Claire Smith

Scripture:

Isaiah 29:17-24
Matthew 9: 27-31

Reflection:

Perhaps you, like me, sense that we celebrate Christmas doing the opposite of what brings peace and joy. Christmas entertainments, shopping, decorating, traveling, cooking, and trying to meet what my Mother called “social obligations,” easily fill our days and nights during this Advent season.

All this hub-bub blinds us to the message of the season. We struggle to find time alone in silence, to slow down to enjoy small details of life around us. To listen to God.

When Pope Francis addressed the U.S. Congress in the fall of 2015, he highlighted three Americans for us to study: Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day.

Each of these 20th-century pilgrims took time to prayerfully and critically analyze what is right and what is wrong with our way of life in America. They each acted on what they noticed. In their time they were condemned as disrupters, Communists, and worse. One was murdered.

Studying their lives, I have learned they each saw (their eyes were open) how the Gospel applies to a nation that prides itself on military strength, higher profits, efficiency, material comforts, possessions, self-sufficiency, while ignoring and devaluing the weak and marginalized.

These American values run counter to Jesus’ message of humility, sharing, serving, listening, non-violence, poverty, respecting God’s time, sacrifice, and total trust in God.

In today’s reading from Isaiah we are told the deaf, blind, lowly, and poor will be healed and exalted. I like to imagine Christ reading these words in the scrolls in the local synagogue. I think of him sitting alone in that sacred place, next to a window, sunlight streaming in, listening to birds and people on the streets of the sleepy town of Nazareth. There he lets the words penetrate. Over time . . . many years, in fact . . . he understands what his Father is calling him to do. His eyes are open. At the right moment he stands up in that same synagogue and quotes Isaiah to his family and fellow Nazarenes: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me with the commission to announce good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to send off the oppressed with liberty.”

Not long afterward, in today’s Gospel, a couple of guys shouted at him on the road, asking him to pity them. Jesus immediately gave them sight. They were so thrilled that they defied his request to not speak of the miracle. Instead they whooped it up, letting everyone know what had just happened.

But more astounding was the passage that follows (verses 32-34), not included in today’s Gospel. The sighted men could see another who needed healing. They saw a mute man possessed by a demon and brought him to Jesus. What did Jesus do? He healed him, of course.

Marinating in a culture that blinds us to pain and threats everywhere, we need Christ’s healing. Making space to deeply reflect on the challenges of our time, the way that King, Merton, and Day did, will open our eyes to the urgent need to protect of our environment, ban all nuclear weapons, condemn of racism, welcome (not demonize) refugees and immigrants, curb the greed of corporate titans, insist everyone has a home, healthcare, a living wage, and an excellent education. It will also open our eyes to people right around us who are lonely, scared, hurt, sick, addicted, cold, and hungry.

We can so easily be blinded by honors, riches, power, comforts, commercial distractions, and “social obligations” of this season. Let us each ask Christ, as the two blind men pleaded, “Son of David, have pity on us!” and really believe, as they did, that He can open our eyes.

None of us can fix all that ails this world. But God is calling each of us to some noble act, however small or large, that “helps make the world a place where it is easier for people to be good” (Dorothy Day’s words).

What do you see that needs your attention this day?

“And their eyes were open.”

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

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

Today’s gospel presents a most challenging element.  “Not everyone who calls Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”  Like many things Jesus says in the Gospels, there is an element of vagueness in this statement.  We humans crave the absoluteness and actions that can be measured, judged and quantified.  In Jesus’s world, the immense abundance of God outclasses all of our human measures. 

The action Jesus mentions is seeking the will of the Father.  This requires a different posture.  Happily, we are blessed by our founder, St. Paul of the Cross in this regard.  His prayer and reflection on this topic are wisdom for us today.  Ultimately, Paul sees God as all good and trusts that the source of all goodness will give him whatever is good, regardless of whether the individual person thinks that it is good. Paul is extraordinarily wise in not judging the trials that come to him. He believes in and directs others in a simple philosophy; if the source of ultimate good gifts us with trials, then the trials must be good. If we are gifted with pain or anguish, then this must be good as well.

Paul believes that many people inflict suffering onto themselves by believing that they know better than the Lord. And in rejecting some of the “gifts” which God gives us we really aren’t people who follow the Divine Will.

Second, Paul adds that if you submit yourself to God’s will, even if events transpire contradictory to your personal desires, then you can at least take heart that you are working with a greater authority. This doesn’t necessitate total passivity.  On the contrary, we will be challenged much like Jesus was in the garden.  What it does mean is that we aren’t tossed so much by the ups and downs or the ebbs and flows of life.  It frees us from the childish notion that good days and bad days are rewards or punishments. As Paul the Apostle reminds us that our identity is in Christ.   Who we are is who we are in Christ.  So regardless of the outcome of our days, whether we may judge them as good days or not-so-good days, the real meaning is that we see our true selves and our connection to Christ.

Yet Paul of the Cross will take this one step further.  He goes so far as to say, Feed on the will of God.   Let God’s will be nourishment and food. Paul referred to this as “having the food of the divine will in a pure spirit of faith and love.”   When you begin to discover that pursuing the will of God is a real blessing and that it nourishes your soul, then you will find yourself returning again and again to the table of that nourishment. 

At seventy-seven years of age, Paul hadn’t changed his understanding. To Anna Maria Calcagnini, he writes:

Now, I would like to tell you about a principle of faith that embraces the highest perfection. Jesus Christ said to his apostles one day that his food was to do the will of his eternal Father. What an important point this is. Therefore, in every event of life, in all interior and exterior worries, desolations, aridities…. In bodily pain, in all of these find the food of the divine will…

Another point to ponder in this Advent season. 

Fr. David Colhour, C.P., is the Provincial Superior of Holy Cross Province. He resides in Chicago, Illinois.

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

Our Hungers and Hopes This Advent

In today’s Gospel, Jesus walks by the Sea of Galilee and encounters “great crowds” of needy folks:  the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute…and He cures them!  And He lovingly feeds them with the seven loaves of bread and the few fish that his disciples had brought along – a feast!!  People were fed and healed…with baskets of leftovers!

I can’t help but think of the crowds of these days between Thanksgiving and Christmas…crowds of shoppers, some even pushing and shoving in pursuit of their “treasures.”  Some are “needy” people, like those of long ago — dealing with loneliness, frustration, various physical and psychological illnesses, selfishness and greed, etc.  Jesus lovingly desires to come and meet their needs, to cure their aches and pains, and feed their spirits…to pour out His loving heart for us all.

Jesus fed the hungry crowd with seven loaves of bread.  For people of ancient times, bread was a fundamental source of nourishment and, therefore, a symbol of all the good things needed to sustain life.  Even now, we speak of a person who earns a living for their family as a “breadwinner.”  Who among us these days can resist the inviting aroma of fresh-baked bread and the warm feelings that fresh bread inspires?  And yes, those Holiday breads…

This Advent 2024 we journey as people of hope – needy, hungry people seeking Jesus who is “Bread for the Life of the world” … Life that is wholesome, inviting — and lasts!  Advent becomes for us an evolving celebration of the transformation of all creation in Jesus!  These special days we look to the great event of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem (the name means “The House of Bread”), then to Jesus’ presence in our midst in the Eucharist and the Scriptures and one another.  And like the Prophet Isaiah, we look for the great coming of Jesus at the end of all time: to destroy death forever, to wipe away our tears, to save us from our selfishness, to share eternal Life with us. 

These Advent days, as members of the Passionist Family, let’s open our hearts to God who comes to save us, to nourish us, and to love us in His life, death, and resurrection.  We pray these days:  Come, Lord Jesus!

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:

Isaiah 11:1-10
Luke 10:21-24

Reflection:

Hiding things from the learned and clever might seem a difficult thing to do. For example, most parents know much more about their children’s behaviour than the son or daughter realises, but the parents often choose to keep things hidden and quiet. Teachers see much more than any student thinks. Partners keep quiet about some faults and, in general, tend to follow the advice of Pope St John 23rd, who once said, “See everything and overlook a great deal”.

So, today’s reading finds Jesus rejoicing in this idea of ‘hidden things’ and their discovery by others – but it’s with a twist.

No longer is the core of God’s plan to be something to be ‘learned’ or subject to esoteric theories and interpretations. It is not a new ‘law’ in the sense that it can be codified, learned in such a way that it can be recited by heart (but ignored in living) and finally interpreted through various perspectives and then debated. 

No, God’s plan for our good now and in eternity is something so radically simple that those with an open mind, open heart, and open will are the ones most likely to ‘see’ it and discover its power. 

Jesus finds such openness in children playing, but it seems to be the dynamic of their play that inspires him to such a prayer as we hear today. Playing together seems based on openness to the other, inclusion, welcome,  acceptance of difference, and unity forged by a common task – these seem to be the dynamics that not only enable children to overlook a great deal but which are needed to build the Reign of God in our world as well. 

Of course the message – revealed to those whose faith allows them to hold onto the above values, but hidden from those who prefer their own ways and opinions – is not a written one but rather the message is Jesus, and learning the message requires lifestyle changes, openness and humility. 

He hides nothing from us if we are humble enough to be ‘mere children.’

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