Daily Scripture

Scripture:

1 Samuel 17: 32-33, 37, 40-51
Mark 3: 1-6

Reflection:

Today’s scripture readings remind us that performing good deeds, doing the right thing, can be misinterpreted and even twisted into something that many will condemn.

First we hear of David, a young inexperienced “warrior” who seems almost naïve about his ability to take on the experienced, grizzled, powerful Philistine warrior, Goliath.  Goliath was a giant of a man who had killed many soldiers over the years.  His very presence struck fear into the hearts of all of King Saul’s soldiers.  No one was willing to face Goliath.  And then young David stepped up.  King Saul was heartened by David’s willingness to take Goliath on but was less than confident that this young companion of his son was up to the task.  He tells David to be realistic and back down.  David asserts his confidence…not in his own skills, but rather in God’s faithfulness in protecting him.  And so, with King Saul’s blessing, David goes out to meet the invincible, ferocious Goliath.  The outcome was startling with David’s easy vanquishing of the formidable Goliath.  King Saul is at first delighted but soon is overtaken with fear that David is plotting to take over the kingship.  David has no such intention but his relationship with King Saul soon deteriorates due to the King’s paranoia.  But one thing sustains David, both in his confrontation with Goliath and his struggle with King Saul’s fears, his complete trust in God’s faithfulness to him.

In the Gospel for today we have one of the many stories about Jesus’ healing someone, in this case a man with a withered hand.  Just as in the case with David, we see this story play out on more than one level.  What drives the story is the love and compassion Jesus has for the man with the withered hand.  Jesus wants to heal him and restore him to full health.  But it is the Sabbath and that certainly complicates things!   Jesus knows that there will be those who will be offended if he cures the man on the Sabbath.  He also knows that his enemies will twist his good deed and make of it a violation of the Sabbath.   Nonetheless, Jesus reaches out and heals the man’s withered hand.  The man healed rejoices but the enemies of Jesus continue to plot to have Jesus put to death.

Strangely enough, even though our lives are much less dramatic than the lives of David and Jesus; and, we would never dream of even comparing our lives to these two remarkable religious leaders, we, too, can be intimidated by what others might think or say about our efforts to show compassion and love.  Let’s make our prayer for today be that God will give us the courage and wisdom to live our Christian life with the same generous integrity that we see in our readings today.

 

Fr. Michael Higgins, C.P. is the director of Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Mark 2:23-28

Reflection:

How long will you grieve for Saul whom I have rejected as King of Israel? 1 Samuel 16:1

I was in sixth grade when I discovered that I needed eye glasses. Those were the days when frames were fragile and lenses were breakable. Eye glasses were expensive. My parents were so poor that every costly purchase they made had to be paid in installments.

About nine months after I got my eye glasses, I lost them. We looked high and low for them, and my parents told me that they could not afford another pair of glasses. I was devastated and for a week I prayed, I cried, I blamed my brothers and sisters for hiding them from me, I begged my parents to get me another pair of glasses. Nothing worked. It occurred to me that God was not about to come down and give me another pair of glasses. I needed to take responsibility for misplacing them and I needed review my actions and try to find them myself. Once I stood back, reflected upon my days prior to losing them, eliminate the places where I could have left them, I finally found them in a place that I had put them, so hidden and protected, because I didn’t want them to break. I learned a valuable lesson that day. I needed to go beyond complaining, blaming and grieving, and take responsibility for my actions.

The prophet Samuel, of today’s first reading, had to learn a similar lesson. He didn’t want to admit that Saul, the king he had anointed, needed to be replaced. We have a tendency to cry over spilled milk and not get on with our lives. Finally, God has to tell him, “How long will you grieve for Saul, whom I have rejected as king of Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way.”

No matter how many times God has repaid us with a better life, a better future, a better choice, we still want to cling to our past, with those things that do not please God. As it says in this first reading: “Not as man sees does God see.” It is so difficult to let go and let God!

These readings invite me to acknowledge a fundamental truth of life and faith: God’s Will is more loving, merciful, generous, grace-filled than my own will. When it comes to our life and our future, we are powerless. To acknowledge our powerlessness before God is the first step toward receiving the graces we need to overcome whatever mess we have placed ourselves into with our pride, our bad decisions and our grieving.

May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know wat is the hope that belongs to our call. Ephesians 1:17 (Alleluia verse).

 

Fr. Clemente Barrón, C.P. is a member of Christ the King Community in Citrus Heights, California. 

Scripture:

1 Samuel 15:16-23
Mark 2:18-22

Reflection:

Obedience is better than sacrifice
While respecting his traditions and history, Jesus definitely seemed to have a preference for the new over the old. His stories and teaching reveal this again and again.

But what Jesus came to bring into our world was not merely a new teaching or a just new image of God.  He himself is a witness to a new moment in our evolution and his actions enfleshed a new experience God’s love. His truth is a dual revelation – a new truth about God yes, but also a new truth about us!

Jesus, through his own relationship with the Father, witnessed to new possibilities for all of us to live one’s life fully within God’s loving embrace.

This was good news. It was something new for his world (and for all time). Such a new truth could not be contained within old frameworks, old attitudes or old actions and rituals. Thus in today’s gospel he speaks of new wine and new patches of cloth not being wasted by trying to place them within old parameters. No! New wine requires a new wine skin and unshrunken cloth needs to be sown only onto a new coat.

What Jesus teaches us about our tendencies is so, so, true! We all have some kind of ‘default’ setting” – a way of acting, speaking, thinking and being that we are comfortable with and take for granted. From time to time a learning experience – a challenge from a partner or colleague or an honest face to face moment where a close friend tells us “home truths” that others fear to say – may help us to move to a new understanding and even a new way of acting. But if we are not careful, vigilant and aware, we soon enough slip back into the old ways of acting, thinking and speaking. This cycle can repeat itself again and again all throughout life.

But what Jesus challenges us to is exactly the opposite of this pattern. Thus to embrace all of the new vision – the good news – that he offers, we need to be renewed. We are invited constantly to open our hearts, to listen, to be converted and to make ourselves ready so that we can receive and respond to all that is new and that we are offered in Jesus.

For Jesus, relationship is to be preferred to ritual, and the celebration of life is to be preferred to a sombre seriousness that reduces everything to obligation and expectation.

Let us practice listening for the word of God addressed to us today (and each day). Let us practice an awareness, a readiness, a listening stance that makes us receptive to the ‘ever new’ message of God that we know is constantly offered and addressed to us. But let us also practice our responses to that same message – let us be ready and willing to move beyond tired old responses and familiar patterns of behaviour so that we can truly embrace the ‘new’ that offers us the chance to also be renewed!

New wine? Then bring out new wineskins! New cloth? Then fasten on to it only pre-shrunken patches.

Fr. Denis Travers, C.P., is a member of Holy Spirit Province, Australia.  He currently serves on the General Council and is stationed in Rome.

Scripture:

1 Samuel 9:1-4, 17-19; 10:1a
Mark 2:13-17

Reflection:

In the first chapter of Mark’s gospel Jesus announces the Kingdom and calls people to a change of heart. He then shows himself as one who has power to heal and drive out demons. A new voice is being heard in Israel and a miraculous power breaks into the ordinary lives of men and women. Jesus caused a sensation. People want to see him and hear what he had to say. Even representatives of the religious leadership join the crowds to size him up. Up to this point Jesus hadn’t really broken any expected molds. There were prophets and healers before him in Israel.

But Jesus was about to reveal something that would become fully known and understood only in the light of his death and resurrection. Four men carry a paralytic to Jesus, but can’t get near him because of the crowds. Not to be stopped, they go up on the roof, separate the tiles, and lower the mat upon which paralytic was lying into Jesus’ presence.

We can sense their enthusiasm and determination by their boldness.

Jesus senses much more: faith! We expect Jesus to act as he had done before and cure the paralytic. But the does a new thing. “Child, your sins are forgiven.” Wow! The scribes are shocked. “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?”  They got that right.

“Child, your sins are forgiven!” These are words that people longed to hear. They are words that I need to hear. May my wounded heart always have the faith that brings me to the sacrament of Reconciliation to hear the same words spoken to me by Christ’s representative: “I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

Fr. Michael Hoolahan, C.P. is on the staff of Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

1 Samuel 8:4-7, 10-22a
Mark 2: 1-12

Reflection:

The world can be a scary place. It is true today as it was four thousand years ago in the time of Samuel the prophet. The Hebrew people had occupied the Promised Land, more or less. They were united in language and in their shared experience of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But they lived in separate clans, on both sides of the Jordan River away from the Mediterranean Sea.  The coast was still controlled by the Canaanites. To the southwest was the powerful kingdom of Egypt and to the north and east the ancient civilization of the Sumerians. For two hundred years the Hebrews maintained their freedom, uniting temporarily under a “judge”, a tribal chief who had the ability to lead in war. This ad hoc arrangement was deemed unsatisfactory by thoughtful men, the elders, who come to Samuel to ask for a king.

What does God think of civil authority and power? Obviously the writer of first Samuel had his concerns. Civil power and authority can be abused and given human nature probably will be. Our text has the Lord almost reluctantly saying: “Grant their request and appoint a king to rule them”.

2016 is an election year for us in the United States. The question of leadership is on the minds of Americans. In prayerful reflection each of us in conscience will participate in primaries and then in the November general election to choose a president for the next four years. Like the Hebrews four thousand years ago, it is important for us and the world that we choose well.

 

Fr. Michael Hoolahan, C.P. is on the staff of Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

1 Samuel 1:1-8
Mark 1:14-20

Reflection:

Immediately they left their nets and followed Jesus.

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

Peter and his brother Andrew left their nets behind and followed Jesus.  James and his brother John not only left their nets behind, they left their father, to follow Jesus.  They gave up their security of home and income.  They left behind their old lives to follow Jesus into a risky venture.  In the process, they stumbled and fell into the mud over and over.

Knowing that, are we ready to give up our nets? I, for one, have tried to be practical about this call to discipleship.  I’ve told myself it makes no sense to leave my nets behind.  I can follow Jesus and still carry my nets with me, or more accurately. wrap myself in my nets, like a shawl or security blanket.  But the trouble is that those nets become heavier as I try to follow Jesus.  My feet get tangled in those nets.  Like the first disciples, I stumble and fall, over and over.

But then, repentance– metanoia, change of heart and direction–was never meant to be easy.  What, then, is Jesus asking us to leave behind?  Could it be those nets of insecurity and our need to be in control? Or of self-doubt and inadequacy about how we can even respond to God’s call.  There are so many nets we clutch.  Nets of anger, inability to forgive, to forgive ourselves as well as others.  Could it be any net that separates us from the love of God?

Nevertheless, Jesus calls us over and over again.  And therein may lie the Good News.  Jesus calls us to be his disciples, not because we are perfect, but because we are weak.  We are called not to run away from ourselves, but rather to enter more deeply into who we truly are — sons and daughters of God, created in his image;  that just as Jesus humbled himself to share in our humanity, he calls us to share in his divinity.  That is Good News worth believing, worth sharing.

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

The Baptism of the Lord

Scripture:

Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7
Acts 10:34-38
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

Reflection:

Today brings the Christmas season to a close. Like most of you, we celebrated Christmas with a bit too much food and drink and a sometimes mind-numbing schedule of visiting, gift-giving, shopping (and then returning).  For my family this is the day to strip trees of their ornaments and “un-deck” the halls, to put away Nativity figurines and the once-again tangled sets of lights.

As much as I tried to focus on the “reason for the season” through it all, it is tempting to linger at the crib as more of a spectator than a participant in the story. Not today. As we now leave the manger, we face the fact: Babies don’t stay babies for long (as my children and grandchildren constantly remind me). They and we must grow up. So today, we are focused not on mangers and cute babies, scruffy shepherds and kind kings, but on the waters of life and death, on adult choices and responsibilities, and on the real “reason for the season.” Jesus was born and so are we. The Spirit that rests on Jesus at his baptism is the same Spirit that comes to rest on each of us. Through our baptism, each of us is a child of God, made in the divine image, breathing divine breath and capable of achieving the impossible through God’s grace.

This is the culminating message of the season: Our faith is not merely about honoring Christ through remembering his birth, but accepting the challenge of discipleship, opening ourselves to being baptized not just with water but with the Holy Spirit and with fire. We are to be adult Christians with adult faith. Now more than ever, we need people living out the call of baptism.

I think I will get out my baptismal certificate and reflect on the dreams and hopes my parents had for me that day. Then I will expand my focus and reflect on the dreams and hopes that God has for me. I have been given so much. I pray that through the grace of this feast, rather than returning to my work exhausted from celebrating, I can return to my work renewed in awareness of my responsibility to manifest Christ and be an instrument of God’s loving and healing power. I hope I gain courage to challenge those who discriminate or promote violence based on another’s skin color, culture, religion or political beliefs. I hope that wherever I go I can stop hateful speech in its tracks and refuse to stoop to humanity’s lowest common denominator. I hope I can find ever-new ways to advocate for justice, to abandon gossip, to reach out in mercy and compassion, and to let God’s light shine through me to a dark and weary world.

Today, God says to me and to each one of us “You are my beloved child – in you I am well-pleased!” Our task is to speak those words to those whose ears have grown deaf, and continue the work of Christmas that John and Jesus began so long ago. There is so much to do. Can we start anew today?

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:

1 John 5:5-13
Luke 5:12-16

Reflection:

I can almost see John standing with outreached hands saying, “Don’t you get it?  What else can I say to you to make you understand?”  That is John’s message in today’s First Reading.  He tells us water, blood, the spirit and human understanding should make the point.  But beyond that, don’t you hear the Father?  If you believe, you will have eternal life, and if you believe, you will know that Jesus has brought us eternal life.  In this reading, John is speaking to a people who for the most part didn’t seem to have a very strong belief in eternal life.  But he is also speaking to us.  This may be a good time to think a bit about how strongly we actually do believe in eternal life.  The average life expectancy for humanity is 66.7 years.  If you compare that to eternity, it’s not much at all and yet our focus is definitely on this life.  We put so much of ourselves into celebrations—birthdays, Christmas, Halloween—but it seems like our preparation for eternal life is an afterthought.  If our Faith was stronger, wouldn’t we be spending most of our time preparing for eternal life and less time preparing for Halloween?  Wouldn’t we be overjoyed when someone enters the Kingdom?  And wouldn’t we live lives that show that we know that 66, 70, 80 or even a hundred years of this life are but nothing compared to eternal life?

As we begin this year of 2016, let’s ask ourselves, what will I do this year to get ready for eternal life?  But let’s also give ourselves a break; after all, we’re only human.  Hopefully this year of mercy will encourage us to be merciful to our neighbors but also to be merciful to ourselves and to remember that we can bathe in God’s mercy.

In the Gospel, Jesus performs a great act of mercy when he cures the leper.  And he goes one step further, when he tells the leper to show himself to the priest and present the offering so they will know he is clean.  Jesus knew that if the leper tried to resume a normal life without having this seal of approval, he would continue to be shunned by family and friends.  Jesus didn’t just cure the leper, he cared about the leper.

Do we do acts of mercy, truly caring about the recipient, and do we remember to love ourselves as we love others?  May 2016 be a year of strengthening our beliefs, living our Faith, and practicing mercy as we follow the path Jesus laid for us.

 

Mary Lou Butler is a long-time friend and partner in ministry to the Passionists in California.