Category Archives: Religion

Rejected By His Own: Luke 10: 13-16

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“And as for you, Capernaum, ‘Will you be exalted to heaven?

You will go down to the netherworld.” Luke 10,13-16

The mystery of unbelief is hard to understand. Why was he rejected by the people of Capernaum who received him so enthusiastically when he began his ministry there? They saw him expel a demon in their synagogue. They marveled at his teaching. He cured Peter’s mother in law and made a paralyzed man walk. People came to the town from everywhere with their sick to have him cure them. They flocked around the door of the house where he stay. 

I’m sure some of Luke’s gentile readers (He wrote with them in mind) also wondered what happened in the land where Jesus was born and taught and died and rose again. Why was Jesus rejected in  Capernaum, Nazareth, Bethsaida– centers of Jesus’ life and ministry?

 “He came to his own and his own received him not,’ John’s gospel says. The mystery of unbelief was there from the beginning. Paul writes extensively about this mystery in the 9th chapter of this Letter to the Romans. Hope in the mystery of God’s mercy, Paul writes, Israel will have its day of belief.

The rejection of Jesus by his own people was a mystery  Christians could not understand then. We cannot understand it nows  as we see people abandoning Christianity and its churches. We wonder about the future of Christianity, especially among the young.

The mystery of unbelief is a mystery which calls us, not to believe less, but to believe more strongly. Believe in him with all your strength, preach him as well as you know how, Luke’s gospel says. Believing in a world of unbelief is one of the ways we enter into the mystery of the cross and resurrection.

World of Vapor

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“World of Vapor”
A reflection on Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
©️2024 Gloria M. Chang

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-8 (ESV)

What is the Meaning of Life?

Qoheleth, the “Preacher,” writing in the name of Solomon, the son of David, wrestles with the absolute in the book of Ecclesiastes. The Hebrew word Qoheleth (from qahal, a root that means “assembly” or “congregation”) is Ekklesiastes in Greek, which names the book. Early traditions attribute the book’s authorship to Solomon, but philological evidence dates the book to no earlier than the mid-fifth century B.C., a half-millennium after Solomon’s reign. Thus, Qoheleth, a Hebrew sage, critiques the world through the eyes of King Solomon, the wisest, wealthiest, and most powerful man in the world. He investigates the patterns of nature and human striving, hoping to discover an ultimate purpose behind it all.  

World of Vapor

Qoheleth begins by lamenting that all is “vanity” (in Hebrew hebel, “vapor, breath”), which he pronounces five times in a single utterance (1:2). Finding no ultimate profit in the drudgery of human toil, he rhetorically asks, “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”

Ephemeral phenomena and superficial impressions shift and slide incessantly “under the sun,” where nothing is constant. The rising and setting of the sun, and the circuitous currents of wind go “round and round” ceaselessly in a futile loop. The sea, too, like human ambition and appetite, never finds fulfillment despite continuous filling: “All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full” (1:7). Jaded by familiarity, Qoheleth deplores the predictable motions of the earth.

“All things are full of weariness,” he despairs, “a man cannot utter it.” “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (1:8). Ever restless, human desire insatiably consumes the panorama of sight and sound—representative of all sensory and intellectual stimuli. All impressions eventually evaporate like steam (hebel).

Nothing New Under the Sun

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (ESV)

Ecclesiastes affirms the truism that “history repeats itself.” As civilizations rise and fall, human nature remains the same. War and peace, joy and sorrow, strength and weakness, freedom and slavery, profit and loss—the same old human affairs cycle round and round, generation after generation, world without end. A keen observer of human nature and historical recurrence, Qoheleth bleakly concludes, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Puff of the Past

There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.

Ecclesiastes 1:11 (ESV)

As the sands of time fade away, so does human “remembrance of former things.” Stars and galaxies, fossils, and artifacts provide clues to the mystery of the 13.8 billion-year-old universe and human evolution. Yet billions of ancestors lie buried in the ground, forgotten by their descendants. Apart from cave paintings, oral traditions, scrolls, books, annals, chronicles, and even modern audiovisual media, which capture only fragments from limited perspectives, the past vanishes like vapor “under the sun.” Can fragmentary memories preserve an unbroken, unified recollection of the past? Can mortals achieve immortality in the minds of posterity? 

The Value of Struggle

Ecclesiastes challenges the assembly of wisdom seekers to find ultimate purpose and profit “under the sun.” Like Job, Qoheleth embraces disputation and wrestling with elemental questions. Sometimes described as “unorthodox,” these books goad the pious to “struggle with God,” the meaning of Israel’s name (Genesis 32:28). Questions do not threaten religion but expand its horizons. 

Without being an atheist, Qoheleth journeys to the edge of human striving to discover its peaks and valleys apart from God. His experiment confirms Paul’s observation that, on account of Adam’s departure from God’s will, “the creation was subjected to futility” (Romans 8:20; Genesis 3:17). The Greek word for futility, mataiotés (“vanity,” “emptiness”), translates the Hebrew word hebel (“vapor,” “breath”) in the Septuagint. Ecclesiastes allows every seeker of meaning to feel the emptiness of a life and vision that never rises above the sun. 

I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a chase after wind.

Ecclesiastes 1:14 (NABRE)

All is vanity, a chase after wind.
Series and cycles—these I examined.
Under the sun, seasons whirl like vapor.
What do humans gain by all their labor?


This content by Gloria M. Chang was originally published online at Shalom Snail: Journey to Wholeness.

Learning from Job

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St. Gregory the Great, one the greatest of the popes, was called to that position in the 6th century, when Rome was under siege and in decline.  He didn’t want the job and for spiritual guidance he read from the Book of Job.  We would never know the greatness of Job, if suffering didn’t reveal it, he said.  Here are a few lines from his commentary on Job, our first reading this week:

“Paul saw the riches of wisdom within himself though his outward body was corruptible, and so he says ‘ We have this treasure in earthen vessels.  In Job, then, the earthen vessel had gaping sores, while an interior treasure of wisdom remained unchanged. Gaping outward wounds did not stop a treasure of wisdom from welling up within, for he said: ‘If we have received good things at the hand of the Lord, shall we not receive evil?’

By good things Job means the good things given by God, both temporal and eternal; by evil he means the blows he presently suffers.

When we’re afflicted, let’s remember our Maker’s gifts to us. Suffering will not depress us if we quickly remember the gifts we’ve been given. As Scripture says, ‘In the day of prosperity do not forget affliction, and in the day of affliction, do not forget prosperity.’”

The love of God for us was proven through the death of his Son, Jesus Christ who, like Job, was tested by suffering and death.

Guardian Angels

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We usually associate Guardian Angels with children. In the gospel reading for the Feast of Guardian Angels, October 2, Jesus says we can’t get to heaven unless we become like little children whose “angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”  (Matthew 18,1-5,10)

Artists, like the above, usually picture children with Guardian Angels, protecting and guiding them as they go on their way in a dangerous world.

Yet, the angels we read about  in the Bible are more than guardians of children; they’re signs of God’s guardianship of the whole world. They bring God’s message to Mary and Joseph and the prophets. They bring bread to Elijah in the desert and save Daniel in the lion’s den. Angels are part of God’s providential hand dealing with the world. They’re guardians and guides of nations, the human family and creation itself.  They’re everywhere instruments of God’s power and love and justice. 

This week’s news will be dominated, as usual,  by politics, wars, human tragedies and scandals, but here we are reading about guardian angels, who will never make the news of the day, yet are powerfully present in our world.  However smart or independent or grown-up we think are, God knows we’re still little children. We never outgrow God’s guidance and care: we have “loyal, prudent, powerful protectors and guides. They  keep us so our ways cannot be overpowered or led astray.” So that’s us in the picture above.

I think of the “principle of subsidiarity” on the feastday of the Guardian Angels. God spreads his  power around. I also remember that sometime ago I nearly hit a truck ahead of me but something suddenly stopped me. “Thanks.”

O God,
in your infinite providence you deign to send your holy angels to be our guardians. Grant to us who pray to you
that we may be defended by them in this life
and rejoice with them in the next.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son.

Luke 9:51-18:14: The Journey

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We begin reading this week from the long portion of Luke’s gospel describing Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem–chapters 9,51-18:14. 

“When the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled,

he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51)

One sentence dominates this part of Luke’s gospel. “Follow me,” Another sentence we hear repeatedly: “Don’t look back.”

“Follow me,” Jesus says on his way to glory, but not all hear and there are obstacles along the way, like the Samaritan village in today’s gospel. Things get in the way,  Jesus says, In Lot’s day “they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting , building on the day Lot left Sodom.” A hard world to leave.  Lot’s wife was one of those looking back.

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?

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)

His healing miracles were great, but greater still is the final gift he gives for following him.  After his resurrection, two disciples leave Jerusalem for Emmaus and Jesus walked with them, renewing their hope by recalling the scriptures to them. Then he broke bread with them and they recognized him in the breaking of the bread.

On our journey Jesus is with us in the breaking of the Bread. He is Bread for our journey. He is Bread for the journey this world of ours is making.  We must keep close to this gift.  

St. Therese of Lisieux: October 1

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therese
St. Therese of Lisieux was born in Alencon, France in 1873, the youngest of 9 children. The year she was born the economies of Europe and the United States failed; historians call it the Long Depression; it lasted for 6 years, till 1879. France was hit the hardest.

During this time, her mother died, when Therese was 4 year’s old. Her family was never poverty stricken, but her biographers say she experienced a sense of helplessness and suffering as a child.

She had a spiritual experience on Christmas day 1886, when she was 13. She would always have a special devotion to the Child Jesus. She entered the Carmelite convent when she was 15 and for the next 7 years she lived the simple, routine life of a Carmelite nun until her death of tuberculosis on September 30, 1897. She was only 24.

She kept a notebook of her reflections on the spiritual life and after she died her two sisters who were also Carmelite nuns made the notebook public. They called it The Story of a Soul and it became a spiritual classic among Catholics. Therese called her spirituality “the little way.”

She had a great desire for God and she wanted to die for God if she could. In The Story of a Soul she recalls her envy of people who did great things for God, who built hospitals or were great theologians or who traveled as missionaries to other continents.

Emerging from its depression, France embarked on what it called a “civilizing mission” into Asia and Africa, and one way it tried to civilize places like Vietnam (French Indo-China) was to send Catholic missionaries there. In exciting times like these, Therese thought of herself, living unknown in a convent, as a nobody.

But she made a spiritual discovery:

“Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles of St Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the 12th and 13th chapters of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace.
I persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will show you the way which surpasses all others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.
When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognised myself in none of the members which St Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favourably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realised that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In a word, that love is everlasting.
Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.”

Her love transformed all she did, however small, into a gift for God.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux: October 1

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therese-close

We celebrate the feast of St. Thérèse, a Doctor of the Church, October 1. Saints are antidotes to the poisons of their times, G.K. Chesterton once wrote. They reveal what’s wrong in their world and counteract its poison by their own lives. Mother Theresa, for example, saw a world poisoned by its neglect of the poor.  She not only pointed out the evil but did something to remedy it.

What poison does St. Thérèse reveal? She lived in late 19th century France, when the poison of unbelief, which first infected French intellectuals like Voltaire, had spread to the country’s ordinary people. Many rejected faith in God and traditional religion. In their place they put their trust in reason and their own lights. As the psalmist said of his day, “There is no thought of God in them.”

Raised in a family of firm faith and traditional beliefs, Thérèse’s childhood was nourished by a sheltered life. Her faith grew in the Carmel of Lisieux, which she entered at 14. There she lived a life of prayer, with people of faith inspired by the spiritual wisdom of the Carmelite tradition. Yet limitations of sickness and unrealized dreams challenged her.

In her last days, she was plunged into a darkness that brought her an experience of  the poison of unbelief. God permitted her to be “invaded by the thickest darkness,” she said, and “the thought of heaven, up to then so sweet to me, was no longer anything but a cause of struggle and torment.”

In her experience she saw herself as a voice for those who do not believe.

“Your child, however, O Lord, has understood Your divine light, and she begs pardon for her brothers. She is resigned to eat the bread of sorrow as long as You desire it; she does not wish to rise up from this table filled with bitterness at which poor sinners are eating until the day set by You.

Can she not say in her name and in the name of her brothers, “Have pity on us, O Lord, for we are poor sinners!” Oh! Lord, send us away justified. May all those who were not enlightened by the bright flame of faith one day see it shine. O Jesus!

if it is needful that the table soiled by them be purified by a soul who loves You, then I desire to eat this bread of trial at this table until it pleases You to bring me into Your bright Kingdom. The only grace I ask of You is that I never offend You!” (Manuscript C, chapter 10)

Sharing the darkness that comes with unbelief, Thérèse  prayed in their name, “’Have pity on us, O Lord, for we are poor sinners!’ Oh! Lord, send us away justified. May all those who were not enlightened by the bright flame of faith one day see it shine. O Jesus!”  Her “struggle and torment” linked her to unbelievers “ not enlightened by the bright flame of faith.”

Mother Theresa seems to have had a similar experience of that darkness. Do other believers today share, in different degrees and different ways, that experience of darkness, that “dark night”, so that “those not enlightened by the bright light of faith may one day see it shine?” It seems so.

Here’s a description of how Thérèse  saw herself:

Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles of St Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the 12th and 13th chapters of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace.

  I persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will show you the way which surpasses all others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.

  When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognised myself in none of the members which St Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favourably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realised that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.

  Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.

October

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We’re on our way tomorrow into October. A good time to look at the calendar to see the days ahead. On Sundays, our red letter days, we follow Mark’s gospel, our gospel reading for the year. For Passionists, October 20th, a Sunday, is the feast of St. Paul of the Cross, our founder.

The weekday gospels from Luke are from his journey narrative, Luke 19:51-18; 14. It’s a section where Luke, the theologian, is at work.

The Book of Job is read the first week of September, the only time it is read in our two year weekday cycle. Job is followed by the Epistle to the Galatians and during the last two weeks of the month, the Letter to the Ephesians.

Our Lady of the Rosary is Mary’s feast this month. (Oct 7) October is the month of the Rosary. Simon and Jude are the apostles we remember this month. (Oct. 28)

With the Feast of St. Francis ( Oct 3) we end the Season of Creation. Two great women saints St. Therese and St. Teresa of Avila are celebrated early in the month.

An important early martyr, Ignatius of Antioch (Oct 17) and the North American Jesuit martyrs (Oct 19) have a place in October.

We also remember two recent popes, John XXIII and John Paul II this month. Both were important figures in the Second Vatican Council.

26th Sunday b: Don’t Miss the Good

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Our gospel readings for the last three Sundays are taken from the 8th and 9th chapters of Mark’s gospel. They are mostly Jesus’ words to his immediate disciples, those whom he called to follow him. People like Peter, James and John. 

They show us that even those closest to Jesus in his earthly ministry often did not understand him and his teaching. A few Sunday’s ago in our gospel, Peter, one of his closest disciples, told Jesus to forget about going to Jerusalem where he might be put to death. Jesus called him, “Satan” and told him he was thinking  like a human being and not like God.

In last Sunday’s reading from Mark the disciples were arguing about who was best among them. Who is going to get the best job in the kingdom Jesus promised would come. Jesus pointed to a child and said it would be the children in spirit, not the powerful and talented who would be first in the kingdom of God. 

The chosen disciples  who listened to Jesus day by day often didn’t understand him. 

In today’s gospel, they misunderstand him as well.

 “ At that time, John said to Jesus,”Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him.There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us. Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ,  amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.” (Mark 

John and his brother James, you remember, wanted fire to consume the Samaritans who objected to Jesus passing through their town. Not tolerant men at all.

We have to continually recognize the way our human thinking, our way of human planing, our way of human wisdom can get in the way of knowing Jesus, his wisdom and God ways. We have to be respectful of all, because God’s truth and goodness is not just in. us, or our party, or our country’s. God’s grace is everywhere.

Pope Francis was criticized by some recently  for his recent visits to Moslem spiritual leaders in Indonesian and elsewhere.  He believes in working with other religions. Each offers a path to God and can promote the common good.

I remember some years ago the pope spoke io the Congress of the United States and. held out four people who worked for the common good of our country.  Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. Two were not Catholic. The others worked for the good of our nation using their unique gifts.

The gospel we read today is especially important for the divisive world we live in now. It makes makes sense. We need to work for the common good, whether in our world, our country, our church or out community. The common good is God’s good. Those who work for it are for us, not against us.

Ecclesiastes: 1:2-11

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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.