Claire Smith

Scripture:

1 John 5:5-13
Luke 5:12-16

Reflection:

My much younger friend recently vented about how overwhelming her life as a working parent can seem. I remember being the primary parent of three young children because my husband worked long hours and was often away. I truly loved each child and would willingly die for them, but some days I wanted to scream! I didn’t want to nurse the baby again, or comfort the toddler, or be constantly asked to play. I didn’t want to resolve one more dispute, or load whining children into the car to head to soccer practice and then basketball practice. I didn’t want to cook and clean up endless meals, wash sheets, clean floors, do laundry, run errands, and serve my family with every breath I took. Some days I just wanted to go for a walk by myself, read a book, call a friend without someone clinging to my legs, or even just go to the bathroom undisturbed!

How much greater the pressure on Jesus had to be! Imagine the crush of people vying for his attention, clinging to him, and begging him for very legitimate needs. Repeatedly, his compassionate heart reached out to heal, comfort, and include them, making sure that each one felt seen, heard, and loved. It’s no wonder he had to withdraw to deserted places to be by himself and pray! Even the son of God needed concentrated time with God for comfort, nurture, and strength to be effective in his service to others.

Why, then, do I think I can do it on my own? Why am I so quick to assume that something is wrong with me if I don’t feel sufficiently strong, wise, competent, or lovable to do it myself? Who taught me those lessons? It certainly wasn’t Jesus! He taught about the Godhead not as separate and independent beings, but as a union, a circle of ever-flowing love and sustenance between them. He relied on that love and sustenance, returning again and again to the Source. Why should I be different?

As we continue through the Christmas season, I resolve to let go of the world’s lessons of ideal self-contained competence and instead focus on Jesus’ invitation into the Divine flow of love. Even in this resolution, I know I will “fail”. But we never fail in God’s eyes, except when we don’t show up. So I will doing my best to continue my Advent practice of increased time for prayer, both in stillness and in the activities and necessary chores of my daily life. Will you join me?

May every breath of our lives be in service to God!

Amy Florian is a teacher and consultant working in Chicago.  For many years she has partnered with the Passionists.  Visit Amy’s website: http://www.corgenius.com/.

Scripture:

1 John 4:19-5:4
Luke 4:14-22a

Reflection:

May You Enjoy Your Christmas Gifts

Do you have a gift yet to be delivered, one under the soon-to-disappear tree sitting unclaimed? Could there be a gift yet to be purchased for the person who lives at the furthest orbit of where your Christmas comet passes each year? Gift-giving is so much more complex than our commercials lead us to believe.

At Christmas, we speak of the great exchange. (Not returning unusable or ill-fitting gifts). God has given us a gift, the Beloved Son. In the fullness of time, in the perfect moment in God’s planning, the Word became flesh. That is a gift that transforms all of us and all of creation. We share the love of God with one another; we offer to God our response to the gift of love that we have so generously received.

This Thursday of the final week of the Christmas season, the week after the Epiphany, continues to be a time of gift-giving! All late gift givers pay attention!

We have celebrated that the Father’s love promised to Abraham and to his children forever is given. To the Chosen People, a long-awaited messiah has come. And we see that this gift is given to all people, all of creation is touched. The Holy Ones of Israel, Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, Anna and Simeon stand before us giving God the gift of their trust; magi who come from the other ends of the earth and who do not know the God of Israel bring their gifts, and we must imagine that all creation wants to bend itself to Jesus the Word. Surely, a cherry tree can bow down at Joseph’s request, or a star can serve its maker as a celestial guide.

This week’s liturgy reverberates with joy and thanks for the gifts of God that we see in Word and manifestation! See how Jesus looks upon us with compassion, with loving mercy. This love sees the apostles tossed on the stormy sea, confused and then afraid. What would Jesus like to have done? He ends up climbing in the boat with his friends, ‘It is I. Do no be afraid!” That was what he could do, for the time being enough. Jesus shouts an affirmation of desire to the leper, “If you will do so, you can cure me.” “I do will it. Be cured.” And we learn that Jesus is the groom. Can we experience God’s love with the intimacy of our greatest human love? These are all gifts of the Word this week. And we have been fed with the 5,000 and cured with the people of Nazareth.

Maybe this year we will see an unopened gift somewhat hidden in the debris left behind from our Christmas celebration. Could it be the readings of this week? Gift-giving is complex! We might even be the person on God’s gift list this year who is at the utmost end of where that comet of Christmas celebration will end? And as the lights go out we hear God’s word, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me…to announce a year of favor from the Lord.” …and they marveled at the appealing discourse which came from his lips. What a gift to hear and to marvel. Is that what happened to Andrew and John when Jesus said to them, “Come and abide with me.”? Check the debris, ask Our Lord, is there perhaps one more small gift you would like me to have?

Fr. William Murphy, CP, is a member of Immaculate Conception Community in Jamaica, New York.

Scripture:

1 John 4:7-10
Mark 6:34-44

Reflection:

He said to them in reply, “Give them some food yourselves.”
But they said to him, “Are we to buy two hundred days’ wages worth of food
and give it to them to eat?” -Mark 6:37

I attended my brother-in-law’s funeral this past weekend via Facebook. He was 93 years old.  Sitting at my very familiar desk, (the funeral was in Jamestown New York) watching a very familiar ritual (the Catholic Funeral Mass-I’m 79 years old) I was totally mystified by the fact that Bill’s remains in front of the altar where we not only recall, but once again sacrifice the body and blood of Jesus, that Bill too, by his very life shares in this sacrifice. Bill attended Mass daily. His attendance on this day is just the culmination of a life given for others.  Maybe another way of saying this is that we are, or can all be, food for one another.

Bill gave his life, as I get to do, one day at a time, getting up, going to work, providing for his family, and contributing to the well-being of the community, all the while giving thanks for the gift of life. A gift full of challenges as well as delights, and moments of joy, peace and hope.

Jesus tells his apostles in today’s selection from Mark to: “Give them some food yourselves.” I wonder if we can just interpret this as meaning that we should offer ourselves on the altar, along with Jesus, not by killing ourselves, but by living fully for each other? If we do this we will one day, like my brother-in-law, Bill, lie with no life left in us, because we have totally given it, one day at a time, so that it is not only “…, two hundred days’ wages…” as mentioned in today’s scripture quote above, but a lifetime of gifts of self.

God, help me give fully of myself today and join in Your Son’s sacrifice of His body and blood, His life given that we all might live. God, thank You for the gift of life today. Help me be nourishment to Your Body, Your presence in the world, by freely giving all that I have, am and do today.

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

Scripture:

1 John 3:22-4:6
Matthew 4:12-17, 23-25

Reflection:

Who among us has not paused to access major intersections of our lives . . .  after high school plans, marriage, entering the seminary or religious community, a job we took, the neighborhood we chose as home? Looking back years later, in a prayerful moment, we may have seen the hand of God in each big decision, realizing the Spirit guided us even when we didn’t know it.

The opposite can be true as well. We all make bad choices, even when they look like very fine choices at the time. We rush into a career/vocation that proves unsatisfying, we seek financial security only to find ourselves in an ethical cesspool, we marry someone who we failed to see had a destructive mental disorder, or an addiction to sex, gambling, or substances.

Our faith offers us guidelines for each decision we make, from what we have for breakfast, to how we spend our money, to who we choose as friends. St. John’s first letter encourages us: “Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they being to God, because many false prophets have gone our into the world.”

A word used by spiritual guides to test the spirits is discernment. Great mystics like St. Ignatius of Loyola and Thomas Merton focus much attention on the discernment of spirits. Why? Because there is a battle going on within us. We want to go one way, but something tells us to go the opposite way.

What criteria do we use to know the right decision? St John says, “This is how you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God.”

Acknowledging Jesus Christ come in the flesh leads us to put on the mind of Christ. How would my brother Jesus understand and handle this situation? Thinking like Christ means stripping ourselves of pride, of clinging to money, possessions, status, and honors. It means looking around to consider what someone else needs first, to see the impact our choices have on family, co-workers, the poor, the refugee, the innocent.

St. Ignatius assures us that the Spirit gives a feeling of “consolation” when we make a good choice. This gift of consolation is an assurance that, a best we can, we are in alignment with God’s desires for us. Consolation provides the chief characteristics of followers of Jesus: inner joy and peace.

After John the Baptist infuriated the political big wigs of his day, he was arrested. In today’s Gospel Jesus gets the news about his cousin’s imprisonment and moves out of his hometown of Nazareth to launch his life’s work of preaching and healing. He evidently wasted no time pleading for people to repent, as John the Baptist had done. Then, in a passage omitted in the middle section of today’s Gospel, he rounded up a couple of buddies to help him and he started to heal anyone who needed healing: the sick, those in pain, the possessed, lunatics, paralytics. In our time it would be like a someone walking among those living in tents and under expressways in every city in America to heal them one by one.

Jesus was living his vocation, what his Father wanted him to do when he got up in the morning.  Each of us are given the grace we need to discern what God wants us to do. Some are called to marriage, others to religious or non-vowed single life or widowhood. Some heal in health care settings, others are teachers, UPS drivers, factory workers, street vendors, craftsmen and women, tailors, writers, entertainers, homemakers, accountants, and on and on.

We all must weigh marriage/religious community, family, and community responsibilities against a desire to perform noble compassionate deeds. Some may have yearnings to do special or noted, like another Jimmy Carter or Mother Theresa. But in prayerful discernment, God may lead us to a  much more modest, unnoticed job caring for a grandchild with a disability or finishing our education to be high school teacher while working a low wage job to pay for food, shelter, and tuition.

Regardless of the choices we face each day, our faith provides a context for knowing what is God’s will for us. Praying for the grace to know what the Spirit is telling us will, in time, lead us to what is best for us and the ones we love. We will experience joy and peace. In this we must trust. “This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit,” as St. John wisely tells us today.

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

Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord

Scripture:

Isaiah 60:1-6
Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6
Matthew 2:1-12

Reflection:

…it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body…  -Ephesians 3:5b-6a

…behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem…  -Matthew 2:1b

I was fairly old before I came across the idea that the birth story of Jesus with the shepherds and the story of the visitation of the Magi were two different stories. The parish where we worshiped had a life-size creche right by the entrance to the church which included the manger, the Holy Family, the shepherds presenting their lambs, and three splendid, royal kings, including their camels and entourage, presenting gifts to the babe in the manger.

For years, these two stories were conflated into one grand scene in my mind. It was only after deeper study and wider reading I came across the idea that many biblical scholars hold, that the visitation by the Magi (a word meaning, “wise one,” or “priest,” and not indicating any social standing or rank) most likely occurred months if not years after the birth of our Lord. I still find it difficult sometimes to disentangle the popular culture, and artistic representations from “gospel truth.”

So, what is the truth of this gospel? The reading from the letter to the Ephesians makes this quite clear. Today is the Epiphany of the Lord, the revelation to the world beyond a small, nondescript stable in a backwater town that God is incarnate. That He is Lord to all the world. That the Gentiles are part of God’s family. It is interesting to note that the Greek word used by Paul that is translated as “Gentiles” is ethnos, meaning “the human family.”

Paul is saying we all belong to Christ, from the greatest to the least. No one is left out of this family. Another notable fact is that the magi didn’t remain. They returned to their own lands and their own ways. But they were still included as “members of the same body.” Still today the Risen Christ calls us to recognize that everyone we meet, whether they are from a different land, speak a different language, wear different clothes, or have different customs, are our brothers and sisters in the eyes of God.

This year, let us make a renewed effort to meet everyone as our brother or sister in Christ.

Talib Huff is a retired teacher and a member of the retreat team at Christ the King Passionist Retreat Center in Citrus Heights, California. You may contact him at [email protected].

Scripture:

1 John 3:7-10
John 1:35-42

Reflection:

The Christmas Event and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Today’s Gospel selection features John the Baptist and two of his disciples meeting Jesus as he walked by – John the Baptist call Jesus “the Lamb of God”.  This chance encounter led to Jesus’ invitation to the two disciples of John the Baptist to “come and see” where Jesus was staying – and ultimately, those first few hours with Jesus led to lives of life-changing discipleship. 

Over the centuries and around the world, countless others have heard in their hearts Jesus’ personal invitation to “come and see”.  One such 18^th Century American woman-disciple we honor today:  St. Elizabeth Ann Seton…the first American-born saint.

Married to William Seton and mother of their five children, Elizabeth Ann was raised an Episcopalian but was later drawn to the Catholic faith by an Italian Catholic family whom she met while in Italy traveling with her husband.  After her husband’s untimely death from tuberculosis at the young age of 30, Elizabeth Ann embraced the Catholic faith – and subsequently opened a parish school in Baltimore to support her family and live her new-found faith. 

Drawn by Elizabeth Ann’s example, her fervor, a group of young women joined Elizabeth Ann in her gifted approach to education and Christian living.  In 1809 they formed the American Sisters of Charity, following the rule of St. Vincent de Paul; later they founded other schools and orphanages.  By the time of her death on January 4, 1821, the community had expanded their ministries as far west as St. Louis.

Elizabeth Ann Seton was called to help build up the Church in her era.  As noted in today’s Gospel, Jesus drew disciples to Himself and began the Church; centuries later and in another part of the world Elizabeth Ann joined those early disciples in saying “yes” to Jesus –and then working tirelessly to build up the Church.

This year 2025, God continues to bless us with our Passionist charism as enfleshed by St. Paul of the Cross years ago and lived today by many women and men world-wide.  May we deepen our relationship with Jesus as 2025 continues to unfold; may we encourage others to “come and see” God’s love present in our needy world.  I’m sure St. Elizabeth Ann Seton prayed the encouraging words of today’s Responsorial Psalm 98:  “Sing to the Lord a new song, for God has done wondrous deeds…”  Yes…Amen!!

Fr. John Schork, C.P. serves as the Province Vocation Director and also as Local Superior of the Passionist Community of Holy Name in Houston, Texas.  

Scripture:

1 John 2:29-3:6
John 1:29-34

Reflection:

‘I did not know him myself’

In today’s Gospel, John the Baptist uses this term twice, and each time reflects that whilst personal knowledge of Jesus, even personal contact is not the case, his trust in God’s revelation and direction to him is sufficient to motivate his faithful response.

More than this – John becomes an advocate, an announcer and a witness to Jesus – such is his trust.

We make much of the family connection of John and Jesus, and some scholars suggest they shared ministry together in the earlier period of Jesus life, but here the Johanine community suggest a different kind of relationship. One that we too can imitate.

Without the kinds of ‘proof’ the modern world so often insists on, we too can be a witness to the one we know as our saviour and ‘the Lamb of God’. 

Witness in this sense is not based so much on knowledge or prior experience, but on absolute trust in God’s revelation. John’ experience seems to be Trinitarian – the Father announces Jesus and calls John to witness to him, the Spirit manifests self and in turn revels Jesus to John and finally John sees Jesus and seeks him out. 

We know John lived his witness to Jesus to the fullest and prepared the way for Jesus. Let us live in the same spirit. 

Fr. Denis Travers, C.P., is the Provincial Superior of Holy Spirit Province, Australia.