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The Love that Compels

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Daily Scripture

Upcoming Daily Scriptures

February 24, 2015

Scripture:

Isaiah 55:10-11
Matthew 6:7-15

Reflection:

Prayer is such a stretch for our poor human nature! To say prayer is difficult would be the understatement of the centuries. “No one can come to me unless my Father Who sent me drag him.” John 6:44   The Church directs us to start the Divine Office with: “Open my lips and I shall declare thy

praise”. In other words I must pray to be able to pray!   It should never surprise us that prayer can be terribly hard.  When we pray we are totally over our head.

What a consolation today’s gospel is for us. Jesus steps in and tells us how to pray. “Pray in this way.” Mt 6:9 “Father” is the first word of prayer. St Paul of the cross was noted to be saying the Rosary as an old

man by two seminarians as they went by to shop.   They were away for two hours and coming back to the monastery notice the old saint still saying his rosary. “Father Paul, how many rosaries have you said?”  The old man looked down at his beds and said: “I am still on my first Our Father!”  To be wrapped in amazement and wonder when we say Father for two hours is how the great ones prayed! What an astonishment to see how fond God is of us! “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret.”

It is still more a shock to realize how immense this loving Father really is in the heavens. One never comes to fully appreciate Jesus if our God is too small.  In the first line of Our Lord’s great prayer He plunges us into the affection and greatness of our God.  When we look through our telescopes and see over 200 billion galaxies, should we not be staggered when SS tells “Do I not fill heaven and earth”! Jer 23:24

Would it not be wonderful if we could linger a couple of hours on this first line of the Our Father? Praise to Christ who taught us how to pray! Prayer is indeed the greatest stretch of our lives, but if we let our brother Christ guide us it will also be the greatest act of our lives!

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

 

February 23, 2015

Scripture:

Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18
Matthew 25:31-46

Reflection:

How vivid are my memories as a child after reading the life of one of the great saints of the Church!  How often I would find myself thinking, “O Lord, I want to be holy too.  Help me to be holy Lord!”  And so would go the musings of an idealistic young fellow who believed that it could really and truly happen.  “If I really try, then one day I will be holy just like the saints are!”  I never doubted that this could happen, not for a moment.  And I still believe it to this day.

On this Monday of the first week of Lent we are given a profound lesson from the Lord himself who teaches us what it means to be holy.  Perhaps this kind of holiness is not quite like the fasting and prayer of St. Paul of the Cross who preached to the poor in dark and swampy places, or not the same as the gentleness and soothing touch of a St. Francis as he reached out to the poor and infirm.  But in our readings today we discover that this kind of holiness is offered to us all, even though it may not be so easy to attain.

In the Book of Leviticus we read the immensely challenging words of Yahweh himself:

“Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”

The words are firm, almost a demand rather than an invitation.  And then it becomes so very clear what we must do to achieve such holiness.  We must not steal or lie; nor should we speak falsely to another.  We cannot profane God’s name and we dare not defraud or steal from another person.  And how could we ever curse a deaf person or even put a stumbling block to trip the blind one?  We are to act with justice in all things whether it is with a powerful or a weak person, all are to be treated with justice and dignity.  As if this is not enough the Lord tells us we may never slander another person and never stand by when our neighbor is in need.  And to bring it all to a conclusion, we dare not ever hold hatred in our heart for a brother or sister but must love them as ourselves, even as we must love God above all else.  So does God reveal this message to us, stamping the lesson with final words: I am the Lord.”

The Gospel passage from Matthew is even more powerful as we have another lesson in what holiness is all about.  Holiness is when we give food or clothing, comfort and compassion, to another because, in so doing, we indeed do it to the Lord himself.  As long as we do it to the least of our brothers and sisters this act of holiness is one that is bestowed upon the Lord himself.  Such is holiness.  This is what it means to be a saint!  Let us learn well from the colorful readings on this Monday of the first week of Lent.

 

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

 

February 22, 2015

First Sunday of Lent

Scripture:

Genesis 9:8-15
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1: 12 -15

Reflection:                                                                                 

“Lord, who throughout these forty days…”  The opening line of a traditional Lenten hymn for Eucharistic celebration is sometimes jokingly understood and written as “Lord, who threw out these forty days…”  This version of the hymn may be more attractive to those of us who have a limited appreciation of our need to repent.  But here we are, once again, at the beginning of our forty days attempting to figure out just what it is we will offer up for the holy season and why we will be offering it up for the holy season.  Perhaps we will be able to discover the deeper meaning together.

Our first clue comes from the number “40”.  The ears of those of us who believe in the Christian scriptures ought to perk right up when we hear the number “40”.  We know immediately that it is not necessarily a time idea but is rather a symbolic number meaning the length of time given for someone to enjoy a deeper, richer, more profound experience of God and God’s love in one’s life.  We remember the 40 days of rain in Noah’s day, Elijah’s 40 days in the desert, Israel’s 40 years in the desert, the Lord’s 40 days of fasting, and the 40 days from the Resurrection to the Ascension.  All occasioned a deeper experience of God’s presence and love.

We have, then, our 40 days for a deeper bonding with God.  Our reading from Genesis teaches us about the foundation of that bonding with the Lord, i.e. the covenant God initiated with His people.  In this sacred moment, God chose to unite Himself with humanity with a loving bond which would never be broken again.  What a tremendous moment in human history !  God pledges to us never to leave us alone, never to abandon us, never to destroy us over sin again.  And it is not because we deserved it.  It is because of the enormity of God’s love for us.  Perhaps we can say it this way, God cannot help Himself, when He looks upon us, He sees the divine reflection and keeps falling in love with us over and over again.

Our second reading from the First Letter of Peter reminds us that this marvelous covenanted bonding of love between God and us has been finalized once and for all time through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  The cross of Jesus became for us the most eloquent expression of God’s determination to be one with us forever.  This bond of love, then, becomes the clarion call to us to repent and believe the Good News which we hear in Mark’s gospel passage today.  Too often we think repentance means turning away from some terribly large evil in which we may have a hand.  For many of us, this is simply not the case.  Rather, we are called to move toward a more perfect love of God by  searching through our hearts and lives for those small places of darkness, those  corners where we hold on to a bit of pride or selfishness, where we consider ourselves better than another person or group of persons, where we hold onto a resentment or lack of forgiveness for a past hurt or betrayal.  These are the areas of our hearts and lives which still need God’s redemptive grace.  These are the areas which made continuing repentance a necessity for each one of us.

We are called during these “40” days of our holy season of Lent to open ourselves up to  a deeper, richer, more profound experience of God and His love in our lives.  In doing so, we open ourselves to the continuing repentance we need to grow into the holiness to which the Lord Jesus calls us.

 

Fr. Richard Burke, CP, is a member of St. Paul of the Cross Province and also serves on the Provincial Council of Holy Cross Province.  He lives at St. Ann’s Monastery in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

February 21, 2015

Scripture:

Isaiah 58:9b-14
Luke 5:27-32

Reflection:

Down in Taylor Country, Kentucky, where the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains rise, there was some farmland belonging to my grandfather, given to his people by proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, as reward for their serving in the Union Army during the Civil War.  The farmhouse on this property abuts against a hill rising several hundred feet behind it, and at the foot of this hill, close to the house, can be found a spring of cold water dripping out of the hillside, into a carefully constructed basin built by my father in 1937 or thereabouts, a process that I observed.  This was a more convenient arrangement for gathering water than tramping over to the well, some considerable distance away.  It may still be there, though times have changed.  But it was a valuable asset in those days.

And in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range running the length of the state of California can be found, next to Pasadena, the village of Sierra Madre, within which the Passionist Retreat House of Mater Dolorosa can be found, perched against these hills.  Given the perennial scarcity of water in that area, a Passionist Brother named Joe discovered and excavated a water source in the rise behind the retreat house, in 1959, constructing a basin for collecting a pool of cool, fresh water, much along the lines of the one in Taylor country.  I offered some minimal help in this project.  It still waters the land.

These water references help to appreciate the promises made by the prophet Isaiah in today’s readings as he alerts his readers  to what the Lord will do on their behalf: He will “…satisfy your thirst in parched places…” so that “…you shall be like a watered garden, like a flowing spring whose waters never fail.”  This was quite a bonus for doing what they ought to have been about anyways, such as removing burdens from others that they had wrongly imposed on them, and stopping malicious speech against them, or abusing the holiness of the Sabbath, disregarding their duty to God while pursuing their own interests.

What an attractive bargain for us television addicts promised, in the frequent ads interrupting the programming, a variety of medicinal benefits from products presented there, with always a lengthy proviso that we do so at our own risk of suffering any number of fearful consequences.    Thankfully, Isaiah, as God’s prophet, presented no such scare tactics to his “audience”, but simply promises of good benefits to follow.

And a similar transaction occurred between Jesus and Levi (or Matthew, as we know him), as Jesus passed by the latter’s customs post.  Jesus was not in any way judgmental of this tax collector, regarded by his fellow Jews as a despicable “collaborator” with the Roman occupation force.  Jesus simply invited him: “Follow me”, and Levi, “…leaving everything behind…got up and followed him”.  Levi’s obvious thirst for something better than what he was doing led to his own voluntary response to what was an opportunity of a lifetime for him: he “…gave a great banquet for him (Jesus) in his house…”

So we have benefits presented us today, with no threats about serious problems attached.  This is an attractive scenario for beginning Lent: no downside involved other than the effort at digging into the side of the hill where the cool water can be found to slake our thirst.

 

Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, C.P. is a member of the Passionist formation community at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago. 

February 20, 2015

Scripture:

Isaiah 58:1-9a
Matthew 9:14-15

Reflection:

As we begin our Lenten season and are urged to fast, pray and do penance in preparation for the great feast of Easter, we are invited to think about how we go about our fast over these next 40 days.  If we take the Lenten fast seriously, our first impulse might be to cut down on food and drink.  Then we might think about cutting down on entertainment.  Then, if we get really serious, we might begin to think about curbing our temper, our quick judgment of others, or even our sharp criticisms.  All ways of fasting from behaviors that we know are not of God.

All these efforts are admirable but, as our first reading from Isaiah insists so clearly, they only scratch the surface and are just a beginning!!  Isaiah reminds us that the purpose of fasting, indeed all acts of penance, is to open our hearts to the needs of others.

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own.

Surely the focus of our prayer during this challenging season is to ask God to transform our hearts, make us attentive and responsive to the people around us so that we will be ready to receive the overwhelming love of God that is offered us over these next few weeks.

 

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

February 19, 2015

Scripture:

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Luke 9:22-25

Reflection:

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
Luke 9:24

Moses asked his followers to choose between “Life and Prosperity, Death and Doom.” We would think that this should be an easy choice to make. Who would want to choose Death and Doom?

Yet, today, people all around us are choosing Death and Doom. There is so much hatred in their hearts that they are convinced that the only answer to the world’s problems is by putting to death all of their enemies. They are so convinced of this that some even sacrifice themselves by choosing Death as they take away someone else’s life.

There are no winners when we choose Death. They think that killing off their enemy, cutting themselves off from people who do not like them or disagree with them or displease them will result in the ideal society. Thus, they would create a society that would respect only their values, their vision of the future and their way of life.

Killing another human being degrades the whole human race. It does not purify the human race, it dehumanizes it. To kill another human being, one needs raw power and instruments of death. Some people think that the more they surround themselves with destructive armaments, such as guns, weapons of mass destruction, armies of killers, then they can impose their will on others.

Where does all of this hatred come from? It comes from the heart. We may want to make excuses that we have a right to our anger, a right to our hatred. After all, we have been hated and disrespected for years, maybe even centuries. We may think, it is now our turn to bring Death and Doom to those who have beat us down, enslaved us and even killed our family and friends. We say, it is only right that we have our chance to give others what they have done to us.

Yet history, especially Salvation History, teaches us that choosing Death and Doom will never bring about New Life, Peace and Prosperity.

Lent demands that we examine ourselves as individuals and as people. It invites us to explore what is present in the innermost recesses of our heart. Is it Hatred or Love? Is it Death and Doom or Life and Prosperity? Is it a commitment to choose Life and Prosperity despite of the culture of death that surrounds us? Or do we find that in the innermost depths of our hearts there is a conflict between hate and love, death and life?

Lent teaches us that we cannot live in both worlds, the world that tries to correct human behavior by violent methods of discipline, including killing the other for the sake of justice, or killing the other because our property is being stolen. I do hear the voices in religion class asking the “what if” questions. We cannot get to the trick questions about what is permissible and what is not without making a fundamental option to choose Life, to choose Love.

Moses says, “Choose Life, then by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice and holding fast to him.”

Jesus says, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit him?”

Who are we going to listen to?

During our Lenten Journey, let us choose Life and Prosperity with God’s help!

 

Fr. Clemente Barrón, C.P. is a member of Immaculate Conception Community in Chicago, Illinois. 

February 18, 2015

Ash Wednesday

Scripture:

Joel 2:12-18
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

 

Reflection:

Come back to me with all your heart.

The words of the first reading set the theme for our reflections today;  “return to me with your whole heart” says the prophet Joel, reminding us of one of the deepest truths and guiding principles of Jesus’ life – that our God is full of mercy and forgiveness and that God wants us to have life above all else.

And what kind of life does God wish for us? Perhaps the gospel text offers us the answer in three words – authenticity, integrity and belonging.

“Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them” says Jesus. The challenge of the Word today seems to be that of orienting us towards a balance and integration of our inner motivation and outward actions.

Jesus highlights how easy it is to perform – for the crowd, for our own ego satisfaction and for faint and shallow praise, when our true needs are much more important and worthwhile. That is, our deepest longings are only satisfied in our relationship with our God where we can be out true selves and can find all that we need. Thus as Augustine noted, yes “we are restless” – we strive and seek to be ‘real’, but we can become so distracted in this search. It is only when “our hearts rest in God” that we can find our true authenticity, integrity and belonging.

But until we are totally and finally encapsulated in God’s love, we strive to find our way. Jesus does not draw up a map for us, but he does give us a powerful guide, an inner compass if you like. In the vision of Jesus, in order to find our way to our true self (and thus our own intimate relatedness to God) we need to strive to make our outer actions mirror what God’s own Spirit is already prompting within us.

Thus we give alms not to win praise or acclaim, but so that we can imitate the life of Jesus and mirror his option for the poor.

We pray not to be seen as holy, but so that we might be in communion with the God who created us and loves us always.

We fast, not to attract the attention of others, but so that we might bring higher values to bear on more basic or self-centered desires.

To me these seem to be the thoughts that underpin all that Jesus teaches and comments on in this gospel today – a gospel text which introduces us to the season of Lent and more so to the opportunity to put into place some practice or discipline that stands as an outward sign of our inner desire to grow and to become more of the person that God sees.

Let us enter this season of renewal wholeheartedly and with a deep appreciation of the opportunity it affords us to grow both practically and spiritually in our Christian life.

If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

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.

February 17, 2015

Scripture: 

Genesis 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 10
Psalm 29
Mark 8:14-21

Reflection: 

Our readings today put up a yellow caution light. In the pre-history account from the book of Genesis the human family is depicted as a failed project. God regrets the crowning of his creation that occurred on the sixth day: Adam and Eve. Judgment is given: “I will wipe out from the earth the men whom I have created.”  However, God gives the human family a second chance with Noah, the only just man on the earth.

We are a part of the second chance. How difficult it is for us to live up to our calling to give glory and praise to God, to shout with every fiber of our being “Glory” (Ps. 29).

The gospel is another yellow caution light. Already earlier in the gospel Mark made it very evident that Jesus’ own people did not accept him and that their spiritual leaders, the Pharisees, were plotting to kill him. Now it is the disciples turn not to understand him. “Are your hearts hardened?” he asks in frustration. “Do you still not understand?”

These readings are a challenge to admit our own weaknesses in giving God his due. Often our hearts are hardened and closed, rather than receptive and open. In a thousand little ways we hold back and betray the gifts of grace that God extends to us. In my freshman year at Loyola Academy in Chicago

I was introduced to the motto of the Jesuits: “ad majoram Dei gloriam.” I have tried to make it the motive and direction of my life.

 

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

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