century, describes the return of the apostles to Jerusalem for Mary’s burial and their discovery that her body was taken up to heaven. The writings attest to an early interest in the death of Mary in some parts of the early church.

The first liturgical celebrations of Mary’s death and assumption to heaven took place in Jerusalem at her tomb (above) on the Mount of Olives about the 5th century. The Roman Catholic Church draws her present belief from this early tradition and her conviction that Mary is “wholly united with her son in the work of salvation.” For scriptural support, the church looks to sources like Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians–the second reading at Mass for August 15th – to understand this mystery.

Paul wrote that letter about the year 56 AD to Corinthian Christians who had questions about the resurrection of Jesus. Their precise difficulty seems to be that they saw only the soul surviving death and not the body, a common conception of the Greek mindset of the day. That belief brought a low appreciation of the body and the place of creation itself in the mystery of redemption.  The created world wasn’t worth much and was passing away, so let it go.

Paul countered that opinion with the belief he received, a belief from the beginning:  “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15: 3-6).

Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, Paul affirms, and we will rise bodily too. Jesus is “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Mary’s bodily assumption follows the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Because of her unique role in the mystery of redemption she is among the “first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Her assumption is part of the mystery of the resurrection; it’s an affirmation we will follow Jesus who rose body and soul.

In her prayer, the Magnificat – the gospel read on the Feast of the Assumption – Mary accepts her mission from God to share in the mission of her Son, the Word made flesh, who came to redeem the world.

The church gradually understood the mystery of Mary’s Assumption over time. A rising Gnosticism in the 3rd and 4th centuries certainly promoted appreciation of this mystery. Gnosticism promised escape from the limits of bodily life through a higher knowledge. As a result, human life and creation itself didn’t matter.

Mary’s Assumption claims they do.

The Roman Catholic Church formally defined the dogma of the Assumption on November 1, 1959, on the Feast of All Saints, but the belief was firmly held for centuries before:

“…the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.” The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians: ‘In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death'” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 966).

Mary’s Assumption was defined in a century when human life and the planet itself were threatened. World War I ended in 1918 after four years when millions perished. World War II, ending in 1945, left the real possibility that war and nuclear weapons could bring about the destruction of the human race. The Holocaust seemed to prove the capability of human evil.

Threats to human life continue and creation itself is increasingly endangered by climate change and consequent poverty. August 15, the date for the celebration of this feast from earliest times, is the time of harvest for most of the Western Hemisphere. Our belief in the resurrection of the body sees creation itself promised a share in this mystery. The readings and prayers of the feast describe Mary in heaven as the woman clothed with the sun, the moon and the stars beneath her feet. (Revelation 11)

The Feast of Mary’s Assumption is the oldest and most important of Mary’s feasts in our church calendar.

Feast of the Assumption of Mary: August 15

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For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

St. Maximilian Kolbe

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Maximilian Kolbe
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Teresa Benedicta

A number of martyrs are remembered in our liturgy in mid-August. August 9, we remembered Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein, who died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz August 9, 1942.

August 10th, we remembered Lawrence the Deacon, one of the most important martyrs of the early church. August 13 Pontian and Hippolytus.

August 14 we remember Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan priest, who died in Auschwitz about a year before Edith Stein, August 14, 1941.

Peter Brown, an historian of early Christianity, says it wasn’t the bravery of Christian martyrs that impressed the Romans. The Romans, a macho people, had war in their blood. They prided themselves on dying bravely.

Rather, the Romans marveled at how Christian martyrs approached death. They saw something beyond death. They considered themselves citizens of another world, who followed Jesus Christ in how they lived and believed in his promise of everlasting life.

Lawrence the deacon, for example, could have escaped Roman persecution, but he wouldn’t abandon the poor of Rome in his care. Jesus said take care of the poor.

Centuries later, Maximillian Kolbe was a priest who wouldn’t abandon the vocation God gave him.

Before World War II, Kolbe was active as a Franciscan priest, promoting devotion to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. He ran a large, successful Franciscan printing enterprise in Warsaw.

In 1939, after invading Poland, the Nazi arrested him and a number of other Franciscans and imprisoned them for some months. They ransacked their printing place, probably hoping to intimidate them. Then, they left them go.

Instead of being intimidated, Kolbe began to house refugees from the Nazis, some of them Jews. That got him into trouble, so he was arrested again, on February 14th, 1941, and sent to Auschwitz to do hard labor.

Concentration camps like Auschwitz where Maximillian Kolbe and Sr.Teresa Benedicta died are the nearest thing to Calvary in modern times. More than 1500 of them were spread mostly through German occupied territories in Europe. Twenty million people died in the camps in the Second World War, 6 million were Jews. 1.3 million people went to Auschwitz; 1,1 million died there.

Five months after Kolbe entered Auschwitz, in July 1941, a prisoner from his barracks escaped. In reprisal, the Nazis took 10 men from the barracks to put them to death by starvation. One of them cried out that he had a wife and children who would never see him again. Father Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take the man’s place.

He was the last of the ten men to die of starvation and an injection of carbolic acid two weeks later, on August 14, 1941.

Many stories of Kolbe’s ministry among the prisoners in Auschwitz were told after his death when Auschwitz was liberated. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 19, 1983, who called him “Patron Saint of Our Difficult Age.”

He was a sign of God’s love in a place where God seemed absent.

Maximillian Kolbe’s death on the vigil of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven has been seen as a further sign. God’s hand reached into the dark horror of Calvary to save his Son. God reached out to Mary to bring her, body and soul, to heaven. God reached into Auschwitz and other camps of horror to bring suffering human beings to glory and peace.

Ezechiel, for those over Thirty

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We‘re reading the Prophet Ezekiel at Mass these days. Early Jewish scholars considered him hard to read; only those over 30 should read him, some said. We have the same difficultly. The lectionary for today, Friday in the 19th week of the year, offers a gruesome story of infanticide. A infant girl is thrown out to die. Not a pretty story to look at.

It’s a story harsh to hear and hard to understand. Infanticide, a form of abortion. child abuse,, prostitution, ingratitude, forgetfulness of God. Ezechiel describes his own society in dark terms. Yet, all the while God is there. We’re offered a shorter version in our lectionary to spare us some ugly details.

But don’t miss God’s intervention:

“You became mine, says the Lord GOD.Then I bathed you with water, washed away your blood, and anointed you with oil. I clothed you with an embroidered gown, put sandals of fine leather on your feet; I gave you a fine linen sash and silk robes to wear. I adorned you with jewelry… You were exceedingly beautiful, with the dignity of a queen.”

“But you were captivated by your own beauty,
you used your renown to make yourself a harlot,
and you lavished your harlotry on every passer-by,
whose own you became.”

“Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you when you were a girl,
and I will set up an everlasting covenant with you,
that you may remember and be covered with confusion,
and that you may be utterly silenced for shame
when I pardon you for all you have done, says the Lord GOD.”
{Ezechiel 16, 1-69)

Ezeckiel’ story of the abandoned girl is a story of sin and redemption. All the while God is there.

Look at the hard times, don’t ignore or hide from them, but see them with the eyes of God, the prophet says. “Thus says the Lord GOD,” I swear I am coming… I will claim my sheep…I will save my sheep…I myself will look after and tend my sheep.” (Ezekiel 34,1-11)

Good words for us today?

 Pontian and Hippolytus

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 St Pontian, Pope and Martyr, and St Hippolytus, Priest and Martyr. August 13

Pontian and Hippolytu died in Sardinia in the persecution of Maximus Thrax about the year 235. No one escapted fromSardinia, the Roman penal colon, the Romans called it  the “Isle of the Dead.” 

They’re considered important martyrs in the early church and their bodies were taken back to Rome by Pope Fabian. Pontian was buried in the chapel of the popes in the cemetery of St. Callistus. Hyppolytus was buried in a cemetery along the Via Tiburtina.

 

Via Appia to the Catacomb of St. Callistus
Pontian, Cemetery of Callistus

Originally Pontian and Hippolytus were honored separately in our liturgical calendar, but our 1969 calendar after Vatican II gave them a feast together. One reason was that they were rivals for power in the Roman church and were reconciled as they faced death together. Forgiveness is always identified with martyrdom. Forgiveness leaves judgement to God.

They also give us a picture into the early development of the papacy in Rome. It was not the smooth process often pictured in church history books. . 

The early church in Rome emerged from the large Jewish community in that city. Its house churches emerged from Jewish-Christian synagogues. The process was not easy.

 Historians like Eamon Duffy say that the house churches in Rome were less centrally organized than the communities in Antioch.“To begin with, indeed, there was no ‘pope’, no bishops as such, for the church in Rome was slow to develop the office of chief presbyter, or bishop.” (Saints and Sinners, A History of the Popes, New Haven, USA, 1997 p 7)

That’s not say that the Roman church wasn’t looked up to. From earliest times the Roman church was seen as the church founded by two great apostles, Peter and Paul. It was also the church of Rome, seat of Roman government. Some of its members served in Caesar’s household.

The papal office developed in response to heresy. Rome was a magnet drawing teachers like Marcion who came to Rome in 140 and wished to do away the Old Testament and all Jewish teaching. About the same time, Tatian and the gnostic Valentinus visited Rome. They had to be dealt with too.

That’s where figures like Hippolytus come in. He was a brilliant theologian and champion of orthodoxy. Yet, according to some sources he thought he should be bishop of Rome rather than someone like Callistus, a former slave whose abilities he considered far inferior to his own.  The papacy at the time was far from the well-ordered institution we know now.

The saintly martyrs we honor today didn’t live or die in a vacuum. They were fully involved in their own, unsettled times. Did Pope Fabian, a peacemaker, bring back the remains of Pontian and Hippolytus to Rome as examples of peace and reconciliation for a church dealing with heretical teachers and periodic outbursts of persecution.

Living in your own times is always a form of martyrdom.  

Listen to Ezechiel

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The Prophet Ezechiel, Rubens

We usually look to the New Testament for wisdom day by day. The Old Testament readings in our lectionary don’t seem as relevant as the New; the words themselves– “Old,” “New”– suggest that. The Fathers of the Church, though, preached and reflected on the Old Testament a lot, more  than we do. For one thing, they saw in the Old Testament their mission to be involved in the world of their day.

During his ministry Jesus was cautious about saying anything the Romans and those occupying Palestine might see as meant for them. He’s careful about social or political statements that could end his ministry quickly. Look what happened to John the Baptist, for example. In an upcoming gospel reading (Matthew 19,23-30) Jesus tells his disciples, with Peter as their head, that the rich will find it hard to enter the kingdom of heaven. He’s cautious about indicating who the rich are.

The Prophet Ezechiel (Ez. 28,1-10) in our Old Testament readings, however, speaks out against the rich and powerful of his time by name. He inveighs against the Prince of Tyre, a small Phoenician kingdom entrenched along the Mediterranean Sea, where Lebanon is today. Smart traders and skillful politicians, they saw themselves as a model society for that part of the world.

Ezechiel like so many of the prophets was a social critic. He’s warning  the Jewish ruling class in exile in Babylon about seeing Tyre as their model for rebuilding Jerusalem. He sees too much of Tyre’s unjust ways and arrogance to buy into becoming a nation like them.

In our own time and place, we shouldn’t lose our voice for criticizing social issues, prophets like Ezekiel say. While we struggle with our own personal sins and failures, we need to keep promoting a just society throughout the world. God calls us to work for issues of social justice, like immigration and poverty, for example.

We need to listen to Ezekiel and the prophets like him.