Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Most people are able to recall a time when they excluded others. Most people can also recall a time when they were excluded. These can be among the most poignant and painful memories, especially for kids and young adults. This happens in religion as well. We might remember that after Jesus commanded the crowd to “love you neighbor,” their first response was, ‘who is my neighbor?’ People want to know who they can exclude. This reality is the starting point for our first reading.
Memorial of Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs
We've had a lot of new things this past year. The two biggest additions to our life are little Eli (two weeks old) and our new home. We have come to love our new home and have put a lot of time, energy, and money into it. Yet, like all homes it comes with a never ending list of things we could do to improve it or things we need to do to maintain it. While we've been able to relish our new home and have done so with greater appreciation after brining Eli home to it, we are served well by taking Jesus' parable to heart.
Memorial of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr
When I first wake up in the morning, I lie in bed and think, “OK Lord, what do you want me to do today?” Today’s readings remind me that I am not on my own, when I get up to face the day. The Holy Spirit provides me the wisdom, hope, courage and grace that I need to follow God’s leads. The challenge is to believe and trust in the Spirit particularly when I do not know what lies ahead.
Friday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
I love to play games of all kinds. Some of my favorite games as a child were team games--football, dodgeball, kickball. I have distinct memories of grade school out on the playground or in gym class. We would identify two individuals to be captains and they would, one-by-one, select members for their team until everyone was chosen. There was this hopeful desire to be chosen first--it is very exciting to be wanted for a team. Yet, there was also a fear of being chosen last. However, as I reflect on it today, the truly powerful piece of the process is that everyone was chosen. We all wanted to play; we were all chosen to participate.
Memorial of Saint Teresa of Jesus, virgin and doctor of the Church
Over the last week or so, my husband Bill (who has been writing on Protestant fundamentalism for more than forty years), has been engaged in an email exchange with Mark, who is a self-identified fundamentalist.
The exchange started when Mark contacted Bill in response to an article that Bill and I wrote on the Creation Museum that was published in The Conversation, which is an outlet for scholarly work written for a popular audience. The piece got picked up by other media venues, which is how Mark came across it. Here’s a link to the article, in case you want to read it.
Wednesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
When my boys were young, I bought some assorted plastic fruit and wrote an attribute of the fruit of the Spirit on each piece of fruit. We kept the fruit basket on the dining room table and while we ate dinner together as a family, one of the boys would choose a fruit and we would talk altogether about what it means to live that particular virtue. Interestingly, the fruit of the Spirit is singular – St Paul describes fruit, not fruits, so we had fun trying to picture a multi-faceted fruit that contained all of these various virtues. It’s like a fruit that has the qualities of a grape, an apple, a mango, a banana, a kiwi, and an orange all wrapped up in one!
Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
Flowcharts, processes, and procedures, these are all things that I have an appreciation for. I prefer the recipe following and precision measurements of baking over the intuition and eyeballing of cooking. When I’m thinking about buying a new game, I’ll often search online to read a copy of the rule book to help me decide about purchasing it. Today’s readings challenge me.
Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
My children teach me new things everyday. Sometimes they are little factoids they have picked up from some educational show or book. At other times they remind me where my deepest weaknesses are or just how sweet and loving they can be. The latter has been particularly prominent as we have just brought home our fourth child and the other three are the most amazing caregivers for their little brother. Their actions and my time on paternity leave has really drawn me to today’s Psalm.
Saturday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Scripture Readings
Although there are so many struggles that we face today, one of the things that brings me the greatest sorrow is the amount of division in our world and even our church. This polarization and at times malice accosts you at every turn. As Christians, Jesus calls us to become one in Him. If we could see one another as equals- fellow children of God- we could work together to address the many problems plaguing our world.
Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Although Pope Francis released an encyclical this past Sunday, today’s readings have led me to his previous writing: an apostolic exhortation from 2018, Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad). It may seem odd that I am drawing on a document entitled Rejoice and Be Glad to help us reflect on a gospel passage (Luke 11:15-26) that deals with demons and unclean spirits. But Francis specifically refers to the end of today’s gospel in a chapter entitled “Spiritual Combat, Vigilance and Discernment,” noting that the Christian life is “a constant battle.” I invite you to continue with me here to learn more about what he (and Jesus) has to say.
Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
As I spent time in prayer with today’s gospel, I was immediately drawn to St. Augustine’s famous words from his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” This restlessness has always been present in me, and usually I spend a lot of my time trying to find a way to get control of it. Yet, through the help of God’s grace, I aim to let go of this control so that I can experience glimpses of the rest that St. Augustine describes.
Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
Today’s Gospel offers us St Luke’s shortened version of the Our Father prayer (compare with Matt. 6:9-13). The brevity of this prayer gives me pause to reflect on the nature of prayer. In his first general audience of 2019, Pope Francis reflected on the Our Father. He said, “He does not need anything, our God: in prayer he asks only that we keep open a channel of communication with him to always discover ourselves [to be] his beloved children and [that] he loves us so much.” Pope Francis saw Jesus as distancing himself from hypocrites, who want to draw attention to themselves by their pious prayers, but then distort the Christian witness by their less than holy behavior; and from those who babble lengthy prayers in an attempt to please God or to be heard by God. He went on to say, “Christian prayer, on the other hand, has no other credible testimony than its own conscience . . . where a continuous dialogue with the Father intertwines intensely . . .” Today, can we enter into that kind of space with God, a continuous dialogue intertwined intensely?
Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
How would it feel to be able to say this about your life-story and good works? What a blessing to know that one’s time here on Earth is well-spent, bringing people closer to their God and more at peace with themselves and their neighbors. Could there be something the Spirit is calling you to be or do that would inspire others to glorify God?
Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
My mother-in-law loves connections. She lights up when she retells a story of how some stranger’s grandmother was actually the next door neighbor of someone we all know and there is some long lost connection. As an in-law (or out-law) I can’t always keep up with her series of connections but they are still fun to listen to. Today I felt a little of that excitement when I saw a new connection between our reading in Galatians and the Gospel’s telling of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Saturday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time
I have the privilege of caring for my grandchildren on a regular basis. They know that whether they come to me with a drawing or run to me with a skinned knee, I will offer them love and support. We are called to turn and trust in God with the same childlike trust. As children of God, God provides us the grace to become a source of healing and goodness for the world.
Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels
Angel of God, My guardian dear,
To whom God’s love, Commits me here.
Ever this day, Be at my side
To light & guard, To rule & guide, Amen.
Memorial of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
I will never forget the first evening I spent with my first husband’s parents. I knew very well going into that evening that I was not even close to the sort of woman they hoped their son would marry.
My first husband was raised among some of the most conservative Mennonites in Ohio. To be more clear, these Mennonites were among those who worked hard to hold onto tradition rather than readily adopt more worldly ways. When other Mennonites built church infrastructures like conferences with paid conference ministers, these folks said no. They weren’t going to have conferences. They weren’t going to have conference ministers. They were going to stay focused on the local congregation. I am pretty sure that, like the Amish, they didn’t pay their local pastors. They dressed very plainly. For those unschooled in the intricacies of plain dress, it would be easy to confuse them with the Amish. Their children attended a two-room school house. None of my first husband’s cousins went to school beyond the eighth grade. My first husband did go to high school. But it was a high school held in the basement of a Holiness church. He graduated with 10 other students, if memory serves.
Memorial of Saint Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church
In 1976, a new Broadway musical debuted, based on the Gospel of Matthew, and entitled, Your Arms Too Short to Box with God: A Soaring Celebration in Song and Dance. The title of this production hearkens back to a story recounted by James Weldon Johnson (author and civil rights activist) in his novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Johnson tells of a fiery preacher named John Brown who thundered in one of his sermons, “Young man, yo’ arm's too short to box wid God!” This blunt and provocative statement must have rung a deep bass note for Johnson, as he uses it again in his poem “The Prodigal Son,” published as part of a collection in 1927. This exclamation vividly describes our smallness in the light of God’s indescribable vastness. We are too infinitesimal to comprehend God’s greatness. Not only are our arms too short, we cannot even come close to conceiving of this God who is so transcendently other! I think this phrase from Pastor Brown offers a fitting synopsis of our first reading from Job. It’s an invitation to fall prostrate before our great God in an attitude of abject humility. It’s an opportunity to practice coming before the Holy Trinity in awe and wonder, fear and reverence.
Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels
Scripture Readings
Perhaps no part of our Christian faith today is so extracted from its original Christian context as angels. Angels! We see them as statues, on stationery, and in books. Those who do very little to practice Christianity are often drawn to the cute little cherubs. Those who do practice Christianity often take very little notice of angels, other than accepting this sentimentalized and sanitized version of winged figures flitting about doing good.
Monday of the Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
I'm not sure if you noticed but a lot more can happen on social media than cute cat photos and silly memes. It can be a pretty hostile place. And that hostility can be supercharged because the entire nature of our communication on social media is performative. Our "in" crowd is on there and watching and we, consciously or unconsciously, are longing for their approval when we engage on social media. Part of me wants to chalk all of this up to being social media's problem. But it isn't. I concede the rules of the game have changed DRAMATICALLY because of social media's permanence, scope, performative nature, and propensity to fuel misinformation and conflict. However, a puddle of gas, no matter how great its potential for explosion, will remain inert until the spark is brought near it. Today's Gospel is a good reminder that we are carrying that spark.