Claire Smith

Scripture:

Isaiah 40:1-11
Matthew 18:12-14

Reflection:

Like a shepherd he feeds his flock;
in his arms he gathers the lambs,
Carrying them in his bosom,
and leading the ewes with care.
-Isaiah 40:11

“Go right home now, no dawdling on your way.” Sister Lawrence Marie, SP, admonished me as I walked out of our fifth-grade classroom heading home for lunch that Friday morning. That was strange I thought. Sister had never said that before. I hooked up with my brother and along with a few friends, we headed home. We got to the busy corner where Mrs. Lacy, our crossing guard,  helped us maneuver the traffic. As she kept us waiting for the light to change, our friend Dan noticed and pointed out that there was a hearse sitting in front of our house. As soon as Mrs. Lacy let us go, my twin brother Dave and I took off running. We arrived in front of our house just in time to see our mother’s remains neatly wrapped in a body bag being rolled out on a two-wheeler hand truck.

All of a sudden, the Assistant Pastor, Fr. Casper’s visit to our home the night before made sense. “You know your mother is dying,” said Father as he sat with us in the living room. “Oh yes, I know that,” I assured him. What I didn’t know was that he had just given my mother “The Last Rites” which in 1956 meant that one truly was at death’s door. Nor did I know the trauma that would result from that day that truly remains with me sixty-six years later.

I don’t remember much more that Friday afternoon in February. The next morning, however, I remember as if it were yesterday. I went to Mass where Fr. Casper was the celebrant. He came up to me afterward and invited me to join him for breakfast at the monastery. Now I grew up across the street from that mysterious building, often hearing chanting coming from the windows and wondering what it was like inside. I accepted, and Father took me into the monastery through the busy kitchen and into a small parlor where we had breakfast. I had a bowl of cereal as I recall.  Leaving and heading home, I felt cared for. I didn’t know it, but looking back I realize now that the Church in the person of Fr. Casper became my new mother on that day.

I wonder what would happen if I, imitated Fr. Casper and took Isaiah seriously realizing that it is my responsibility to feed bodily and spiritually, the flock of those about me, and to carry those who can no longer carry themselves. Help me respond dear God to Your cries for help today. 

Dan O’Donnell is a Passionist Partner and a longtime friend of the Passionists.  He lives in Chicago, Illinois.  

Scripture:

Isaiah 35:1-10
Luke 5:17-26

Reflection:

Several years ago, a dozen Louisville Catholics were given an abandoned rectory to develop a Catholic Worker house of hospitality. When we began the effort there was no clear path to follow. We prayed, hesitated, attempted a “strategic plan,” but failed to launch the project. Then we were inspired to consult with Joe Zarella, one of Dorothy Day’s original members at the New York Catholic Worker, who was then in his late 80’s.

On a bright autumn day, we lunched with Joe on a picnic table outside a simple mom and pop restaurant and asked him how to start a Catholic Worker house of hospitality. With a twinkle in his eyes and a head of thick snow-white hair he smiled and said simply, “You just do it.”

Taking his advice, we welcomed immigrant women and their children into the large rectory with mismatched donated furniture, creating a noisy, chaotic loving small community of faith and mixed languages.

After several weeks, we hosted all the volunteers to meet the guests around a large dining table filled with special recipes brought by the attendees. As we ate together something stirred within me looking around the crowded room: this is what the reign of God looks like. There were no cultural barriers, no language barriers, no class barriers…love had broken down all barriers.

The utopia described in today’s reading from the book of Isaiah and what I experienced at the Catholic Worker house that night is possible, if we just do it. I am encouraged, as I read Isaiah’s prophetic words, to know that Jesus read the same words in his native language from the same prophet. He must have prayed over them, letting them sink in, letting them transform his understanding of the goodness of his Father and the goodness in himself and the goodness in each of us.

In today’s Gospel, people of every village in Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem sat in the presence of this transformed Jesus…the Pharisees and teachers of the law, the community of a variety of people…all determined in their mission to just sit. This great crowd crushing around Jesus must have included all classes of people from the highways and byways seeking something better in life, the something they hoped Jesus would provide.

Their enthusiasm led them to this house on that day. They wanted what we all want, what the Prophet Isaiah poetically describes in the first reading: a world where all barriers are broken down, where love rules and where we are free to shed what individually weighs us down and keeps us from being all we can be and all that God desires for each of us.

In prayerful reflection, let us sit before Jesus today in stillness to listen to him and to feel his love. This will lead us to moments when we just do it, which leads us to barrier-absent mystical moments when we really know the reign of God is within us and around us.

Jim Wayne is a board member of the Passionist Solidarity Network (PSN), and author of The Unfinished Man. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Second Sunday of Advent

Scripture:

Baruch 5:1-9
Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11
Luke 3:1-6

Reflection:

Wow, we are already in the Second Sunday of Advent. For many of us, and I include myself in this group, the First Sunday of Advent frequently gets lost amidst the Thanksgiving weekend. 

Years ago, when I was studying theology, my preaching instructor said something that made a lot of sense to me.  He said the season of Advent prepares us for Christmas, just like the season of Lent prepares us for the celebration of the Triduum.  Of course, that is true but how that happens is the most important.  He then he took it one step further and walked through a season of readings showing how they are steppingstones, and each step advances you in its mission.  I recalled how my high school composition teacher spoke how one’s introductory paragraph is supposed to start a very broad encompassing the reader and gradually narrow the topic with each sentence till the final sentence is what your paper or composition focuses on.    Advent is the exact same journey.  It doesn’t start with stories of Jesus’ birth.  It leads you to that story by starting exceptionally broad.  Last week, Luke’s Gospel began the Advent journey with calamities.  We were told that amidst all the calamities, raise your heads and stand before the Son of Man. We were reminded not to be weighed down but to be watchful and attentive.  How appropriate for the times we live.   

If listening to the gospel today doesn’t put an element of fright into your psyche, then you’re probably a little out of touch with first-century Israel.  Luke mentions specific names: Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, and his brothers Philip and  Lysanias. (He left out their father, Herod the Great) None of these names left a good taste in anyone’s mouth.  The big three were tyrants, cruel and oppressive dictators, who cared very little about the common person.   Luke is trying to say that of all the times of history this is one of the most difficult times to live in.   And yet specifically, in amidst such tyrannical or oppressive times is when John the Baptist begins speaking loudly and boldly.  Take note, his message at this point still is not about the coming of the Anointed One.  His message of all things is a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  He is asking people to think differently and live differently which is the essence of the Greek word metanoia.

If you live in a joy-filled happy place all the time, then why do you need a savior?  We can’t use the Advent season to fictitiously paint joy on our hearts, and peace in our city streets. Biblically speaking, we find Christ most profoundly when are willing to sit in a chaotic troublesome place and call upon God.  Joy and peace promised us in the gospel never start with us. They start first and foremost with the mercy of God.  What wisdom is ours when we listen to our spiritual elders?  Think of the men and women who could sit in the midst of the chaos and call forth the spirit of God.   I think of men such as Martin Luther King Jr.  I think of countries such as South Africa.  And indeed, repentance is a necessary step for the coming of Christ.  How can we ask Christ to come into our hearts if we are not willing to change?  How can we celebrate the incarnation if we refuse to forgive? 

Lastly, I think it’s important to highlight another element in these Sunday Advent Readings for this new liturgical year.  If you look them over you will notice these Sunday readings are not inclusive of the book of the prophet Isaiah.  The truth is that each week we listen to a different prophet, and each prophet speaks to us of a promise that God makes.  Last Sunday we listened to the prophet Jeremiah.  This week the prophet Baruch says to take off your long faces.  Look at the splendor of God which is before you. God will lead Israel with joy. God is filled with mercy and righteousness.  While this reading may be over 2500 years old, could we possibly find a reading that is more applicable to us today?   And coming up we have the prophets Zephaniah and Micah.  For anyone who is looking for an Advent exercise this year, I couldn’t recommend anything better than every week spend some time with the prophet of the week.  Who were they?  What was their family and their cultural life like?  What motivated them?  What are they saying about God?  How has God fulfilled the promise made to each of them?  And how is their message speaking to me about the coming of God’s Anointed One?

Have a blessed Advent week.

Fr. David Colhour, C.P. is the local superior of St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois.

Scripture:

Isaiah 30:19-21,23-26
Matthew 9:35 – 10:2,5,6-8

Reflection:

Faith, Life, Love … Treasured and Shared

Today’s Advent Gospel presents a touching scene:  Jesus moves among the towns and villages, teaching, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, curing disease and illness.  To underscore just how personally involved Jesus was in this ministry, Matthew writes that Jesus’ “…heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.”  The troubled, the abandoned, the lonely, the wanderers…Jesus had come into the world as God’s gift to such people — people like us centuries later.

Jesus then spoke to his disciples about the abundant harvest of souls and called them to share his authority and help continue his mission:  to proclaim that “the Kingdom of heaven is at hand” and back up the words with action on behalf of those in need.  The final words of Jesus cited in today’s Gospel are especially encouraging: “…without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”  God has freely given us faith in Jesus, and this gift is to be freely shared…shared with the same intensity that “moved” Jesus.

The gift of faith is so different than the material gifts that draw our attention this Christmas season.  If you give someone a gift of money, you necessarily have less money yourself.  However, if you give someone the gift of faith, you not only do not have less — but you really have more!  To grow in our Christian life, we must share our faith with others…families, coworkers, neighbors, even the “stranger” we meet while holiday shopping.  Our words, our good example, our interest in people – rising from our faith — speak volumes and make real the person of Jesus who loves us all unconditionally.  Faith shared is faith on-the-grow.

Advent is a time of hope, of anticipation, growth, and celebration – the gift of Jesus’ life and love are so real these days as Advent moves us to the celebration of Christmas!  May we make Jesus’ clarion call our own:  the Kingdom is at hand!  May we be faith-moved to greater care for our sisters and brothers, especially those in special need.

Fr. John Schork, C.P. is the Vocation Director for Holy Cross Province. He lives at St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois. 

Scripture:

Isaiah 25:6-10a
Matthew 15:29-37

Reflection:

The miracle that we read of in today’s gospel seems to have various levels of application for us.

Firstly, of course, we have the presenting situation of a physical hunger – “My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, for they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, for fear they may collapse on the way.”

Apart for satisfying physical hunger, we can read here, and relish, that Jesus is moved by our inner world too – he sees our lack of nourishment and emptiness of spirit, he sees and knows our hunger for the basic things of life and wants to address these needs of ours too.

However, aside from this ‘hunger’ we also see that the reign of God that Jesus came to announce very much includes all and especially those in need of any kind. Today we read of the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute, all finding their way to Jesus and being nourished by his teaching and hope-filled message but more so, we see that they also experienced physical healing.

Thus, we see the healing hand of God at work in Jesus. No matter what our external situations – our blindness in life and our failures to see those around us, our inability to walk the way of love and self-giving, or our incompleteness and lacks at times – Jesus is constantly extending healing and the offer of new life to us.

In this reading too, we learn that our resources, meager as they might be in our own eyes, can be taken up by Jesus and used to nourish others.  What is more, whilst our efforts and capacity might seem to us to be small compared to the scale of the challenge, we should not be discouraged. Jesus takes what we have to offer, and in his hands, it is magnified and becomes effective.

So, we might take encouragement from this text today. It is given so that we might have trust and faith in Jesus and in his care for us, and we learn that his mission and presence in our world builds on our own generosity and contribution too.

Finally, we might see a reminder that it is the Eucharist which is not only the source of nourishment for us – for which we too give thanks, but it is also that place where we can hear the call of Jesus to go out to others and to serve generously.

We do all this in faith, knowing that this passage will come alive again and again and that we too will eat and be satisfied in the company of Jesus.

Fr. Denis Travers, C.P., is a member of Holy Spirit Province, Australia. 

Scripture:

Isaiah 26:1-6
Matthew 7:21, 24-27

Reflection:

When I was young, I was blessed to be part of the Cursillo[PG1]  “short course” (in Christianity) movement. The first talk of our weekends was on “Ideals;” and the main point was that we know our Ideals (values) by three things: what we think about, how we use our time, and where we spend our money. As the weekend unfolded, we were invited to align our thinking, our activities, and our resources more closely with the Gospel values of Jesus, as the foundation for our lives.

In today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus asking us to do just that: to listen to His words and act on them: to not just mouth “Lord, Lord” but to really walk the talk.      

And Jesus assures us that we:

“will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house. 
But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.” 

The people to whom Jesus spoke knew well the Palestinian winter rains that came down the slopes and eroded the sand from around the foundations of their homes…unless they were built on a rock foundation.   

In today’s first reading from Isaiah, God is described as the “eternal Rock” in whom we can put our trust. The “Rock” is a common Old Testament metaphor expressing the dependability of God.

As we strive to align our lives more closely with Jesus this Advent 2021, Scripture scholar Walter Bruggemann has a contemporary prayer to help us:

We discover yet again, how sandy we are,
with the quaking of our foundations
    and our fantasized firmaments.

We are filled with trembling and nightmares that disturb.

An then you-rock-solid-stable-reliable-sure
            You rock against our sand,
            You rock of ages,
            You rock that is higher than us treading water,
            You rock of compassion –

                 be compassionate even for us, our loved ones
                             and all our needy neighbors.
            You rock of abidingness for our sick,
                 and for those long loved, lingering memories,                            
dead and in your care,

You rock of justice for the nations,
            fed up with our hate,
                             exhausted by the greed of our several tribes,
            You rock of communion in our loneliness,
                            rock of graciousness in our many modes of gracelessness.

Come be present even here and there, and there, and there.
            Move us from our sandy certitudes to your grace-filled risk,
            Move us to become more rock-like
                        in compassion and abidingness and justice,
            Move us to be more like you in our neighborliness
                       and in our self-regard. 
Yes, yes, yes – move us that we may finally
            stand on the solid rock, no more sinking sand.

                ——from Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

Patty Gillis is a retired Pastoral Minister. She served on the Board of Directors at St. Paul of the Cross Passionist Retreat and Conference Center in Detroit. She is currently a member of the Laudato Si Vision Fulfillment Team and the Passionist Solidarity Network.

Scripture:

Isaiah 25:6-10a
Matthew 15:29-37

Reflection:

In his wonderful book, Let Us Dream, Pope Francis reflects on how we should face the future in a post-pandemic world.  One lesson to take with us, the Pope suggests, is the vital role that “healers” play.  He points to the life-giving work of first responders, health care workers, caregivers, and all those who risked their lives to bring to others the essential services they needed to stay alive.

He contrasts this sort of response to human need with those who whom he describes as being afflicted with “isolated consciences,” those who focus on concerns that have little to do with the everyday needs and anxieties of ordinary people.  Often these are religious leaders who fret about the finer points of doctrine or insist on the rigors of moral rules, but who have insulated themselves from the pain and struggles that most people face every day. 

The Pope has famously declared that the church should be something of a “field hospital,” caring for the desperately wounded.  The urgent mission is to care for peoples’ wounds.  You don’t ask a seriously wounded person first about their blood sugar levels; that comes later after you have saved their lives.

I thought of the Pope’s urgent message in the light of the Scripture readings for today.  The first reading is from the prophet Isaiah, and it dreams of a future where the Lord prepares a great banquet for all peoples, where death is destroyed, and God “will wipe away the tears from all faces” The prophet sees God as a healing and consoling God.   This passage is often read at funerals, a Word of God that brings comfort and healing.

The Responsorial Psalm 23 moves with a similar reconciling spirit: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side.”

And the gospel selection from Matthew portrays Jesus as a great healer and nourisher of the people. In a scene unique to Matthew, Jesus ascends a mountain and the crowds of the “lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute” come to him, and “he cured them all.”  The people who witness this scene of healing “glorify the God of Israel.”

To this scene Matthew appends the story of the feeding of the multitude.  Jesus is prompted to feed the crowds because: “My heart is moved with pity…  for they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat.”

Advent invites us to think more deeply about our lives as Christians. The Scriptures we hear at today’s Eucharist and the words and example of faithful followers of Jesus remind us that, above all, we are to bring healing and reconciliation into our fractured world.

Fr. Donald Senior, C.P. is President Emeritus and Professor of New Testament at Catholic Theological Union.  He lives at the Passionist residence in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Scripture: 

Isaiah 2:1-5
Matthew 8:5-11

Reflection:

      O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. -Isaiah 2:5

Mountains! Beautiful! Majestic! Some people feel the need to climb up to the very summits of the highest mountains in the world. Some of us stand at the bottom or admire them in photographs. Whether we are standing on these great places or looking at photographs we are in awe of their majesty. Created by the moving of ice over the earth many thousands of years ago they stand as watchtowers of the world.

The prophet Isaiah writes of “the LORD’s house being established on the highest mountain.” In scripture, mountains or going up to a high place is about heaven. Isaiah is writing about the future, when God’s Kingdom will be completed and what the possibilities are when that comes to fulfillment. The prophet Isaiah was writing to give hope to people of his time. Hope that they would no longer need to be in exile. Hope that they would not need to be prepared to protect themselves against enemies. Hope for peace among all peoples.

The author of the Gospel of Matthew writes that people from all places on earth will join in the “banquet in the Kingdom of heaven”. An unlikely person, a Roman officer, approaches Jesus and asks for help for a servant who is very ill. Obviously, the Roman officer has heard about Jesus either from talk on the streets or from his own servants. He must have some love for his servant in order to want to seek Jesus out to have him be healed from his illness. An unexpected person, a Gentile, asking a “teacher” for assistance. The Gospels are full of unexpected requests for help from Jesus. Requests come mostly from the poor, the outcast, and Gentiles. Requests come from people from all walks of life who have faith, the one requirement for healing. Faith can be shown by the person in need of healing or the people who bring the person to be healed or even a Roman officer.

Advent is about Hope. Hope that life can be different. Hope that our world can move towards a peaceful state of being. God’s Kingdom was established over two thousand years ago. And it has been evolving, taking shape through all of us as we go about our daily activities. God’s Kingdom has been evolving in the ways we treat one another through the giving of our time, talent, and treasure. The “mountain of the LORD” is the highest mountain to climb. It is steep and rocky in some places and in some places it is easy to walk. As long as we are moving forward and up we are on the right path. As long as we remember who is walking beside us, we are on the right path. Advent is a time to prepare for the coming of the Lord in our hearts in a new way. How we choose to deepen our relationship this coming year is up to us. How will you continue to climb the “mountain of the LORD”? Will you stand at the bottom and admire this mountain or will you be the one who continues to climb?

As we begin, a new liturgical year, may you and your families have a blessed Advent Season!

Linda Schork is a theology teacher at Saint Xavier High School in Louisville, Kentucky.