Daily Scripture

Scripture:

Genesis 18:20-32
Colossians 2:12-14
Luke 11:1-13

Reflection:

Awesome Presence and Wonderful Intimacy

In our experience of God, it is important that we try to be conscious of both His majesty and the warmth of His intimacy.  In today’s liturgy Luke relates an essential reading of the Our Father.  In the very first words he sets before us the foundations of prayer, the transcendence and intimacy of God!  “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name!” Lk 11:2   Our prayer will limp badly if we fail to appreciate by grace the Holiness of God and the depth of His love for us.

First of all, Jesus tells us to start our prayer with Father.  The word father is treated 414 times in NT.   The most important father Jesus knew as a child was Joseph.  Father is Jesus’s primary word for God.   It is the most important metaphor of Jesus’s teaching.  It is of great interest that every reported prayer of Jesus in the New Testament starts with the word Father!   What a beautiful compliment to Joseph!  So we begin our prayer with the intimate word father!  St Paul of the Cross would spend two hours on first word of the Our Father!

Luke next relates the words “hallowed be Your name!”    The idea of “holy” in the Scriptures is in Hebrew qadosh.  It is used 115 in OT.  “I am the Lord, your Holy One” Is 43:15. The angels cry out which shakes the heavens.“Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts,   The whole earth is full of His glory.” Is 6:3     Holy in the Latin phrase is: mysterium tremendum et fascinans.   As mysterium, the numinous is “wholly other”– entirely different from anything we experience in ordinary life.

In NT Greek holy is hagiosand is used 233 times. In Mary’s beautiful prayer she exults: “For the Mighty One has done great things for me; And holy is His name.” Lk 1:49  When we view the Universe now with the new eyes of science, we indeed can see how great God is!  Our sun with its planets is speeding around our Galaxy, the Milky Way, about 500,000 miles an hour!  Even at this prodigious speed it will take about 250 million years to make the trip once!  Our Milky Way is just one of 100 billon galaxies.   “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made” Ps 33:6    This welcoming God is indeed incredibly big!

Fr. Bob Weiss, C.P. preaches Parish Missions and is a member of the Passionist Community in Louisville, Kentucky.

Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

Scripture:

Song of Songs 3:1-4b or 2 Corinthians 5:14-17
John 20:1-2, 11-18

Reflection:

There it is. The simple, one word lesson that encompasses all that Christ has tried to teach us.  The one word which conveys all the love Christ proclaimed with His suffering death. He whispers “Mary” in the dim light before new day.  She, undoubtedly beaten down by the emotions and images of the prior day, may well have not slept.  She returned before dawn to the tomb, compelled to complete the burial rituals they had been unable to complete the day before because of the impending Sabbath.

Even in the darkness, she saw that the immense stone blocking the tomb had been rolled away.  Surely her first thoughts were those of panic and even anger because she had witnessed the vicious, evil and unfair treatment Jesus had suffered the day before by those who tormented and put Him finally, to death. They might have stolen his body as another way of inflicting injury on Him.   

She saw a man standing at the head of the burial bench, and in the darkness, blinded by her tears, she failed to recognize Jesus until He spoke that one simple word which encompassed all of Christ’s love: “Mary”.     

No other words were necessary to impart His love for not only Mary, but for all of us, His people.    Upon hearing her name, Mary’s choked reply was simply, “Rabbi”, addressing Him not as the Man she knew, but in the redemptive role His life had always been. Do I know you when You call me, Lord, or am I blinded by the pain and anger of this world?   

Ray Alonzo is the father of three children, grandfather of two, and husband to Jan for 45 years. He is a USN Vietnam Veteran, and a 1969 graduate of Mother of Good Counsel Passionist Prep Seminary. Ray currently serves on the Passionist Alumni Council.

Scripture:

Jeremiah 2: 1-3, 7-8, 12-13
Matthew 13:10-17

Reflection:

Many of us remember Paul Simon’s song “The Boxer,” “Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest,” (The Boxer lyrics © Mca Music Ltd., Paul Simon Music, Sony/atv Songs Llc, Warner/chappell Music Ltd) 

Both readings today have a common theme: people hear but don’t really listen or we selectively hear what we want to hear. In the first reading, people are not listening to the prophet Jeremiah. He is reminding them of how great God has been to them in leading them out of Egypt and into the promised land. But soon they forgot God’s goodness and got busy going their own way including idolatry to Baal. Jeremiah states the priests don’t even try and seek the Lord. Israel has forsaken the Lord and refuses to listen to Jeremiah. In today’s gospel reading Jesus urges us to open our eyes and really see, open our ears, and not just hear but listen and understand with our hearts. We all know how easy it is to get super busy, easily distracted and be overwhelmed work demands, family responsibilities and variety of other challenges.

Am I one of those persons who are so busy that I  look without seeing, or hear without understanding? (https://www.sacredspace.ie/scripture/matthew-1310-17)  Take some time this day to be still and listen to what God might be saying to you, wanting you to see and understand.  O Lord help me to slow down and listen to your speaking and to see your presence and understand how much you love me.

Carl Middleton is a theologian/ethicist and a member of the Passionist Family.

Scripture:

Micah 6:1-4, 6-8
Matthew 12:38-42

Reflection:

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is asked for a sign, ostensibly to demonstrate that He is who He says He is. But Jesus replies, “An evil and unfaithful generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.” Then Jesus offers a parallel between Jonah in the belly of the whale and He in “the heart of the earth.”

There may have been times in our lives when we asked for a sign, especially at times when we were trying to discern God’s will. Does that mean we are an “evil and unfaithful generation?” I don’t think so, but you can almost hear the frustration in Jesus’ voice as He tries to point out that He is the sign they are looking for.

If there are times when we’re not sure of what direction God wants us to go, I can’t see that it is wrong to ask for a sign. But if we are at a time in our lives when we wonder whether God loves us or not, all we need do is look at the Cross! We can read the Scriptures. We can observe the beauty of creation. We can look at our lives, and as it says so famously in “Footprints,” we can see when Jesus was carrying us through our most difficult trials. These are the signs that God has already given us to show us His love! And there are probably so many small signs every day that come to us, whether it is an encouraging word, a hand on the shoulder, or even just a smile.

Some of the Pharisees just refused to believe in Jesus, and it wouldn’t have mattered what sign Jesus gave them. But for us who believe, may we have the grace to see and hear the signs, big and small, that God sends our way.

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

Scripture:

Genesis 18:1-10
Colossians 1:24-28
Luke 10:38-42

Reflection:

Here’s a gospel story for which we love to take sides! Mary or Martha? Those of us who feel we are always doing way more than our fair share, whether in our families, communities, or on our jobs, rally around a miffed Martha when she complains to Jesus that her dreamy sister needs to get up and lend a hand. (The gospel hints that maybe this wasn’t the first time Martha was peeved with the leisurely ways of her sister.) But those of us who think that the way too industrious Marthas of this world need to chill a little before they drive everybody crazy, loyally align ourselves with Mary.

And yet, rather than seeing Mary and Martha as irreconcilable opposites, perhaps they represent two essential dimensions of the Christian life that must be kept in balance. When Jesus tells Martha, “Mary has chosen the better part,” he reminds us that God must be the abiding center of our lives. No matter how much good we may do, if we are so busy that we seldom have time for the prayer, solitude, and contemplative listening that is necessary to nurture our relationship with God, we will lose our way. That is why we need to be Mary “who seated herself at the Lord’s feet and listened to his words.” But we also need to be Martha not only because other people depend on us and we have responsibilities to them, but also because God can work through all the good things we do to love and bless others.

Still, we shouldn’t be so focused on the distinctive character traits of these two sisters that we overlook the one thing on which they both obviously agree: welcoming Jesus into their home and into their lives. Martha and Mary had opened their door to Jesus often enough that he had changed from being a stranger to becoming a friend. Let us pray that Jesus feels as at home with us as he did with Martha and Mary. Let us pray that, like them, we spend enough time with Jesus so that he is no longer stranger, but friend.  

Paul J. Wadell is Professor Emeritus of Theology & Religious Studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, and a member of the Passionist Family.

Scripture:

Isaiah 38:1-6, 21-22, 7-8
Matthew 12:1-8

Reflection:

At one time during the First World War, a young British Army surgeon was accompanying his senior officer-surgeon around the wards of the wounded soldiers. They had completed the wards housing the British soldiers and were now making a round of the wounded German prisoners. They came to a man with a badly damaged hand, and the senior surgeon upon a quick examination remarked for the notes “We can probably save the hand itself, but the fingers will have to be removed”. And then he walked on to the next bed. But the prisoner understood some English and his eyes met those of the young doctor as he pleaded “Please, I am a watch maker”.

Watchmaking as a profession has probably disappeared from our world, but in 1915 it was still a viable occupation and one that required surgeon-like precision and the obvious use of one’s fingers.

The young doctor was moved by pity and hurried after the senior surgeon to plead for the chance to save both the hand and the fingers. His appeal was not appreciated in a situation of limited resources of supplies and time – and after all this man was an enemy – but by persisting he won permission to try to save all of the hand. After much effort he did so.

Perhaps not surprisingly,  after the war the young doctor studied for priesthood and was ordained and ended his ecclesial life as a Bishop in the Anglican Church.

It often takes great courage to act against social expectations or one’s peer group or indeed the law itself.

One does not readily set aside any of the above, let alone all three at one time. Yet today we read of Jesus standing up to the letter of the law, the criticism of the Pharisees and the long standing traditions that surrounded the Sabbath.

But it is the statement of Jesus “… I desire mercy, not sacrifice…” that seems to give us the sound interpretive principle for understanding the motivations and perspective of Jesus. The disciples are innocent of any wrong doing – they are merely picking corn because they are hungry, yet there are those willing to ignore compassion and to condemn them for a minor infringement of the law.

The young doctor in the story above had understood this – he chose not to see an enemy, but a fellow traveller on life’s journey. He chose not to see a problem too difficult to deal with, but rather to see a need and a future life either ruined of saved by his actions. The young doctor understood the words of Jesus  “What I desire is mercy”… (not a slavish adherence to the letter of the law, or to peer expectations or social conventions).

Let us make this principle of Jesus the one by which we judge, interpret and respond to situations of need and challenge. At times it will take some courage to do so, but we can act knowing that we follow the teaching and example of the Lord himself.

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