Daily Scripture

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Scripture:

Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40
Romans 8:14-17
Matthew 28:16-20

Reflection:

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday, a day that represents to us so much that the Father has given us – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus doesn’t say, “Hey – go make lots of money!” He says to make disciples of all nations. We are reminded that as disciples, we are always in touch with the one true God, ever present, ever merciful. We know that no matter what we experience in this life, that we are never alone – He is with us.

And He says he will be with us until the end of the age; this means forever, for eternity, until the end of time. Remember, we will NEVER be alone! Please extend the invitation to Jesus to be with you, to guide you, to nourish and support you.

Patty Masson supports the Passionists from Spring, Texas.  

Scripture:

Sirach 44:1, 9-13
Mark 11:11-26

Reflection:

We hear in the reading from Sirach about the rewards allotted to our ancestors who were faithful to the covenant, thus passing on the richness of faith that we are blessed with today.

            Their wealth remains in their families, their heritage with their descendants; through God’s covenant with them their family endures, their posterity, for their sake.

We are wealthy in so many ways because of this gift of faith, nurtured through prayer and scripture.  Jesus reminds us that when we pray in faith whatever we ask for will be granted. This continues to be good news considering all the chaos that continues to surround us in this post-pandemic world we live in!

Our ancestors in faith as well as our family and faith communities today can be a real source of support for how we live our lives as faithful Christians.  Jesus reminds us of the charge that we all have received to keep growing in our faith with these words:

            I chose you from the world, to go and bear fruit that will last,

One of the great joys of pastoral ministry over the years and now in retirement is to witness to how so many of those I have had the privilege to walk with through RCIA, faith formation, sacrament preparation and celebrations and outreach ministry over the years are actively accepting the call to ‘go and bear fruit that will last’! 

They are busy and active in so many areas of parish and community ministry including justice/outreach, RCIA sponsors/team, liturgical ministers, parish leadership, hospitality, life-long faith formation/Catholic school and parish.  There is a lot of fruit bearing happening!

Summer is upon us, fields are planted, flowers are growing, the beauty of nature is all around us!  May we take time to give thanks to God for this bounty as we faithfully ‘bear fruit that will last’!

Theresa Secord retired as a Pastoral Associate at St. Agnes Parish, Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Sirach 42:15-25
Mark 10:46-52

Reflection:

It’s just that easy. The blind man says, “Master, I want to see.”  and Jesus tells him to go his way, that his faith has saved him. This opened the blind man’s eyes and he was able to see. For us, as we search our faith to find answers to help us find what we need, that make us search for God’s truth, then that truth is always easy to find. Master, I want to find peace; Master, I want the hurting to stop, Master, I don’t want to be alone. He is always ready to give us the authority, the freedom, the ability to find what we need when we need it.

Don’t stop searching – don’t stop asking. Our Lord always provide what we need. If we are hurting, maybe we need to learn from that pain. If we are lonely, maybe there is something in that loneliness that will open our eyes to what really needs to be seen. 

And if it is peace that you long for, then search no more. His peace and His grace are enough.

Patty Masson supports the Passionists from Spring, Texas.

Scripture:

Sirach 36:1, 4-5a, 10-17
Mark 10:32-45

Reflection:

“Give new signs and work new wonders.” (Sir 36:6)

This single line from the Book of Sirach (at times called the Book of Ecclesiasticus) leapt off the page as I read today’s readings. The bickering disciples depicted in today’s gospel from Mark usually get my attention. Maybe because those guys remind me of growing up with eight siblings. But not today.

Breathe in: “Give new signs.”
Breathe out: “Work new wonders.”

My tendency in prayer is to be very active. I engage my imagination and play out gospel scenes. I am not really very good or practiced in quiet meditation. Yet I am quite drawn to these seven words.

A mantra is a word or phrase repeated over and again to aid concentration in meditation. It is very common in eastern religions and the growing popularity of meditation to help quiet the mind and experience the Divine. Its intention is to step back from all the distractions around us and focus on simple, repetitive words and slow, measured breathing.

Breathe in: “Give new signs.”
Breathe out: “Work new wonders.”

With all that has happened in the past fifteen months, I experience a growing need to find some quiet to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. The rancor, incivility, rudeness, and disrespect in word and action in these stressful times lead me to plead with God: “Give new signs and work new wonders.” And if I can find that quiet, I trust God will reveal all the wonderful signs and wonders that are indeed around me. I’m just too often distracted to see them. And so, I’m trying this.

Breathe in: “Give new signs.”
Breathe out: “Work new wonders.”

Robert Hotz is a consultant with American City Bureau, Inc. and was the Director of The Passion of Christ: The Love That Compels Campaign for Holy Cross Province.

Scripture:

Sirach 35:1-12
Mark 10:28-31

Reflection:

Peter began to say to Jesus,
“We have given up everything and followed you.”
~Mark 10:28

What does this mean, to “give up everything?”  I hear this and I know I can’t even imagine it.  I have a hard time even giving 10% of my income away–a goal I’ve had for about three years now.  I inch closer.  Then the kitchen sink backs up and a plumber needs to be called and that “radical trust” in Jesus takes a back seat.  Ten percent?  Radical?

We all likely have some area like that, our learning edge of trust in giving up.  Maybe it’s not money.  Maybe it’s opening your heart, letting someone in a little closer.  What would you need to give up? 

Maybe it’s trusting in God’s love for you.  What would you need to give up?

Maybe it’s exploring “just what is this systemic racism thing all about?”  What would you need to give up? 

Or maybe it’s reading the encyclical Laudato Si’ and wondering: What can I do to respond to “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor?” What would you need to give up?

Hopefully a few of these things resonate for you.  But the truth is they are all things that have required me giving up something.  They have required me dying to something: beliefs; fears; parts of me that I thought were who I was; and training from my parents, teachers, and formative community that I had taken on without even knowing it.  And this process of giving up, of faithfully surrendering to the dying of these parts of me, is far from complete. My rewrite of this gospel verse would be something like “I am in the process of trying really hard to give up those things that are standing in the way of my fully following you, Jesus, and I need your help.” 

Yet my sense is that that is enough, this guiding beacon: our wish, our commitment, our prayer to follow Jesus, trusting in his own sacrifice that it is in the giving up, in the dying, that we too will be born into new life in the Kingdom of God.  Again and again.

Lissa Romell is the Administrator at St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois.

Image credit: Ilyas Basim Khuri Bazzi Rahib, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Scripture:

Genesis 3:9-15, 20 or Acts 1:12-14
John 19:25-34

Reflection:

Mary and Anatomy of Sin in Genesis

“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Gen 3:8

Our first parents gave us a virus far worse than Covid 19. The Holy Scriptures in the sin of Adam and Eve have given us an anatomy of the most deadly disease known in history.  The first effect of this virus is to hide from the very Person who can heal us.  “You hid Your face, I was dismayed (bāhal). Ps 30:7 Bāhal is the Hebrew word for dismay, be disturbed, alarmed, terrify.   Running from the face of God leaves us in a horrific loneliness. 

Their incredible offence was to overthrow God so that they can be gods! The liar Devil promised: “you will be like gods knowing good and evil.” In other words, you decide what is good or bad!   While this sounds off the wall is this any different than what we do today?  We deny God’s word, His instructions for a beautiful life, and think we are smarter than Him.  We in effect place our minds over His and our hearts dismiss any care for Him. 

Society’s favorite ideal today is to be open minded about sexuality, fidelity, religion and any care for our neighbor.   “Tolerance is often the virtue of the man without convictions.”  Gilbert K. Chesterton   We must be careful that our minds not be so open that our brains fall out.  We need the help and protection of a wise and caring mother. As in our natural lives it is often true that it is not so much what we know as who we know.   So also, in our spiritual lives we are extremely blessed to have Mary as our mother’

 We celebrate the feast of Mary, the Mother of the Church.   I have been long fascinated that the first words of Jesus on the cross in John’s Gospel were about Mary’s being mother of all the Beloved disciples.  “Behold your mother” came at the high-water mark of the fourth Gospel.  We are truly blessed to have as a mother Jesus’s own!  We are the children of God.   Children need a mother to care for them!  I love William Thackeray’s quote: “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

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

Scripture:

Acts 2:1-11
1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Galatians 5:16-25
John 20:19-23 or John 15:26-27; 16:12-15

Reflection:

One of the quotes on my office wall is from St. John XXIII as he opened the Second Vatican Council:

We are not gathered here to argue the truths of faith, they have been passed down from
generation to generation. We are here to figure out how we can transmit the faith to
tomorrow’s men and women in such a way that will penetrate their consciences and
thereby move consciences to live by faith!

This came to me as I reflected on the account of the coming of the Holy Spirit, which we find in our first reading for the Feast of Pentecost this Sunday (Acts 2:1-11). There are so many remarkable things in that account that Luke gives us! There is that “noise like a strong driving wind” that drew a crowd to where the apostles were. Then there was the appearance of “tongues as of fire” that descended on each of the apostles. And there is just the fact that these apostles, who not long before this, locked themselves in an upper room out of fear, are now going out, boldly proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to anyone who was listening!

But what struck me more than anything, I guess because of the times in which we are living, is that when the apostles came out and spoke to the crowd, everyone in the crowd could understand them, even though they came from different parts of the world, and spoke different languages. Maybe you could say it was a miracle of communication, even without Google Translate and Zoom and Skype, and all the rest.

We believe that at our baptism we, too, received the Holy Spirit, which was confirmed at our confirmation. And so, we, too, are called to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. Our challenge is to proclaim the Gospel in such a way, following John XXIII, that people can understand.

But in order to speak in a way that makes sense to people, we need to listen to them. In our politics, and in our “culture wars,” there doesn’t seem to be much value placed on listening to the “other.” But how can I truly communicate with you unless I am willing to listen as well as speak, and to be impacted by what I hear?

In the Gospel reading option for Cycle B (John 15:26-27, 16:12-15), Jesus says to His disciples: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” It has been my experience that the more I listen to those whose experience and background and culture are different from mine, that I gain in understanding and knowledge of the truth.

And so I wonder, at this time in our history, that, as the Holy Spirit is moving us to be witnesses to the love of God in Jesus Christ, that we are also being called to listen and to serve, so that our testimony may be better understood and accepted.

May we be found, in the words of those listening to the apostles, speaking of “the mighty acts of God.”

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