Daily Scripture

Scripture:

2 Corinthians 3:15-4:1, 3-6
Matthew 5:20-26

Reflection:

During the pandemic, there were thousands of deaths from COVID alone, plus the “usual” deaths due to other causes. In my field, we face a tsunami of complicated grief. One cause of complication is the inability or, due to the suddenness of the illness, lack of opportunity to forgive. Dr. Ira Byock, a medical doctor and researcher of dying patients, labeled “I forgive you” as one of the four most important things people need to give and receive when they are dying.

I admit I’ve sometimes had trouble forgiving those who hurt me; I am struggling with one brother right now. I’ve also met people who held grudges for so long they no longer remember what the grudge was about in the first place. In a world ruled by revenge-fueled cries of eye-for-an-eye “justice”, forgiveness remains one of the thorniest aspects of discipleship. Yet it is precisely what Jesus calls us to.

Note the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Reconciliation is mutual. Each party admits their wrongdoing, each repents and asks forgiveness, and both forgive. Then both sincerely engage in the difficult process of repairing the relationship and rebuilding damaged trust. Both people must want it, and the relationship must be worth it. Reconciliation isn’t always possible, especially in cases of abuse or dysfunction.

Forgiveness, though, can be unilateral. I can forgive even if the other person isn’t sorry. Forgiveness doesn’t condone the wrong or say it’s OK. Forgiveness doesn’t pretend it didn’t hurt, sometimes deeply. In serious cases, it doesn’t mean I give up on pursuit of justice or due consequences for the action.  What forgiveness does is free my heart from being imprisoned by someone else’s bad actions. I let go of the need for revenge, the need to hate, the need to “get even”, the need to see that person suffer as I suffered. It releases the hold they have over my emotions, sleep, appetite, and life. I take back my power, free my heart, and allow the Spirit to flow freely through me.  

The more grievous the hurt, the longer this process takes. Even after forgiving, something may happen that brings old hurts up again. Then I have to repeat the process and reaffirm the forgiveness, over and over again.

It’s tough stuff! But Jesus says not to come to the altar unless I’m doing it. And, as we’re finding out, if we don’t do it every day of our lives, death may rob us of the chance. So, this week I pledge to work harder on forgiving my brother. Because of his history of hurting me and likelihood of doing it again, I will never have a close, trusting relationship with him. I will, however, work through and then let go of the pain, hurt, and anger so he doesn’t control any part of my heart. Then perhaps I can go on to forgive someone else.

Is there someone you need to work to forgive? Is there a grudge or hurt that holds your heart bound? Perhaps along with me, you can bring that to Jesus and ask for the grace and strength to forgive. And do it now.

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:

2 Corinthians 3:4-11
Matthew 5:17-19

Reflection:

Law 101

Law is something we absorb early in life. We learn what we are to do as well as the things we are not to do before we can ask, ‘why’, before we can understand the reasons for the ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’. How fascinating law is. I watched my youngest niece, who was 5, play a board game with her friends. When her fortunes took a dip, she announced that since she was the owner of the game, and it was being played in her house, she made the rules. A creatively new rule was introduced that turned her immanent defeat to a giant step toward victory.

Laws can corral us but protect us. The laws of the church, moral laws, perhaps every law can enable us to live positively and help us avoid what will bring harm to ourselves or others. There is that way of looking at law. The prophets spoke of a new law written in the heart. At the last supper Jesus gives a new commandment, to love as he loves. He modeled that new law as a ‘humble servant love’, washing the feet of the disciples.

For Israel law works as a sacrament works for the Church. Both are encounters with the mystery of God’s love in the events, people and things that make up our lives. In doing the good of the law Israel saw the face of God. The commandments were the signs of the Covenant God made with Israel. ‘I love you’, said God to Israel. ‘Love me back by loving others. Here are the laws of that love’. Psalm 119, the longest psalm praises God’s law. Each of its 176 verses contain the word ‘law’ or a word that means law, for example: statute, decree, revelation, ordinance, command, promise, and more. Read the psalm by substituting the word ‘love’ in each of the verses for the ‘law’ word, the psalm becomes a meditation on law as an act of God’s love for us.

But sometimes the devil makes us do it, or so we say. Augustine recalled being a teenager and stealing pears from an orchard. He didn’t want to eat them. He wanted to enjoy stealing them. There is an endless variety of ways that we can break laws and accompanying reasons why we should! Sometimes there are good reasons too. Jesus tells us that he comes to fulfill the law. His heart is love, so in his heart laws are transparent, seen as love. Some laws do not stand the test of time. As we grow some laws grow in wisdom or perhaps in wisdom they are dissolved as unnecessary?

On Sinai Israel received from Moses the 10 commandments. The story that gets Israel to Mt. Sinai begins when God speaks to Moses from the burning bush. God is now going to act on behalf of ‘my people’. Moses hears that this is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Then Moses asks, ‘ahem, umh, pardon, I must have missed it…but what is your name again?’ Is the name of God lost to Israel and to its new leader? We are forgetful about important things. We do need reminders. Sometimes even reminders written in stone.

Fr. William Murphy, CP is a member of Immaculate Conception Community in Jamaica, New York.

Scripture:

2 Corinthians 1:18-22
Matthew 5:13-16

Reflection:

In our Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that they “.. are the salt of the earth” (v. 13). Salt adds flavor to an otherwise bland or tasteless food item. It simply makes it taste better. However, Jesus is telling them that they are the spiritual salt of the world. In this context we can understand his comments about salt losing its flavor. It would be tasteless and of no value. The same applies to spiritual salt, it can lose its flavor without care and attention focused on maintaining its freshness. This section of the Sermon on the Mount follows Jesus’ sharing of the Beatitudes, his teachings on how we are to live. To live those teachings, we must make our spiritual life a priority.

“Salt of the earth,” is a common phrase often used in referring to certain people we know. They are not salt; yet they add flavor to our lives in positive ways. These are people who are faithful, loyal, vibrant, dependable, and much more. One might say that “yes” to the spiritual life was present in them.

“You the light of the world (v.14).” If we placed a candle under a bushel basket, it would be extinguished and be of no value. Light is a metaphor for faith. If we hide it, it will surely go out. Yet, if we use the flame to light other candles, the light is not diminished. Similarly, faith, once shared, is increased. We are not diminished in the sharing.

Salt and light are necessary for life, and Jesus uses these as similes to relay his missionary message. I believe Jesus was warning the disciples—and us—to be careful to protect their spiritual life.

A healthy spiritual life allows us to spread that message liberally where we live and work.

In our reading from the Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul’s words offer a similar message of commitment. “Yes,” was in Jesus. He fulfilled all the promises of God with a resounding “yes” poured out for us. We are wrapped in Jesus’ “yes” as a seal. In his “yes” we have been given the Spirit into our hearts. Can we protect our “yes” within us?

Being spiritual salt and light means our actions and words have meaning and bring life.

May we be salt for the earth, and light for the world.

 Like St. Anthony, whose feast we celebrate today, may we find our “yes” daily. Amen.

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.

Scripture:

Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a
1 Corinthians 10:16-17
John 6:51-58

Reflection:

The Mass as Dangerous Memory

There is memory.
And there is dangerous memory.

How do these two terms differ?  And what relevance do they have with today’s feast, The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, a feast that calls us to focus on two manifestations of the Body of Christ, the Holy Eucharist, and the Church?

First, since the earliest centuries, the Church has spoken of the elements used in celebrating the Eucharist as being changed into the body and blood of Christ.  Indeed, the Church teaches that “the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life” (no. 1324, CCC). 

This teaching, that the bread and wine in the Eucharist become the Real Presence, body blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ (no. 1374, CCC), is a central tenet of our faith.  However, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, most Catholics do not believe this core teaching.  Specifically, nearly 7 in 10, (69 percent), say they believe that the bread and wine used in Communion are merely symbols of the body and blood of Jesus.

Sadly, for these Catholics, the Eucharist – and the Mass itself – is simply memory.  The bread and wine serve as symbols to remind us of the Last Supper and the death of Jesus 2,000 years ago.  That is memory, not unlike the way we remember our nation’s Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.  We remember and we celebrate that which took place nearly 250 years ago.

The Pew survey also found that only 31 percent of Catholics believe “that during Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”

They embrace dangerous memory.

Yes, we remember what Jesus did 2,000 years ago.  But equally important, that memory is made present in the Real Presence of the Eucharist.  We remember that Jesus is present, right now among us.  The theological term for this memory is the Greek word, anamnesis. Anamnesis explains why the Church has always taught that Christ is not re-sacrificed at each Mass, but that we enter that one moment when Jesus defeated evil’s strongest consequence – death.

Anamnesis means that the memory of the past becomes the memory of the present.  We may even think of this Eucharistic moment as a liminal experience – that space where we mortals occupy both sides of a boundary between time and timelessness, that moment that holds both the past and present as one.   It is that moment when the priest, in persona Christi, acting in the person of Christ, speaks the sacred words, “This is my body,” and “this is my blood.  Do this in memory of me.”

This memory is dangerous because it urges us to act, to make inconvenient, even dangerous choices.  Jesus made his choice, most agonizingly at Gethsemane.  “Not my will, but yours be done,” Jesus declared in the garden.  Choosing for God led Jesus to the cross.

This Eucharistic meal, this Messianic Banquet, this Real Presence, brings the Church together in communion to share in this salvific living bread, calling us to join in solidarity with those who today suffer, and who in the past have suffered persecution, unjust treatment and death, the poor of God.  That is the meaning of dangerous memory as 20th-century theologian Johann Baptist Metz described the term.

The Eucharist is not solely a matter of personal, feel-good, devotional memory – that certainly can be a good and comforting experience for the faithful.  But it cannot stop there.  The Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, challenges us to choose what we stand for, with whom we stand, and in what we stand against.  The Apostol Paul says it best.  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).

That is also the moment, at the conclusion of Mass, when the Church is sent out in mission, “The Mass is ended.  Go out to serve God and one another.”  It is time to act, to build up God’s kingdom here on earth – against all odds, against all opposition.

That is dangerous memory.

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

Scripture:

Tobit 11:5-17
Mark 12:35-37

Reflection:

Story Tellers of the Happy Ending

We are finishing one of the most beautiful stories of the Old Testament, the story of Tobit. Well crafted, we have a love story, one of human suffering and hopeless as well as human goodness, and the happiest of endings! We can make the story one that speaks of ourselves. We are Tobits trying to do good, our laments are his and Sarah’s, and our hope is their happy ending.

The story also belongs to the Chosen People. The People of Israel seeing themselves during the Assyrian exile becomes their story when they were challenged to keep the law of Moses that could violate the laws of their captors – as removing a body left on display in the market place as part of the death sentence, and removing one being a serious offense. The exile was a true suffering, did God hear their unceasing prayer? Could they, the People of the Covenant, again experience the joys of Tobias and Sarah who amidst unspeakable misfortune find joy in their marriage covenant. 

Like the Book of Tobit, we conclude our yearly reading of Mark’s gospel this week. Our reading ends before the Passion, but what we are reading is associated with the approaching Passion. It is in Mark’s Passion as Jesus dies on the Cross that we hear his words of great lament, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”. Today’s reading gives us a proclamation of Jesus as Lord. His true identity that will be revealed as Jesus enters into the mystery of the Cross, his passion and death, when the Roman Centurion proclaims, ’Truly this man was the Son of God’.

We delight in stories, especially love stories. Truly, every story partakes in the Love Story of God for us. The story of Pentecost continues among us as Church, a pilgrim people, in the world but not of the world; exiles in a sense as we await a new more permanent dwelling not made of human hands. As a Church we carry with us and share the victory of God’s love. We are people of hope and encouragement gifted by the spirit, and one with the Father through Jesus our Lord. In the story of life we continually want to be spoilers for those who do not know a happy ending. That is God’s gift, our vision and our goal.

In the Western Province of the Passionists today begins a ‘Chapter meeting’, a once every four years assembly of the vowed men, both brothers and priests, along with lay men and women who are part of the Passionist community, feeling drawn to the charism of St. Paul of Cross in prayer and sharing in its the ministry and work. Paul proclaimed as a preacher in the 18th century: the love and mercy of God made present among us through Jesus Passion and Death. He gathered companions to live a way of life to nourish growth in this charism and to empower them to share this in the Church.

A ‘Chapter meeting’ is always a significant event. Gathered are approximately 35 priests and brothers, and about 60 non-vowed men and women to listen to the spirit in their service to the pilgrim people, the Church, and to be enabled to bring hope and encouragement to the Tobits and Sarahs of today though the victory of the Cross.

Please, this week include our Passionist family in your daily prayers.

Fr. William Murphy, CP is a member of Immaculate Conception Community in Jamaica, New York.

Scripture:

Tobit 6: 10-11; 7: 1bede, 9-17;8: a4-9a
Mark 12: 28-34

Reflection:

The Greatest Commandment: Love God and Love Others

In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 12, verses 28 to 34, we find a powerful exchange between Jesus and a scribe. The scribe approaches Jesus and asks, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus responds, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

These words of Jesus encapsulate the essence of true spirituality and righteousness. Love for God and love for others form the foundation of a fulfilled life. Jesus reveals that our devotion to God should be complete and all-encompassing, involving every aspect of our being – heart, soul, mind, and strength. This love for God should overflow into our relationships with others, where we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves.

By emphasizing these two commandments, Jesus highlights the interconnectedness of our love for God and our love for fellow human beings. Loving God requires us to genuinely care for those around us, treating them with kindness, compassion, and respect. It compels us to go beyond mere religious rituals and extend a helping hand to the marginalized, show empathy to the hurting, and offer forgiveness to the broken.

This teaching challenges us to examine the priorities in our lives. Are we truly loving God with our whole being? Are we actively expressing that love through our actions toward others? It’s easy to get caught up in religious activities without experiencing the transformational power of love. Jesus invites us to a deeper understanding of faith, urging us to embody love in all that we do.

As we embrace the greatest commandment, we find that love has the potential to change lives and bring healing to a broken world. It is through genuine love, both for God and our neighbors, that we can make a meaningful impact and leave a lasting legacy of compassion and grace.

Let us heed Jesus’ words today and allow love to be the guiding principle in our lives. As we walk in love, we embody the essence of true discipleship and fulfill the purpose for which we were created.

Deacon Peter Smith serves at St. Mary’s/Holy Family Parishes in Alabama. He is a retired Theology teacher from Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Birmingham, a retired soldier from the US Air Force, and a member of the Passionist Family.

Scripture:

Tobit 3:1-11a, 16-17a
Mark 12:18-27

Reflection:

Have you not read in the Book of Moses,
in the passage about the bush, how God told him,
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, 
and the God of Jacob?
He is not God of the dead but of the living.
You are greatly misled.

-Mark 12:27

Every Tuesday afternoon I visit a friend of another faith who is in hospice care, and even though over the years we have both claimed no fear of death, here we are on each visit, sharing how terrifying this concept becomes when we must move out of the realm of the intellect into today, disrupting not only our plans for today, but evidently for all time to come. OMG!

We’ve shared how letting go and willingly venturing off from our homes as children, I entered a very familiar life in the Monastery I lived across the street from, and he, believe it or not, went off to the Clown School in Baraboo Wisconsin. Although very different paths leading to this day, a day neither of us could have imagined at that time.

Along the way, we’ve shared how both of us have made many mistakes, some of which held us in bondage to individuals and institutions that we had harmed, or we thought had harmed us. Learning to let go of these mistaken beliefs, or in the words of St. Paul of the Cross and many other mystics, forgiving ourselves, each other and the institutions we mistakenly or not believed were the cause of all our problems, has allowed us to live in the moment.  

Dear God, help me believe the Apostle Mark’s reminder to the people of his day, that You are in charge. Help me let go of all my expectations—resentments in the making. Help me forgive myself and others I believe have harmed me, and finally, help me accept that not only are You, our Emmanuel with us today, but so are, our parents and all Your creation.

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