Daily Scripture

Scripture:

Sirach 1:1-10
Mark 9:14-29

Reflection:

We hold on, we hold on tighter

August Wilson’s play, Fences, captured a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, while the movie version also earned four Oscar nominations. It’s the story of a resentful sanitation worker who never made it to baseball’s major leagues, and his wounded family. At one painful moment, Rose, our protagonist’s wife, now aware of her husband’s infidelity, speaks her truth:

“I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life, too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don’t you think I ever wanted other things? Don’t you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me? Don’t you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? You not the only one who’s got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams…and I buried them inside you. I planted a seed and watched and prayed over it. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn’t take me not eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn’t never gonna bloom. But I held on to you. I held you tighter. You was my husband. I owed you everything I had. Every part of me I could find to give you. And upstairs in that room…with the darkness falling in on me…I gave everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn’t the finest man in the world. And wherever you was going…I wanted to be there with you. Cause you was my husband. Cause that’s the only way I was gonna survive as your wife. You always talking about what you give…and what you don’t have to give. But you take too. You take…and you don’t even know nobody’s giving!”

In a parallel way, Jesus seems so very discouraged in today’s Gospel, as Mark’s narrative offers one of the more haunting questions of Our Lord:

“O faithless generation, how long will I be with you?
How long will I endure you? Bring him to me.”

Last week, you may recall, Mark offered another of Jesus’ statements of frustration when he told the crowds:
“Why does this generation seek a sign?
Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.”

What seems to upset Jesus more than anything is when the crowds expect religion to be a quick fix. Perhaps that is why the Pharisees always seem to be at odds with Jesus; they want black and white answers, immediate gratification, spontaneous solutions. They also want a punitive God. And Jesus proclaims a God slow to anger, rich in compassion.

Our first reading provides a form of spiritual direction when we feel overwhelmed with sadness, or darkness and discouragement today:

The sand of the seashore, the drops of rain,
the days of eternity: who can number these?
Heaven’s height, earth’s breadth,
the depths of the abyss: who can explore these?

And like Rose, we hold on, we hold on tighter.

Fr. Jack Conley, C.P. is a member of the Passionist formation community at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

Scripture:

1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23
1Corinthians 15:45-49
Luke 6:27-38

Reflection:

Compassionate Love ~Luke 6:6

In today’s Scripture we have some of the most consoling lines in Luke’s Gospel!

“Be children of the Most High, for He himself is kind “chrēstós” to the ungrateful (acharistos) and the wicked (ponēros).  God is proclaimed kind!  Chrestos is the Greek NT Word for kindhearted. Someone is said to be kind or considerate when they give out of pure generosity to the undeserving some beautiful thing.  I feel one of the most beautiful things we can say about God is that He is kind.  Where would be if we did not have His graciousness to enrich us!  What a wonderful word your Son gave us when He said You are gracious to the ungracious and even to the evil or more literally,  ponēros, people“full of trouble,”

To receive His kindness we must be merciful to others.  “Be merciful ( oiktirmōn) even as your Father is merciful.”  Lk 6:36 The word Jesus used for mercy is oiktirmōn.  It is much more intense word than mercy.   It means the pain of others generates a compassionate sound like oihe!

Years ago walking along the ocean I saw a mother of a little 4 year old girl talking to some of her friends near the water’s edge.  It was high tide on open ocean which was quite wild.  The mother lost attention of her daughter for a brief few minutes.  She looked down for her little girl and she was gone!  For a brief horrible moment she thought her baby walked into the ocean.  She cried out in horrible cry her daughter’s name: Marion, Marion!  That was 50 years ago but I remember that horrible scream like it was today.

That day I learned a great deal about the intensity of a mother’s love.  That horrifying scream is a good definition of the biblical word oiktirmōn.   We can’t forget that horrible scream of Jesus on the cross at His death.  This scream was for all of His children!  We can’t even begin to understand the depth of God’s love and concern for us, “and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Eph 3:19

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

Scripture:

Genesis 9:1-13
Mark 8:27-33

Reflection:

Our readings today address the topic of: when is enough enough?  It rises to the fore in the saga of Noah.  It is also present in the incident presenting itself to Jesus and His apostles as the question of Jesus’ identity continues to engage the followers of Jesus, especially the twelve.

So far as Noah is concerned, he emerges to the fore as a kind of response to God’s growing exasperation with the way the descendants of Adam and Eve went about living their lives, in an ever descending spiral  exasperating God Who “ regretted making human beings on the earth, and his heart was grieved.  (Gen. 6.6)  But “Noah found favor with the Lord.” (6.7)

So, under God’s guidance, Noah built the ark to house those members of his family, who managed to remain faithful to the Lord, including pairs of all the animals and fowl that graced the surface of the earth at that time.  (In Kentucky there is a replica of the ark, built according to the specifications provided Noah, as we read them in Gn. 6. 14-22.  It is about 50 miles south of Cincinnati, and is larger than most visitors anticipate).

After everyone of Noah’s people was suitably provided for, it started raining, for forty days and forty nights, as a result of which the entire earth was engulfed in water, and all forms of life were drowned except those in the ark, and in the sea itself (since fish could survive on their own).  And it seems that  the fowl of the air found safe passage on the ark itself.  The rain eventually subsided, but the waters continued to rise for 150 days (Gen.7.24).  And then God provided the rainbow as a beautiful remembrance “of the covenant” God established between Himself and every living creature.  And it seems that God regretted having (practically) exterminated the human race from the face of the earth.  (Gn. 21)

So Noah became a kind of second Adam, as he and his descendants repopulated the earth.  Through him God gave us all a second chance.  And this time God provided an improved version of starting over again, not in terms of Noah himself, but in view of Jesus Himself, Who was yet to come as Redeemer of the world, beginning a totally new dispensation or arrangement for our benefit.

We hear of this in the day’s gospel as Jesus pursues an issue of extreme interest to Him: “Who do people say that I am?”  (Mk. 8.27)

How pleased He must have been at hearing Peter answer: “You are the Messiah”.  Not even Noah anticipated this momentous response of Peter.  But Peter himself failed to appreciate the magnitude of what he said, since a few minutes later, he flubbed his chance to show he fully understood Jesus when Jesus began to describe the death He was to undergo at the hands of “the elders, the chief priests and the scribes” (Mk. 8.31, ff.) precisely because He claimed the title of Messiah for Himself.  Peter could not handle this challenge of the Messiah revealing His coming sufferings and death.  So Jesus had to put him in his place.

Noah and Peter make an unlikely team in conveying God’s message to us, each in his own way.  And for this we are grateful.

Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, C.P. is a member of the Passionist Community in Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Genesis 6:5-8; 7:1-5
Mark 8:14-21

Reflection:

“ . . .and his heart was grieved.” Genesis 6:6; “Are your hearts harden?” Mark 8:17

Today’s readings invite us to take a good, long look into God’s heart, into the hearts of the disciples and into our own hearts. We may not be pleased with what we see!

When the Book of Genesis was being put together, the authors were dealing with two very paradoxical realities: the experience of goodness and the experience of evil, the experience of a loving God and the experience of a God who allowed wickedness. They tried to make some sense of those two very contradictory experiences. They decided that this was not an “either/or” reality, but a “both/and” existence.

On one hand, we have the God of creation, the God who looked upon the fruits of creation and declared them very good. This same God is the one who made us male and female and in the image of God. When Adam saw the first woman, he said: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man this one has been taken.” (Genesis 2:23) Both are of equal dignity.

On the other hand, along with the gift of life, God also gave us the gift of free will. The book of Genesis illustrates this with instances of bad choices made by Adam and Eve and Cain and Able. Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, forbidden by God and Cain killed his brother Able in a fit of jealously. Thus, wickedness grieved the heart of God.

In the Genesis accounts, there are always glimpses of hope. For example, God has a long conversation with Adam and Eve after they had eaten of the forbidden fruit. God does abandon them but walks with them and then makes a covenant with them. God does not strike Cain down in anger but lets him live with his sin. And no matter how wicked the world was, there was always someone who clearly a good person. “But Noah found favor with the LORD. Noah was a righteous man and blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6:8 – 9) Goodness overcomes wickedness. It turns out that God’s Heart is a Compassionate Heart, no matter how many times it’s been broken!

When Jesus tried to teach his disciples about the deceitfulness and the dishonesty of the political and religious leaders of his day using the metaphor of leaven, the disciples missed the meaning of his words completely. Jesus was reminding them that they were to see the reality of their day with the heart: the heart of love, the heart of pity, the heart of compassion, the heart of justice! Instead, they had hardened their hearts to the reality of wrongdoing.

It took a while before the disciples began to understand the difference between true goodness and false goodness, between grace and sin, between justice and injustice.

So, what’s in our hearts? Do we want to see with the Heart of God, with the Heart of Jesus or do we want to overlook the evil of this world and pretend that it has nothing to do with us? Do we have the courage to stand with the God of Life and Love? With the grace of God, we will choose Life and Love!

Fr. Clemente Barrón, C.P. is a member of Mater Dolorosa Community in Sierra Madre, California. 

Scripture:

Genesis 3:9-24
Mark 8:1-10

Reflection:

Frequently in the gospels stories are repeated.   The reason for this is that it is important to recite for sacramental reasons, and sometimes when the congregation is mostly Gentiles and the evangelist wants them to know what happened on behalf of Jews in Galilee.

In Mark’s Gospel the crowds are with Jesus for three days.  When Jesus reflected on this he realized the crowds had been without food for those three days.  Mark says Jesus’s heart is filled with pity/ compassion.  The Disciples see this same event and they suggest that Jesu tell the crowd to go and find food for them-selves.  When Jesus says: They have been with me for three days.  Jesus also saw if he sent the people to go and search for food they were so weak already that they would collapse.   Jesus asks the disciples what resources they had and they tell him they had five loaves of bread and a couple of fish.  Jesus also saw that the people were hungry not just for their bodies, but food for their spirits.  Jesus says they are like sheep without a shepherd.  Jesus and the crowd understood this to mean something even more profound.  Jesus says their spiritual leaders, i.e. Their teachers, but also the Pharisees, scribes, and the rabbis.  They killed the spirit of Moses and left the people with rigidity and letter of the law teachings.

Jesus asks the crowds to recline and enjoy the food readied for them.  When the disciples collected the left overs, they had twelve baskets filled with food.

Mark suggests the faith of the Disciples was not as strong as was hoped for by Jesus.  Like the disciples we need to know the gifts we have received should be shared as gifts from God.  In Mark gifts are given to be shared.   Our most important experience in life are crises where there is very little we can so for one another, but be there. There are extraordinary moments  in life which we can’t always wait for.

The Gospel tells us we have to constantly allow ourselves to be available to our family, friends, neighbors, etc.  Like Jesus’s compassion it is a virtue which never forgets the details of life, e.g. three days, the collapsing for the search for food in this deserted place.  He saw what the Disciples missed in the crowd. For Jesus the crowds were lost souls in tired bodies.  We are called to serve them.

Fr. Ken O’Malley, C.P., is the local superior at Holy Name Passionist Community in Houston, Texas.

Scripture:

Genesis 3:1-8
Mark 7:31-37

Reflection:

You will be like gods!

Be opened!

Today we are reminded in the Old Testament book of Genesis, how cunning the enemy can be as he convinces us that we can be like gods. Satan (the serpent) was cunning in the days of our first parents, he’s been cunning in every generation since and he is cunning in our day as well. We should reflectively imagine how a small amount of doubt can totally cloud our judgement and drive us into poor decisions. It is definitely one of Satan’s favorite tools, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” Then we engage and the serpent continues, “You certainly will not die, you will become like gods.” Doubt-Darkness-Sin!

It is the same for us today, our sin is just as tempting, it is just as real and it is just as harmful. Human nature has not changed much through all the millennia of our existence and the pattern of sin is the same. First there is the temptation, that one thing that catches our eye, a handsome man, a beautiful women, a shiny object, an irresistible urge, then there is the doubt or justification that it can’t really be all the bad, surely I can enjoy this one little thing, just this one little time. I can be my own god even if for just an instant. Why do I need the Church, I can reason for myself, I’m not a bad person, I don’t need a Bishop, Priest or Deacon to tell me how I should live, act or die.  Then there is the act, we submit to the temptation just as Eve does and we find ourselves naked, exposed for all to see and we run and hide.

It is a vicious cycle that will only end when we listen to Christ, anyone that has been part of the 12 step tradition will tell you that they could not break free of their addiction until they submitted to God, “help me Lord I cannot do this on my own.” We must draw closer to God, trust in His embrace and allow ourselves to be opened, allow Christ to open our ears and remove our speech impediment so that we may speak and hear with clarity drowning out the clatter of the evil one.

Deacon James Anderson is the Administrator at Holy Name Passionist Retreat Center in Houston, Texas.

Scripture:

Genesis 2:18-25
Mark 7:24-30

Reflection:

In his letter to the Corinthians St. Paul tells us, “Let all that you do be done with love.” What a great thought for Valentine’s Day.  Most of us have grown up thinking of this day as a day for expressing friendship with little heart-covered valentines and, if we are lucky, even heart-shaped pieces of candy with little messages on them that don’t really matter as much as the flavor!  And for some, Valentine’s Day is a chance to share heartfelt sentiments that might never be expressed otherwise, at least not with such passion and romance.  Yet, the origin of this special day actually goes back to early Roman times when a young soldier name Valentine was jailed for protesting the Emperor’s decree that young men were to be soldiers and not allowed to marry.  Other sources say that this day is attributed to the actions of a man, again named Valentine, who helped Christians escape from prison.  And still others say that there was a man named Valentine who sent a greeting to those he loved from prison and hence, the first Valentine!  One thing is for sure, February 14^th is a day where one and all are invited to reflect on the meaning of love in their lives, whether that love is prompted by divine grace or human affection.  When we think about it, no one can really live without love.  How fitting, then, that we dedicate a day when we not only think about love in our life but actually reach out and tell others that we love them, as well.  Charles Schultz, the famed creator of Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and lovely Lucy, summed it all up by saying, “All you need is love.  But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”

Our first reading, taken from the creation account in the book of Genesis, captures the thoughtful kindness of our God as God creates the first man, Adam, and a loving partner, Eve.  Adam is the word given for humankind; Eve (Eva) signifies that she is the mother of humankind.  How well God knew and loved all of creation, desiring from the very beginning of time, that we would not be alone but would know love, God’s love, personally and through one another.  In the passage from Mark’s Gospel we see love overflowing from the heart of Jesus himself as he responds to the mother’s desperate plea that her daughter be cured from the grasp of a terrible demon.  How I would love to have witnessed this encounter between the mother, a “foreigner” as the scriptures tell us, whose love was absolutely selfless, as she unhesitatingly cries out to Jesus who was trying so hard to enter the home without even being noticed!  Nothing could stop her; nothing could hold her back so great was her love.

On this day, then, St. Valentine’s Day, we celebrate love, human and divine.  While we enjoy the candies and little messages on pieces of colored paper, perhaps we can also remember the invitation of St. Paul who, once again, reminds us to let everything that we do be done with love.  Happy Valentine’s Day!

Fr. Pat Brennan, C.P. is the director of Saint Paul of the Cross Passionist Retreat and Conference Center, Detroit, Michigan.

Scripture:

Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17
Mark 7:14-23

Reflection:

Have you ever been tempted to assume you understand the message of a familiar Gospel? A default sort of subconscious way of categorizing—neatly—what we think the message says. Today’s text is that kind of example for me. I have usually assumed that Jesus is calling out or criticizing the Pharisees for their hypocritical judgements; “don’t be so preoccupied with outward appearances but rather be sure you’re keeping your heart clean or pure.” I might suggest we’ve often experienced people in our own world who seem preoccupied with judging others and I used to think—those people need to hear this! Yet, Scripture is the living word and if I’m not listening deeply to new ways of understanding the text where is the life in that? Where is the growth?

More recently, I’ve been looking at this through the frame of the Pharisees, and I feel an empathy for their challenge and struggle. Its as if suddenly their purity laws are up for debate; what about their martyrs who died rather than eat unclean food? Is Jesus saying they died for nothing? That would be hard to accept and very confusing for his audience. So, what does Mark want his first audience to understand?

Much has been written about the early struggles of the church. The Apostle Paul addresses these issues in many of his letters; the blending of Gentile and Jewish cultures was a huge challenge. Our clue comes from the very next section of this Gospel—The Syrophoenician Woman who challenges Jesus to give her the crumbs from the table of the chosen people (7:24-29). Might it be possible here that Mark has Jesus speaking to the early Jewish Christians about inclusion of the Gentiles?

Therefore, the conversation about all foods being declared clean (v. 19) indicates the current reality of the early church. Paul takes this up in his letters to the Corinthians and Galatians. Jesus is the wholeness, the fulfillment of the Covenant with Israel, the purity laws were only guideposts leading to him. They were good and useful but not today. Now we press on with Metanoia—the changed mind; the Mind of Christ. We look to the person of Jesus and how he taught his disciples and the crowds. We are not far from the kingdom when we help our neighbor, not for personal glorification but with a humble desire to care for the other.

Jesus suggests, nothing that enters from the outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile (v.15, 16). In the first reading from Genesis; commonly understood to be the second story of creation where God makes man first before all the animals and puts them in a garden. The story speaks of a loving engaged Father who walks with us in the cool of the evening. This is a God who desires a relationship with us. This is a God who disturbs me –like the Pharisees—when I need to include those who are different from me. God desires for us to work towards unity. Jesus himself prays the prayer for unity, “so that they may all be one, as you Father, are in me and I in you..” (John 17:21)

Where have I encountered the stranger this day? This may even be a family member.

Who are the people you are being called to include?

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.