Daily Scripture

Scripture:

Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10
Hebrews 12:1-4
Luke 12:49-53

Reflection:

Living in these divided times, I found myself struggling with the words of Jesus in our Gospel reading for Sunday (Luke 12:49-53): “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”

Personally, I feel called to help bring people together, not push them apart. Is Jesus really asking me and all of us to promote the divisions that exist between peoples? In light of what we read in the Gospels; I would say the answer is no.

What I do believe Jesus is saying is that His message is not to be diluted for the sake of “not rocking the boat,” or “not stirring things up.” He encountered opposition from almost the very beginning of His public ministry. Much like the prophet Jeremiah (See our first reading: Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10), there were people, mostly people in power, who didn’t like what He had to say, and eventually these people plotted to kill Him, just as their ancestors looked to do with Jeremiah. Jesus did not come to establish comfortability or complacency or “peace” with what is.

For many early Christians, their decision to follow Jesus not only put their lives in danger, but put them in conflict with members of their own families, as Jesus says when He talks about fathers against sons and mothers against daughters, etc.

To follow Jesus is to take a stand, which can lead to conflict and the cross. But when we look at how Jesus dealt with and related to the Samaritan woman at the well, or the Syro-Phoenician woman begging for help for her daughter, or the synagogue official, or the Roman centurion with the servant who was ill, we can see that Jesus was not looking for us to be so divided that we lose sight of the humanity or the sacredness, in God’s eyes, of the “other.” That is what I fear our divisions have brought us to: questioning even the humanity of the “other.” It is this kind of mentality that has led to slavery and injustice and human trafficking and attempts at genocide. We are not called to promote this kind of division, no matter how righteous we think we are.

Instead, as it says in our second reading from Hebrews (12:1-4): “let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us [Doesn’t prejudice and violence seem to cling to us?] and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith. For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God.” I suppose that the “joy that lay before him” refers to the Resurrection. But I also wonder if that joy has to do with our salvation. He endured the cross for the sake of the joy of saving us all, not just some.

Jesus says, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” May we be set on fire for love of the world, even love for those we consider “other.”

Fr. Phil Paxton, C.P., is the local superior of the Passionist Community in Birmingham, Alabama. 

Scripture:

Ezekiel 18:1-10, 13b, 30-32
Matthew 19:13-15

Reflection:

Recently, my husband and I traveled to Ireland to attend a family wedding. While there we were joined by our son and his family. It was the first trip for our grandson who is two years old. And he seemed to take to the idea of farming and cows and tractors with glee. As I reflected on the readings for today, I was struck by those memories of how he walked purposefully over the field with a goal to see the cows. Something inside me resonated deeply as I watched him walk with his dad and grandfather and uncle over the fields of his heritage as if he felt at home.  Paying attention to the movements of God in our life seems important. The first reading from the prophet Ezekiel simply suggests that. We are not responsible for the sins of our fathers, rather we walk purposefully towards our heritage. We are invited to be virtuous in life. Our Gospel offers a similar idea, let the children come to Jesus, it is he desires to have a relationship with them, with you and me.

In Sunday’s readings, the Gospel of Luke suggests, “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father, is pleased to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32)”

To me, the readings of today offer us an invitation to pause and reflect on how we can integrate Sacred Scripture into our lives.

Often, we are so busy that we hardly take time to pause and truly reflect on the readings; myself included. Can we imagine how we might approach life if we understood that we are not to be afraid and that our Father is pleased to share the kingdom? Is that what Jesus meant all those years ago as he went about proclaiming the Kingdom in Galilee and Jerusalem?

When I reflect on the scene with our grandson, I am reminded of the abundance of God’s presence in our lives. A God who moves in and through to get our attention.

What do you see the readings offering you today? What thought comes to you?

While I have no idea how our grandson understood this experience, safe to say, I trust him to the providence of the kingdom.

Dear Jesus, may we always trust in your love and guidance. May you be before us and beside us (Psalm 139:5).

So, when we look to the right or left, in confidence, we will hear the voice of God saying, “this is the way, walk this way. (Isaiah 30:21)” Amen.

Jean Bowler is a retreatant at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center in Sierra Madre, California, and a member of the Office of Mission Effectiveness Board of Holy Cross Province.

Scripture:

Ezekiel 16:1-15, 60, 63 or 16:59-63
Matthew 19:3-12

Reflection:

The Word of God for us today is meditation on the sacredness of a covenant, especially as regards marriage. It is a plea to encourage, affirm, pardon and be faithful to every marriage relationship in your life. Whether you are single, married, or, vowed in religious life, I believe that it is our responsibility to pay attention to and pray for the married couples in our life.

This is our sacred task and responsibility to verbally acknowledge the importance of what two people must do to maintain their faithful love.

We are actually working in cooperation with God, the source of all genuine love and grace, when we affirm, encourage and reinforce every marital commitment with whom we come in contact. Is it not God who declares today in the Word that “I will re-establish my covenant with you, that you may know that I am the Lord that you may remember and be covered with confusion, and that you may be utterly silenced for shame when I pardon you for all you had done, says the Lord God…” (Ezek. 16:63)

I am suggesting something that is counter to the American culture where love is the most misunderstood and misinterpreted word in a loveless age.

In the words of Catherine de Hueck Doherty, foundress of Madonna House Apostolate, in Combermere, Canada, “If we want to restore the world to Christ, we must first clarify what marriage really is to a world that has forgotten the very meaning of the word love, let alone that sanctity of marital love.

I suggest that we act upon our meditation today and every day, with the deliberate and intentional act of acknowledging the importance of each sacred relationship in whose presence we encounter. Maybe you will get their attention as to who and what is most important, and you will make their day!  At least you got their attention!

Make this a pleasing act to God, as God is able to heal, enlighten and transform each relationship with whom we come in contact.

Fr. Alex Steinmiller, C.P., is a member of the Passionist Community in Detroit, Michigan.

Scripture:

Ezekiel 12:1-12
Matthew 18:21-19:1

Reflection:

We can best understand today’s gospel by knowing that Matthew organized his gospel into five discourses, or teachings.

They are:

1. The Sermon on the Mount (teachings on the kingdom)
2. The Mission (sending out the disciples)
3. The Parables
4. The Care of the Church
5. The Olivet discourse on the last days

Today’s gospel is part of the fourth discourse, Care of the Church – how are we to care for one another, how are we to live in harmony as community?  Two stories examine those issues and the challenge of forgiveness: Peter’s question, and the king and two servants.

Why would Peter suggest forgiving the other specifically seven times.  It may have been that Peter was familiar with rabbinic teaching of the time, and taught by Rabbi Jose bar Hanina, which held that one must forgive the other three times, but not the fourth time.  In answering his own question – how many times must one forgive another? – was Peter attempting to exceed rabbinic teaching?

Another possibility may be that Peter selected the number seven for its Jewish symbolic meaning.  Seven is the perfect number.  It symbolizes completeness and wholesomeness, the eternal.

Whatever the reason, Peter, hopeless braggadocio that he is, wants to impress Jesus.  And, as usual, Jesus is strikingly unimpressed with Peter.

“Not seven times,” Jesus responded, “but seventy-seven times.”  Through this Jesus episode, the evangelist Matthew is exhorting his Jewish-Christian community to forgive one another without limit.

To underscore this teaching, Jesus presents a parable, which compares God’s forgiveness to ours.  The story is about a king and his slaves.  The king, with great generosity, forgave the one slave the entirety of the immense debt he owes him.  That same slave, however, refuses to forgive a relatively minor debt that a fellow slave owed him.   Instead, he had him thrown in prison until he paid back the debt.  When the king heard of the slave’s refusal to forgive a debt as his own was forgiven, he had him thrown into prison

What then is Matthew’s community – and we today – are to understand from this discourse on the Care of the Church?  Just this:  living in community is often, perhaps all too frequently, can be difficult, calling for great patience, and the need to forgive.  Certainly, we see this today in a highly contentious and toxic climate of within the Church.

We, the Church today, are called to care for one another to build up the Body of Christ.  We must forgive, not seven times but seventy-seven times, that is, without limit.

It is because of God’s limitless forgiveness to us, undeserving people, that we in turn cannot claim the right to withhold forgiveness from our fellow disciples.

Like the king who first forgave his slave, the initiative is with God.  It is because God has first forgiven us, that we are expected, and through God’s grace, enabled, to forgive one another.  We, as community of the forgiven, must be a forgiving community.

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

Scripture:

2 Corinthians 9:6-10
John 12:24-26

Reflection:

When I was a teen, it was akin to a mortal sin for a Catholic to attend a Protestant worship service, much less marry a person of another faith. That is no longer true. Instead, when we died to our superior and exclusivist attitudes toward Protestants, we discovered that God had been sowing and reaping in them all along and they had much to teach us.

Similarly, I was in 5^th grade when a Spanish-speaking Cuban family moved into the 100% white Catholic town where I grew up. Fascinated by their language and culture, I befriended the funny, smart girl in my class. But the family moved away after enduring 5 months of getting their car egged, reading threatening notes on their door, having people refuse to offer them the Sign of Peace at Mass, and being ignored by store clerks.  All of this was done, of course, by the town’s good, upright Catholics clinging to their lives of exclusivity and superiority rather than following Jesus by welcoming the stranger, dying to their own power, and realizing that the family could enrich the town. Jesus was willing to sit at table with everyone who came.  Are we?

As more people of other cultures find a home within our country, do we complain that they are ruining our “American way of life” or do we look for all the ways they contribute to our society as it continues to be shaped, sown, grown, and brought to harvest? How can we become “cheerful givers” who lend generously to the poor and marginalized, who nurture seedlings in every race and culture so they can realize their potential, and who bring new life to every person we encounter?

These are tough questions. It’s always hard to die to self. When a person literally dies, they learn to let go of so many things that defined life for them. As all is stripped away, they are left with only those things that are truly important, and the experience transforms them if they let it. Even as they die, they are born again in new ways. 

Jesus calls us to do that before we physically die. He wants us to do the demanding work of stripping away everything except that which is truly important.  He wants to crack the hard seed coat that separates us from the “other” so we can look at persons of every race, religion, and culture and see ourselves in them. He wants us to reach out in welcoming, open-armed, generous, overflowing love. He wants us to sow and reap in abundance, celebrate and learn from our “otherness”, reject notions of scarcity that keep us from sharing for fear there won’t be enough for ourselves, and teach lessons in word and deed that ensure unity (not uniformity), respect, and shared life.  If we can do that, and only if we do that, the kingdom of God will flourish on this earth and righteousness will endure forever.

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:

Ezekiel 2:8-3:4
Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

Reflection:

Little Ones Should Not Be Lost

Last week was Pope Francis’ pilgrimage of sorrow and apology among the indigenous peoples of Canada. Each of us are healed and share in the healing of one another during life’s pilgrimage. It is part of our conversation when we dine at the table of the Eucharist: Lord, have mercy; Our Father forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us; Lamb of God, have mercy; Lord, I am not worthy. We can add the penitential seasons, the beautiful Eucharistic Prayers and Prefaces of Reconciliation, and Scripture readings.

Our Gospel tells us to become like little children and never harm one of the little ones. Pope Francis asking forgiveness on behalf of the church focused on the Residential Schools, where children were taken from their families and forced to live in boarding schools in order to ‘take the Indian out of the children’. The children were taught a new language and deprived of their culture. Now we know that destroyed families as well as a way of life with its culture and spirituality and was an insult to the wisdom of the elders, the grandparents, the keepers and sharers of the treasures of culture. Lives were disrupted, a culture damaged, and a bad harvest was sown in the plowed proud bodies of a people who bear those scars. On the plane returning home the Pope used the word ‘genocide’. Good he did not use that word during his visit. At a burial we need not remind one another that our loved one is dead. Francis was pulling weeds, attending to living wheat so it can grow to produce an abundant crop.

Why is this gospel so linked to the Pope’s visit? Could it be the gift giving?  Francis always, with a timid smile, offered little red boxes which I think held rosaries to all who approached to offer him their ‘special’ gifts. There is something so humble in giving and receiving a gift. There is a language of childhood in gift-giving. We want to make someone happy. The gospel is reflected too in the beautiful, humble church of the Sacred Heart of the First Peoples in Edmonton with the large poles of a teepee, framed the image of the crucifix. God has pitched his tent among us, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” were words above the altar. The Incarnation that began in Mary’s womb and was a baby in Bethlehem. Also, the rituals that were presented and shared with delight and dignity, call forth our gentle reverence to children. Even if they were beyond our understanding, we could appreciate the child within, caught up in sharing something sacred, ritual makers sharing with us invisible things that they can see.

But finally, our gospel speaks of the Good Shepherd who goes off searching for a sheep separated from the flock. The Pope took us with him to people far away, but not too far; different, but not too different. People who suffer and have suffered, but whose lives in this present moment offer something enlivening to us. Francis says, go and find the sheep, be among them. Many of us have had our stuffed lambs when we were children, older we might still count sheep on occasion. What speaks of the child in the visit of Pope Francis, the Shepherd, may be his hope and trust that as children have a remarkable ability to forgive, the ‘child’ so damaged in times past but still living among these good people can forgive. May new seeds, reconciliation seeds, grow now along with the wheat freed from many weeds, to be a rich, beautiful, nourishing harvest.

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

Scripture:

Wisdom 18:6-9
Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19 or 11:1-2, 8-12
Luke 12:32-48 or 12:35-40

Reflection:

…for he was looking forward to the city with foundations,
whose architect and maker is God. -Hebrews 11:10

I always wanted to be an architect. The closest I came to realize that dream was the first college course I ever took, an Interior Design course at the Art Institute of Chicago. In that course, we learned all about the placement and construction of good and lasting furniture. Looking back that sounds a bit esoteric in my world today, where I’m taught that if I’m not happy with my physical world, all I have to do is throw out my present belongings and replace them with whatever is the latest fad of the day. 

Looking further into my world, I see a dichotomy, I suppose not too different from Abraham’s world that Paul talks about in our second scripture selection for today. Much of my world has all the marvels of great minds using the tremendous gifts from the earth, buildings that reach to the sky, and so on and so forth. In this same world however, I daily witness homeless people, people suffering from addiction, from mental and physical illnesses who don’t seem to be healed or taken care of, despite the fact that we throw more resources at these problems and have some of the most modern technology our world has ever known. What’s wrong? I wonder if we could use some new architects, some who might believe in what Luke writes about in today’s gospel selection:

Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.  -Luke 12:33-34

God, you are a demanding god if I am to take Luke seriously. You don’t want half measures. You want my full commitment to your creation—not my creation—you are the architect. God, help me follow your son, Jesus, trusting that with you in charge, the world will blossom and reflect your loving, peaceful and joyful life for all your creatures.

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