Category Archives: spirituality

The Numbers are Down:Mark 4:24-34

Numbers seem to indicate power and popularity. We think that way; Jesus’ disciples must have thought that way too. In Mark’s gospel Jesus begins his ministry in Capernaum before an enthusiastic crowd. At the end of his first day, the whole town gathers at the door of Peter’s house and word reaches out to other towns and places that a prophet has come. The numbers go up. (Mark 1, 21-34)

But then enthusiasm dies down as Jesus’ authority is questioned. Religious leaders from Jerusalem and the followers of Herod Antipas cast doubts about him. His own hometown, Nazareth, takes a dim view of him.. Gradually, Capernaum and the other towns that welcomed Jesus enthusiastically turn against him. His numbers go down.

Why are the number going down, his disciples must have wondered? It didn’t make sense. Jesus’ answer comes in Mark’s gospel today. God’s kingdom is coming; God is at work in the world, but human beings are mostly unaware of it:

“This is how it is with the Kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.” (Mark 4, 28-34)

Great power is at work in the scattered seed, but we know little how it grows. The seed takes time, with its own law of growth; a great harvest will come, but still there’s mystery we don’t see. We sleep.

Meanwhile, we worry about numbers. Why are growing numbers giving up going to church or synagogue? Why are there so few vocations to our religious communities? So many of the good things in this world seem to be diminishing.

What can we do? Look into the signs of the time. Treasure the seed we have. Scatter it as we can. Be patient as we sleep. The Kingdom of God comes.

Reading Mark’s Gospel

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Mark 1, 7-11- Mark 8, 14-21

After the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus we read at Mass from the first 8 chapters of the Gospel of Mark until Ash Wednesday.

Mark’s Gospel makes no mention of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem but begins with his baptism in the Jordan River. Then he describes his miracles and teaching in the towns around the Sea of Galilee– the Jewish towns first, then in the gentile region. Then Jesus goes up to Jerusalem and his death and resurrection.

Until recently, Mark’s Gospel received little attention compared to the gospels of Matthew, John or Luke. It was hardly read in the liturgy. Earlier commentators thought Mark was simply a synopsis of Matthew’s Gospel. Commentators today, however, recognize Mark’s Gospel as the first to be written and appreciate the powerful way it tells the story of Jesus. It’s not just a simple portrayal of historical facts or a synopsis of Matthew. It’s rich in symbolism of its own.

Mark’s Gospel, for example, begins in the waters of the Jordan River, where Jesus is called God’s beloved Son on whom the Spirit rests. Water is a recurring image in Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’ ministry.

John Donahue SJ, a recent commentator on the Gospel of Mark (Liturgical Press, 2002) , points out the symbolic nature of the various events in Jesus’ ministry, beginning with his baptism in the Jordan River and then his ministry around the Sea of Galilee. As the Spirit rested on the waters of the Jordan, so does the Spirit stir the waters in Galilee, drawing more and more to Jesus, God’s Son. Crossing from the western to its eastern side of the Sea – from a side largely Jewish to a side largely gentile – Jesus and his disciples bring the gospel to gentiles as well as Jews.

The storms Jesus and his disciples face on waters of the Sea of Galilee are more than historic storms; they symbolize the fearful challenge and rejection to be faced in bringing the gospel to others. (Mark 6:45-52)

“As he passed by the Sea of Galilee,” Jesus calls some fishermen, Simon, his brother Andrew, James and his brother John. He makes them “ fishers of men.” (Mark 1, 16-19) Along the sea, Jesus teaches the crowds in parables.

The journeys of Jesus and his disciples to Tyre and Sidon, seaports on the Mediterranean Sea, are also more than historical markers. The Syrophoenician woman and the deaf man, both gentiles healed there, are signs that the gospel must be brought over the seas to the gentiles at ends of the earth. ( Mark 7:24-37)

Jesus multiplies bread on both sides of the Sea of Galilee in Mark’s Gospel. The gentiles are to be fed and blessed as well as Jews. (Mark 6:31-44; Mark 8:1-10)

The Spirit moves in the waters of the Jordan, the Sea of Galilee and the waters beyond yet, as Mark’s Gospel indicates repeatedly, the Jewish leaders, the pharisees, scribes, Herodians, members of his own family, his disciples, do not understand. Neither do we.

Still, the Spirit works through the waters, softening, cleansing, strengthening, giving new life.

I suspect Mark’s gospel had an important affect on the early community of Roman Christians as they survived the Neronian persecution in the 60s, when Peter and Paul were killed. A common opinion is that Mark, a disciple of Peter, wrote this gospel in Rome in part to support the Roman community after their experience. He reminded them of Peter’s words and example.

Our readings from Mark end on Ash Wednesday.

John Neumann, January 5

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Today’s the feast of St. John Neumann,. “The sacrament of Holy Orders is at the service of the communion of the church.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church). John Neumann served the church in an heroic way as a priest and bishop. He’s one of the founding figures of the church in the United States.

Born in Bohemia in 1811, John Neumann was drawn to serve the church in the new world as a young seminarian. Arriving in New York City in 1835, he was immediately accepted for ordination by Bishop Dubois and ordained at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Canals and railroads were transforming the new nation then. The Eire Canal, completed in 1828, connected New York harbor and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes region, causing an explosive population growth in the cities and towns along its route. Bishop Dubois sent the newly-arrived priest to minister to the many Catholic immigrants settling there.

First as a diocesan priest and then as a Redemptorist religious, Neumann founded numerous parishes and missions in the cities and towns along the canal and railroad lines in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and New York.

He spoke a number of languages and learned to speak others, even Gaelic, as he reached out to the diverse immigrant population, many poor Irish workers on the canal. He wore himself out in his tireless efforts and joined the Redemptorist Order looking for the support and stability that a religious order provided, yet as a Redemptorist he continued establishing churches and parishes through the northeastern United States as a preacher and catechist.

In 1852 Neumann was appointed bishop of Philadelphia, where the Catholic population was rapidly growing. He was a tireless shepherd, building over 100 new schools and 50 churches, until his death in 1860. Convinced that young people needed good formation in the faith, Neumann fostered Christian education and wrote two catechisms. He preached continuously, administered the sacraments and encouraged the Forty Hours Devotion and other devotional practices in his diocese.

John Neumann served the church as a zealous priest and bishop. He left his own homeland to work tirelessly to build the Catholic Church in the United States. He was a true missionary of Christ.

We need priests and missionaries like him today. Not only priests who leave their own homeland to minister in different countries, but priests who minister in an evolving church where the boundaries are not fixed.

O God, who called the Bishop Saint John Neumann, renowned for his charity and pastoral service, to shepherd your people in America, grant by his intercession that, as we foster the Christian education of youth and are strengthened by the witness of his brotherly love, we may constantly increase the family of your Church. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

January 1: Mary, the Mother of God

December 18: Joseph, Son of David

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Nativity

In the gospel of Matthew Joseph, the husband of Mary, has an important role in Jesus’ birth and early years. Mary points to him to tell the story of the birth of Jesus in the illustration above.

Matthew’s gospel calls Joseph a just man, someone who listens to God rather than to himself. He does God’s will. He’s a carpenter, the gospels say, certainly not someone privileged – but he’s a “son of David” from the royal family who gives the world a Messiah.

During their betrothal, which in Jewish tradition was more than the modern engagement we know, Joseph finds that Mary is pregnant. A just man, he struggles to find a way to divorce her quietly when, in a dream, an angel of God tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife.

Here is the key part of the angel’s message: “For it is through the Holy Spirit  that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Like Mary, Joseph believes God’s message. Like Mary, he sees more than human eyes and a human mind sees. “When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.” He believed what we say in our creed: “(Jesus) was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary.” Jesus became one of us, God was with us.

Artists early on pictured Joseph with his head in his hands, listening in sleep to the angel’s message. In a dream later he heard the angel telling him to take the child and his mother to Egypt to escape Herod, the king. He was a man of great faith.

The medieval artist who painted the picture above has Mary pointing to Joseph as a witness to whose Child this is who’s’ born in a stable. They are the first to believe and they will care for Jesus with all the love and care they can give him.

Joseph has his hand on his head.. The angel spoke to him in dreams. Faith is like a dream where God speaks to us in another way.

O Leader of the House of Israel,
giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai:
come to rescue us with your mighty power!

The gospels for the remaining days until Christmas are from St. Luke, recalling the angel’s visit to Mary and her relative Zechariah. Matthew’s gospel will be read again after the birth of the Child, when Joseph will be warned of danger and takes the Child and Mary to Egypt and then to Nazareth..

Feast of The Immaculate Conception

Advent: Tuesday, 1st Week

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“The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” (Isaiah 11,1)

A child stands atop Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom in Tuesday’s first reading at Mass. Edward Hicks, the Quaker painter, made over 100 copies of this scene from Isaiah, carefully indicating in the far left the peace treaty between William Penn and the native peoples of Pennsylvania in colonial America.

It takes a child to believe the astounding promises Isaiah makes. Adults, hardened by the experience of life, struggle with the prophet’s words. That’s why Advent invites us to become children, not physically, of course, but spiritually.

Become like little children. That’s what Jesus told his followers, and he praised the childlike:

“I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the childlike.” Luke 10

Only the childlike believe in great promises.

What does being “childlike” mean? Here’s what St. Leo the Great said about Jesus’s teaching on spiritual childhood: To be a child means to be “free from crippling anxiety, to be forgetful of injuries, to be sociable and to keep wondering at all things.”

A little child in its mother’s arms has no worries. It’s a good place to be, free from anxieties and a mother’s voice promising all will be well. Advent brings that grace back to us; a grace we can lose so easily.

Jesus experienced that grace in Mary’s arms. Herod’s soldiers, like Isaiah’s Assyrian armies, were on their way. It’s a poor place where he’s born, no room in the inn, but the Child in his mother’s arms has no fear. All will be well.

Injuries come. The world can turn hostile. The promises may seem far away, but from infancy to his death, Jesus knew he was a child of God, his Father, in God’s caring hands and destined for God’s kingdom.

Help us, Lord to become like children

The Maccabees: Restoring the Temple

Mother Cabrini: November 13

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Mulberry Street, New York City, ca.1900

From 1880 to 1920 more than 4 million Italian immigrants came to the United States, mostly from rural southern Italy. Many were poor peasants escaping the chaotic political situation and widespread poverty of a recently united Italian peninsula.

Almost all the new immigrants came through Ellis Island; many settled in the crowded tenements of the New York region, where men found work in the subways, canals and buildings of the growing city. The women often worked in the sweatshops that multiplied in New York at the time. Almost half of the 146 workers killed as fire consumed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911, were Italian women.

Over time, the immigrants moved elsewhere and became prominent in American society, but at first large numbers suffered from the over-crowding, harsh conditions, discrimination and cultural shock they met in cities like New York. Many returned to Italy with stories of the contradictions and injustices lurking in “the American dream.”

Mother Maria Francesca Cabrini

Mother Maria Francesca Cabrini (1850-19170), founder of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, an order of women missionaries , came to America in 1889 at the urging of Pope Leo XIII to serve the underserved poor. Her work is succinctly described on the website of the Cabrini Mission Foundation. and in the movie Cabrini.

She proceeded to found schools, orphanages, hospitals and social services institutions to serve the needs of immigrants in the United States and other parts of the world. Despite poor health and frailty, Mother Cabrini crossed the ocean 25 times during 29 years of missionary work, and with her sisters founded 67 institutions in nine countries on three continents – one for each year of her life.

Mother Cabrini was a collaborator from the start of her missionary activity. She was a woman of her time, yet beyond her time. Her message – “all things are possible with God” – is as alive today as it was 110 years ago. Mother Cabrini lived and worked among the people, poor and rich alike, using whatever means were provided to support her works. She was a progressive, strategic visionary, willing to take risks, adaptable to change, and responsive to every opportunity that arose to help others. In recognition of her extraordinary service to immigrants, Mother Cabrini was canonized in 1946 as the “first American saint,” and was officially declared the Universal Patroness of Immigrants by the Vatican in 1950.”

Be good to have leaders like her today in the church, as well as in society, wouldn’t it? “… a progressive, strategic visionary, willing to take risks, adaptable to change, and responsive to every opportunity that arose to help others.”

Her feastday is November 13th. “Mother Cabrini, pray for us.”

St. Martin of Tours, November 11

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If saints are antidotes to the poison of their times, as Chesterton said, Martin of Tours is a saint worth reflecting upon. So, what poison did Martin confront?

One was the poison of militarism. Martin was born into a military family in 316, his father a Roman officer who arose through the ranks and commanded the legions on the Roman frontier along the Rhine and Danube rivers. When his son was born his father saw him as a soldier like himself and named him Martin, after Mars, the god of war.

Rome was mobilizing then to stop invading barbarian tribes, and soldiers, like the emperors Constantine and Diocletian, were its heroes. But Martin wanted nothing to do with war. As a young boy he heard a message of peace and non-violence from Christians he knew. Instead of a soldier, he became a Christian catechumen, over his father’s strong objections.

Martin was a lifelong peacemaker. He died on his way as a bishop to settle a dispute among his priests.

Another poison Martin confronted was the poison of careerism. Elected bishop of Tours by the people, Martin adopted a lifestyle unlike that of other bishops of Gaul, who were increasingly involved in imperial administration and adopted the privileged style that came with an imperial administrator.

Bishops set themselves up in the cities; Martin preferred to minister in the country, to the “pagani”, the uneducated poor. He established monasteries and the simple Christian life they promoted. The great monastic settlements that contributed to the evangelization of Gaul were largely his legacy.

Are the poisons of militarism and careerism around today? We remember our war veterans today.So many died in terrible wars these 100 years and many bear the scars of war. Militarism, the glamorizing of war, is still around. So is careerism .

Finally, martyrdom was the great sign of holiness in Martin’s day, but Martin witnessed to another kind of martyrdom, the martyrdom of everyday. That could happen in embracing monasticism or religious life. It also could take place in embracing fully one’s own state in life. Martin was a martyr of another kind. For all these reasons, he is an important saint on our church calendar.

The story that epitomizes Martin, of course, is his meeting with a beggar in a cold winter as he was coming through the gate in the town of Amiens. Still a soldier but also a Christian catechumen, he stopped and cut his military cloak in two and gave one to the poor man. That night, the story goes, Christ appeared to him in a dream, wearing the beggar’s cloak. “Martin gave me this,” he said.

Pope Benedict XVI commented on this event.

“ Martin’s gesture flows from the same logic that drove Jesus to multiply the loaves for the hungry crowd, but most of all to leave himself to humanity as food in the Eucharist… It’s the logic of sharing.

May St Martin help us to understand that only by a common commitment to sharing is it possible to respond to the great challenge of our times: to build a world of peace and justice where each person can live with dignity. This can be achieved if an authentic solidarity prevails which assures to all inhabitants of the planet food, water, necessary medical treatment, and also work and energy resources as well as cultural benefits, scientific and technological knowledge.”

Well said.

In medieval Europe farmers, getting ready for winter at this time, put aside food and meat for the cold days ahead. Martin’s feast day was their reminder to put aside something for the poor. The poor are always with us; are we remembering them?

Today Veterans’ Day in the USA honors those who fought in our country’s wars. It was originally called Armistice Day celebrating the end of fighting between the Allies and Germany on November 11, 1918. The United States lost 116,516 troops in the 1st World War; other countries lost millions more. The wars that followed added to that count.

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The Victor's Place

Some homilies, scattered thoughts, images from the Passionists: : whatever the days bring. Follow me on Twitter @vhoagland.

Category Archives: spirituality

The Numbers are Down:Mark 4:24-34

Reading Mark’s Gospel

John Neumann, January 5

January 1: Mary, the Mother of God

December 18: Joseph, Son of David

Feast of The Immaculate Conception

Advent: Tuesday, 1st Week

The Maccabees: Restoring the Temple

Mother Cabrini: November 13

St. Martin of Tours, November 11

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