Daily Scripture

Scripture:

Genesis 49:29-32; 50:15-26a
Matthew 10:24-33

Reflection:

Sparrows are small birds found in most parts of the world.  They have a typical length of 6.3 inches and weigh a mere .85 to 1.39 ounces.  Sparrows are native to Europe, the Mediterranean Basin and a large part of Asia.  Sparrows’ intentional or accidental introduction to many regions, including parts of Australasia, Africa, and the Americas, make them the most widely populated wild bird in the world.  Jesus relates today’s gospel message in the context of the Father’s attention to sparrows: “Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?  Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.”.

Jesus admonishes his Apostles in today’s gospel reading not to allow their egos to swell in the context of their ministry.  No disciple is above his teacher and no slave is above his master.  It is enough for the disciple to become like his teacher and for the slave to become like his master.  This seems to imply that in the context of the love of God, no one in our society is greater than any other.  Like the sparrow, none of us can fall to the ground without the Father’s knowledge.  Jesus tells us that we are each worth more than many sparrows.

So, I ask myself in whatever circumstance I find myself, how often do I compare myself to others in my family, my Parish, my community, my workplace, etc.  When the Father looks across the entire network of people that I know and associate with, all members of his same creation, does he ever consider me better than anyone else that I know?  I know the answer to that question.  Unfortunately, all too often, my psyche tries to tell me otherwise.  We realize intuitively that God loves every person on the planet with infinite love, which means that love has no bounds.  We are all loved with that infinite love as if we were the only person that he created.  That’s why not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without God’s knowledge. 

This is not to suggest that God condones sinfulness in any one of his creatures.  In fact he advises us to turn away from the house in which the master is called Beelzebul, since, if we cannot turn away, we are inherently destined to be thrown into Gehenna.  However, even in the context of our sinful lives, God continues to love us with an infinite love.  He cannot help himself.  He is our creator, and we are members of his loving creation.  At the end of our earthly journey, if we fail to achieve heavenly glory, it is not because God did not love us for every moment of our life with such infinite love.  “Even all the hairs of your head are counted”. 

Jesus gives us strong advice about how to stay in the Father’s good graces.  “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.  But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before by heavenly Father.  In either case, it is not for lack of God’s infinite love that we might be thrown into Gehenna.  It will obviously be because of our own sinfulness, turning away from that infinite love that will seal our fate. 

Dear Lord God, teach me to love others more than I love myself.  Let me come to realize that we are each and everyone like common and equal sparrows in your loving creation and therefore deserving of equal and abundant love. 

May the Passion of Jesus Christ be always in our hearts!

Bill Berger has had a lifelong relationship with the Passionist Family.  Bill and his wife, Linda, are currently leaders of the Community of Passionist Partners (CPPs) in Houston, Texas.

Scripture:

Genesis 46:1-7, 28-30
Matthew 10:16-23

Reflection:

“Hineni,” “Here I am,” Jacob responded to God who called him.

The Hebrew word “hineni” is packed with mystical, life-changing meaning. It means complete readiness and availability to respond to a call, however unclear or uncertain the situation.

Hineni conveys being fully present, spiritually engaged, ready to embark on a significant mission.

Abraham responded “Hineni” when God called him before he was told to take Isaac up to a mount and bind him, demonstrating absolute obedience and readiness.

Moses responded “Hineni” at the burning bush, signifying his willingness to embrace a challenging leadership role despite his lack of confidence and doubts.

Isaiah responded “Hineni,” ‘Here I am, send me!’ In response to God’s call, embodying the spirit of readiness and commitment.

Jacob, too, in today’s first reading, answered “Hineni,” “Here I am,” when God called him by night, that dark moment of uncertainty, that moment when complete trust in God is demanded.

“Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you a great nation,” God promised Jacob

And at the beginning of chapter 10 in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus calls and names his 12 apostles. They implicitly replied “Hineni,” not knowing the full extent of the cost they would pay for their response.

Although “Hineni” may not be explicitly declared, it is unmistakably implied by the 12 who accepted their chosen mission as followers of Jesus.

Jesus sent them out with the commandment:” Don’t go among the Gentiles, and don’t enter into any city of the Samaritans. Rather, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 10:9).

These chosen men were not yet ready to take on the world. They were to limit their mission to Galilee, perhaps because this region was the most open to the Good News of Jesus.

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells his apostles he is “sending them out like sheep in the midst of wolves.”

Even as he sends them out, Jesus tells his apostles to brace themselves for the same persecution and pain he himself suffered.

Just as Jesus was preparing his apostles for their certain persecution, so too was Matthew bracing his community to prepare for hardship, rejection, and persecution.

“…when they deliver you up,” Jesus continues, “don’t be anxious how or what you will say, for it will be given you in that hour what you will say.”

The apostles were not to formulate their defense in advance, because the Spirit will speak through them.Matthew’s community was to do likewise.

And so are we, the Church, to stand ready within a consumer-driven, subjective, and scientistic world that rejects, mocks, or worse, is indifferent to the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Will we accept the challenge? “Hineni” is the response of sacred and undiluted presence, a response in which the self-sheds all reservations. It is pure unguarded affirmation, even before all the facts are known.

“Hineni” means we are to trust that the Holy Spirit will scaffold us with the fortitude necessary to persevere, in spite of our Mosaic doubts, or Abrahamic uncertainties, so that we can declare as affirmatively as Isaiah did: “Here I am. Send me.”

Deacon Manuel Valencia retired from active retreat ministry at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center in Sierra Madre, California, after 23 years. He continues to provide spiritual counseling there and delivers a monthly homily at the retreat chapel.

Scripture:

Genesis 44:18-21, 23b-29; 45:1-5
Matthew 10:7-15

Reflection:

When I was 3 months old, I weighed the same as when I was born. Although they eventually received a diagnosis and effective treatment, my parents were so afraid they would lose me that I became more precious in their eyes. When we were teens, my older brother and sister were rebels who caused no end of trouble. I didn’t want the consequences my siblings’ misbehaviors caused, so I became the one who, in my parents’ words and to their relief, “never gave them a grey hair.”  When I was widowed at 25, my parents’ concern knew no bounds and there was nothing they would not do to help.

The unfortunate result of all this special attention was that many of my nine siblings were jealous, convinced that I was Mom and Dad’s “favorite.” Jealousy is a destructive emotion that divides family members, friends, community members, and nations. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt because of their jealousy, and modern-day wars are fought because of it. We all want to be #1, the best, the favorite, the top of the heap. Anyone who gets in our way, has what we desire, or doesn’t give us what we want is a threat that we must work against.

Most people claim they don’t feel much jealousy. Despite its presence, we perceive it as being “bad” and so we allow it to hide, meaning it often acts insidiously. It only becomes apparent when we dig deeper and ask hard, honest questions.

I have to admit that I can feel jealous when a speaker gets a higher rating or a bigger audience than me. I can feel jealous of people who travel extensively for leisure, or who are obviously financially secure. I can even feel jealous of someone I perceive as being farther in their spiritual journey, more easily able to quiet their mind in meditative prayer, wiser, and (at least in my eyes) more in touch with God. But, none of this jealousy accomplishes a thing.

So my prayer this week is first to ask the Spirit to show me the ways that jealousy is active in my life, wherever and whenever it exists. Then I pray to be given the grace, humility, and courage to turn any jealousy into delight for the other person and heartfelt prayers for their peace and happiness. That really turns it around!  

Our relationships and our hearts will all be better off if we can recognize, let go of, and reverse jealousy. Are you willing to do so?

Amy Florian is an author and consultant in suburban Chicago who travels the country teaching about spirituality, grief, and healing. She has partnered with the Passionists in various ways for many years. Visit Amy’s website: http://www.corgenius.com/.

Scripture:

Genesis 41:55-57; 42:5-7a, 17-24a
Matthew 10:1-7

Reflection:

Hope

The Passionist community celebrates the feast of “Mary Mother of Hope” today. The origin of this devotion is found in the mission preaching of Thomas Struzzieri, CP, later bishop, who spoke of Mary, the Mother of Hope. This devotion is echoed by Bl. Dominic Barbari, CP. and the martyred Bulgarian Bishop, Eugene Bassilkov, CP.  Pope Francis in his autobiography, “Hope”, reflects poetically on this virtue. Along side our daily readings from Genesis and Matthew, readings from the common of Mary may be chosen. Mass prayers and preface are in the “Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary”, Volume 1.

In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars which devastated the Church and religious life in Europe, the superior of the Passionists, instead of retrenching with a smaller number of religious, chose to expand, to preach the passion in new places. Dominic Barbari, CP who wanted to go to England, found himself in Belgium as the first religious superior in 1840. It took this rather rotund, gentle and quiet man only two years to lead a few Passionists off to England. He was a theologian and teacher driven to work for unity with the Church of England, something we find in the prayer of St. Paul of the Cross, the founder of the Passionists. In the nine years before his death in Reading, England, although he did not realize his goal, he did receive a great consolation. It was Dominic Barbari who welcomed John Henry Newman into the Church!

Dominic says this of Mary and hope: Hope is that virtue than anchors the ship of our soul in the stormy sea of this troubled world…Though endowed with extraordinary graces and unstained by original sin, Mary never counted on any resource of her own. She knew God as the source of every good. She confided in God, fleeing from persecution from her own country, and she hoped in God even when she saw her divine Son die on the Cross. She encouraged the weak, lifted up the fallen…even now she reaches with a mother’s hand to those who go to her. She is Mother of holy hope.

In 1952 Bl. Eugene Bassilkov, bishop of the church of Bulgaria during the Communist persecution was taken from his prison cell and shot by a firing squad. We have a letter from Bassilkov where he says, ‘things are bad, but as a son of the Province of Our Lady of Hope, (the province in Belgium). Mary, Mother of Hope is my inspiration’.

Advertising uses words to make sales, poetry uses words that make us wonder why we rarely see the obvious until someone expresses it simply. Poetry safeguards not sales but souls. So Pope Francis uses the poetry of Charles Péguy: ‘Faith, he says, is a loyal wife/Charity is a Mother, but Hope is a little girl not even noticed, who will endure worlds. She alone, carrying the others, is lost among her sister’s skirts. Hope, the little one, carries them all./Because Faith sees only what is. But she, she sees what will be./Charity only loves what is. But she, she loves what will be’. There is a saying, “When the seas rise, those without ideas are the first to go under”. So for those without hope. Christian hope is the humble, strong virtue that sustains us and does not let us drown in the many difficulties of life. Hope, the anchor, Mary, the vessel. She pulls us aboard dripping and tired. ‘Here’s a towel, there’s an oar! I knew you were there’, she says.

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

Scripture:

Genesis 32:23-33
Matthew 9:32-38

Reflection:

Jacob sent his wives, 11 children and others of his party with all his possessions, across the Jabbok River.  He stood alone on the other side of that river, alone in the deepest darkness of night.

In dread, he awaited the arrival of his twin brother Esau, who despised him for his deceptions.  Jacob knew that Esau was approaching with his army to seek revenge on him.

All his life, Jacob has been a man imbued with conflict.  Jacob and Esau were twin brothers.  Esau, however, was born first.  Jacob was born moments later, grasping at Esau’s heel as though attempting to pull him back, allowing Jacob to emerge first from their mother’s womb.  That is why he was named Jacob.  In the Hebrew, Yaakov, or Jacob, means the back of the foot, the heel.  It also means the one who deceives, the trickster.  That was Jacob.

The infant Jacob grabbed at Esau’s heel because it is the first-born becomes the heir to the father’s properties, possessions, wealth, and would eventually become the head of the extended family’s tribe.

Jacob’s grasping of Esau’s heel defined his life.  His modus operandi was always to grab the heel, to sneak from behind to deceive and get his way.  When Esau reached the age of maturity, his father, the aging, and nearly blind Isaac, was ready to give him his blessing as head of the tribe.  However, Jacob, with his mother’s help, deceived Isaac into believing Jacob was Esau. 

As a result, Jacob received his father’s blessing, and causing a bitter enmity with Esau.

Jacob now stood alone in his midnight hour, dreading the approaching Esau and his army.

Then, something strange happens.  “Jacob was left there alone.  Then some man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.”  Literally, the Hebrew reads that some “ish” wrestled with him until the break of dawn. 

This word, Ish, has at least two meanings.  Ish can mean man.  In fact, the Book of Genesis refers to Jacob as “ish.”  But Ish can mean Angel of God.

The question we are left with then is which meaning are we supposed to ascribe to the phrase “some man,” some Ish?  Is it some mysterious man?  Or is it the Angel of God?

Perhaps the answer is both.

As Jacob stood alone in his spiritual darkness, all the deception and trickery Jacob had inflicted on his brother, and others throughout his life now returned to haunt him like a nightmare. 

He wrestled with that nightmare, with his conscience, and there were no wives, no children, no wealth to distract him.

Jacob wrestled with Ish, the man, that man, himself.  Who was he?  What was his true identity?  All his life, Jacob was no more than a false image of his twin brother Esau. 

All his life, Jacob wanted to be first, like Esau.  He could do this only by deceiving others and by deceiving himself.

Jacob wrestled with Ish, the Angel of God.  In the end, it was with God with whom Jacob had to contend with, wrestle with.

Have you ever found yourself utterly alone in your own darkness?  With whom have you wrestled?

Is it with Ish, yourself with whom you are wrestling?  Many of us do a lot of wrestling with Ish. 

I have. 

In my faith, my doubts, my questions, my fears, I have felt alone, standing on one side of the river, while my family of faith stands at the far side of the river.

In my darkness, I have wrestled with my physical limitations, which are really nothing more than the natural progression of age.  And yet, I have struggled with this stage of my life.

Have you been there?  Are you there now, perhaps in your illness, your grief at the loss of a loved one, in your marital difficulties?  We each wrestle with Ish in our own way

Sounds rather gloomy, doesn’t it?  Where then does hope lie on this side of the river?

Jacob and Ish hold the key to that question.

You see, even though today’s narrative says Jacob “prevailed” over Ish, it doesn’t mean Jacob defeated God.  No.  Nor did God defeat Jacob.  Winning and losing was never the point of this struggle.  The point was that Jacob refused to stop struggling.  Jacob did not quit.  He did not run away.  Nor did God.

Therein lies the hope for us.  These struggles and challenges will certainly come our way.  We will have to wrestle with Ish.  However, it is in that place of our struggle that Ish, God encounters us, wrestles with us.  God will never quit on us.  Nor should we quit on God – or ourselves.

And there is the Good News.  At the break of dawn, Jacob, as he had done by trickery years before, now begged for a blessing.  Jacob received several blessings.

–God, Ish, gave Jacob a new name, a new beginning, a new man: His name was now Israel, one who wrestles with God.

–And Jacob, that is Israel, walked out of his darkness and into the dawn with a limp.

Our struggle with God and ourselves, however, comes at a cost.  We walk away with a limp.  It is the limp – physical or spiritual, or both, that life will inevitably inflict on us.

And yet, that is the best news.  That limp, your limp and mine is the unmistakable sign that God has transformed us to be more authentically ourselves, more like God.

Deacon Manuel Valencia is on the staff at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

Genesis 28:10-22a
Matthew 9:18-26

Reflection:

‘Courage, daughter!  Your faith has saved you.’
And from that hour the woman was cured.   -Matthew 9:22

I had lunch with a “doubting Thomas” (well, really Bill) the other day. We hadn’t seen each other for years and were catching up. At one point we were talking about faith in Jesus. When I suggested that by following Jesus, he could affect healing and cures, he balked. “Oh no! that’s my lord and savior’s work.”

As our discussion proceeded, he told me of an adventure he experienced after retiring. Bill had been successful in the financial world and retired when he was 65. Thinking his current assets could do much better in another venture, he took them all, as well as those of other family and friends, and invested in a new venture. As he told the story this all sounded very exciting until he got to the point where every $1.00 invested eventually turned out to be worth forth-one cents. Bill, didn’t stop there. He kept trying (believing) and collaborating with others in the field, till eventually his and his friends’ assets rebounded doing better than ever.

God, help my unbelief today and no matter how bleak and terrible my life looks, help me believe in you, in your love and care not only for me, but for all your creation. Help me believe further that working with and caring for my sister, as well as Mother Earth, will heal us all.

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

Scripture:

Isaiah 66:10-14
Galatians 6:14-18
Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

Reflection:

My fellow Kentuckian, Trappist monk Thomas Merton, wrote: “I have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.”

When the culture around us endorses or is indifferent to owning nuclear weapons, polluting of our fragile planet, leaving our brothers and sisters homeless, hungry, or diseased, we disciples must offer a high degree of resistance. When people in our culture cheer when immigrants and refugees are arrested without due process, stripped, shaven, and thrown into a foreign country’s jail, resistance is demanded, as our pope and American bishops have courageously done.

The seventy-two disciples Jesus instructs in today’s Gospel are sent into harsh territory, into mostly Greek-formed cultures where Christians were required to offer a high degree of resistance. The Gospel focus on forgiveness, love, and absolute trust in God no doubt got a lot of push-back.

In imitation of these disciples, we must ask what are our own acts of resistance in our fast-paced, complex, media-saturated world?

Our culture is not foreign to us, most of us were born into it and have been shaped by it. But the message of Christ is foreign to our culture. The advertising world promotes being young, attractive, popular, powerful, and wealthy. These things, we are told, assure happiness, pleasure, satisfaction. To sustain our consumer-satisfying culture we start wars for oil, build war machines to “guarantee” security, and exploit and pollute Mother Earth in irreputable ways.

None of this offers care of the soul. Jesus’ message, which the seventy-two are asked to preach and live, emphasizes humility, powerlessness, detachment, and deep love for one another, especially the weak, lowly, discarded, and poor.

To be close to Christ means living simple, sincere lives with total trust in God to help us resist what does not respect our souls. This can mean pain, suffering, rejection, and, at times, feeling like we are accomplishing little in the eyes of the world.

But it is the only path to caring for our souls, to finding the deep, inner joy and peace that everyone longs for in the darkest moments of the night.

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

Scripture:

Genesis 27:1-5, 15-29
Matthew 9:14-17

Reflection:

May God give to you of the dew of the heavens and of the fertility of the earth abundance of grain and wine.   -Genesis 27:28

People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined.   -Matthew 9:17

Albert Einstein once said, “The problems of today can only be solved at a higher level of thinking than that which created them.” A similar quote from David Goldstein runs, “You can’t solve tomorrow’s challenges with yesterday’s thinking.” Both of these quotations echo Jesus‘s words about new wine in old wine skins. Although somewhat obscure to us today, the apostles would’ve understood what he meant. Old wine skins would have been stretched out and ready to tear if put under any pressure. New wine was still fermenting, growing, under transformation from grape juice to wine. In the same way that Albert Einstein and David Goldstein said that are thinking must be transformed if we are to move forward, Jesus is telling us that we ourselves must be transformed to hold his new teaching.

But this is not a one-time event. As it is written in the book of Revelation, “Behold, I make all things new,” every day is a new day.  Every day, Jesus comes to us, ready to pour His Spirit of new wine into us. We must allow ourselves to be transformed into new wine skins for this new teaching. This can sometimes be uncomfortable. However, as Christians, we are called to continuously participate in this creative process of transformation, giving up our old ways of thinking and allowing ourselves to be born again.

My prayer today is that we all give ourselves over to this process of transformation and allow ourselves to be Jesus’s hands in the building up of God‘s kingdom here on earth.

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].