Daily Scripture

Solemnity of All Saints

Scripture:

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

Reflection:

In the Church’s liturgical calendar, each November begins with the great feast of “All Saints” and then turns to “All Souls.”  The exuberant Scripture readings include the gospel selection from the beatitudes, the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew’s Gospel, one of the New Testament’s most well-known passages. Jesus blesses those who are poor and downtrodden and lifts up those who exemplify the very values and commitments that mark his own ministry: the peacemakers, the merciful, the clean of heart, those who hunger and thirst for justice.  The first reading today is a portion from the Book of Revelation where the author, John, is treated to a vision of a “great multitude” from “every nation, race, people and tongue”—a vast procession of those who worship God and have followed Jesus, the Lamb of God.  Wedged between these readings is a beautiful selection from the First Letter of John, reminding his “beloved” Christians that God’s love for them is so intense that may be called “children of God.”

Who are the people addressed in these biblical readings?  Who is included in this feast’s “all Saints”?   Surely, as the reading from the Book of Revelation illustrates, it includes the saints from all ages past—from Augustine, the great theologian to Theresa, the Little Flower, from Agnes the early Roman martyr, to the Medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen, from St. Monica, the mother of Augustine to Mother Theresa, the mother of the poor.  Not all the saints are formally declared such. When Pope Francis spoke to the Congress on his visit to the United States, he cited two such “unofficial” saints such as Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.  And there are all the other “saints” in that great procession of the followers of the Lamb—family members and friends we have known and whose memory still inspires us.

But this feast of “All Saints” honors more than our beloved dead.  We the living should also be listed among the “saints.”  In his letters to his communities, Paul the Apostle repeatedly called his fellow Christians the “saints” or the “holy ones.”  For Paul, every baptized Christian was imbued with God’s grace and therefore was “holy.”  In Paul’s view it was not a matter of a follower of Jesus having to try to “become holy”—a Christian was already graced by God, already a “temple of the Holy Spirit,” even now, a member of the “Body of Christ.”  That is the same view expressed in John’s letter: “Beloved, we are God’s children now.” The challenge is to “be ourselves”—that is to live a life expressive of who we truly are.  “Become what you are” is one way of thinking about what we seek to do in living a life in accord with the gospel. 

This great feast—and the feast of All Souls that will follow—views the church as one innumerable assembly of people united and graced by God’s love.  A people that includes those of us who live now in this world, who, in the words of today’s responsorial psalm, “long to see God’s face,” and those who have gone before us and now see the ultimate source of all life and all joy “face to face.”  At a time of pandemic and much social distress and violence in our world, this feast reminds us of our dignity as daughters and sons of God, a cause for joy and hope.

Fr. Donald Senior, C.P. is President Emeritus and Professor of New Testament at Catholic Theological Union.  He lives at the Passionist residence in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Scripture:

Philippians 2:1-4
Luke 14:12-14

Reflection:

Happy Monday in the 31st Week of Ordinary Time!

Call me eccentric (Ok, Paul, you’re eccentric), but I’ve always been one to leave little notes or flowers or gifts on people’s cars.  It’s almost like a secret mission!  I plot a course to wherever they’re working or living and go at a time I knew they wouldn’t be around.  Then I park around the corner, sneak up, and place a little envelope under their windshield wiper, slip a small bouquet in the door handle, or hang a little gift-bag on their side-view mirror, and then quietly slip away, hopefully unnoticed.  Often, I don’t even sign my name.

I suppose it’s silly, but for my heart, it’s joyful and uplifting.  It’s a strange type of happiness, knowing someone’s day might be made just a little bit brighter because of a small effort from my time and body, and boatload of love from my heart.  And when they don’t know it was me, well, that’s the most fun of all!  The surprise lets them feel loved with no rhyme nor reason.  I know I long for that, and I sure enjoy giving it when I can.

In today’s Gospel (Luke 14:12-14), Jesus is having dinner with one of the “leading Pharisees,” and said to the host, “When you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.”

We all know Jesus’ instruction to care for the people on the fringes of society.  But what are they?  “The poor, the Sick, the crippled, the lame, the blind.”  (Luke 14:13) What these people are is an important distinction.  But -who- are they?

Who are the invisible people in our life?  Whom do we pass by daily?

The poor could be our sister, struggling to pay her bills this month.  The sick could be our brother, in body or in mind.  The crippled or lame might be our mother, needing help with her walker or wheelchair.  How about the person with a different skin color or ethnic background.  The gay person, longing to be accepted.  The person reeling from a brutal separation or divorce.  The convict.  The adult just recently orphaned after their final parent dies.  The person trapped in the recesses of mental illness.

And the list goes on and on.

These are all beautiful souls, worthy of the little notes, flowers, and gifts of our heart.  And the sharing of that love only doubles as it floods not just one, but two.

So, who are the people that need to be invited to our table?

Who will be blessed with a little surprise from us today?

Dear God,
thank you for the invitation
to dine at your table.

Please,
grant us the grace
to carry that invitation
to those on the fringes.
Help us open the door of our hearts,
especially to that person
most in need of our acceptance and our love. Amen.

Peace, joy, and surprising love to you all today, and forever.

Paul Puccinelli is Director of Liturgy & Music at St. Rita Parish in Sierra Madre, California, and a member of the retreat team at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center.

Scripture:

Wisdom 11:22-12:2
2 Thessalonians 1:11-2:2
Luke 19:1-10

Reflection:

I remember a story about St. Teresa of Avila. She said that the devil had appeared to her disguised as Christ. Because of her deep faith, St. Teresa knew immediately that this vision was not Jesus, so she dismissed him. Before he left, the devil asked her, “How did you know that I wasn’t Christ?” She responded, “You didn’t have any wounds – Jesus has wounds!” The moral of this story – know your source!

This reading reminds me how much I don’t like gossip, or that horrible telephone game where you start a phrase, and by the time it gets to the end, it is a perfectly senseless statement because people just can’t always seem to disseminate information clearly. 

In this second letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul is telling the people to not jump to conclusions – verify your sources before you begin to talk about the “coming judgment”, especially if there is a misunderstanding or misinformation from false teachers who really didn’t know what they were talking about. It wasn’t yet time for the day of judgment! Paul wants them to understand that the time must be in the future for the day of judgment because certain events had not yet happened, and it could therefore not be fulfilled as yet.

This reading is also a reassurance to us of God’s endless supply of grace to us through his Holy Spirit, and that in order to retain and continue to receive these gifts we must remain holy. He is so kind to us, and we give him the great pleasure of receiving and retaining his salvation. His son died for us to save us, and when we remain faithful to his grace and mercy, he will manifest his great love in us.

In Christ’s dying for us, through his passion and death, we must remember that we honor his sacrifice in the way we live our lives with joy and service, and we offer our sufferings to him.

Patty Masson supports the Passionists from Spring, Texas.

Scripture:

Philippians 1:18b-26
Luke 14:1, 7-11

Reflection:

                      “For to me life is Christ . . .”

In Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul seems to be wrestling with remaining on earth and continuing the work that Christ commissioned him to do; spread the Gospel to the Gentiles or moving on to eternal life. It’s the wrestling that is most interesting. His reasoning for staying and going and then finally realizing that it is God’s will that he continue his own journey.

We wrestle with decisions every day. When making a decision we look at the pros and the cons and decide what is in our best interest. We think of our family, career opportunities, living situation and other factors. Saint Paul was doing this as well and he included Christ in the process. Christ, being the center of this process is Saint Paul’s way of giving his life over to Christ and the will of God. This is a process called discernment, where we take time to look at all the factors and then take it to prayer and ask for the grace to be open to where God is taking us. A way of letting go of what we want and looking to what God wants. Saint Paul was open to whatever God asked of him. He was ready to continue working for God on earth and at the same time ready to let go of his earthly life and embrace eternal life. 

In the Gospel of Luke another decision is given to a group dining with Jesus at a Pharisees house. Jesus tells a parable about choosing a place at the dinner table. Again, Jesus challenges the Pharisees with his ending, telling all, that those who think themselves better than others and take the highest place will be humbled and those who have chosen the lowest may in turn be asked to move to a higher place. The goal is to make choices that lead us to the heavenly feast. The feast of eternal life comes through our choices to become the person that God created us to be. Through our choices we may also participate in the building of the Kingdom of God now. Through our own suffering we share in the Kingdom and the eternal feast that awaits us.

Saint Paul’s wrestling and Christ’s parable calls each of us to take time to reflect on how we invite Christ into our lives and the choices we make. Do I invite Christ into all aspects of my life? Do I take time in prayer to listen with my heart to where Christ is leading me? 

Linda Schork is a theology teacher at Saint Xavier High School in Louisville, Kentucky.

Feast of Saints Simon and Jude

Scripture:

Ephesians 2:19-22
Luke 6:12-16

Reflection:

I find a lot of hope and promise in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  He is speaking not only to the people of Ephesus, but to all of us who call ourselves Christian as well!  It is comforting to be reminded that we are sisters and brothers in Christ, members of the household of God and part of something bigger than we can even imagine! Today we celebrate the feast of Saints Simon and Jude.  They were faithful apostles of Jesus who preached the Good News throughout the Middle East and gave their lives in service to the Gospel.

In a few short days we will celebrate the great feast of All Saints!  We give thanks for all those holy men and women who like Simon and Jude have gone before us in faith and call us to follow in their footsteps as we seek to live out our call to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ.

Luke shares the gospel message wherein Jesus, after prayer and discernment, gathers the disciples and appoints the twelve to be his apostles.  We all have a ‘call’ story or many stories of how God calls us time and again to serve as members of his household.  This call to serve takes us down many paths in our lifetime. We are confronted daily with the joys and struggles that surround us as we try to live out that clarion call to be disciples of Jesus in a world that often seems to turn a deaf ear to the good news!

May we continue to answer the call to live the Gospel message, to work towards a more peaceful and just world, to spend time in prayerful discernment and above all, give thanks that we are, fellow citizens and members of the household of God, blessed to have a place at the table of the Lord.  Amen!

Theresa Secord recently is a retired Pastoral Associate from St. Agnes Parish, Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Ephesians 6:10-20
Luke 13:31-35

Reflection:

Today’s gospel is a reading from Luke 13:31-35:

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’

Jesus wasn’t afraid of Herod – I don’t believe Jesus feared anyone; the closest thing may have been the feeling of separation from his heavenly Father as he hung on the cross and was hit by the realization of all of the sins being laid upon him. But Jesus knew what his purpose was going to be in these last three days, and he knew he had things to do before the third day. He knew he was surrounded by pain and suffering, and his mission was to heal, to share his beautiful mission with those in his path. Jesus cannot be swayed from his role as he enters into the last stages of his journey here on earth.

Reading on,

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you.”

Jesus loved Jerusalem, and he wanted to protect those who lived there. The Jerusalem of today is not far different from then – there is still a need for his loving protection in that place where so much of our faith history was experienced firsthand.

Jesus so easily could have run away, fled from the hands that would take his life. But he knew there was a plan. He knew these would be the last days on earth for him, and nothing and no one could force or reason with him to escape from the inevitable. That is faith, trust, and love. 

I think of Saint Pope John Paul II as we celebrated his feast day this past October 22. How he suffered in the throngs of World War II, how he worked so hard to open the paths of communication through socialism, through the Nazi persecution, even as he became a Priest and continued to fight for the less fortunate. He was a voice for the people, and he, like the hen, and like Jesus himself, did his best to gather his children as the hen gathered her brood under her wings.

And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’

Patty Masson supports the Passionists from Spring, Texas.

Scripture:

Ephesians 5:21-33
Luke 13:18-21

Reflection:

Jesus said “What is the Kingdom of God like?”

What a wonderful question!  How often do we take the time to ponder what the Kingdom of God is like? Today’s reading is an opportunity to imagine into a future not dictated by the front-page headlines or our current political leaders, but by who and what God calls us to be, both individually and collectively.  

Walter Brueggemann writes in The Prophetic Imagination,

The prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined…Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing….[E]very totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.

And this is exactly what Jesus is modeling for us today: a ministry of imagination, conjuring images that will open us into what we already are in God’s eyes, and propel us toward that which together we are called by God to be: the Kingdom of God.

It’s hard to miss that both images that Jesus “conjures” are transformative processes, grounded in mystery.  We may have observed a seed growing or maybe even studied the scientific process of a seed growing into a bush.  We may have experienced baking bread or even analyzed the chemical reaction which occurs in the process of adding yeast to flour and water. But we really do not know how the generative mechanism actually works.  The mystery of becoming precisely what God has intended from the first moment of existence—whether for a seed or a human being–is God’s alone.

And then there is the surrender.  There is a surrendering to the process of becoming that a mustard seed fulfills so effortlessly.  There is a surrendering to its purpose that the yeast performs so gracefully, leavening the whole batch of dough. It is, perhaps, for a mustard seed or yeast organism, not really even a question of surrender but rather of a natural, inevitable fulfilling of its nature. Yet for us human beings, our lives can become a conscious practice of surrendering, of listening to the Spirit within us and among us, and surrendering to its movement and invitation.

I like to imagine that each of us can be yeast for the whole. There may be times when any one of us is tired or discouraged. Yet within the whole, when even some of us are listening for the Spirit and surrendering to its movement, the entire batch will continue to leaven.  Together, we are part of an inevitable process of becoming what God has intended: the Kingdom of God.  That seems to me something worth imagining into being.

Lissa Romell is the Administrator at St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois.

Scripture:

Ephesians 4:32-5:8
Luke 13:10-17

Reflection:

Precious Love of God

Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,
as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us
as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma. EPH 15:19      Ps 36:7

Psalm 139:7 states one of the most beautiful sentences in the Scripture.  “How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God!  And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.”  One of the most romantic scenes in movie history, Casablanca, is Humphry Bogart’s words to Ingrid Bergman “here is looking at you, kid”!  Could you even in your wildest imagination see God taking you by the chin and saying this to you?   Saint Augustine describes our relationship with God: “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.”  

The ultimate word about God’s love for us is that He gave His Only Begotten Son to die for us.  We must never stop being startled that we mean so much to God!  We must be humble enough to realize we are not in the loving eye of God only because of our good looks.

There is the story of a little girl I saw when visiting her parents.  I asked her to show me her favorite doll.   She had lots of beautiful dolls, but the one she showed me was the ugliest one I ever saw!  It was old and wore out.  The hair was mostly gone and an arm was missing.   “Why is this your favorite doll?”  She answered: “If I don’t love this doll, nobody will.” 

I think the little girl’s answer was very insightful.  Nothing attracts God’s mercy like humility.  Pope St John XX111 has a beautiful quote on our need of God’s merciful love.  “I live by the mercy of Jesus, to whom I owe everything and from whom I expect everything.”  God loves us with merciful love. “Pope John continues “There is nothing more man needs than Divine Mercy – that love, which is benevolent, which is compassionate, which raises man above his weakness to the infinite heights to the holiness of God.”  “How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God!”

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