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August 2, 2023

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:36:01 GMT

Jesus tells his disciples that the kingdom is of such value that it must be pursued with great zeal, as illustrated in the story of the treasure and the pearl. They must be singularly committed to this pursuit.

Jesus, you told the disciples all that your Father told you. From you and through them, we too receive this good news.

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Charity and mercy

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:33:56 GMT

“‘This heart sees where love is needed and acts accordingly’ (Deus Caritas Est, 31). Charity and mercy are in this way closely related, because they are God’s way of being and acting: his identity and his name.” — Pope Francis

Reflection : As you look around you today, notice where love is needed. How might you act with mercy in these situations?

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In the tabernacle, a true friend awaits

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 17:03:00 GMT

He was there — reliably there, always ready for a visitor, always happy to listen. Al Williams was a saintly Baptist deacon who influenced me a lot in my youth, and many others as well. In the evening, unless he was at church, he was usually to be found at home, watching a Red Sox, Celtics or Bruins game, depending on the season, and kids knew they could drop by if they wanted to talk.

He had a ministry of presence, as we might say nowadays. He affected me, and I’m guessing many others, when those who “evangelized” and “witnessed” and worked hard to close the deal did not. He was a Christ-figure in a very practical and personal way, which I later found perfected in the tabernacle.

The Mass and the Tabernacle

When I first discovered the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist , I loved the idea that Jesus comes to dwell among us and in us. Most of my fellow converts talked about the way the Mass drew them into the Church. I felt that, too, but I felt even more strongly the pull of the tabernacle.

I learned not to say that because saying it got me strange looks or the kinds of lectures patient adults give to children dealing with matters over their heads. I got it from the more traditional and the more modern. They seemed worried that I would discount the Mass because I loved the tabernacle.

One reason for their reaction (I think) is that religious people like to dial it up, to talk about every aspect of the Faith at its best and highest, its most intense, with all its bells and whistles. The Mass offers a spectacle, a drama, with the words of the liturgy and the ritual actions, with the Scripture and the homily, and then Jesus appearing where He had not been before and our receiving him.

There’s a lot going on in the Mass. It’s a Big Thing.

But the tabernacle just sits there. Jesus waits for us in the church. He already arrived. That drama’s over. He waits for us the way Al sat in his living room waiting for visitors, happy to see whoever shows up.

It’s not a Spectacle. But it’s a Big Thing. It’s astonishing good news. Even better good news than the kind of more “spiritual” salvation my evangelical friends proclaimed. It was even better good news for someone of my put-your-finger-on-things kind of mind. Here, God through the Church gives us Jesus in a form we can see and touch .

I entered the Church in part because she offered Jesus in the tabernacle. I loved knowing Jesus was, so to speak, always just around the corner. Walking into the church, even when it’s empty, except for Jesus, feels like walking into your real home with your brother and best friend sitting there. He loves you as no on else does, he’s glad to see you, he’ll listen to you and do anything he can for you, and he doesn’t expect you to be anyone but who you are.

Presence and friendship

This means a lot to me. Not, I should say, the chance to adore Jesus so much as to enjoy his presence and friendship. I’d been put off as a new Catholic by the way experienced Catholics, with that same worried look and patient lectures, would insist that I must kneel there in rapt adoration . They pushed the spectacle, the drama, the intensity of the experience.

But I felt ( as I’ve written here ) more attracted to just spending time with Jesus. I felt that way partly because I’m not big on spectacle, and I deeply value friendship. I’d also experienced among evangelicals enough of “spectacular” religion and its many problems to react against it when I met a version of it among Catholics. The spectacle thrilled them, and the pursuit of religious thrills had as bad an effect as the pursuit of any other kind of thrill.

I like things that are normal, everyday, simple, gentle, “homely” in the English sense, that don’t intrude or impose themselves but grow on you, and in you, over time. Things that enrich and satisfy more than they excite. The bigger and louder it is, the less I like it. (Except for fireworks.) The quieter and more permanent it is, the better.

Time with friends, for example. When simply being together, without an agenda except the pleasure of each other’s company, is enough. This applies most of all to time with the Lord of Lords who is the Friend of friends, who waits for us in the tabernacle, who loves us so much that he wants our company and makes himself available.

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The family of the Church exists also as the Communion of Saints in heaven

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:42:44 GMT

To be in God's family is the deepest meaning of sainthood

The Church is a mother, a teacher and a family. We know this from Scripture, both the Old Testament and the New. The people of God are a household, a clan, a tribe. We have a familial form. Each of us stands in relation to the whole as a child to his mother.

The motif is so common in the Bible that it should lead us to ask: How real is it? Is it a metaphor, or is it more than that? Is it a mystery that opens us to something greater?

In baptism we are born again, and in the Eucharist we are fed. Thus, the Church does what a mother does: She gives birth and she feeds her children from her own substance.

In baptism, we join the assembly of those “who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy” (1 Cor 1:2). St. Paul continues that we are “called to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 1:2).

“Sainthood” — sanctity, holiness — is our family name, our family identity and our family resemblance.

We live in a vast community with “all those everywhere” who share our calling. St. Paul addressed the Colossians as “holy ones and faithful brothers in Christ” (Col 1:2) — and he noted that he had heard of the love they had “for all the holy ones” (Col 1:4), meaning those who live not only in Colossae, but everywhere else on earth. And then the apostle went a step further. He went on to give “thanks to the Father, who has made you fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light” (Col 1:12).

By “holy ones in light,” St. Paul could only mean the “saints” who had already died and now knew God’s glory in its fullness.

Our family — our Church — is not simply an earthly phenomenon, not just a fancy title for the Sunday congregation. It is at once earthly and heavenly. As the Letter to the Colossians shows us, it is an “inheritance” we already “share” with those who are already enjoying it for all it’s worth. We are family.

The New Testament consistently testifies to this bond between believers alive on earth and those who are more alive in heaven. We are mistaken, in a sense, when we refer to them as “the dead.” Their bodies may have died, but their souls live in Christ; and they are, in fact, more alive than we are, because nothing obstructs them from God. They are now “in light.” “At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor 13:12).

We are participants together. Thus, none of us lives merely alone with God. Together, as the Church, we bear God, bear Christ, bear the temple and bear all holy things. Christ did not come to create a loose association of individuals, each of them living faith as a relationship between “just me and Jesus.” Christ gave us the Church as a mother, and as a mother the Church still bears him — as “the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29).

This is the stuff of family life. The Church is a communion of saints, and that means it is a family first of all.

To be in God’s family is the deepest meaning of sainthood, and it’s the deepest meaning of salvation. For the two words are functional equivalents. Only saints are saved; and only the saved are saints.

Sainthood does not mean sinlessness. It means, however, that we’re working on the problem, and in a serious way. Pope Francis began his pontificate by urging: “Let us not forget this: God never wearies of forgiving us, never! ... The problem is that we grow weary, we do not want to, we tire of asking for forgiveness.” As Blessed Mother Teresa of Kolkata often said: saints are sinners who never give up.

Through the lives of the saints — through our lives — holiness touches upon all the things of the earth. “Behold,” Jesus said, “I make all things new” (Rv 21:5). He does this through our touch — yours and mine — through the touch of the saints who live in him — the saints who live in his family.

Scott Hahn is a professor of biblical theology at Franciscan University and is the founder and president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theolog

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New parable: Small kindness makes huge difference

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:37:41 GMT

There was a woman with a watermelon. As she stood at her counter, slicing the melon, she saw the outdoor thermometer. The mercury had reached 90 degrees, and it wasn’t yet 9 a.m.

Watermelon was the woman’s favorite food, yet that day the fruit of summer saddened her. Her old dog had loved watermelon, too; and the woman missed her furry friend, recently deceased. The woman also had shared watermelon with an elderly man who had lived across the street, but he had been moved to a nursing home near his daughter, far away.

The act of carving the melon stirred the woman’s memory and made her melancholy. “I have too much of a good thing,” she said to herself. The fruit that had all her life symbolized the carefree joys of summer now seemed bittersweet. “What will I do with all this sticky, drippy, pink melon?”

Then, she heard the usual Friday morning roar as the lawn crew arrived with their mowers, blowers and weed whippers. Deeply tanned, covered in dust, grass clippings stuck to their sweaty skin, they worked quickly. The woman’s property was not an easy job, given her corner lot and steep banks. It occurred to the woman how delicious and welcome a slice of cold watermelon might be to these young men on a morning already so hot and getting hotter. She hesitated. Would they consider it some sort of bribe? Was it improper? Would they, like some children these days, grow suspect, having been taught not to accept gifts — especially food — from strangers? She censored her altruistic instinct. Fearing rejection or misunderstanding, she tossed watermelon rinds in the compost container and put the sliced melon into the refrigerator.

At her window, she watched the guys finish the mowing. One wiped sweat from his brow with his T-shirt; the other paused a moment in the shade of a maple. Maybe they don’t even like watermelon, she considered. Maybe they’re allergic. And the nonsense of her line of thinking struck her as she said aloud, “Who doesn’t like a cold slice of watermelon on a hot summer’s day?”

She grabbed two thick slices of melon and two paper towels. Based on their response, the pink fruit might have been gold.

This article comes to you from Grace In Action ( Our Sunday Visitor ) courtesy of your parish or diocese.