Daily Scripture

Scripture:

1 Kings 8:1-7, 9-13
Mark 6:53-56

Reflection:

Solomon built a magnificent temple, and threw a lavish, vast celebration enthroning the Ark of the Covenant in it. He then declared that this was the dwelling place of God, built by human hands to hold the Almighty.

There’s only one problem. God cannot be contained in a building nor owned by one people. As Bonaventure (and others) said, God is the infinite one whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Revelations says that God’s dwelling place is with the human race – not just one people, religion, or nation, but everyone. Centuries later, Jesus proved it. He healed foreigners and pagan Romans, forgave prostitutes, ate with sinners, and decried the strict laws and temple practices that excluded people or reflected a grip on power by the priests and scribes of his day. He consistently went outside the boundaries to prove that God’s love, care, and indwelling presence is universal and cannot be safely enclosed in our images and boxes.

Despite all this evidence against it, today we too often think that God dwells in the church building, but not in our offices, streets, or homes. We think that strict rules defining who is “in” or “out” reflect the mind of God and determine who qualifies as a recipient of God’s favor. We think Christians own God, and the people of other faith traditions can be despised and cast aside. We think people of different skin color from ours are evil-minded and outside our duty to be compassionate, welcoming, and healing. If we are truly listening to the Gospel message of Jesus, how did we get so blind and close-hearted? God must look at our world and cry.

Unfortunately, as individuals we can’t unilaterally change the systemic mindsets that allow these things to happen. But what we can do is what Jesus did – start locally. Jesus didn’t immediately head off to Jerusalem; he started in his own hometown. As Paul says in Acts of the Apostles, he went about “doing good and healing”. Gradually he was able to make more and more of a difference and expand his reach.

What can you do to actively participate in making the world a better place? Can you take on responsibilities in your parish that allow you to uphold the best of our faith tradition in the face of abuse and misuse of power? Can you volunteer at non-profit organizations that feed the hungry, house immigrants, serve needy children, or help those who increasingly fall through our society’s unraveling safety nets? Can you speak up when you hear classes of people or other faiths being reviled? Can you set aside your own grasp on privilege and power, being willing to use what you have to help those who don’t have it? Can you consciously live as Jesus did – a beacon of peace, acceptance, and hope to everyone he encountered?

Compassion, care, inclusion, and love are at risk in our world today. God is calling each one of us to do what we can to live by the core messages of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not by trying to “contain” God but by living the moral and ethical demands that Jesus calls us to fulfill.

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:

Isaiah 58:7-10
1 Corinthians 2:1-5
Matthew 5:13-16

Reflection:

Salt and Light; Cross and Justice

Our Scripture readings make a circle, each reading touching the other. They each open something in the other and ultimately invite us to rest in what God’s Word is doing among us.

Paul describes himself as a fearful, weak man as he came to testify to God in Corinth. He will not use the persuasive force of “wise” argumentation. He has received grace from God: his failure. Paul’s goal was to proclaim Christ to the learned men of Athens. He did so with eloquence and self-confidence, (Acts 17:22ff). However, he was not successful in confronting the wisdom of the world with his preaching. Something was missing. World wisdom was not impressed.

The grace given to Paul as he left Athens to go to Corinth was his insight into the mystery of the wisdom of the Cross. Only the mystery of Jesus dying and rising, the Paschal Mystery, could stand up against the wisdom of the world. This is the wisdom of the spiritually mature; the stumbling block and absurdity to many, but the power of God and wisdom of God.

Paul’s grace has something to say the poor of the Beatitudes. Matthew’s gospel gave us the Beatitudes last weekend and now continues by telling us hat we are the salt of the earth, the light of the world. Fr. John Donahue, SJ, says the Beatitudes speak the cause of the prophets: justice. As the first teaching of Matthew’s gospel, connects with the last teaching ( Mt. 25, the sheep and the goats,’blessed are those who respond to the suffering of their neighbors’), Matthew surrounds the gospel with the work of compassion and justice. The Beatitudes can fool us. They may sound like the future, but it not an “otherworldly future”. The arrival of Jesus and his proclamation of the Kingdom create the conditions by which the world can be changed now. The promise that justice will be for the persecuted, that heaven is will be ‘yours’, might better be put, the Kingdom of heaven is on ‘your side’ or ‘for you’.

Finally, before we come back to St. Paul, we hear Isaiah writing amidst the ruins of the Babylonian exile. Israel is scattered some in exile, some have fled to Egypt or other parts. But he seems to be speaking to the remnant left behind. Some are doing better than others, even prospering. The sacrifice continues but it is hollow. The light of faith in the God is Israel is dim, zest is tread underfoot like bad salt. In their despair and especially the forgetting of God’s faithfulness Isaias calls the remnant to fidelity.

To those who have the worldly wisdom to succeed and maneuver in a broken world, he calls them to see success by showing love for God and neighbor by keeping the convent. Bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the darkness.

In the mystery of the Cross, where there is exile and brokenness, yet the presence of the Kingdom gives us the strength to be light and salt. We may be aware of our weakness and much trembling but God’s grace gives us the strength of this wisdom to proclaim Jesus compassion and justice where they do not appear to others as wisdom at all.

Fr. William Murphy, CP is the pastor of Immaculate Conception parish in Jamaica, New York.

Scripture:

1 Kings 3:4-13
Mark 6:30-34

Reflection:

Lost Without a Shepherd and No One to Guide You

How do you think it will feel to be a child with no one to guide you? What if you were abandoned by your mother and father at childbirth or at any point in your life and needed someone you could depend on, someone to love you, and someone you could count on to be there to take care of any of your bodily needs? This could be how the crowd felt before they met Jesus. In this Gospel passage, Jesus and His disciples had taken a moment to get away from the vast crowds so that they could be alone and rest for a while. But the crowd is aware of their departure by boat and they quickly make it to the other side of the lake, arriving before Jesus and the disciples to meet them as they do arrive.

Jesus’ response is one of heartfelt mercy and compassion. He is moved with pity for them and He continues to teach them many things. Jesus also had a deep longing to be with His people. He desired to share His heart with them and to shepherd them, leading them into the many truths He came to reveal. Jesus was a true Shepherd who loved His sheep and welcomed them continually.

Our son and daughter-in-law just had their second child today. His name is Theodore Ryan Smith. He was born weighing 9 pounds 11 ounces and very healthy. We are very proud grandparents. He has a loving mother, father, grandfather, grandmother and countless of other family members and friends to care for him. He has plenty of people to guide and care for him throughout his life, but he has not yet met his chief shepherd, Jesus, in life. The crowd knows that they have seen their Chief Shepherd and can’t get enough of him. We must all seek to be with Him, love Him and follow His commands Whenever you are lost don’t forget your Chief Shephard, Jesus. He is always there for you. He will never let you down. Reflect, today, upon the merciful heart of Jesus. See His heart, long for Him and go to Him. Know of His burning love for you and accept Him as your Shepherd.

Deacon Peter Smith serves at St. Mary’s/Holy Family Parish in Alabama, is a religion teacher at Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Birmingham, and a member of our extended Passionist Family.

Scripture:

Sirach 47:2-11
Mark 6:14-29

Reflection:

As an undergraduate student at Chicago’s DePaul University in the 1960’s I learned to think. At least I believe I did. I learned about logic, logical fallacies, the square of opposition, rhetoric… I studied different philosophers beginning with Aristotle, Plato, down through Thomas Aquinas to the more contemporary thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Bertrand Russell, Karl Marx…

While I was wrangling with all these great ideas, life happened all around me. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated; blocks on the West Side of Chicago were burned out. The Vietnam War raged on.

I student-taught right after King’s assassination. During that time, I hardly remember a day that we didn’t have a false fire alarm. Some student would pull an alarm (these were the days before ubiquitous cameras) and we would have to evacuate this entire large inner-city public school only to wait for the fire department to arrive and tell us what we already knew, that it was ok to return to our classrooms. By the time we got back to our classroom, we might have ten minutes to continue our activities before dismissing the class.

Today’s gospel selection tells of a similar time. John the Baptist is unjustly in-prisoned, and eventually put to death because of the wiles of those in power. Jesus it seems is powerless to change that outcome, and yet he claims to be God. Something doesn’t compute, at least to “the world’s” way of thinking and all the logic and great philosophies I learned seem useless.

If I am to live today, I must believe that a loving power is actually in control, watching over me and all of creation, lovingly nourishing and walking with each of us. God, I pray for faith today, faith that you truly are in charge and that all will be ok and then I’ll walk my class back up to the fourth floor and get as much of the class completed as we have time.

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

Scripture:

1 Kings 2:1-4, 10-12
Mark 6:7-13

Reflection:

Today’s passage from the Gospel of Mark inspires me when I pack for a trip, even a weekend trip to visit family a hundred miles away.

What do I need to bring? What can I buy there? What will my hosts provide?

Jesus is straight forward: keep it simple.

But putting myself in this Gospel scene, I still have questions about this call to simple living. I wonder why he wants me to take the means of travel (staff, sandals), but not the sustenance (shelter, bread, money, wallet and extra clothes).

What’s his point?

Perhaps he’s telling me, “Quit being so self-sufficient! I’m trying to teach you that together we…you, me, our fellow believers… have a mission in life and I don’t want you getting caught up in thinking you’re going to do it all on your own. Get it?”

I don’t get it right away.

Living in affluent America…where we are taught from youth to make our own way, be financially successful, and to look down on those who are lazy or dependent on others to take care of them…it is foreign and uncomfortable to accept what Jesus is telling his apostles.

But the reason for his instructions is to free us from our enslavements to money, possessions, status, power. If we devote our lives to these false gods, we will be forever enslaved by them. Jesus wants us to focus on his mission: healing and resisting evil (casting out demons) in all its forms. This is an enslavement to God’s will, but, ironically, an enslavement that is liberating.

Under God’s protection, devoting ourselves to seeking God’s will for each of us, we are free from all distress and anxiety. God’s grace, God’s presence, God’s providence is there when we need it.

In our illnesses, loneliness, grief, in our consoling and comforting others, in speaking truth to one another, in resisting the forces that threaten life, we are carrying out our missionary duties.

God will provide the sustenance (shelter, bread, money, wallet and extra clothes). More importantly, God will provide the map to live each day in God’s company.

So, live simply and be fearless on your journey.

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

Scripture:

2 Samuel 24:2, 9-17
Mark 6:1-6

Reflection:

If you’ve been following the daily readings over the last couple of weeks, the readings from the Old Testament have immersed us into the life of the great king, David.    Amidst the greatness of his name and the lore that surrounds him, the church in her wisdom does not eliminate the readings which some may find dishonorable.  In fact, none of the hero’s in the Old Testament are models of perfection.  They are represented with all their foibles, flaws, failings and faults.    I think we all can learn a lesson from this.

First, if these significant people have such noteworthy deficiencies, then it ought to give us encouragement for God’s expectations for us are not our understanding of perfection.  If God does not hold the faults of the like of David, Solomon, and Moses, then it is unreasonable that God would hold us to a higher standard.   I think what makes David great in the eyes of the Lord is not the city he built, or his attempt to keep the Northern and Southern kingdoms united, but rather the texts that are also included which show his remorse, and his desire and quest to be reunited with the Joy of the Lord.

So much of Spirituality is the wrestling with being in between.  We are less than the gods yet more than the beasts—yet we are somehow both.   We are not everything, but we certainly are more than nothing.  Again, we are somewhere in between.  How does a person find meaning between the paradoxes of extremes?  A spiritual path doesn’t start by blaming others.  If you have ever met a person who has gotten stuck in the blaming game, how can you help them move beyond merely blaming others?   I think the spiritual challenge follows three unique steps:  First a person needs to see, then they need to come to an understanding and lastly, they find a place of acceptance.

Just like the Old Testament includes David’s sin, so too it includes his recompense.  Today’s reading from 2 Samuel finds David in a stage of understanding and having to choose consequences.   Even more profound is Psalm 51.  Reading it you’ll begin to see David’s remorse, and his inability to fix the situation on his own accord.    This if far different than the mind of the rugged individualist who simply says, you need to try harder or work harder.    It is more about seeing one’s imperfections and inviting God’s grace to transform them.  Which is the wisdom Paul receives when God suggests to Paul to trust his weakness,  “My grace is enough for you,  for in weakness power reaches perfection.” (2 Cor 12:9)

Dealing with imperfections, and failures is difficult.  Years ago, when I was in my studies of theology, I remember a quote from a speech Francis Vincent, the MLB commissioner gave.  He stated:

Baseball teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure.    We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball and precisely because we have failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often.  I also find it fascinating that baseball alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of its rigorous truth.

The frustration Jesus experiences in his hometown is their limited ability to see the mercy of God.  They can’t see beyond his membership in the village of Nazareth.   And this is their error.   Many of us may have the same kind of thinking when we think we have to fix whatever problems and challenges are in our life.  Perhaps the best spiritual practice we can partake in this day is to first acknowledge whatever breakdown, insecurity, failure, error, mistake, or mess is in our life.  And without having to attempt to fix it, if we first allow God’s mercy to touch it.   Remember what Paul was told,  “My grace is enough for you, for in weakness power reaches perfection.”

Fr. David Colhour, C.P. is the local superior of St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois.

Scripture:

2 Samuel 18:9 – 19:3
Mark 5:21-43

Reflection:

 Today’s Scriptures challenge us to ponder anew the depths of relationship among family members.  It’s so natural that parents are concerned about their children, that we even see relative “strangers” as brothers and sisters in our human family.

Our reading from Second Samuel helps us appreciate David’s deep love for his son, Absalom – even though Absalom wanted to forcefully take the kingly throne from his father David.  Word of Absalom’s death at the hand of Joab while attempting to kill his father brought copious, tear-filled mourning to David.  He saw Absalom as his son, not his enemy; he even prayed “…if only I had died instead of you, Absalom my son.”

The Gospel selection from Mark shares the story of the synagogue official, Jairus, pleading with Jesus to come and cure his dying daughter.  En route to the official’s home, Jesus is approached by a woman afflicted with long-standing hemorrhages; she touches his cloak, seeking a cure which she then received!  Jesus addresses her:  “…daughter, your faith has saved you.”  Upon arriving at Jairus’ house, Jesus enters and with a word restores the twelve-year-old daughter to full health.  In both cases, Jairus and Jesus’ love for family bring about health and life.

Truly we are members of God’s family, loved totally, unconditionally.  In Jesus, God is our all-loving Father/Mother/Parent – looking upon us with even greater tenderness and concern that is shown in the stories of David, Jairus, and the woman cited in Mark’s Gospel.  God loves us as family, is patient with us, so thoughtful, and always acting on our behalf (even in our sinfulness!).  Amazing!

Food for thought this 4^th Week of the Church Year:  How receptive are we God’s special love?  How grateful are we?  How do we share God’s love?  God’s love gives life and gladdens our soul; may we reflect that life and joy in our every thought, word, and deed!

Fr. John Schork, C.P. is a member of the Passionist community in Chicago, Illinois.