Category Archives: Passionists

Learning in Bad Times

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I find myself turning away from the news on television these days. I don’t think I’m the only one. The pandemic only seems to be getting worse, and we’re getting worse with it.

So we turn to the Good News.

I’m finding the Gospel of Matthew, which we’re reading these weekdays and on Sundays, helpful. It was written for people struggling with bad times.

The bad times were around the year AD 90 when the followers of Jesus in Galilee were reeling from the attacks of a resurgent Judaism. Those attacks are described in Chapters 10-12 of Matthew’s gospel.

Instead of closing their eyes and hanging on tight, Jesus tells his disciples to open their eyes and their ears, because there’s something for them to learn. “Blessed are your eyes, because they see and your ears because they hear. Many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it and hear what you hear and did not hear it”  (Matthew 13:16-17). He says that as he teaches them in parables.

Bad times can be the best times to learn. Some of the best things we know; some of the best insights we have;  some of the most creative thoughts may come in bad times. God doesn’t stop speaking or teaching in bad times; God sows seeds and opens new avenues. New treasures, new pearls are there to be discovered in the ground we walk over and the jumble of things that seem to overwhelm us.

We will be reading soon the parables of the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price and the net that pulls up a bewildering variety of things from the sea.  It’s a message continued in the mystery of the Passion of Jesus. The disciples saw only death and failure there at first, but then they saw treasures in the wounds, the blood and water that flowed from his side, the words he said.

We don’t have to turn away from bad times. They’re times to keep your eyes and ears open, Jesus says. Like his first disciples, we should pray, not for blinders, but for “understanding hearts.”

An Immense Sea

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View_of_Cliffs_of_Moher
Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

Did St. Gregory of Nyssa ever stand at a place like this? He must have:

“The feelings that come as one stands on a high mountain peak and looks down onto some immense sea are the same feelings that come to me when I look out from the high mountain peak of the Lord’s words into the incomprehensible depths of his thoughts.

“When you look at mountains that stand next to the sea, you will often find that they seem to have been cut in half, so that on the side nearest the sea there is a sheer drop and something dropped from the summit will fall straight into the depths. Someone who looks down from such a peak will become dizzy, and so too I become dizzy when I look down from the high peak of these words of the Lord: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“These words offer the sight of God to those whose hearts have been purified and purged. But look: St John says No-one has seen God. The Apostle Paul’s sublime mind goes further still: What no man has seen and no man can see. This is the slippery and crumbling rock that seems to give the mind no support in the heights. Even the teaching of Moses declared God to be a rock that was so inaccessible that our minds could not even approach it: No-one can see the Lord and live.
“To see God is to have eternal life – and yet the pillars of our faith, John and Paul and Moses, say that God cannot be seen. Can you understand the dizziness of a soul that contemplates their words? If God is life, whoever does not see God does not see life. If the prophets and the Apostle, inspired by the Holy Spirit, attest that God cannot be seen, does this not wreck all the hopes of man?
 “It is the Lord who sustains our floundering hope, just as he sustained Peter when he was floundering in the water, and made the waters firm beneath his feet. If the hand of the Word stretches out to us as well, and sets us firm in a new understanding when these speculations have made us lose our balance, we shall be safe from fear, held safe in the guiding hand of the Word. Blessed, he says, are those who possess a pure heart, for they shall see God.”

Readings for the 6th Week of Easter

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Lent 1

17 SUN SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17/1 Pt 3:15-18/Jn 14:15-21

18 Mon Easter Weekday
[Saint John I, Pope and Martyr]
Acts 16:11-15/Jn 15:26—16:4a 

19 Tue Easter Weekday
Acts 16:22-34/Jn 16:5-11

20 Wed Easter Weekday
[Saint Bernardine of Siena, Priest]
Acts 17:15, 22—18:1/Jn 16:12-15

Ecclesiastical Provinces of Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Omaha, Philadelphia:

21 Thu THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD (Solemnity and Holy Day of Obligation)
Acts 1:1-11/Eph 1:17-23/Mt 28:16-20 

All Other U.S. Ecclesiastical Provinces:

21 Thu Easter Weekday
[Saint Christopher Magallanes, Priest, and Companions, Martyrs]
Acts 18:1-8/Jn 16:16-20

22 Fri Easter Weekday
[Saint Rita of Cascia, Religious]
Acts 18:9-18/Jn 16:20-23 

23 Sat Easter Weekday
Acts 18:23-28/Jn 16:23b-28

Ecclesiastical Provinces of Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Omaha, Philadelphia: 

24 SUN SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 1:12-14/1 Pt 4:13-16/Jn 17:1-11a 

All Other U.S. Ecclesiastical Provinces:

24 SUN THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD (Solemnity)
Acts 1:1-11/Eph 1:17-23/Mt 28:16-20

When the Ascension of the Lord is celebrated on the following Sunday, the Second Reading and Gospel from the Seventh Sunday of Easter may be read on the Sixth Sunday of Easter.

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The Feast of the Ascension is celebrated on Thursday this week in the eastern United States and on Sunday in the western dioceses. Better to celebrate this feast at the same time, I think.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul takes the stage at Athens, the intellectual capitol of the Roman world, but his words chosen carefully are met only with curiosity. “We would like to hear you some other time.” (Wednesday)

Paul gets a better reception in Corinth, not far from Athens, but worlds away from the proud self sufficient city. “Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.” Jesus says to Paul in a vision. (Friday)

In the reading from Acts on Saturday, Luke reminds us that Paul had great people with him like Priscilla and Aquila, the wife and husband, who instruct Apollos, a good speaker but weak in his theology.  “When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the Way of God more accurately.”

I told a cousin of mine recently who wasn’t sure about a sermon she heard in church. “You may be right and he’s wrong.”

Laudato Si and the Passion of Jesus Christ

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The temptation when reading Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si, on creation and our common home–one of our principal guides today– is to see it as a series of political or economic or social recommendations. It’s deeper than that.

“Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it. (19)

Our present Covid crisis has created another range of personal and global suffering. We need to change the way we see things and do things. The danger is we lose the sense beauty and the good in life as we cover our faces and distance ourselves from the world around us..

I wish I could remember the name a book written years ago by a biologist pointing out the basic health and goodness of our life forms, from the smallest to the greatest. We live in a world where life thrives and not dies.

The mysticism of the Passion of Jesus offers a way to see our new painful situation as a way to life and not death. The Cross is always of tree that brings life;; a garden tomb offers the promise of new harvest. The mysticism of the Passion doesn’t end in suffering and death, but in life and resurrection.

Mystics usually see the connection of things. Are we being called to embrace a passion mysticism now?

I like Francis’ quotation of the Sufi spiritual writer Ali al-Khawas who “stresses that we not put too much distance between creatures of the world and the interior experience of God.” We have to see this present situation as part of the plan of God, a mystery of death and resurrection.

“Prejudice should not have us criticize those who seek ecstasy in music or poetry. There is a subtle mystery in each of the movements and sounds of this world. The initiate will capture what is being said when the wind blows, the trees sway, water flows, flies buzz, doors creak, birds sing, or in the sound of strings or flutes, the sighs of the sick, the groans of the afflicted…” (EVA DE VITRAY-MEYEROVITCH [ed.], Anthologie du soufisme, Paris 1978, 200).

As we put on face masks and practice social distancing, let’s not lose sight of the beauty of creation, a sign of God’s presence.

3rd Sunday of Easter

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6th Sunday A: Commandments about Love

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Please watch today’s homily by selecting the video below:

Feast of the Epiphany

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For this week’s homily, please play the video below:

Monday, Week 3 of Advent

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balaam

Readings here

Mattthew’s gospel begins this week with a story of unbelief. Those you would expect to receive Jesus reject him.  They also rejected John the Baptist before him. Yet, prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners believed in him and they also believed  in John, Jesus says.

Faith in Jesus doesn’t come from holding places of privilege and power, or from great learning.

The Old Testament offers a wonderful reading from the Book of Numbers.. It’s about Balaam, a foreign prophet, who’s offered handsome pay if he will put a curse on the tribes of Israel. Instead, Balaam, “whose eyes are true, who sees what God sees and knows what God knows,”  blesses the tribes of Israel.

He promises a “star shall rise from Israel and a staff should appear from Jacob.”.

Even his donkey gets it right. He won’t take Balaam to the place where they want him to curse the Israelites. Is that why t a donkey appears at the manger in Bethlehem?

Beautiful illustration from the Middle Ages. The donkey won’t budge..

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

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We tend to see the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, which says that Mary was preserved from original sin from conception, as a gift just for her and not affecting us at all,  a gift that makes her unlike us.

St. Anselm, the 12th century monk, later archbishop of Canterbury, sees it differently. Mary shows us what being human and being part of God’s creation was meant to be. She’s the first to be blessed by Jesus Christ, her son. All of us, yes creation itself,  benefit from the gift:

“Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth and rivers, day and night – everything that is subject to our power or use – rejoice that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and are endowed with inexpressible new grace. All creatures were dead, as it were, useless to us or for the praise of God, who made them. The world, contrary to its true destiny, was corrupted and tainted by human acts of idolatry. Now all creation has been restored to life and rejoices.

“The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God, its Creator, it sees God openly, working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.

“Through the fullness of the grace given you, dead things rejoice in their freedom, and those in heaven are glad to be made new. Through the Son who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before his life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.

“Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation receives new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator himself has been blessed by creation.”

What You Find in the First Week of Advent

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The daily Advent readings at Mass for the first week of Advent are beautifully arranged..

In the Old Testament readings,  the Prophet Isaiah speaks as a fierce Assyrian army heads towards Jerusalem. Bad times ahead, but the prophet sees something else. All nations are streaming to God’s mountain.

The nations will come to God’s mountain, Jerusalem, where the temple stands, the prophet says.  They’ll be fed a rich banquet (Wednesday),  the poor will triumph (Thursday),  the blind will see (Friday). Safe on this rock, children play around the cobra’s den, and the lion and the lamb lie down together (Tuesday). The prophet  challenges us to see our world in another way.

In the gospels  Jesus Christ fulfills the Isaian prophecies. The Roman centurion, humbly approaching Jesus in Capernaum, represents all nations approaching him. (Monday)  Jesus praises the childlike;  they will enter the kingdom of heaven.(Tuesday)  He feeds a multitude on the mountain.(Wednesday) His kingdom is built on rock.(Thursday)  He gives sight to the blind to find their way.  (Friday)

Many Advent readings in these early weeks of Advent are from the gospel of Matthew, who portrays Jesus teaching on a mountain (Isaiah’s favorite symbol). His miracles affect all. Jesus is the new temple, the Presence of God, Emmanuel, God with us. He brings hope beyond human hope.

Lord, help us see what you and the prophets see.