BENEDICAMUS DOMINO

“Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.”

PRAYER OF THE WEEK

Prayer for Trust

O Christ Jesus, when all is darkness and we feel our weakness and helplessness,

Give us the sense of Your presence, Your love, and Your strength.

Help us to have perfect trust in Your protecting love and strengthening power,

So that nothing may frighten or worry us, for, living close to You,

We shall see Your hand, Your purpose, Your will through all things.

We ask this in your holy name.

Amen.

COLLECT

Almighty and merciful God,

graciously keep from us all adversity,

so that, unhindered in mind and body alike,

we may pursue in freedom of heart

the things that are yours.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity

of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

READING I

1 Kgs 17:10-16

In those days, Elijah the prophet went to Zarephath.

As he arrived at the entrance of the city,

a widow was gathering sticks there; he called out to her,

“Please bring me a small cupful of water to drink.”

She left to get it, and he called out after her,

“Please bring along a bit of bread.”

She answered, “As the LORD, your God, lives,

I have nothing baked; there is only a handful of flour in my jar

and a little oil in my jug.

Just now I was collecting a couple of sticks,

to go in and prepare something for myself and my son;

when we have eaten it, we shall die.”

Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid.

Go and do as you propose.

But first make me a little cake and bring it to me.

Then you can prepare something for yourself and your son.

For the LORD, the God of Israel, says,

‘The jar of flour shall not go empty,

nor the jug of oil run dry,

until the day when the LORD sends rain upon the earth.'”

She left and did as Elijah had said.

She was able to eat for a year, and he and her son as well;

the jar of flour did not go empty,

nor the jug of oil run dry,

as the LORD had foretold through Elijah.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 2583 After Elijah had learned mercy during his retreat at the Wadi Cherith, he teaches the widow of Zarephath to believe in The Word of God and confirms her faith by his urgent prayer: God brings the widow’s child back to life.1

The sacrifice on Mount Carmel is a decisive test for the faith of the People of God. In response to Elijah’s plea, “Answer me, O LORD, answer me,” the Lord’s fire consumes the holocaust, at the time of the evening oblation. The Eastern liturgies repeat Elijah’s plea in the Eucharistic epiclesis.

Finally, taking the desert road that leads to the place where the living and true God reveals himself to his people, Elijah, like Moses before him, hides “in a cleft of he rock” until the mysterious presence of God has passed by.2 But only on the mountain of the Transfiguration will Moses and Elijah behold the unveiled face of him whom they sought; “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God [shines] in the face of Christ,” crucified and risen.3

1 Cf. 1 Kings 17:7-24.

2 Cf. 1 Kings 19:1-14; cf. Ex 33:19-23.

3 2 Cor 4:6; cf. Lk 9:30-35.

APPLICATION

“Anyone who welcomes a prophet because he is a prophet will have a prophet’s reward; and, anyone who welcomes a holy man because he is a holy man will have a holy man’s reward. If anyone gives so much as a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is a disciple, then I tell you solemnly, he will most certainly not lose his reward” (Mt. 10: 41-42). These are the words of Christ, the Son of God, when recommending his poor disciples to the charity of the people. Doubtless his mention of prophet and the cup of cold water, would recall to the minds of his hearers the story of Elijah and the kind-hearted widow of Zarephath. Elijah was one of the most popular and best-remembered prophets of the Old Testament. On another occasion (Lk. 4: 25), our Lord reminded his doubting hearers in his home-town of Nazareth how God sent Elijah to this good widow of Sidon, who was not one of the Chosen People, although there were many widows in Israel then in need of help but unworthy of it. They would not have shared their last morsel of bread with a stranger even though he was God’s representative.

The lesson of today’s reading–reemphasized as it is by our divine Lord’s own word–is clear for us. We must be charitable towards a needy neighbor, not only when we have some superfluous goods which we can give away, but even when we have only the bare essentials for ourselves. We are expected to share these with one who has not even that little. But is not this demanding too much of us? Can Christian charity command us to shorten our own lives in order to prolong those of a needy neighbor for a few days or weeks? The answer is very clearly “yes”: we must be ready not only to risk our own lives in order to save that of a neighbor but we must be ready to lay down our lives willingly, if needs be, to save a neighbor. “Greater love than this no man has, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15: 13); this is the ultimate in Christian charity, our Lord tells us. He put it into practice for us and he expects us to be willing to imitate him should the need arise.

We are grateful to God that Christ has had followers who fulfilled his command to the letter. They gave their lives to save others. Their noble sacrifice not only earned eternal life for them, but inspired many with a new love for God and neighbor. While making this earth a better place in which to live, it put heaven within the reach of many who would otherwise not have attained it. Most of us will never have the privilege of being called on to make the supreme sacrifice for our neighbor’s sake–but we are all called on to sacrifice some of our possessions to help a neighbor in need. Today’s story emphasizes that we must be ready to share even our scanty means with one in greater need. It also adds that God will not let such charity go unrecorded. The widow of Zarephath and her son could have had one last modest meal before they died of the famine, but her generosity made her share even that little with a stranger. She was rewarded: the little supply she had never diminished and she lived in frugal comfort all through the famine. God can never be outdone in generosity. All we have and all that we are we owe to his kindness. If we show our willingness to share with those who are in want, he will not forget our charity–he will not see us in want.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM

Ps 146:7, 8-9, 9-10

Praise the Lord, my soul!

The LORD keeps faith forever,

secures justice for the oppressed,

gives food to the hungry.

The LORD sets captives free.

Praise the Lord, my soul!

The LORD gives sight to the blind.

The LORD raises up those who were bowed down;

the LORD loves the just.

The LORD protects strangers.

Praise the Lord, my soul!

The fatherless and the widow he sustains,

but the way of the wicked he thwarts.

The LORD shall reign forever;

your God, O Zion, through all generations. Alleluia.

Praise the Lord, my soul!

READING II

Heb 9:24-28

Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands,

a copy of the true one, but heaven itself,

that he might now appear before God on our behalf.

Not that he might offer himself repeatedly,

as the high priest enters each year into the sanctuary

with blood that is not his own;

if that were so, he would have had to suffer repeatedly

from the foundation of the world.

But now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages

to take away sin by his sacrifice.

Just as it is appointed that human beings die once,

and after this the judgment, so also Christ,

offered once to take away the sins of many,

will appear a second time, not to take away sin

but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 1544 Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men.”1 The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique “high priest after the order of Melchizedek”;2 “holy, blameless, unstained,”3 “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,”4 that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross.

1 2 Tim 2:5.

2 Heb 5:10; cf. 6:20; Gen 14:18.

3 Heb 7:26.

4 Heb 10:14.

APPLICATION

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is evidently writing to Jews who had become followers of Christ. Again and again he stressed the superiority of the Christian religion over that of the Old Testament which they had left. The Jewish high priesthood, appointed by God through Moses, was one held in great esteem and importance all through Old Testament times, but especially after the return from Babylon–when the high priest became their political as well as their religious leader. It was the high priest who regulated all the services of the Jerusalem temple. On their great annual Day of Atonement, he alone could offer sacrifice for the sins of the people and for his own sins. On that day, he alone could enter the holy of holies–the inner sanctuary of the temple in which were kept the tables of the commandments in the Ark of the Covenant. This Ark was called God’s throne on earth. The Ark was missing from the inner sanctuary since before the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians (587 B.C.), because the prophet Jeremiah hid it in a cave on Mount Nebo according to 2 Mc. 2: 4-8. The high priest, however, still carried out the ritual of the Day of Atonement. He entered the holy of holies and sprinkled the blood of the sacrifices where the Ark used to rest. This ritual was repeated each year.

The author of Hebrews says that Christ, our high priest, was superior in every way to the Jewish high priest, important though he was in the eyes of religious Jews. Christ did not have to repeat his sacrifice annually, his offering of himself as atonement for the sins of the whole world, of Jews and Gentiles, sufficed once for all. His sacrifice, unlike the temple sacrifices, was of infinite value. It was not the blood of goats and oxen that Christ offered to his Father, but the sacred blood of his body which he, the Son of God, assumed in order to become one of us and to be able to die for us. It was not into the inner sanctuary of the Jerusalem temple that Christ sent his precious offering, but into the real holy of holies, the eternal throne of his Father in heaven.

Therefore, there is no real comparison between the Jewish high priesthood and the real effective priesthood of Christ. Any effectiveness which the intermediation of the Jewish high priest had, or any value which the temple sacrifices could claim, came to the Chosen People from God’s loving mercy which had the incarnation in view. They were types and the shadows of the real intercession, the real sacrifice which God’s Son would offer not only for the Chosen People of old but for all mankind and for all time.

Do we Christians really appreciate the favors and the blessings God showered on us by sending his divine Son in human nature? By the fact of the incarnation we became brothers of Christ and adopted sons of God. This was the fulfillment of God’s eternal plan for mankind. In the meantime sin had entered our world. To atone for the sins of the world the incarnate Son of God willingly accepted to undergo his passion and death by crucifixion so that his heavenly Father would remit the spiritual death our sins merited. Thus we would be able to share in the eternal inheritance which the incarnation won for us.

Do we really appreciate the greatness of God’s love for us in planning this eternal future happiness for us and at such cost–the humiliation, sufferings and death of his only-begotten Son? With a future such as this, could we be so foolish as to let anything or any person on this earth come between us and the eternal crown God has prepared for us? Let St. Paul, the man who loved God with every fiber of his being, and gladly spent his life to bring the knowledge of God’s love for us to all the world, answer for us: “I consider that the sufferings of this life are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us . . . If God is for us who is against us? He did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all . . . Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecutions or famine or nakedness or peril or sword . . . nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rm. 8 :18 ff).

St. Paul is in heaven. We shall be there too if we follow his advice.

GOSPEL

Mk 12:38-44

In the course of his teaching Jesus said to the crowds,

“Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes

and accept greetings in the marketplaces,

seats of honor in synagogues,

and places of honor at banquets.

They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext

recite lengthy prayers.

They will receive a very severe condemnation.”

He sat down opposite the treasury

and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury.

Many rich people put in large sums.

A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.

Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them,

“Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more

than all the other contributors to the treasury.

For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth,

but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had,

her whole livelihood.”

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 678 Following in the steps of the prophets and John the Baptist, Jesus announced the judgment of the Last Day in his preaching.1 Then will the conduct of each one and the secrets of hearts be brought to light.2 Then will the culpable unbelief that counted the offer of God’s grace as nothing be condemned.3 Our attitude to our neighbor will disclose acceptance or refusal of grace and divine love.4 On the Last Day Jesus will say: “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”5

CCC 2444 “The Church’s love for the poor… is a part of her constant tradition.” This love is inspired by the Gospel of the Beatitudes, of the poverty of Jesus, and of his concern for the poor.6 Love for the poor is even one of the motives for the duty of working so as to “be able to give to those in need.”7 It extends not only to material poverty but also to the many forms of cultural and religious poverty.8

1 Cf. Dan 7:10; Joel 3-4; Mal 3: 19; Mt 3:7-12.

2 Cf Mk 12:38-40; Lk 12:1-3; Jn 3:20-21; Rom 2:16; I Cor 4:5.

3 Cf. Mt 11:20-24; 12:41-42.

4 Cf. Mt 5:22; 7:1-5.

5 Mt 25:40.

6 CA 57; cf. Lk 6:20-22, Mt 8:20; Mk 12:41-44.

7 Eph 4:28.

8 Cf. CA 57.

APPLICATION

Our Lord’s severe condemnation of those Scribes whose exaggerated opinion of their own importance made a mockery of the religion they professed to live, is a serious warning to all his followers not to look for the praise and esteem of their neighbors when doing their good works, but rather to hope for God’s praise and esteem in the future world. In another context, he said to his followers: “Because of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven . . . when you give alms do not let your left hand know what your right is doing . . . and your Father who sees in secret will reward you . . . when you pray go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father . . . who sees in secret and will reward you” (Mt. 6: 1-6).

It is hardly necessary to say that our Lord is not referring to community prayers or services here. What he is condemning is the hypocrisy of the Scribes, who lengthened their garments and their prayers not in order to give glory to God but to earn the glory of their fellowmen for themselves. Pride was their predominant vice–the vice which caused the fall of angels and of man. It so governed their lives that even their best actions were vitiated by it. There is a strong inclination to pride in every one of us. The reason is that we have great gifts from God and great capabilities; but we are tempted to claim the credit for these gifts and capabilities for ourselves–whereas we owe them all to God’s generosity.

A proud Christian is surely a contradiction in terms. A Christian is a follower of Christ whose humility can never be equaled. He was God as well as man. While on earth he emptied himself, as St. Paul puts it, of his divine glory so that he could be like one of us. A follower of Christ should not try to make display of gifts which are not his own, nor try to exalt himself above his neighbor because of something he has which was not given to his neighbor. If Christ wanted to be, and indeed was like the least one among us, we must never try to raise ourselves above our neighbor. Love of neighbor is the second of the two essential commandments–there can be no true love of neighbor where there is pride.

The second incident in today’s Gospel story highlights true humility and true charity. The poor widow, forgetful of herself and of her own needs gave her all, her last penny, to help others who were in need. She made this sacrifice without publicity and without seeking the praise of her neighbors. It is this deep contrast between her outlook on life and on religion, and that of the Scribes in the first that connects the two incidents. While the Scribes sought to earn the respect and praise of their fellow-Jews–as well as all the financial gain they could come by–from the practice of the externals of their religion, this poor widow’s religion was practiced in secret and it was to God alone that she looked for any reward that he might deign to give her.

As we saw in today’s first reading: we can be sure that she was not left without the reward she deserved. The widow of Zarephath was given a temporal reward. The same generous God did not let the similar act of supreme generosity on the part of the widow in Jerusalem go unnoticed. Christ’s judgment on the Scribes implies this: They will receive the greater condemnation for their pride, and abuse of religion for their own temporal gain. On the other hand the widow’s religion was an act of complete self-renunciation: “she has put in everything she had, her whole living.”

We may never be called on to share our last morsel with a starving neighbor but if we are, we must remember that Christ gave his very life for us and has asked us to do likewise, if necessary. It may never be necessary for us to make this supreme act of self-renunciation. If, however, we are sincerely practicing our religion, we must be ever-ready to help a neighbor in need even if this cuts into our hard-earned reserves. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward.

Applications written by Fr. Kevin O’Sullivan O.F.M. used with permission of Franciscan Press

BENEDICTUS

Suffering and Love

Pain is a part of being human. Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with ti renunciation and pain. When we know that the way of love – this exodus, this going out of oneself – is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others, becomes more human. Anyone who has consistently avoided suffering does not understand other people; he becomes hard and selfish… If we say that suffering is the inner side of love, we then also understand why it is so important to learn how to suffer – and why, conversely, the avoidance of suffering renders someone unfit to cope with life. He would be left with an existential emptiness, which could then only be combined with bitterness, with rejection, and no longer with any inner acceptance or progress toward maturity.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

CLOSING PRAYER

A Prayer for the Virtue of Humility

Lord Jesus, when You walked the earth,

Your humility obscured Your Kingship.

Your meekness confused the arrogant,

Hindering them from grasping Your purpose,

Your nobleness attending to the destitute.

Teach me to model after Your eminence,

To subject my human nature to humility.

Grant me a natural inclination

To never view myself greater than anyone.

Banish all lingering sparks of self-importance

That could elevate me greater than You.

Let my heart always imitate Your humility.

We ask this through your most holy name,

Lord Jesus Christ, King of all salvation.

Amen.

Here is a special gift!

http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/

And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him, 

“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

PRAYER OF THE WEEK

Act of Love

O My God, I love you above all things, with my whole heart, mind and soul, because you are all-good and worthy of all love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of you. I forgive all who have injured me, and ask pardon of all whom I have injured.

Amen.

COLLECT

Almighty and merciful God,

by whose gift your faithful offer you

right and praiseworthy service,

grant, we pray,

that we may hasten without stumbling

to receive the things you have promised.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity

of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

READING I

Dt 6:2-6

Moses spoke to the people, saying:

“Fear the LORD, your God,

and keep, throughout the days of your lives,

all his statutes and commandments which I enjoin on you,

and thus have long life.

Hear then, Israel, and be careful to observe them,

that you may grow and prosper the more,

in keeping with the promise of the LORD, the God of your fathers,

to give you a land flowing with milk and honey.

“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!

Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God,

with all your heart,

and with all your soul,

and with all your strength.

Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.”

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 201 To Israel, his chosen, God revealed himself as the only One: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”1 Through the prophets, God calls Israel and all nations to turn to him, the one and only God: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. .. To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. ‘Only in the LORD, it shall be said of me, are righteousness and strength.’”2

CCC 368 The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one’s being, where the person decides for or against God.3

CCC 459 The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”4 On the mountain of the Transfiguration, the Father commands: “Listen to him!”5 Jesus is the model for the Beatitudes and the norm of the new law: “Love one another as I have loved you.”6 This love implies an effective offering of oneself, after his example.7

CCC 708 This divine pedagogy appears especially in the gift of the Law.8 God gave the Law as a “pedagogue” to lead his people toward Christ.9 But the Law’s powerlessness to save man deprived of the divine “likeness,” along with the growing awareness of sin that it imparts,10 enkindles a desire for the Holy Spirit. The lamentations of the Psalms bear witness to this.

CCC 2055 When someone asks him, “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?”11 Jesus replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.”12 The Decalogue must be interpreted in light of this twofold yet single commandment of love, the fullness of the Law:

The commandments: “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.13

CCC 2083 Jesus summed up man’s duties toward God in this saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”14 This immediately echoes the solemn call: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD.”15

God has loved us first. The love of the One God is recalled in the first of the “ten words.” The commandments then make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God.

CCC 2093 Faith in God’s love encompasses the call and the obligation to respond with sincere love to divine charity. The first commandment enjoins us to love God above everything and all creatures for him and because of him.16

CCC 2196 In response to the question about the first of the commandments, Jesus says: “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall 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, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”17

The apostle St. Paul reminds us of this: “He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,‘ and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”18

1 Dt 6:45.

2 Is 45:22-24; cf. Phil 2:10-11.

3 Cf. Jer 31:33; Dt 6:5; 29:3; Is 29:13; Ezek 36:26; Mt 6:21; Lk 8:15; Rom 5:5.

4 Mt 11:29; Jn 14:6.

5 Mk 9:7; cf. Dt 6:4-5.

6 Jn 15:12.

7 Cf. Mk 8:34.

8 Cf. Ex 19-20; Deut 1-11; 29-30.

9 Gal 3:24.

10 Cf. Rom 3:20.

11 Mt 22:36.

12 Mt 22:37-40; cf. Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18.

13 Rom 13:9-10.

14 Mt 22:37; cf. Lk 10:27:“… and with all your strength.”

15 Deut 6:4.

16 Cf. Deut 6:4-5.

17 Mk 12:29-31; cf. Deut 6:4-5; Lev 19:18; Mt 22:34-40; Lk 10:25-28.

18 Rom 13:8-10.

APPLICATION

The relationship between God and man is a relationship of love. God is love and because he is love he created the universe and made man the master and masterpiece of that creation. Love, like heat, is self-diffusive, that is, its nature is to spread itself out. The spreading out of God’s love was creation; he made things and beings who could share his love with him. Chief among his created beings was man to whom he gave the capacity to appreciate love and to return it. Now, God could have given a limited portion of his love to men, that is, he could have let men, like the other creatures on earth, be content with whatever gifts of God’s love they could receive in this world. In other words, earthly death could have been their final end.

However, God’s love, being infinite, went far beyond this as regards men. In creating them, God gave them the faculties which place them away above all other earthly creatures. He made men capable of appreciating love and of reciprocating it–something the other creatures on earth cannot do. God saw that in the short space of this earthly life men could not satisfy the faculty for loving and being loved. He, therefore, planned for men a future life–a life wherein men could fully appreciate the immensity of divine love and return to the that fullness of love according to our own created capacity.

In the “fullness of time,” centuries and centuries after he had created man, God began to make preparations for putting his plan into action. By this time, men had more or less completely forgotten their divine Benefactor, but God had not forgotten them. He called Abraham out of the pagan land of Ur of the Chaldees, and made him a believer in the true God. He brought him over to Canaan–promising to give his descendants that country as their ‘ fatherland. God did so in order to have one people on earth who would know and reverence him, and from whom his divine Son would take his human nature. The incarnation was God’s loving way of making man fit and worthy to win the gift of the future life he had planned for him.

God took a special interest in the descendants of Abraham whom he made his own Chosen People. Having led them out of the slavery of Egypt he made a covenant or pact with them–through their leader Moses on Mount Sinai. God promised to bring them into the Promised Land of Canaan and establish them there; they on their part, were to keep the commandments he gave them. These commandments regulated their lives, their relationship with God and their neighbor. The basis of these relationships was a proper appreciation of all that God had done for them; this appreciation they would show and prove by their reciprocal love for him.

Unfortunately for themselves, the Chosen People did not always keep their part of this covenant of Sinai. Instead of loving God and thanking him for all his gifts to them, they became involved in worldly affairs and turned to the false gods of their pagan neighbors. The result: they were decimated by pagan conquerors and by exile. Notwithstanding their infidelity God was faithful to his promise. A remnant was saved and from that came eventually the human nature which the Son of God took on himself.

We may be shocked at the behavior of God’s Chosen People who were never really grateful for all he did for them, but how much more blameworthy are we Christians, when we forget to love and reverence him. What he did for Abraham’s descendants was but a shadow of what he has done for us. He made them his Chosen People–he has made us his adopted children. He gave them the land of Canaan–he has promised us heaven as our homeland. He gave them Moses to lead them out of the slavery of Egypt–he has given us his divine Son to lead us from the sin and slavery of this world to heaven. Moses, as leader of the stubborn Israelites, led a life of contradiction and troubles–Christ our Leader suffered the death of the cross for us.

We do owe so much more than the Chosen People to God; are we trying to repay that immense debt? Do we love God as we should?

RESPONSORIAL PSALM

Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51

I love you, Lord, my strength.

I love you, O LORD, my strength,

O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.

I love you, Lord, my strength.

My God, my rock of refuge,

my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!

Praised be the LORD, I exclaim,

and I am safe from my enemies.

I love you, Lord, my strength.

The LORD lives! And blessed be my rock!

Extolled be God my savior.

You who gave great victories to your king

and showed kindness to your anointed.

I love you, Lord, my strength.

READING II

Heb 7:23-28

Brothers and sisters:

The levitical priests were many

because they were prevented by death from remaining in office,

but Jesus, because he remains forever,

has a priesthood that does not pass away.

Therefore, he is always able to save those who approach God through him,

since he lives forever to make intercession for them.

It was fitting that we should have such a high priest:

holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners,

higher than the heavens.

He has no need, as did the high priests,

to offer sacrifice day after day,

first for his own sins and then for those of the people;

he did that once for all when he offered himself.

For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests,

but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law,

appoints a son,

who has been made perfect forever.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 519 All Christ’s riches “are for every individual and are everybody’s property.”1 Christ did not live his life for himself but for us, from his Incarnation “for us men and for our salvation” to his death “for our sins” and Resurrection “for our justification”.2 He is still “our advocate with the Father”, who “always lives to make intercession” for us.3 He remains ever “in the presence of God on our behalf, bringing before him all that he lived and suffered for us.”4

CCC 662 “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”5 The lifting up of Jesus on the cross signifies and announces his lifting up by his Ascension into heaven, and indeed begins it. Jesus Christ, the one priest of the new and eternal Covenant, “entered, not into a sanctuary made by human hands. .. but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”6 There Christ permanently exercises his priesthood, for he “always lives to make intercession” for “those who draw near to God through him”.7 As “high priest of the good things to come” he is the center and the principal actor of the liturgy that honors the Father in heaven.8

CCC 827 “Christ, ‘holy, innocent, and undefiled,’ knew nothing of sin, but came only to expiate the sins of the people. The Church, however, clasping sinners to her bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal.”9 All members of the Church, including her ministers, must acknowledge that they are sinners.10 In everyone, the weeds of sin will still be mixed with the good wheat of the Gospel until the end of time.11 Hence the Church gathers sinners already caught up in Christ’s salvation but still on the way to holiness:

The Church is therefore holy, though having sinners in her midst, because she herself has no other life but the life of grace. If they live her life, her members are sanctified; if they move away from her life, they fall into sins and disorders that prevent the radiation of her sanctity. This is why she suffers and does penance for those offenses, of which she has the power to free her children through the blood of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit.12

CCC 828 By canonizing some of the faithful, i.e., by solemnly proclaiming that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God’s grace, the Church recognizes the power of the Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as models and intercessors.13 “The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church’s history.”14 Indeed, “holiness is the hidden source and infallible measure of her apostolic activity and missionary zeal.”15

CCC 1085 In the liturgy of the Church, it is principally his own Paschal mystery that Christ signifies and makes present. During his earthly life Jesus announced his Paschal mystery by his teaching and anticipated it by his actions. When his Hour comes, he lives out the unique event of history which does not pass away: Jesus dies, is buried, rises from the dead, and is seated at the right hand of the Father “once for all.”16 His Paschal mystery is a real event that occurred in our history, but it is unique: all other historical events happen once, and then they pass away, swallowed up in the past. The Paschal mystery of Christ, by contrast, cannot remain only in the past, because by his death he destroyed death, and all that Christ is – all that he did and suffered for all men – participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all. The event of the Cross and Resurrection abides and draws everything toward life.

CCC 1364 In the New Testament, the memorial takes on new meaning. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ’s Passover, and it is made present the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present.17 “As often as the sacrifice of the Cross by which ‘Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed’ is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out.”18

CCC 1366 The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit:

[Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper “on the night when he was betrayed,” [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.19

CCC 1540 Instituted to proclaim the Word of God and to restore communion with God by sacrifices and prayer,20 this priesthood nevertheless remains powerless to bring about salvation, needing to repeat its sacrifices ceaselessly and being unable to achieve a definitive sanctification, which only the sacrifice of Christ would accomplish.21

CCC 1544 Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men.”22 The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique “high priest after the order of Melchizedek”;23 “holy, blameless, unstained,”24 “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,”25 that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross.

CCC 1564 “Whilst not having the supreme degree of the pontifical office, and notwithstanding the fact that they depend on the bishops in the exercise of their own proper power, the priests are for all that associated with them by reason of their sacerdotal dignity; and in virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, after the image of Christ, the supreme and eternal priest, they are consecrated in order to preach the Gospel and shepherd the faithful as well as to celebrate divine worship as true priests of the New Testament.”26

CCC 2634 Intercession is a prayer of petition which leads us to pray as Jesus did. He is the one intercessor with the Father on behalf of all men, especially sinners.27 He is “able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”28 The Holy Spirit “himself intercedes for us. .. and intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”29

CCC 2741 Jesus also prays for us – in our place and on our behalf. All our petitions were gathered up, once for all, in his cry on the Cross and, in his Resurrection, heard by the Father. This is why he never ceases to intercede for us with the Father.30 If our prayer is resolutely united with that of Jesus, in trust and boldness as children, we obtain all that we ask in his name, even more than any particular thing: the Holy Spirit himself, who contains all gifts.

1 John Paul II, RH II.

2 I Cor 15:3; Rom 4:25.

3 I Jn 2:1 Heb 7:25.

4 Heb 9:24.

5 Jn 12:32.

6 Heb 9:24.

7 Heb 7:25.

8 Heb 9:11; cf. Rev 4:6-11.

9 LG 8 § 3; Cf. UR 3; 6; Heb 2:17; 726; 2 Cor 5:21.

10 Cf. 1 Jn 1:8-10.

11 Cf. Mt 13:24-30.

12 Paul VI, CPG § 19.

13 Cf. LG 40; 48-51.

14 John Paul II, CL 16,3.

15 CL 17, 3.

16 Rom 6:10; Heb 7:27; 9:12; cf. Jn 13:1; 17:1.

17 Cf. Heb 7:25-27.

18 LG 3; cf. 1 Cor 5:7.

19 Council of Trent (1562): DS 1740; cf. 1 Cor 11:23; Heb 7:24, 27.

20 Cf. Mal 2:7-9.

21 Cf. Heb 5:3; 7:27; 101-4.

22 2 Tim 2:5.

23 Heb 5:10; cf. 6:20; Gen 14:18.

24 Heb 7:26.

25 Heb 10:14.

26 LG 28 cf. Heb 5:1-10; 7:24; 9:11-28; Innocent I, Epist. ad Decentium:PL 20,554A; St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2,22:PG 35,432B.

27 Cf. Rom 8:34; 1 Jn 2:1; 1 Tim 2:5-8.

28 Heb 7:25.

29 Rom 8:26-27.

30 Cf. Heb 5:7; 7:25; 9:24

APPLICATION

In today’s first reading we saw how privileged we are when compared with the Chosen People of the Old Testament. These six verses from Hebrews, which form our second reading today are given over to the same theme: our high priest, our mediator with God, is incomparably greater and more efficacious than any intermediaries they had, for he is none other than God’s own divine Son. But, lest we be tempted to see discrimination or acceptance of persons on the part of God, we must realize that God’s plan for man’s salvation was put into operation gradually–as he found men’s minds fit to receive his revelation.

The Israelites, whom God selected to be the recipients of his partial revelation in the Old Testament times, were evidently more worthy of this honor than any of their contemporaries. Yet, they were only a few steps removed from paganism and were ever in danger of reverting to it. However, God dealt with them mercifully and patiently. He quickly forgave their many lapses, and again and again he protected them from their pagan enemies during their twelve hundred years in Canaan. Even when the exile–which their disloyalty brought upon them–should have ended their history as a separate race forever, he brought back a “remnant” to Jerusalem and Judah from whom the promised Messiah took his human nature.

His revelation of himself to them, and of his great purpose for man, was partial and limited because they were not yet sufficiently developed in their religious outlook. They were given only a vague idea of life after death. The rewards promised for fidelity to him and to his commandments were temporal, earthly rewards. But running like a golden thread through the tapestry of their history, was the promise and, therefore, the hope of a great blessing to come through them for all mankind. The prophets gradually developed this promise and hope. By the time Christ came–as the fulfillment of that promise first made to Abraham–sharing in this blessing was much more important to the true, loyal chosen ones of God than were temporal rewards or blessings.

While thus preparing his Chosen People for the incarnation God was also preparing the pagan nations for the coming of Christ. The following were all preparations for the speedy spread of the gospel when Christ came: Alexander’s conquest of the known world toward the end of the 4th century B.C.–with the consequent spread of the Greek language; the rise of the Roman empire which strengthened the unity of its various subjects by sound laws and safe means of travel; the decline in almost all parts of the empire–the then known world–of the belief in the pagan gods. In these and in many other ways, God was patiently and wisely preparing the world for the astounding act of divine love toward mankind which was revealed in the incarnation.

We are Christians today because God wanted it so from all eternity. He worked quietly and efficiently down through the ages to make this possible. As regards our knowledge of God and the purpose he has for us, we are much better informed than were the Chosen People and the pagan nations of the past. But they will be judged according to their knowledge; their religious ignorance will excuse many a fault. We, on the other hand, will be expected to make a return to him in proportion to the many talents he has given us. Our excuses at the judgement seat will be very few and very flimsy. Our Judge will be the very Son of God who made himself our high priest, in order to open heaven for us and make our entrance there safe and relatively easy. He is ever present, pleading our case at the throne of mercy. The Christian who turns his back on Christ his advocate during life, will surely find it hard to face him as his judge when he comes to die.

GOSPEL

Mk 12:28b-34

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,

“Which is the first of all the commandments?”

Jesus replied, “The first is this:

Hear, O Israel!

The Lord our God is Lord alone!

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul,

with all your mind,

and with all your strength.

The second is this:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher.

You are right in saying,

‘He is One and there is no other than he.’

And ‘to love him with all your heart,

with all your understanding,

with all your strength,

and to love your neighbor as yourself’

is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding,

he said to him,

“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

And no one dared to ask him any more questions.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 129 Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen. Such typological reading discloses the inexhaustible content of the Old Testament; but it must not make us forget that the Old Testament retains its own intrinsic value as Revelation reaffirmed by our Lord himself.1 Besides, the New Testament has to be read in the light of the Old. Early Christian catechesis made constant use of the Old Testament.2 As an old saying put it, the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.3

CCC 202 Jesus himself affirms that God is “the one Lord” whom you must love “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength”.4 At the same time Jesus gives us to understand that he himself is “the Lord”.5 To confess that Jesus is Lord is distinctive of Christian faith. This is not contrary to belief in the One God. Nor does believing in the Holy Spirit as “Lord and giver of life” introduce any division into the One God:

We firmly believe and confess without reservation that there is only one true God, eternal infinite (immensus) and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; three persons indeed, but one essence, substance or nature entirely simple.6

CCC 575 Many of Jesus’ deeds and words constituted a “sign of contradiction”,7 but more so for the religious authorities in Jerusalem, whom the Gospel according to John often calls simply “the Jews”,8 than for the ordinary People of God.9 To be sure, Christ’s relations with the Pharisees were not exclusively polemical. Some Pharisees warn him of the danger he was courting;10 Jesus praises some of them, like the scribe of Mark 12:34, and dines several times at their homes.11 Jesus endorses some of the teachings imparted by this religious elite of God’s people: the resurrection of the dead,12 certain forms of piety (almsgiving, fasting and prayer),13 the custom of addressing God as Father, and the centrality of the commandment to love God and neighbor.14

CCC 2196 In response to the question about the first of the commandments, Jesus says: “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall 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, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”15

The apostle St. Paul reminds us of this: “He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,‘ and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”16

1 Cf. Mk 12:29-31

2 Cf. I Cor 5:6-8; 10:1-11.

3 Cf. St. Augustine, Quaest. in Hept. 2, 73: PL 34,623; Cf. DU 16.

4 Mk 12:29-30

5 Cf. Mk 12:35-37.

6 Lateran Council IV: DS 800.

7 Lk 2:34.

8 Cf. Jn 1:19; 2:18; 5:10; 7:13; 9:22; 18:12; 19:38; 20:19.

9 Jn 7:48-49.

10 Cf Lk 13:31.

11 Cf. Lk 7:36; 14:1.

12 Cf. Mt 22:23-34; Lk 20:39.

13 Cf. Mt 6:18.

14 Cf. Mk 12:28-34.

15 Mk 12:29-31; cf. Deut 6:4-5; Lev 19:18; Mt 22:34-40; Lk 10:25-28.

16 Rom 13:8-10.

APPLICATION

The personal lesson which comes over loud and clear for every sincere Christian from today’s gospel, is that the solid foundation of our Christian religion is love of God and neighbor. As our Lord says: “there is no other commandment greater than these.” All the other commandments are expansions of these two and indications of how we are to put these two commandments into daily practice. For example: why am I forbidden to murder my neighbor? Simply because he belongs to God; it was God who gave him his life, and God has commanded me to love and respect him. Taking his life is interfering with God’s rights, and disobeying him as well. Likewise, the prohibition of idolatry, refraining from insulting God’s name, keeping the Sabbath day holy are the principal ways of indicating how we should love God.

One may ask: how can I love God? He is infinitely perfect, he needs nothing from me, what therefore can I do for him? I can understand loving my neighbor–for a neighbor can need help, advice, encouragement and consolation. I can prove my love by giving these to my neighbor, but God has no such needs. It is quite true that true love is not theoretical but pragmatic, it means doing some good for somebody. While the infinite God has no needs that I can supply, he has claims on my service, on my respect, on my gratitude–claims so basic and so great that I must be ready to suffer persecution and even death rather than deny or dishonor him (Mt. 5: 10; Lk. 6: 23). It was God who gave me existence and every gift that I have. It was God, through the incarnation of his own divine Son, who made me his adopted child and heir to heaven. Everything that I am and have and hope to be, I owe to God’s generosity; therefore, he has an unquestionable right to my gratitude, my reverence, my respect–these are the ways in which I can show my love for him.

The keeping of God’s commandments, the prayers of thanksgiving, praise and petition which daily we offer, the attendance at Mass and other liturgical functions, these are the means God gives us of showing our love, our recognition of total dependence on him and our gratitude for all he has done and is doing for us. God does not need any of these signs of our submission and reverence and respect, but we need them absolutely, for they are the means he has given us of fulfilling his purpose in creating us—to share his eternal glory with him. To love God then, is not an obligation imposed on us by some demanding superior but a privilege granted us so that we can become worthy of the greater gifts he has in store for us.

Loving our neighbor–and in the Christian code this means all men no matter what may be their color, race or religion–is, according to our divine Lord, another most effective way of proving to God that we love him. Because of our common humanity we should be inclined to help our fellow-men, our neighbors, but the Christian law spiritualizes this natural inclination, by commanding us to help our neighbor because he is God’s child. We are all fellow-children of God, members of the one family. Our heavenly Father loves each one of us and wants our salvation. If we love our common Father we will do all we can to help his other children also to attain salvation. It will earn for us God’s favor.

If we observe these two commandments we are “fulfilling the whole law and the prophets,”; we are serving God and showing our gratitude to him for all his goodness to us. The Christian who is following Christ in love is already active in the earthly kingdom of God and traveling safely toward God’s eternal kingdom of peace and happiness.”

Applications written by Fr. Kevin O’Sullivan O.F.M. and used with permission of Franciscan Press,

BENEDICTUS

How Love is Possible

Love of neighbor is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I can offer them not only through the organizations intended for such purposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave… If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be “devout” and to perform my “religious duties,” then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely “proper,” but loveless. Only my readiness to encounter my neighbor and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbor can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

CLOSING PRAYER

Thank You God!

Dear Loving and Compassionate God, Giver of all gifts, we pray especially today for the mercy and love You give us. Open our hearts and minds to You. Give us the grace to accept your mercy. As we live each day, we pray for those less fortunate, especially those who are hurting, and whose wounds need to be healed. Help us become involved in ways that show them how deeply we care. Give us the personal courage to listen to their concerns and help them find the solutions to which they are entitled as Your children and our brothers and sisters. We ask this and all our prayers through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

 

“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”

PRAYER OF THE WEEK

Prayer to Discover and Follow my Vocation

My Lord and my God, you are Love itself, and the source of all love and goodness. Out of love you created me to know you, love you, and serve you in a unique way, as no one else can. I believe that you have a plan for my life, that you have a task in your Kingdom reserved just for me. Your plan and your task are far better than any other I might choose: they will glorify you, fulfill the desires of my heart, and save those souls who are depending on my generous response.

Lord, grant me the light I need to see the next step in that plan; grant me the generosity I need to set aside my own plans in favor of yours; and grant me the strength I need to put my hands to your plough and never turn back. You know me better than I know myself, so you know that I am sinful and weak. All the more reason that I need your grace to uphold the good desires of my heart, O Lord!

Show me your will for me, O gentle and eternal God, and help me to say with Mary, “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word,” and to say with Jesus, “Let not my will be done, but yours.”  Amen.

http://catholic.net/index.php?option=dedestaca&id=3357&grupo=Lifestyle&canal=Vocation

COLLECT

Almighty ever-living God,

increase our faith, hope and charity,

and make us love what you command,

so that we may merit what you promise.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity

of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

READING I

Jer 31:7-9

Thus says the LORD:

Shout with joy for Jacob,

exult at the head of the nations;

proclaim your praise and say:

The LORD has delivered his people,

the remnant of Israel.

Behold, I will bring them back

from the land of the north;

I will gather them from the ends of the world,

with the blind and the lame in their midst,

the mothers and those with child;

they shall return as an immense throng.

They departed in tears,

but I will console them and guide them;

I will lead them to brooks of water,

on a level road, so that none shall stumble.

For I am a father to Israel,

Ephraim is my first-born.

APPLICATION

While granting that the prophet uses some hyperbole in his description of the return of the “remnant” of Israel, as he also does in describing the return of Judah in the following chapters, the fact that God did forgive and bring back such unworthy children is proof beyond compare of his infinite mercy and love. His Chosen People in both the northern and southern kingdom (Israel and Judah) had insulted and betrayed him for centuries, before he allowed the pagan nations they imitated to take them into captivity. They were the very people to whom he had been a kind father for centuries. He had brought them out of Egypt, set them up in Canaan–a country he gave them to be their own, had protected them again and again from aggressive enemies, yet these ungrateful ones forgot all this and abandoned the living God for idols of wood and stone. For generations he tolerated their apostasy; he sent his prophets to recall them to their senses, but in vain; finally, as a last resort, he allowed both kingdoms to be overrun by pagan powers who took his people as slaves into exile.

Although his Chosen People had abandoned him, he did not abandon them. He watched over them in exile and when he found that their exile had wrought a change of heart in some of his rebellious children, he brought them back to their homeland where once more they could be his elected ones. There in the Promised Land of Canaan they remained until the time was ripe for the sending of his divine Son on earth–in the human nature which he was to take from these same Chosen People, as he had promised to Abraham and his descendants.

This prophecy of Jeremiah, then, foretelling the return of a remnant of the Chosen People from exile is not merely a bit of Bible history which we should learn, it is a reminder to us Christians that God was thinking of us and preparing the way for our salvation centuries before Christ came on earth. According to God’s long-standing promise: the Messiah would be a descendant of Abraham, a son of David; he would be born in Bethlehem. But if some of the Chosen People had not been brought back from exile this could not have happened. Thus this return of the exiles, foretold by Jeremiah and later effected by God, was his preparation for the sending of Christ among us to be our Savior.

The first lesson we must learn from this bit of Bible history is, that God was planning for us and thinking of us from all eternity. We are not mere blobs of humanity groping our way in the dark on earth; we are individual human beings, very important in the eyes of God; individuals for whom he has planned a happiness, and he has been planning it from all eternity. The eighteen centuries of God’s dealings with his Chosen People, as described in the Old Testament, are but a short chapter of the history of God’s planning for our eternal happiness. However, it is a short chapter from which we can learn so much of his loving concern for us. If God has thought and planned for so long for our eternal happiness, surely we should be self-interested enough to make this, our eternal happiness, the governing thought of our short lives.

We, Christians, can surely “sing with gladness” today, as the prophet tells us, for the merciful and loving God has saved us. He has put us on the straight path to heaven, on a path made smooth and easy by the life, death and resurrection of his beloved Son whom he sent to lead us back to our merciful Father.

There is a second lesson for all of us in this prophecy of Jeremiah. It is: God’s mercy is without limit and he is ready to bestow it on us at the first sign we give him that we need it. Most of us have offended God and perhaps deserted him for long periods. Like the Chosen People, we did not appreciate all he had done and was doing for us. We were unfaithful to him and went after worldly idols perhaps, getting ourselves swamped in worldly ambitions and pleasures. But we are dealing with the same God of infinite mercy and forgiveness who brought back the unworthy Chosen People from the exile that their sins had brought on them. Can we have any doubt that he will bring us, too, back from that self-induced exile which our sins imposed on us? He is waiting for our word of petition, our humble request for forgiveness to take us back to his fatherly bosom. In fact, he is sending out his fatherly appeals to us to return to the path of virtue. He is sending them in many ways and guises, telling us that he is still our Father–that we are his first-born. Today’s reading is one of these loving calls. There may be other calls for us but there may not; let us not ignore this one–our eternal future depends on our response.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM

 Ps 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6
The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion,

we were like men dreaming.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter,

and our tongue with rejoicing.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

Then they said among the nations,

“The LORD has done great things for them.”

The LORD has done great things for us;

we are glad indeed.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

Restore our fortunes, O LORD,

like the torrents in the southern desert.

Those that sow in tears

shall reap rejoicing.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

Although they go forth weeping,

carrying the seed to be sown,

They shall come back rejoicing,

carrying their sheaves.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

READING II

Heb 5:1-6

Brothers and sisters:

Every high priest is taken from among men

and made their representative before God,

to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.

He is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring,

for he himself is beset by weakness

and so, for this reason, must make sin offerings for himself

as well as for the people.

No one takes this honor upon himself

but only when called by God,

just as Aaron was.

In the same way,

it was not Christ who glorified himself in becoming high priest,

but rather the one who said to him:

You are my son:

this day I have begotten you;

just as he says in another place:

You are a priest forever

according to the order of Melchizedek.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 784 On entering the People of God through faith and Baptism, one receives a share in this people’s unique, priestly vocation: “Christ the Lord, high priest taken from among men, has made this new people ‘a kingdom of priests to God, his Father.’ The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated to be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood.”1

CCC 1537 The word order in Roman antiquity designated an established civil body, especially a governing body. Ordinatio means incorporation into an ordo. In the Church there are established bodies which Tradition, not without a basis in Sacred Scripture,2 has since ancient times called taxeis (Greek) or ordines. And so the liturgy speaks of the ordo episcoporum, the ordo presbyterorum, the ordo diaconorum. Other groups also receive this name of ordo: catechumens, virgins, spouses, widows,…

CCC 1539 The chosen people was constituted by God as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”3 But within the people of Israel, God chose one of the twelve tribes, that of Levi, and set it apart for liturgical service; God himself is its inheritance.4 A special rite consecrated the beginnings of the priesthood of the Old Covenant. The priests are “appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.”5

CCC 1540 Instituted to proclaim the Word of God and to restore communion with God by sacrifices and prayer,6 this priesthood nevertheless remains powerless to bring about salvation, needing to repeat its sacrifices ceaselessly and being unable to achieve a definitive sanctification, which only the sacrifice of Christ would accomplish.7

CCC 1564 “Whilst not having the supreme degree of the pontifical office, and notwithstanding the fact that they depend on the bishops in the exercise of their own proper power, the priests are for all that associated with them by reason of their sacerdotal dignity; and in virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, after the image of Christ, the supreme and eternal priest, they are consecrated in order to preach the Gospel and shepherd the faithful as well as to celebrate divine worship as true priests of the New Testament.”8

CCC 1578 No one has a right to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. Indeed no one claims this office for himself; he is called to it by God.9 Anyone who thinks he recognizes the signs of God’s call to the ordained ministry must humbly submit his desire to the authority of the Church, who has the responsibility and right to call someone to receive orders. Like every grace this sacrament can be received only as an unmerited gift.

1 LG 10; Cf. Heb 5:1-5; Rev 1:6.

2 Cf. Heb 5:6; 7:11; Ps 110:4.

3 Ex 19:6; cf. Isa 61:6.

4 Cf. Num 1:48-53; Josh 13:33.

5 Heb 5:1; cf. Ex 29:1-30; Lev 8.

6 Cf. Mal 2:7-9.

7 Cf. Heb 5:3; 7:27; 101-4.

8 LG 28 cf. Heb 5:1-10; 7:24; 9:11-28; Innocent I, Epist. ad Decentium:PL 20,554A; St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2,22:PG 35,432B.

9 Cf. Heb 5:4.

APPLICATION

Through the incarnation of his divine Son, God has given us a High Priest who offered, once and for all, his own body on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. He entered the real holy of holies on our great day of atonement and will remain there as our intermediary with the Father until the last man has been saved. It is of this basic truth of our Christian faith that the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us today. As the author was writing to Judaeo-Christians, who knew the Jewish cultic regulations of the temple in Jerusalem, he uses terms connected with the temple cult to bring home to his readers the full meaning that the death and glorification of Christ have for them.

It was God himself who appointed Aaron, Moses’ mouthpiece, to be the first high priest to have charge of the services of the Tent of the Meeting, when the Israelites fled from Egypt. His eldest son was to succeed him as high priest, and his other sons were also priests. This was to continue down through the ages. The high priest was the intermediary between the Chosen People and God. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, he offered the sacrifice which made atonement for all the sins of the people. The high priest, therefore, had a very special place–the most important religious position–in the Jewish community. The Jewish converts to Christianity would understand very well what the author of this epistle meant when he called Christ our High Priest, appointed by God to make atonement for all the sins of the world. They already knew how this atonement was made. They knew who this high priest was–the Son of God who took human nature in which he could make this sacrifice which was of infinite value, and surpassed all the sacrifices offered by all the high priests of Jewish history. They knew that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was for all men–not for the Jews alone, but for each and every member of the human race for all time.

We, Christians of the 20th century, know all of this as did the Christians of the seventies of the 1st century. We know God has planned from all eternity to give us a place in heaven when we die. We know the humiliations and sufferings his divine Son endured so that we could be made worthy of this honor, and therefore we should know how important it is that we do the little expected of us in order to fulfill God’s plan for us. Yet, there are many Christians today who are so entangled in the passing things of this world that they have no time or inclination to look to their eternal future. They live and act in this world as if it were to be their eternal world, and have no thought or time to prepare themselves for the future home which God has planned for them.

There will be a rude awakening when they are called to judgment. When they realize what they have lost, and when they look back on the follies and foibles on which they spent their days on earth, how they will despise themselves! Today, out of true Christian charity, let us pray that such deluded Christians will be very few in number.

GOSPEL

Mk 10:46 52

As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd,

Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus,

sat by the roadside begging.

On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth,

he began to cry out and say,

“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”

And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent.

But he kept calling out all the more,

“Son of David, have pity on me.”

Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”

So they called the blind man, saying to him,

“Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”

He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.

Jesus said to him in reply, “What do you want me to do for you?”

The blind man replied to him, “Master, I want to see.”

Jesus told him, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.”

Immediately he received his sight

and followed him on the way.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 548 The signs worked by Jesus attest that the Father has sent him. They invite belief in him.1 To those who turn to him in faith, he grants what they ask.2 So miracles strengthen faith in the One who does his Father’s works; they bear witness that he is the Son of God.3 But his miracles can also be occasions for “offence”;4 they are not intended to satisfy people’s curiosity or desire for magic Despite his evident miracles some people reject Jesus; he is even accused of acting by the power of demons.5

CCC 2616 Prayer to Jesus is answered by him already during his ministry, through signs that anticipate the power of his death and Resurrection: Jesus hears the prayer of faith, expressed in words (the leper, Jairus, the Canaanite woman, the good thief)6 or in silence (the bearers of the paralytic, the woman with a hemorrhage who touches his clothes, the tears and ointment of the sinful woman).7 The urgent request of the blind men, “Have mercy on us, Son of David” or “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” has-been renewed in the traditional prayer to Jesus known as the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”8 Healing infirmities or forgiving sins, Jesus always responds to a prayer offered in faith: “Your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

St. Augustine wonderfully summarizes the three dimensions of Jesus’ prayer: “He prays for us as our priest, prays in us as our Head, and is prayed to by us as our God. Therefore let us acknowledge our voice in him and his in us.”9

CCC 2667 This simple invocation of faith developed in the tradition of prayer under many forms in East and West. The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners.” It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light.10 By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior’s mercy.

1 cf. Jn 5:36; 10:25, 38.

2 Cf. Mk 5:25-34; 10:52; etc.

3 Cf. Jn 10:31-38.

4 Mt 11:6.

5 Cf. Jn 11:47-48; Mk 3:22.

6 Cf. Mk 1:40-41; 5:36; 7:29; Cf. Lk 23:39-43.

7 Cf. Mk 25; 5:28; Lk 7:37-38.

8 Mt 9:27, Mk 10:48.

9 St. Augustine, En. in Ps. 85, 1: PL 37, 1081; cf. GILH 7.

10 Cf. Mk 10:46-52; Lk 18:13.

APPLICATION

This blind man of Jericho was one of the very lucky men in the gospel story. He got the last chance of appealing in person to Jesus for the gift of his eyesight. He used that chance in spite of opposition, his faith and trust in Jesus were so strong that nobody could stop him from expressing them. He made his request while proclaiming his faith. He got, not only what he asked–the physical gift, but a spiritual insight was added as well and he became a faithful follower of Christ.

Our Lord had passed through Jericho a few times during his public ministry. Jericho was on the route from Galilee to Jerusalem. Bartimaeus was very probably sitting on the roadside begging for alms on these occasions also, but influenced by the lack of interest of his fellow-citizens he, too, had no time for all this talk about a Messiah and a miracle-worker. In any case, it was only on the occasion of Christ’s last journey through Jericho that his faith moved him to appeal aloud for help from the one and only person whom he was convinced could grant him his request. His appeal was heard.

There is a deep spiritual lesson for all of us in today’s gospel story. Like Bartimaeus, many of us have been sitting by the roadside for years, not moving a foot toward our eternal destination. We have been blind to our true interests; our sole preoccupation seems to be to collect the paltry alms that this world would deign to drop in our laps. But we are even more to be pitied than Bartimaeus–he knew that he was blind; we are not aware of our spiritual blindness–we think everything in the garden is rosy and colorful when we see only the colors we want to see and are blind to the things that really matter.

We said above that it is probable that Bartimaeus ignored the passing-by of Jesus on earlier occasions; it is certain that in, our case we have ignored the presence of Jesus in the many reminders he has sent us up to now. That parish retreat we did not attend; that sudden death of a close friend; that illness of a near relative; that car accident from which we miraculously escaped; these and many other incidents are examples of the many times our loving Lord passed close to us–ready to cure our spiritual blindness; but we did not see him.

It is possible that our Lord saw Bartimaeus sitting by the roadside on his earlier journeys through Jericho. Perhaps he could not help him, for the blind man was engaged in collecting alms with no thought for the greater gift–the return of his eyesight. It is certain that our Lord has often been near to us, anxious to give us back our spiritual vision. But like Bartimaeus, we were so busy gathering up this world’s paltry donations that we did not even think of the far greater grace we needed.

In the twenty centuries of our Christian history there have been some who have deliberately shut the eyes of their minds to the many calls to repentance which Jesus sent. This is a danger and a fatal mistake we can all avoid if we learn today’s gospel message. This story of the blind man of Jericho was not inspired and preserved for some literary reason, but as an instruction for us. It is read to us today, to make us examine our consciences and see the true state of our spiritual standing in the eyes of God. Are we steadily moving on toward heaven, carrying out daily duties to God and to our neighbor, bearing life’s crosses cheerfully–knowing that they come to us from a loving Father as part of our training for heaven? Or are we sitting idly by the roadside, engrossed and enmeshed in the affairs of this world, oblivious of our real purpose in life and turning deaf ears and blind eyes to all the danger signals that Christ our Savior regularly is sending out to us?

For some among us today this may be Christ’s last call. Will we be so utterly disinterested in our own eternal welfare as to ignore it? For all of us it is a call to put our house in order. We may not have been sitting by the roadside, but have we been keeping faithfully to the road to heaven–marked out for us by our Christian faith? Let us all call on Jesus, son of David and Son of God today, to give us the grace to see ourselves as we are–and then to see ourselves as, we ought to be. “Master, let me receive my sight.”

Applications written by Fr. Kevin O’Sullivan O.F.M. and used with permission of Franciscan Press

BENEDICTUS

We are Meant to Rely on Receiving

Man is redeemed by the cross; the crucified Christ, as the completely opened being, as the true redemption of man – this is the central principle of Christian faith…  in the last analysis of man, it expresses the primacy of acceptance over action, over ones own achievement…  Accordingly, from the point of view of the Christian faith, man comes in the profoundest sense to himself not through what he does but through what he accepts.  He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift.  It cannot be “made” on one’s own, without anyone else; one must wait for it, let it be given to one.  And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved.  That love represents simultaneously both man’s highest possibility and his deepest need, and that this most necessary thing is at the same time the freest and the most unenforceable means precisely that for his “salvation” man is meant to rely on receiving.  If he declines to let himself be presented with the gift, then he destroys himself.  Activity that makes itself into an absolute, that aims at achieving humanity by its own efforts alone, is in contradiction with man’s being…  The primacy of acceptance is not intended to condemn man to passivity; it does not mean that man can now sit idle.  On the contrary, it alone makes it possible to do the things of this world in a spirit of responsibility, yet at the same time in an uncramped, cheerful, free way, and to put at them at the service of redemptive love.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

CLOSING PRAYER

For Healing

Lord, You invite all who are burdened to come to You.

Allow your healing hand to heal me.

Touch my soul with Your compassion for others.

Touch my heart with Your courage and infinite love for all.

Touch my mind with Your wisdom, that my mouth may always proclaim Your praise. Teach me to reach out to You in my need, and help me to lead others to You by my example.

Most loving Heart of Jesus, bring me health in body and spirit that I may serve You with all my strength.

Touch gently this life which You have created, now and forever. Amen.

http://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=75

 

“Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;

whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.”

PRAYER OF THE WEEK

Supplication of Christ in Agony (Ps 143: 1-10)

Hear my prayer, O God, give ear to my supplications! In your faithfulness answer me,in your righteousness! Enter not into judgment with your servant for no one living is righteous before you.

For the enemy has pursued me, has crushed my life to the ground, and has made me sit in darkness like those long dead. Therefore my spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled. I remember the days of old, I meditate on all that you have done; I muse on what your hands have wrought, I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.

Make haste to answer me, O God, My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the Pit, Let me hear in the mourning of your steadfast love, for in you I put my trust.

Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Deliver me, O God, from my enemies.

I have fled to you for refuge.

Teach me to do your will for you are my God!

Let your good spirit lead me on a level path!

Glory be to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end.

Amen.

COLLECT

Almighty ever-living God,

grant that we may always conform our will to yours

and serve your majesty in sincerity of heart.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity

of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

READING I

 

Is 53:10-11

The LORD was pleased

to crush him in infirmity.

If he gives his life as an offering for sin,

he shall see his descendants in a long life,

and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.

Because of his affliction

he shall see the light in fullness of days;

through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,

and their guilt he shall bear.

APPLICATION

The lesson to be learned from these two verses of second-Isaiah (it would be well to read the entire prophecy, or Fourth Servant Oracle as it is called, in Is. 52: 13-53 : 12), is that God in his extraordinary, infinite love for us men and for our salvation, decreed that his divine Son in his assumed human nature, should suffer torture and death so that we might live eternally. The leaders of the Jews plotted his death, and forced the Roman authorities to condemn him to the shameful death of crucifixion, but this was all in God’s plan for us before he created the world. Christ, the Son of God, knew this all along; he tried to prepare his disciples for the shock his death and sufferings would cause them by foretelling on three distinct occasions, that he would suffer and be put to death, but that he would triumph over death and rise again (see Mk. 8: 31-33; 9: 30-32; 10: 32-34). In the garden of Gethsemane, as his hour drew near, he suffered agony because his human nature shrank from the tortures which he vividly foresaw; nevertheless he accepted what his Father had planned and humbly and submissively said: “yet not what I will but what thou wilt ” (Mk. 14: 36).

That Christ our Lord was the suffering obedient Servant foretold by the prophet is evident from the gospel story. He was “rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering . . . yet ours were the sufferings he bore, our sorrows he carried . . . he was crushed for our sins . . . We had all gone astray like sheep . . . Yahweh burdened him with the sins of us all . . . like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers, never opening his mouth” (Is. 53: 3-7). This prophecy had its literal fulfillment in Christ. This is testified by all four gospels. It is not so much the fact that one might be tempted to question, but rather the reason, the necessity, why it had to be thus. Could not God have found other ways of bringing men to heaven without subjecting his divine Son to humiliations and sufferings?

God alone has the full and satisfying answer to this question, and part of our joy in heaven will be to learn the answers to this and to other theological questions which trouble us on earth. Both the Old and New Testaments indicate at least a partial answer to this particular question: when they tell us this was an effect of God’s infinite love for us. We, of course, can form no adequate idea of what infinite love is and does. But even finite love, if true and meaningful, can and does go to great extremes for the sake of those loved. For instance, true patriots in all ages have never hesitated to sacrifice their lives for their country and their fellow countrymen. Their finite love was sufficient to move them to make the supreme sacrifice. God was not dealing with the preservation of a country’s freedom or its liberation from an oppressor, he was dealing with the eternal freedom and happiness of the whole human race. The task was great, the end desired was of everlasting value, the life sacrificed was God’s own Son in his human nature–but the love of God which his Son shared with him, was infinite and therefore capable of any sacrifice.

Furthermore, if we knew our own weak, lazy, human nature as well as God knows it, we would see another reason for the extraordinary manifestation of his love. The cross of Christ, the scourging at the pillar, the crowning with thorns, the cruel nails through the hands and feet, are reminders that will touch a chord even in the coldest Christian heart. With these reminders of God’s love for us many of us are still all too slow to show our appreciation of all God has done for us. How much less responsive, how much less appreciative of what eternal life is worth, would such Christians be, if God had opened heaven for them in a less impressive way?

Our Savior took human nature–an act of extreme humiliation, in order to make us his brothers and therefore sons of God. He came into a world of sin where God the Creator was practically forgotten. He told those who “had ears to hear,” of God and of his desire to give unending life in his own eternal kingdom, to all who would follow the Christian precepts. He established a society–the Church–on earth which would continue until the end of time to proclaim God’s mercy and love. He was tortured and put to the cruelest of deaths because of the opposition and hatred of some of the Jews among whom he lived. But as God, and with God his Father, he foresaw all this and in the full knowledge that he would rise again, willingly accepted it notwithstanding the agonies it would cause him. While the resurrection made his life and death a success and an eternal triumph it did not make the pains of his passion any easier.

We may not understand what infinite love is, but we cannot fail to see the glorious effects that the infinite love of God has earned for us. We are citizens of heaven. We must expect to meet some obstacles on the way–there will be troubles and trials in our lives, but one look at our crucifix should make us realize how little we are asked to suffer for our own salvation when compared with what Christ has suffered to make salvation possible.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 64 Through the prophets, God forms his people in the hope of salvation, in the expectation of a new and everlasting Covenant intended for all, to be written on their hearts.1 The prophets proclaim a radical redemption of the People of God, purification from all their infidelities, a salvation which will include all the nations.2 Above all, the poor and humble of the Lord will bear this hope. Such holy women as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Judith and Esther kept alive the hope of Israel’s salvation. The purest figure among them is Mary.3

CCC 440 Jesus accepted Peter’s profession of faith, which acknowledged him to be the Messiah, by announcing the imminent Passion of the Son of Man.4 He unveiled the authentic content of his messianic kingship both in the transcendent identity of the Son of Man “who came down from heaven”, and in his redemptive mission as the suffering Servant: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”5 Hence the true meaning of his kingship is revealed only when he is raised high on the cross.6 Only after his Resurrection will Peter be able to proclaim Jesus’ messianic kingship to the People of God: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”7

CCC 579 This principle of integral observance of the Law not only in letter but in spirit was dear to the Pharisees. By giving Israel this principle they had led many Jews of Jesus’ time to an extreme religious zeal.8 This zeal, were it not to lapse into “hypocritical” casuistry,9 could only prepare the People for the unprecedented intervention of God through the perfect fulfillment of the Law by the only Righteous One in place of all sinners.10

CCC 601 The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of “the righteous one, my Servant” as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin.11 Citing a confession of faith that he himself had “received”, St. Paul professes that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.”12 In particular Jesus’ redemptive death fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering Servant.13 Indeed Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God’s suffering Servant.14 After his Resurrection he gave this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples at Emmaus, and then to the apostles.15

CCC 615 “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.”16 By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who “makes himself an offering for sin”, when “he bore the sin of many”, and who “shall make many to be accounted righteous”, for “he shall bear their iniquities”.17 Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.18

CCC 1502 The man of the Old Testament lives his sickness in the presence of God. It is before God that he laments his illness, and it is of God, Master of life and death, that he implores healing.19 Illness becomes a way to conversion; God’s forgiveness initiates the healing.20 It is the experience of Israel that illness is mysteriously linked to sin and evil, and that faithfulness to God according to his law restores life: “For I am the Lord, your healer.”21 The prophet intuits that suffering can also have a redemptive meaning for the sins of others.22 Finally Isaiah announces that God will usher in a time for Zion when he will pardon every offense and heal every illness.23

1 Cf. Isa 2:2-4; Jer 31:31-34; Heb 10:16.

2 Cf. Ezek 36; Isa 49:5-6; 53:11.

3 Cf. Ezek 2:3; Lk 1:38.

4 Cf. Mt 16:16-23.

5 Jn 3:13; Mt 20:28; cf. Jn 6:62; Dan 7:13; Is 53:10-12.

6 Cf. Jn 19:19-22; Lk 23:39-43.

7 Acts 2:36.

8 Cf. Rom 10:2.

9 Cf. Mt 15:31; Lk 11:39-54.

10 Cf Is 53:11; Heb 9:15.

11 Is 53:11; cf. 53:12; Jn 8 34-36; Acts 3:14.

12 1 Cor 15:3; cf. also Acts 3:18; 7:52; 13:29; 26:22-23.

13 Cf. Is 53:7-8 and Acts 8:32-35.

14 Cf. Mt 20:28.

15 Cf. Lk 24:25-27, 44-45.

16 Rom 5:19.

17 Is 53:10-12.

18 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1529.

19 Cf. Pss 6:3; 38; Isa 38.

20 Cf. Pss 32:5; 38:5; 39:9, 12; 107:20; cf. Mk 2:5-12.

21 Ex 15:26.

22 Cf. Isa 53:11.

23 Cf. Isa 33:24.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM

Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22

Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.

Upright is the word of the LORD,

and all his works are trustworthy.

He loves justice and right;

of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.

Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.

See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,

upon those who hope for his kindness,

To deliver them from death

and preserve them in spite of famine.

Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.

Our soul waits for the LORD,

who is our help and our shield.

May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us

who have put our hope in you.

Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.

READING II

Heb 4:14-16

Brothers and sisters:

Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,

Jesus, the Son of God,

let us hold fast to our confession.

For we do not have a high priest

who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,

but one who has similarly been tested in every way,

yet without sin.

So let us confidently approach the throne of grace

to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.

APPLICATION

We Christians are God’s chosen people of today. Compared with his Chosen People of the Old Testament, we have infinitely greater blessings and advantages. They knew of the existence of the one true and only God, the Creator of all things, and they knew he was interested in them. Although they knew that he existed they knew very little else about him, and their chief interest in him was to obtain from him all earthly blessings: health, wealth and progeny. They had only a very hazy idea of the future life or what it held for them, yet they did know they were chosen by God so that through them God would send a great blessing on all nations; somehow, sometime they would have a share in that blessing.

We Christians are indeed fortunate that we know much more about God and our real purpose in life. Through the incarnation we have learned that God loves us so much that he sent his divine Son to live among us in order to make us heirs to heaven. That divine Son of God suffered and died in his human nature in order to make perfect atonement to his Father in our behalf. This, surely, was divine love for us creatures. Not only did God make us heirs to his eternal kingdom through the incarnation, but he gave us his own divine Son to be our leader and intermediary between himself and us.

Unlike the Jews of old we know clearly what our real purpose in life is. It is not to be found on this earth, it is the eternal happiness that awaits us after death. Life on earth is but a preparation for the real life to come. This knowledge coupled with the assurance that Christ our brother is pleading for us at the throne of grace, should fill every Christian with courage and hope. Christ knows our weaknesses and should we give in to them and the temptations of life, he is ready to obtain from our Father in heaven pardon the moment we repent of our fall.

We are fortunate to have such a loving and all-powerful high priest who has entered heaven before us and is preparing a place for us. No true Christian can ever despair. God has proved how much he loves us, and how anxious he is to share his heaven with us. Christ, the Son of God, endured the humiliation of the incarnation and the sufferings and pains of his life on earth, and his cruel death on the cross, because he gladly cooperated with the Father in making us heirs of heaven.

With such an intermediary and helper how can we fail to reach our goal? With God and his divine Son on our side, who is against us?

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 784 On entering the People of God through faith and Baptism, one receives a share in this people’s unique, priestly vocation: “Christ the Lord, high priest taken from among men, has made this new people ‘a kingdom of priests to God, his Father.’ The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated to be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood.”1

CCC 1537 The word order in Roman antiquity designated an established civil body, especially a governing body. Ordinatio means incorporation into an ordo. In the Church there are established bodies which Tradition, not without a basis in Sacred Scripture,2 has since ancient times called taxeis (Greek) or ordines. And so the liturgy speaks of the ordo episcoporum, the ordo presbyterorum, the ordo diaconorum. Other groups also receive this name of ordo: catechumens, virgins, spouses, widows,…

CCC 1539 The chosen people was constituted by God as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”3 But within the people of Israel, God chose one of the twelve tribes, that of Levi, and set it apart for liturgical service; God himself is its inheritance.4 A special rite consecrated the beginnings of the priesthood of the Old Covenant. The priests are “appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.”5

CCC 1540 Instituted to proclaim the Word of God and to restore communion with God by sacrifices and prayer,6 this priesthood nevertheless remains powerless to bring about salvation, needing to repeat its sacrifices ceaselessly and being unable to achieve a definitive sanctification, which only the sacrifice of Christ would accomplish.7

CCC 1564 “Whilst not having the supreme degree of the pontifical office, and notwithstanding the fact that they depend on the bishops in the exercise of their own proper power, the priests are for all that associated with them by reason of their sacerdotal dignity; and in virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, after the image of Christ, the supreme and eternal priest, they are consecrated in order to preach the Gospel and shepherd the faithful as well as to celebrate divine worship as true priests of the New Testament.”8

CCC 1578 No one has a right to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. Indeed no one claims this office for himself; he is called to it by God.9 Anyone who thinks he recognizes the signs of God’s call to the ordained ministry must humbly submit his desire to the authority of the Church, who has the responsibility and right to call someone to receive orders. Like every grace this sacrament can be received only as an unmerited gift.

1 LG 10; Cf. Heb 5:1-5; Rev 1:6.

2 Cf. Heb 5:6; 7:11; Ps 110:4.

3 Ex 19:6; cf. Isa 61:6.

4 Cf. Num 1:48-53; Josh 13:33.

5 Heb 5:1; cf. Ex 29:1-30; Lev 8.

6 Cf. Mal 2:7-9.

7 Cf. Heb 5:3; 7:27; 101-4.

8 LG 28 cf. Heb 5:1-10; 7:24; 9:11-28; Innocent I, Epist. ad Decentium:PL 20,554A; St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2,22:PG 35,432B.

9 Cf. Heb 5:4.

GOSPEL

Mk 10:35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him,

“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”

He replied, “What do you wish me to do for you?”

They answered him, “Grant that in your glory

we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”

Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking.

Can you drink the cup that I drink

or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”

They said to him, “We can.”

Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink, you will drink,

and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;

but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give

but is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John.

Jesus summoned them and said to them,

“You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles

lord it over them,

and their great ones make their authority over them felt.

But it shall not be so among you.

Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;

whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.

For the Son of Man did not come to be served

but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

http://usccb.org/bible/readings/102118.cfm

APPLICATION

Our own natural inclination most likely would be to react like the other ten Apostles and become vexed with James and John and to tell them what we thought of their selfish worldly ambitions. However, our Lord’s gentle answer: “you do not know what you are asking” shows us that ignorance of the nature of the kingdom he was going to set up, was the cause of their very human ambitions. They, with the other Apostles, had still the common Jewish idea of the messianic kingdom. They thought the Messiah–and they were now convinced that Jesus was the promised Messiah–would set up a political kingdom in Palestine, oust the pagan Romans and eventually extend his kingdom to all nations. That this kingdom he would set up would be universal, extending to all nations, was indicated in almost all the, messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, but that this kingdom would be spiritual not political, was not grasped by most of Christ’s contemporaries including the Apostles.

Jesus, knowing that his Apostles still had this wrong idea, was gentle with James and John. He took this opportunity to tell them that he would set up a glorious kingdom but that his sufferings and death would be a necessary prelude to its establishment. He had already referred to his sufferings and death three times, but the mention fell on deaf ears. Their argument was: how could he suffer death when he has still to establish his earthly kingdom? The truth in fact was that it was by means of his sufferings and death that he would establish his glorious kingdom. He challenged the two Apostles then to know if they were willing to pay the price for a high place in his glorious kingdom: were they prepared to follow him through suffering and death? He accepted their affirmation, knowing it to be true, but told them their position of honor depended on his Father’s decision. Once they realized the nature of his glorious kingdom they would be the last to look for positions of honor in it.

While no Christian today thinks that Christ came on earth in order to make us wealthy, happy and prosperous during our few years on earth, there are, unfortunately, many Christians who are unwilling to accept Christ’s teaching that the way to heavenly glory is the way of the cross. “All this and heaven too” is their motto. It would, of course, be marvelous if all our days on earth were days of peace, happiness and prosperity to be followed by eternal happiness–when we “shuffle off this mortal coil.” But any man who has the use of reason sees that our world is inhabited by weak, sin-inclined and usually sinful mortals, himself included–weak mortals who can and do disturb the peace and harmony that could regulate our mortal lives. There are “accidents” on our roads and highways every day of the year, frequently causing death or grave injury to hundreds. The rules of the road, if kept by all, would prevent ninety-nine per cent of such accidents–the other one per cent are caused by mechanical failure. Would any man be so naive as to expect that we could have even one day free from car accidents?

Because man has a free-will he is liable to abuse it by choosing what is sinful and wrong. Most of the crosses and trials we meet in life are caused by violations–by ourselves and others–of the rules of life and the laws of charity and justice. To prevent this abuse of free-will, God would have to deprive men of that essential gift which, with his intellect, makes him a man. Likewise, we could prevent all road accidents by removing the steering wheels from cars but then we would have no cars. Let us face the fact, almost all the hardships and sufferings which we have to bear in life, are caused by the unjust and uncharitable actions of our fellowman: and even God himself, following his own wise pattern of life for men on earth, cannot prevent such evil actions.

Would God want to prevent all such injustices and all this inhumanity of man toward his fellowman? Not that he approves of it, much less causes it, but can he not have a purpose in permitting it? How would we, his children on earth, earn heaven if this world were an earthly paradise? What loving father would keep his children from school because they found it a hardship, and when they could be so happy playing at home all day and every day? School is absolutely necessary for those children’s future, and it is because fathers are truly kind to their children that they compel them to undergo this temporary hardship. God is the kindest of fathers. He wants us all in heaven. He has mapped out the road which will lead us there. He allows these hardships to come our way so that we can prepare for our real future life.

With James and John, let us tell our divine Lord that we are ready to follow him on the path to Calvary; that we are ready to drink the cup of sufferings which he drank and to be immersed in the sorrows which he endured. He went through all of this for us; we are doing it for our own sakes. He carried the real cross–ours is light when compared with his; furthermore, he will help us to bear our daily trial and struggles. How could any Christian become weary and faint-hearted when he has Christ helping him on the road?

Applications written by Fr. Kevin O’Sullivan O.F.M. and used with permission of Franciscan Press

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 548 The signs worked by Jesus attest that the Father has sent him. They invite belief in him.1 To those who turn to him in faith, he grants what they ask.2 So miracles strengthen faith in the One who does his Father’s works; they bear witness that he is the Son of God.3 But his miracles can also be occasions for “offence”;4 they are not intended to satisfy people’s curiosity or desire for magic Despite his evident miracles some people reject Jesus; he is even accused of acting by the power of demons.5

CCC 2616 Prayer to Jesus is answered by him already during his ministry, through signs that anticipate the power of his death and Resurrection: Jesus hears the prayer of faith, expressed in words (the leper, Jairus, the Canaanite woman, the good thief)6 or in silence (the bearers of the paralytic, the woman with a hemorrhage who touches his clothes, the tears and ointment of the sinful woman).7 The urgent request of the blind men, “Have mercy on us, Son of David” or “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” has-been renewed in the traditional prayer to Jesus known as the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”8 Healing infirmities or forgiving sins, Jesus always responds to a prayer offered in faith: “Your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

St. Augustine wonderfully summarizes the three dimensions of Jesus’ prayer: “He prays for us as our priest, prays in us as our Head, and is prayed to by us as our God. Therefore let us acknowledge our voice in him and his in us.”9

CCC 2667 This simple invocation of faith developed in the tradition of prayer under many forms in East and West. The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners.” It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light.10 By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior’s mercy.

1 cf. Jn 5:36; 10:25, 38.

2 Cf. Mk 5:25-34; 10:52; etc.

3 Cf. Jn 10:31-38.

4 Mt 11:6.

5 Cf. Jn 11:47-48; Mk 3:22.

6 Cf. Mk 1:40-41; 5:36; 7:29; Cf. Lk 23:39-43.

7 Cf. Mk 25; 5:28; Lk 7:37-38.

8 Mt 9:27, Mk 10:48.

9 St. Augustine, En. in Ps. 85, 1: PL 37, 1081; cf. GILH 7.

10 Cf. Mk 10:46-52; Lk 18:13.

BENEDICTUS

Mission and Loosing Self

The encounter with the Word is a gift for us, too, which was given to us so that we might give it to others, freely, as we have received it.  God made a choice… and we can only acknowledge in humility that we are unworthy messengers who do not proclaim ourselves but rather speak with a holy fear about something that is not ours but that comes from God.  Only in this way can the missionary task be understood…  The model for the missions is clearly prescribed in the way of the Apostles and of the early Church, especially in the commissioning discourses of Jesus.  Missionary work requires, fors and foremost, being prepared for martyrdom, a willingness to lose oneself for the sake of the truth and for the sake of others.  Only in this way does it become believable; again and again this has been the situation with the missions, and so it will always be.  For only then do Christians raise the standard of primacy of the truth… The truth can and must have no other weapon but itself.  Someone who believes has found in the truth the pearl of which he is ready to give everything, even himself.  For he knows that he finds himself by losing himself, that only the grain of wheat that has died bears much fruit.  Someone who can both believe and say, “We have found Love,” has to pass this gift on.  He knows that in doing so he does no one violence, does not destroy anyone’s identity, does not disrupt cultures, but rather sets them free to realize their own great potential; he knows that he is fulfilling a responsibility.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

CLOSING PRAYER

The Jesus Prayer

Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God,

have mercy on me, a sinner.

“Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

PRAYER OF THE WEEK

A Marriage Blessing Prayer

We thank you, O God, for the Love You have implanted in our hearts. May it always inspire us to be kind in our words, considerate of feeling, and concerned for each other’s needs and wishes. Help us to be understanding and forgiving of human weaknesses and failings. Increase our faith and trust in You and may Your Prudence guide our life and love. Bless our Marriage O God, with Peace and Happiness, and make our love fruitful for Your glory and our Joy both here and in eternity.

COLLECT

Almighty ever-living God,

who in the abundance of your kindness

surpass the merits and the desires of those

who entreat you,

pour out your mercy upon us

to pardon what conscience dreads

and to give what prayer does not dare to ask.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity

of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

READING I

Gn 2:18-24

The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a suitable partner for him.”

So the LORD God formed out of the ground

various wild animals and various birds of the air,

and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them;

whatever the man called each of them would be its name.

The man gave names to all the cattle,

all the birds of the air, and all wild animals;

but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.

So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man,

and while he was asleep,

he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib

that he had taken from the man.

When he brought her to the man, the man said:

“This one, at last, is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

this one shall be called ‘woman, ‘

for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.”

That is why a man leaves his father and mother

and clings to his wife,

and the two of them become one flesh.

The word of the Lord.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 343 Man is the summit of the Creator’s work, as the inspired account expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other creatures.1

CCC 369 Man and woman have been created, which is to say, willed by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman. “Being man” or “being woman” is a reality which is good and willed by God: man and woman possess an inalienable dignity which comes to them immediately from God their Creator.2 Man and woman are both with one and the same dignity “in the image of God”. In their “being-man” and “being-woman”, they reflect the Creator’s wisdom and goodness.

CCC 371 God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. The Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.”3 None of the animals can be man’s partner.4 The woman God “fashions” from the man’s rib and brings to him elicits on the man’s part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”5 Man discovers woman as another “I”, sharing the same humanity.

CCC 372 Man and woman were made “for each other” – not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be “helpmate” to the other, for they are equal as persons (“bone of my bones. ..”) and complementary as masculine and feminine. In marriage God unites them in such a way that, by forming “one flesh”,6 they can transmit human life: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”7 By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents cooperate in a unique way in the Creator’s work.8

CCC 1605 Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: “It is not good that the man should be alone.”9 The woman, “flesh of his flesh,” his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a “helpmate”; she thus represents God from whom comes our help.10 “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”11 The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been “in the beginning”: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.”12

CCC 1607 According to faith the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a

break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations;13 their mutual attraction, the Creator’s own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust;14 and the beautiful vocation of man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth was burdened by the pain of childbirth and the toil of work.15

CCC 1616 This is what the Apostle Paul makes clear when he says: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her,” adding at once: “‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church.”16

CCC 1625 The parties to a marriage covenant are a baptized man and woman, free to contract marriage, who freely express their consent; “to be free” means:

– not being under constraint;

– not impeded by any natural or ecclesiastical law.

CCC 1644 The love of the spouses requires, of its very nature, the unity and indissolubility of the spouses’ community of persons, which embraces their entire life: “so they are no longer two, but one flesh.”17 They “are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day fidelity to their marriage promise of total mutual self-giving.”18 This human communion is confirmed, purified, and completed by communion in Jesus Christ, given through the sacrament of Matrimony. It is deepened by lives of the common faith and by the Eucharist received together.

CCC 1652 “By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory.”19

Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves. God himself said: “It is not good that man should be alone,” and “from the beginning [he] made them male and female”; wishing to associate them in a special way in his own creative work, God blessed man and woman with the words: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Hence, true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminishment of the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day.20

CCC 2335 Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way. The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator’s generosity and fecundity: “Therefore a man

leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”21

All human generations proceed from this union.22

CCC 2417 God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image.23 Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.

1 Cf. Gen 1-26.

2 Cf. Gen 2:7, 22.

3 Gen 2:18.

4 Gen 2:19-20.

5 Gen 2:23.

6 Gen 2:24.

7 Gen 1:28.

8 Cf. GS 50 # 1.

9 Gen 2:18.

10 Cf. Gen 2:18-25.

11 Gen 2:24.

12 Mt 19:6.

13 Cf. Gen 3:12.

14 Cf. Gen 2:22; 3:16b.

15 Cf. Gen 1:28; 3:16-19.

16 Eph 5:25-26, 31-32; Cf. Gen 2:24.

17 Mt 19:6; cf. Gen 2:24.

18 FC 19.

19 GS 48 # 1; 50.

20 GS 50 # 1; cf. Gen 2:18; Mt 19:4; Gen 1:28.

21 Gen 2:24.

22 Cf. Gen 4:1-2, 25-26; 5:1.

23 Cf. Gen 2:19-20; 9:1-4.

APPLICATION

Although polygamy, that is one man with many wives, and divorce were widely practiced not alone among their pagan neighbors but also among the Israelites themselves. When the Yahwistic writer composed this source of Genesis, the author courageously expressed the will and intention of God in this regard. God intended woman to be man’s helper and mate for life; she was not his slave or chattel. She was his equal and had a right to be treated as an equal. One of the many evil effects of polygamy and divorce was and is the lowering of the status of woman. Where polygamy is practiced, each wife is but a special slave in the household. She is a chattel which her lord can use when it suits him, but she has no claim on him. However, that one evil has disappeared “officially” from our Western world, but the worse evil of divorce, instead of disappearing, is on the increase.

Here again it is the woman who is humiliated, and sad to say there are women who agree to and encourage this humiliation of their own sex. Apart from the humiliation of woman there is a worse effect of divorce–it is a violation of God’s law, as is clearly revealed to us in the text from Genesis that we have read; this text is again confirmed by Christ in today’s Gospel. God created human nature in two sexes so that one would be a complement of the other and together they were given the power to reproduce themselves and thus continue the human race on earth. To do this–to procreate children and to educate them, is a life-long task and demands the greatest cooperation between husband and wife. Their task is no easy one, difficulties and differences of opinion can and do often arise; but it was God himself who gave married couples this vocation and with it he gives many consolations and moments of deep happiness and contentment as well.

Added to these divine blessings and to fulfill their duties, Christians have the graces of the sacrament which Christ instituted to help those who marry. Not only is their union blessed by God on the day of their marriage but the grace of the sacrament remains with them to aid them all through their married lives. Yet, there are many Christian nations today which have made laws permitting the dissolution of a valid marriage, and there are Christians who avail themselves of this legal loophole to get rid of the partner they took for life. They often enter a new matrimonial bond which not only has not the blessing of God but is directly against his will–as revealed in both the Old and New Testaments.

The nations who have passed this law which directly contravenes the law of the Creator, and the people who avail themselves of such a law are Christian only in name. Their outlook is purely and exclusively worldly, selfishness plays a leading part in their decision. They feel that all crosses must be removed from their paths, they do not wish to climb any Calvary.

Alone among the Christian communities the Catholic Church has stood firm against the violation of God’s law in this matter of divorce, and firm, please God, it will continue to stand. Even among Catholics today, there are isolated voices raised here and there in favor of a relaxation of the indissolubility of marriage. The reasons they bring forward are humane–or is it humanist?  They know of husbands and wives who are incompatible with each other, who are continually quarreling; would they not be better off materially and spiritually if they were separated?  They can be separated, for the Church allows separation where things have become well-nigh impossible, and they may remain apart until peace descends once more upon them, as it often does.

However, this is not what our advocates of a relaxation of the laws of marriage want. They would go as far as allowing the separated partners to undertake a new union wherein they would each find a new happiness.  Would they find that happiness?  The history of the past few decades in the nations where the civil power allows divorce, with re-marriage, would seem to prove the opposite.  No, the Christian who violates the law of God for his own selfish happiness is not likely to get happiness in a new marriage venture nor can he hope to earn eternal happiness.

To our faithful husbands and wives I would say:  continue in your fidelity. You have many trials and troubles, but they are the new crosses that will raise you up and keep you near God. Be quick to forgive and ever ready to forget. Even though one may be right in a row, let one not be too proud to be first to break the ice and reopen relations. Your marriage partner may not be an angel, but he or she is a saint in the making, and you are doing your part to make him or her just that. You, too, are on the road to heaven; you will kick some hard stones and hurt your toes many times during your journey, but when you see your reward you will realize how little you have done and how

unprofitable a servant you have been.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM

Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6

May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.

Blessed are you who fear the LORD,

who walk in his ways!

For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;

blessed shall you be, and favored.

May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.

Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine

in the recesses of your home;

your children like olive plants

around your table.

May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.

Behold, thus is the man blessed

who fears the LORD.

The LORD bless you from Zion:

may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem

all the days of your life.

May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.

May you see your children’s children.

Peace be upon Israel!

May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.

READING II

Heb 2:9-11

Brothers and sisters:

He “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels, ”

that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

For it was fitting that he,

for whom and through whom all things exist,

in bringing many children to glory,

should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.

He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated

all have one origin.

Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them ‘brothers.’

The word of the Lord.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 624 “By the grace of God” Jesus tasted death “for every one”.1 In his plan of salvation, God ordained that his Son should not only “die for our sins”2 but should also “taste death”, experience the condition of death, the separation of his soul from his body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time he was raised from the dead. The state of the dead Christ is the mystery of the tomb and the descent into hell. It is the mystery of Holy Saturday, when Christ, lying in the tomb,3 reveals God’s great sabbath rest4 after the fulfillment5 of man’s salvation, which brings peace to the whole universe.6

1 Heb 2:9.

2 I Cor 15:3.

3 Cf. Jn 19:42.

4 Cf. Heb 4:7-9.

5 Cf. Jn 19:30.

6 Cf Col 1: 18-20.

APPLICATION

The inspired author of this epistle sets out to strengthen the faith of his readers who had become lax in the practice of their faith (see 10: 24). He recalls to their minds that Christ is high priest who has entered into the holy of holies–heaven–to make atonement for the sins of mankind, offering to God not the blood of sacrificed animals but his own precious blood which he shed for mankind on Calvary. He does not enter into heaven alone; he enters rather as the pioneer, the leader of all the faithful ones who will follow him here on earth. He is God’s own Son through whom the universe was created. He is, therefore, immeasurably above the angels. He condescended to become lower than they by taking our ordinary humanity here on earth. And this he did for love of us, to make us his brothers and heirs to heaven. He “tasted death” for all of us. Because of this, death can no longer hold us in its grip: we too shall rise from the dead as Christ did and we shall enter into the glory of heaven if we remain his faithful followers.

Surely, when a Christian realizes how much God has done for him in order to bring him to the eternal happiness of heaven, he cannot and should not find it too difficult to carry some few crosses in life. The author of this letter to the Hebrews compares our Christian life to a pilgrimage, to the heavenly sanctuary (4: 16; 12: 22). In days gone by, making a pilgrimage to some far-off shrine implied a willingness to make many sacrifices–but the thought of seeing the sacred place and kneeling in prayer there made the difficulties of the journey seem as nothing. Let us meditate more often on heaven. We too can make light of the hardships of the earthly journey.

If those in the past who have failed to merit heaven were given a second chance, do we think for a moment that they would let the difficulties and trials of life prevent them from reaching their eternal home? How gladly would they snatch up the crosses which perhaps we are throwing down? How cheerfully would they not forego the illicit pleasures of life, and how quickly would they not turn their backs on the treasures of this world, for now they see the full meaning of that warning: “what does it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his (eternal) life?”

When tempted by our passions or by greed or by our pride and selfishness, let us look ahead and see ourselves at the judgement seat of God. It will help to cast these temptations far from us. I should imagine that the greatest shock those who are lost will get on their judgement day will be to realize the folly which moved them to exchange the eternity of happiness offered them for the empty baubles, the nothingness of this world’s pleasures and gains. If one had all the possible pleasures of this life and never a pain or ache or sorrow of any kind, and had all the gold in Fort Knox he still would have to leave them all at death. What then?

The Son of God came on earth, emptied himself of his divine glory and lived a life of poverty and hardship among us. He let himself be put to death—the shameful death of a criminal and outcast–so that we could merit heaven. In order to reap the great, almost incredible, reward which he won for us, we are asked merely to accept the crosses life brings us and to plod along cheerfully on the road mapped out for us by our loving Lord. He has opened heaven for us, he has shown us the way there; he has left us all the aids we need on our journey. He cannot force our free will, but is there a sane man or woman with such disdain for his or her own true interest as to refuse to follow him on the Christian road to eternal happiness? May God grant us all the grace to avoid such extreme folly!

GOSPEL

Mk 10:2-16

The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked,

“Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?”

They were testing him.

He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?”

They replied,

“Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce

and dismiss her.”

But Jesus told them,

“Because of the hardness of your hearts

he wrote you this commandment.

But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother

and be joined to his wife,

and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two but one flesh.

Therefore what God has joined together,

no human being must separate.”

In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this.

He said to them,

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another

commits adultery against her;

and if she divorces her husband and marries another,

she commits adultery.”

And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them,

but the disciples rebuked them.

When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them,

“Let the children come to me;

do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to

such as these.

Amen, I say to you,

whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child

will not enter it.”

Then he embraced them and blessed them,

placing his hands on them.

The Gospel of the Lord.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)

CCC 699 The hand. Jesus heals the sick and blesses little children by laying hands on them.1 In his name the apostles will do the same.2 Even more pointedly, it is by the Apostles’ imposition of hands that the Holy Spirit is given.3 The Letter to the Hebrews lists the imposition of hands among the “fundamental elements” of its teaching.4 The Church has kept this sign of the all-powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit in its sacramental epicleses.

CCC 1244 First Holy Communion. Having become a child of God clothed with the wedding garment, the neophyte is admitted “to the marriage supper of the Lamb”5 and receives the food of the new life, the body and blood of Christ. The Eastern Churches maintain a lively awareness of the unity of Christian initiation by giving Holy Communion to all the newly baptized and confirmed, even little children, recalling the Lord’s words: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them.”6 The Latin Church, which reserves admission to Holy Communion to those who have attained the age of reason, expresses the orientation of Baptism to the Eucharist by having the newly baptized child brought to the altar for the praying of the Our Father.

CCC 1261 As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,”7 allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.

CCC 1625 The parties to a marriage covenant are a baptized man and woman, free to contract marriage, who freely express their consent; “to be free” means:

– not being under constraint;

– not impeded by any natural or ecclesiastical law.

 

CCC 1639 The consent by which the spouses mutually give and receive one another is sealed by God himself.8 From their covenant arises “an institution, confirmed by the divine law,. .. even in the eyes of society.”9 The covenant between the spouses is integrated into God’s covenant with man: “Authentic married love is caught up into divine love.”10

CCC 1650 Today there are numerous Catholics in many countries who have recourse to civil divorce and contract new civil unions. In fidelity to the words of Jesus Christ –

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery”11 the Church maintains that a new union cannot be recognized as valid, if the first marriage was. If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic communion as long as this situation persists. For the same reason, they cannot exercise certain ecclesial responsibilities. Reconciliation through the sacrament of Penance can be granted only to those who have repented for having violated the sign of the covenant and of fidelity to Christ, and who are committed to living in complete continence.

CCC 2364 The married couple forms “the intimate partnership of life and love established by the Creator and governed by his laws; it is rooted in the conjugal covenant, that is, in their irrevocable personal consent.”12 Both give themselves definitively and totally to one another. They are no longer two; from now on they form one flesh. The covenant they freely contracted imposes on the spouses the obligation to preserve it as unique and indissoluble.13 “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”14

CCC 2380 Adultery refers to marital infidelity. When two partners, of whom at least one is married to another party, have sexual relations – even transient ones – they commit adultery. Christ condemns even adultery of mere desire.15 The sixth commandment and the New Testament forbid adultery absolutely.16 The prophets denounce the gravity of adultery; they see it as an image of the sin of idolatry.17

CCC 2382 The Lord Jesus insisted on the original intention of the Creator who willed that marriage be indissoluble.18 He abrogates the accommodations that had slipped into the old Law.19

Between the baptized, “a ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death.”20

1 Cf. Mk 6:5; 8:23; 10:16.

2 Cf. Mk 16:18; Acts 5:12; 14:3.

3 Cf. Acts 8:17-19; 13:3; 19:6.

4 Cf. Heb 6:2.

5 Rev 19:9.

6 Mk 10 14.

7 Mk 10 14; cf. 1 Tim 2:4.

8 Cf. Mk 10:9.

9 GS 48 # 1.

10 GS 48 # 2.

11 Mk 10:11-12.

12 GS 48 # 1.

13 Cf. CIC, can. 1056.

14 Mk 109; cf. Mt 19:1-12; 1 Cor 7: 10-11.

15 Cf. Mt 5:27-28.

16 Cf. Mt 5:32; 19:6; Mk 10:11; 1 Cor 6:9-10.

17 Cf. Hos 2:7; Jer 5:7; 13:27.

18 Cf. Mt 5:31-32; 19:3-9; Mk 10 9; Lk 16:18; 1 Cor 7:10-ll.

19 Cf. Mt 19:7-9.

20 CIC, can. 1141.

APPLICATION

On the “divorce” section of this Gospel see today’s first reading. Christ clearly states that from the very beginning, God’s plan for marriage was that it should be a life-long unity of one man and one woman. Its purpose is the procreation of children and their education, as well as the mutual love and fulfillment of the husband and wife. These demand this life-long bond. Divorce, which tries to break this bond, breaks the law of the Creator who decreed what was best for the temporal and spiritual welfare of the human race.

The last four verses of today’s Gospel describe an incident which is in no way connected with the previous discussion but which has a very useful lesson for all Christians. It describes Christ’s love for children and while manifesting this love he stresses the need

for all his true followers to be childlike.  “I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”  To receive the kingdom of God is to accept the teaching of Christ and live according to it in his kingdom on earth. He who does this will enter, after death, into the eternal kingdom of heaven. Christ says, however, that we must accept “like a child”: his kingdom on earth, his teaching and the Church he founded to carry on that teaching. It does not mean: in a childish way, an unthinking, uneducated way, but in a child-like way–a humble, grateful, receptive way. A child is unselfconscious, content to be dependent on others’ care and generosity. Christianity is a gift of the generous God to us, we have done nothing and never could do anything to merit it.  We must accept it simply and gratefully as a gift; we could never deserve it.

While Christianity is a religion of reason and conforms in all its aspects to the rational nature of man–its basis is the revelation of God who is the author and foundation of all rationality–yet it is the heart of man rather than his intellect which Christ means to capture. The assent of the intellect to the doctrine revealed by Christ is not sufficient of itself for a Christian to earn the eternal kingdom; faith is the total acceptance and commitment of the believer to God through Jesus Christ. The man of true faith commits himself to God with a filial childlike trust, assured that if he does all that in him lies God will do the rest.

Therefore, our Christian faith must be childlike, a trusting, humble and obedient faith. This is the kind of faith that will move mountains–the mountains that loom so large in the vision of too many Christians today–the mountains of doubt, selfishness, unwillingness to be subjected to authority.  Christ asks us, if we would be his followers: to take up our daily cross and climb the way to Calvary after him. This daily cross is made of the troubles and trials of life from which no one can escape.  They can be borne with reluctance and grumbling, or they can be accepted as the loving God’s means of training us for the future life.  Every true Christian accepts his trials in the latter way, for if he is true to his faith he knows that his years on earth are his apprenticeship to prepare him for his eternal life.

God is surely not asking too much of us when he asks us to live our Christian faith in childlike humility, candor and confidence during the days of our pilgrimage on this earth.

Applications written by Fr. Kevin O’Sullivan and used with permission of Ignatius Press.

BENEDICTUS

The Bond of Marriage

The question of the right relationship between man and woman sinks its roots in the most profound essence of the human being, and can only find its answer in the latter.  It cannot be separated from the always ancient and always new question of man about himself: Who am I?  Does God exist?  And, who is God?  What is his face really like?  The Bible’s answer to these questions is unitary and consequential:  Man is created in the image and likeness of God, and God himself is love.  For this reason, the vocation to love is what makes man the authentic image of God:  He becomes like God in the measure that he becomes someone who lives.  From this fundamental bond between God and man another is derived:  The indissoluble bond between spirit and body.  Man is, in fact, soul that expresses itself in the body and [the] body that is vivified by an immortal spirit.  Also, the body of man and of woman has, therefore, so to speak, a theological character, it is not simply body, and what is biological in man is not only biological, but an expression and fulfillment of our humanity…  In this way, from the two bonds, that of man with God and – in man – that of the body with the spirit, arises a third bond:  the one that exists between person and institution.  The totality of man includes the dimension of time, and man’s “yes” goes beyond the present moment:  In his totality, the “yes” means “always,” it constitutes the area of fidelity.  Only in his interior can this faith grow which gives a future and allows the children, the fruit of love, to believe in man and in his future in difficult times.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

CLOSING PRAYER

Prayer of Spouses

O Lord, holy Father, omnipotent and eternal God, we give you thanks and we bless your holy name. You created man and woman in your image and blessed their union, so that each would be for the other a help and support. Remember us today. Protect us and grant that our love may be in the image of the devotion and love of Christ for his Church. Grant us a long and fruitful life together, in joy and in peace, so that, through your Son and in the Holy Spirit, our hearts may always rise to you in praise and goods works.

Amen.