Monthly Archives: November 2017

Tuesday of Week 32 in Ordinary Time (Year I)
Wisdom 2:23-3:9 | Psalm 33(34):2-3,16-19 | Luke 17:7-10

Today’s gospel passage from Luke is one of the most perplexing, especially in this age of political correctness and social equality. Viewed from an unflattering angle, Jesus’ words might seem tantamount to approving slavery: “Hey you, who said you can rest? It’s dinner time, you wait on me hand and foot first, then you can eat.”

But Servant of God is considered an accolade, a recognition that the individual is pious enough to be considered for sainthood, so that’s clearly a misinterpretation. What then is Jesus telling us with His words?

I think it’s this:

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A servant is given food, shelter, rest and protection, not because he merits it in any way, but because the master chooses to offer him all that. In turn, the master expects that his will be carried out properly, swiftly, and without complaint.

A reasonable master makes reasonable demands on his servants, and ensures that they have everything they need to do his will and thrive under his protection.

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Similarly, you have been showered with graces from my Father and your Father, not because you deserve them in any way, but because the Father wills it to you in His infinite mercy. In turn, He expects you to do His will, to love and serve each other in all things, willingly and without reservation or complaint.

His yoke is easy and His burden light, and He has given you all the love and mercy you need, and taught you how to love the way He wants you to. All you need to do…is His will.

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It’s easy to grouse about the arduous labour of living the Christian life, to love those who don’t love us back, to turn the other cheek when insulted with calumny, to be “good children of God”.

It’s so tempting to crush our “oppressors” with every trick at our earthly disposal, to “just be me”, to be masters of our own destiny at the expense of our neighbors and the abandonment of our Creator.

It’s sometimes hard to remember everything given to us by God: our purification through Baptism, our instruction in faith on what it truly means to be His children, and particularly His command to “go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News” (Mark 16:15) by example,

in our thoughts and in our words,

in what we do and especially what we don’t do.

It’s a heavy cross if we choose to bear it all alone, to hold ourselves aloof from the living community of our brothers and sisters, each with their gifts from God. We can but come together and share these gifts, to serve and not to be served, and leverage on our collective “pool” of God’s graces to show the world the path that leads to salvation and eternal life.

We just need to pay more than just lip-service to our claim to serve God.

Lord, remind us always that we live to serve Your holy will above our selfish ones, and that you’ve already given us everything we need to do what is truly no more than our duty. May we always live in Your love, and visibly share that love with everyone around us. Amen.

Monday of Week 32 in Ordinary Time (Year I)
Wisdom 1:1-7 | Psalm 138(139):1-10 | Luke 17:1-6

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Obstacles are sure to come, but alas for the one who provides them! It would be better for him to be thrown into the Sea with a millstone put round his neck than that he should lead astray a single one of these little ones. Watch yourselves! (Luke 17:1-3)

Yesterday, at the end of my Sacrament of Reconciliation, I ended my Act of Contrition with the words “I will try my very best not to sin again”.

I’ve been using this formulation for many months now, as an explicit admission that I am weak, but I will struggle on, fighting my own tendency to sin.

Perhaps some of you, dear readers, have already noticed a little flaw in that logic, but I’d never received any reaction from the priest on the other side of the confessional, and I’d never thought to question my intent.

Until yesterday, when my confessor shot back with: “No, don’t try. Will it, and let God do the rest.”

Oh.

After a moment of reflection, I understood what he was getting at. I’d inadvertently taken on the burden of fighting sin all by myself, in effect telling God like a stereotypical singlet-wearing coffeeshop assistant, “Don’t worry, boss, I’ve figured out what I did wrong. I’ll get it right next time, you’ll see.”

And Him quietly saying, “You lovable idiot. I’m here to help!”

To think that I’ve been providing my own obstacles, setting them up in my path, then plowing right into them.

All because I decided without thinking to fight sin on my own.

Watch myself, indeed.

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It’s easy, as we beat our breasts to the rhythm of “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault”, to overemphasize the me in all our faults.

Acid-tongued Catholic? “I can’t help it, it’s my nature, I can’t change.”

Pornography addiction? “I can’t help it, my thoughts just go straight to naked women, I can’t change.”

White-collar embezzler? “I can’t help it, my needs are many, I can’t change.”

When we tell our Creator, “It’s not you, Lord, it’s me.”, do we even bother to listen for His reply?

Then stop being a hero. Say the word, let Me in.
I’ll clear the path of righteousness for you.

Lord Jesus, I will not sin again. I will it, Lord, that I should do Your will, but I am weak, as You are stronger than the mightiest oak.

Lord Jesus, I abandon myself to you. Jesus, you take over.

Amen.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Wisdom 6:12-16 | Psalm 62(63):2-8 | 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 | Matthew 25:1-13

We like to think that we’re the sensible bridesmaids, prepared to meet the bridegroom with oil to spare.

But are we truly prepared?

Do we spend our days immersed in worldly affairs, only turning to God for a few minutes each day, convinced that no matter what sins we commit each day, we’ll have time to repent tomorrow?

Or do we let God infuse our every thought, word and deed, quietly acknowledging our misdeeds as they happen with repentant heart, striving daily to draw closer to the perfection of His unconditional and all-consuming Love–because we know not when our time on earth is done, nor when the Son of Man is coming?

I’m reminded yet again of the familiar Commendation to Priests Before Mass:

Priest of God, celebrate this Holy Mass as if it were
your first Mass,
your last Mass,
your only Mass.

As I remember my dear old friend Theresa Helen Broughton, currently lying in tube-fed immobility, I’m moved to spend more time with God each day, because I fear passing on while not at rights with my Creator.

Above all else, I long to see Him in the fullness of time, so it behooves me to do His will while I’m still able.

We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that it will be the same for those who have died in Jesus: God will bring them with him. (1 Thessalonians 4:14)

Almighty God, turn our hearts towards You daily, as we wade through the muck of daily life. Help us find the capacity to love our neighbours fully and freely, and thereby find the courage and strength to raise them and ourselves above that muck, so that we may all present ourselves as best we can on the last day, to stand in Your presence and serve You. Amen.

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Malachi 1:14-2:2,8-10 | Psalm 130(131) | 1 Thessalonians 2:7-9,13 | Matthew 23:1-12

You, however, must not allow yourselves to be called Rabbi, since you have only one master, and you are all brothers. You must call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor must you allow yourselves to be called teachers, for you have only one Teacher, the Christ. (Matthew 23:8-10)

As a child, I was taken regularly to a dentist near my parish, with a strict admonishment to address him as “uncle”. Since I’d been taught to show respect to my elders with such titles, I naturally assumed this was just more of the same.

It was only at my grandfather’s wake, when this same dentist came to my aid as I fainted, that I found out that he was literally my uncle.

(To be pedantic, he was actually my grandmother’s godson, but from a Chinese familial perspective, he certainly wasn’t “set apart” from actual blood relatives.)

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This passage from St. Matthew frequently works Protestants into a lather. “How dare you call your priests ‘Father’ when Jesus Himself said it was verboten?!?!”

I wonder what they call their biological male parents then, and if this misconception is one of the main reasons so many Westerners address their parents by name instead of relationship.

Setting aside the ancient commandment from God Himself to “honour thy (earthly) father and mother”, Jesus was actually admonishing listeners not to honour those preoccupied with their own honour: those who wear “look at me!” clothes, and demand respect from others while treating them with disdain and a distinct lack of kindness.

I’ve been fortunate to have never encountered a priest with such a level of arrogance. If I had, I’m sure having to greet them with “Good morning, Father!” would stick in my craw, even if Jesus didn’t see fit to remind us all.

Conversely, I can imagine how it must rankle our priests, when they behold people who go “God bless you, Father!”, then run off and do un-Christian deeds like being nasty to the neighbors. Such hypocritical shows of respect must surely wound them deeply.

Our clergy have been charged down the millenia with shepherding us toward the Kingdom of God, serving as our spiritual fathers in this world to prepare us for the next. Theirs is an arduous and lonely task, so if we can help by:

listening carefully to their exhortations,

discerning the rightness therein, and

doing the righteous things,

it behooves us to Get Things Done for the glory of Our Father in heaven, and thereby showing proper respect for the title by which we address them.

Lord Jesus, help us show respect to the shepherds You left us, in deed and not just in word. Amen.

All Saints
Apocalypse 7:2-4,9-14 | Psalm 23(24):1-6 | 1 John 3:1-3 | Matthew 5:1-12a

Someone in St. Thomas Aquinas’ life once asked him this question:

What must I do to become a saint?

It might have been his sister, or a friend, or a stranger. It matters not, especially when compared to the good Doctor’s succinct answer for them, and for us:

Will it, desire it, want it.

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Fast-forward seven centuries, and the Trappist monk Thomas Merton recounts a game-changing conversation with his best friend Robert Lax in The Seven Storey Mountain. His account reflects all too painfully the situation we’ve all found ourselves in, so I’ll let his words speak for themselves:

Lax suddenly turned around and asked me the question:

“What do you want to be, anyway?”

I could not say, “I want to be Thomas Merton the well-known writer of all those book reviews in the back pages of the Times Book Review,” or “Thomas Merton the assistant instructor of Freshman English at the New Life Social Institute for Progress and Culture,” so I put the thing on the spiritual plane, where I knew it belonged and said :

“I don’t know; I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic.”

“What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?”

The explanation I gave was lame enough, and expressed my confusion, and betrayed how little I had really thought about it at all.

Lax did not accept it.

“What you should say”–he told me–”what you should say is that you want to be a saint.”

A saint! The thought struck me as a little weird. I said:

“How do you expect me to become a saint?”

“By wanting to,” said Lax, simply.

“I can’t be a saint,” I said, “I can’t be a saint.” And my mind darkened with a confusion of realities and unrealities: the knowledge of my own sins, and the false humility which makes men say that they cannot do the things that they must do, cannot reach the level that they must reach : the cowardice that says: “I am satisfied to save my soul, to keep out of mortal sin,” but which means, by those words : “I do not want to give up my sins and my attachments.”

But Lax said: “No. All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let Him do it? All you have to do is desire it.”

A long time ago, St. Thomas Aquinas had said the same thing and it is something that is obvious to everybody who ever understood the Gospels. After Lax was gone, I thought about it, and it became obvious to me.

—Thomas Merton, O. C. S. O.; The Seven Storey Mountain (pp. 237-238)

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As we head to church to celebrate the feast of All Saints today, let us ponder these all-important questions:

Do I really want to be a saint?

Why not?

What’s keeping me from reaching for sainthood?

What am I waiting for?

And let us pray the novena that Christ Himself gave to the friar Don Dolindo Ruotolo a hundred years ago, 11 simple words both comforting and terrifying:

O Jesus, I abandon myself to you. Jesus, you take over.

Amen.