Thursday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, September 24, 2020

Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity! What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays. The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises. Blowing now toward the south, then toward the north, the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds. All rivers go to the sea, yet never does the sea become full. To the place where they go, the rivers keep on going. All speech is labored; there is nothing one can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear satisfied with hearing.  What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, “See, this is new!” has already existed in the ages that preceded us. There is no remembrance of the men of old; nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them.

The Book of Ecclesiastes appears, at first reading, rather pessimistic.  All things are vanity!  Even the brief shrug of optimism towards the end, “Go then, and eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with gladness, because your works please God” (Ecclesiastes 9, 7) is surrounded by grim reminders that death is just around the corner, awaiting its chance.  This book does contain beautiful, memorable lines, but on the whole we might wonder what it is doing in the Bible.  It hardly mentions God, for one thing.  It has much value for the Christian, however, because it helps him to understand the depths of the human dilemma before the coming of the Lord Jesus: Human nature is fallen and without grace we can do nothing to help ourselves, and when we die, we will suffer punishment in hell for our sins.  The author of Ecclesiastes did not speak of hell as it had not yet been revealed, but speaks of death in what would be its place.  We are mortally wounded, and yet we cannot help ourselves: all we can do is to prolong our time of suffering, and to enjoy a few moments if a pause in it occurs.  We ought to consider that this is the modern view of life as well, that we are all doomed to extinction and that we should enjoy what we can while we can.  This view incites hedonism, waste, addiction, and violence.  The only way out of this doom is through Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life, and the Light in the darkness.

“All things are vanity!”  The Hebrew word translated as “vanity” has the primary meaning of “breath” or “vapor”: All things dissipate quickly like a breath or a bit of mist.  The Greek word used for the Hebrew in the Septuagint has the meaning of “emptiness”, “instability”, or “meaninglessness”.  The English word “vanity”, used in most translations, formerly had as its primary meaning “worthlessness” or “emptiness”, as in, All our attempts were in vain.  The author of Ecclesiastes, traditionally thought to be King Solomon, declares at the very head of his book that “all things” are vapor, are worthless.  Nothing is excluded.  “What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun?”  That is, a man is born, works, and then dies.  What does he gain for all this?  It is the question God asks the rich farmer at the end of his life in the parable Jesus tells: “You fool, this night do they require your soul of you. And whose shall those things be which you have provided?” (Luke 12, 20).  

“One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays.”  Since the days when Charles Darwin wrote about the evolution of species and the tendency he thought he observed in simple species to evolve into more complex, hardier ones, people have had a fascination for the notion of human progress, in terms of the improvement of human living conditions, development of morality, and even political and economic evolution.  The author of Ecclesiastes would dispute that this kind of “betterment” can be achieved or that it is inevitable, as its proponents believe.  The simple fact is that while we have had much change in certain areas of life, we have had no intrinsic progress.  Human nature in its fallen state remains the same throughout the ages. 

“All speech is labored; there is nothing one can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear satisfied with hearing.”  Here, Qoheleth speaks of our frustration with our human limitations.  This verse might remind us of Augustine saying, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.”  Our restless hearts, made to seek and to find God, are so often frustrated by our evil habits, fleeting desires, and sloth and so they seek shortcuts to peace in dangerous, unfulfilling ways.  This is the way to emptiness.

“Nothing is new under the sun.”  This saying shows us the way to the solution of the human dilemma.  For thousands of years, the human race yearned for a deliverance that could come only from “the outside” of our world, that is, from divine intervention.  The deliverance arrived when God became man and died for our sins.  The Incarnation  was the something “new” under the sun that humanity did not dare to dream of.  Jesus Christ makes a new covenant between us and God; pours the new wine of grace into the new wineskins of those transformed by faith; and promises those reborn in him a place in the New Jerusalem.  We can see why St. Paul urges the Gentile converts of Colossae: “As therefore you have received Jesus Christ the Lord, walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him and confirmed in the faith, as also you have learned: abounding in him in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2, 6-7).   

 Wednesday in the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, September 23, 2020

Luke 9:1-6

Jesus summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He said to them, “Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there. And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.” Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere.

“Jesus summoned the Twelve.”  Luke phrases this very formally, as though a king or a general were summoning his emissaries for a mission.  Luke says “the Twelve” as though he were naming an official body of men.  The number seems important to him, and he is the Evangelist who informs us of how the Apostles added one to their membership after Judas hanged himself, thus preserving the number.  The Greeks to whom Luke was writing considered the number twelve a sign or even component of the cosmic order.  They recognized twelve constellations in the zodiac, counted twelve months in the lunar year, and worshipped the twelve gods of Olympus, who had overthrown their predecessors, the twelve Titans.  The number of the Apostles thus reflected for them the new cosmic order of the Gospel.

“And gave them power and authority.”  That is, the Lord shared his power with them; they did not possess power on their own, and the sharing lasted only for the duration of their mission.  He gave them both the power and the authority to use this power — he left its use to their discretion.  “Over all demons and to cure diseases.”  The demons possess varying levels of their own power according to their hierarchy.  The power and authority Jesus lends the Apostles takes in all of them.  These actions, exorcism and curing the sick, act as signs that God walks among men, that the kingdom of the devil is shattered, and for the forgiveness of sins.

“Take nothing for the journey.”  The Apostles are to go abroad as though they were fleeing from something, or fleeing to something.  They were hurrying without impediments just as a person drops everything he is holding in order to run and greet a long-lost loved one.  Nothing matters except seeing them again.  Their entering a town or village as travelers but without a staff, a second tunic, or sack would certainly have drawn people’s attention.  This kind of arrival would also contrast with the arrival of Pharisees or scribes, or any traveling preachers, who would attempt to impress the locals with their wealth, which would imply approbation.  The Apostles come as simple messengers.  “Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.”  The better off denizens of the place would vie with one another to house the Apostles when they saw them perform miracles, but the Apostles had come not for their own benefit but to announce Christ.  They were not to accept honors of any kind.

“And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.”  To shake the dust off from one’s feet amounted to declaring that one would never return to that place, or to write off the place.  The Apostles were to show this sign to a town where they were not welcomed, that is, if they came to a town and began to preach and they were told to leave.  There will always be people who will reject the Gospel no matter how well it is preached or how many miracles support it.

“Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere.”  We see here the commitment of the Apostles.  They did not think of themselves merely as students of Jesus but as his messengers as well.  We should try to imagine how this looked, the Apostles tired and hungry from walking, arriving unannounced into a strange town with no money.  They might have begun to preach in the marketplace, announcing the coming of the kingdom of God and calling people to repent.  They probably lacked charisma and were not used to speaking in public, and they came without credentials — they were neither scribes nor Pharisees from Jerusalem.  They probably spoke of Jesus as the Messiah.  If they gained little hearing, they might have spotted a lame man lying in the shadows, or a child with a deformity, and then laid hands on them to cure them.  The man or child would have stood up healed instantly, and this would have caused a commotion, with a crowd surging around the Apostle to find out who he was.  Then the Apostle would have his audience.

You and I may not possess the power to cure, but we all have the power to perform charitable works.  These are the signs that will draw others to us.  May they see us and our good deeds and find Christ.

Tuesday in the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, September 22, 2020

Luke 8:19-21

The Mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him but were unable to join him because of the crowd. He was told, “Your Mother and your brothers are standing outside and they wish to see you.” He said to them in reply, “My Mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”

When we read about Jesus and his “brothers” we have to keep in mind that we are reading a translation into modern English of a 1st century A.D. document from the Middle East.  The Greek word adelphoi — “brothers” — stands in for the Hebrew awkhim,  This term can mean a male sibling sharing the same parents, a male sibling sharing the same father (as in a “half-brother”), a male of the same tribe, or even a male who resembles another male.  In other words, it is a very general term relating one man to another.  In a town so small as Nazareth, just about every male would be another male’s brother.  The same could also be said for “sister”.  For instance, Abraham called Sarah his “sister”, though technically, in our understanding, she is his half-sister (Genesis 20, 12).  One of the Lord’s Apostles, James the Lesser, was said to be the “brother of the Lord” 

(traditionally, St. Simon the Zealot and St. Jude were said to be the “brothers” of this James), but we know from the Gospels that his mother was the “sister” of the Blessed Virgin Mary, while his father was named Alphaeus.  

The Evangelists speak of the Lord’s brethren in negative terms, generally speaking.  With the exception of members of the Blessed Virgin’s family, they seemed to regard their kinsman with suspicion when it was not with outright hostility.  St. John sums up their reaction to Jesus in two places.  First, at the very beginning of his Gospel, he says, “He came unto his own: and his own received him not” (John 1, 11).  The Greek word translated as “his own” has the meaning of “his people”, or, “his extended family”.  John also comments later, when there was some question as to whether Jesus would return to Jerusalem for one of the holy days, and his relatives were taunting him, “For neither did his brethren believe in him.”  To this, Jesus replied,  “My time is not yet come; but your time is always ready” (John 7, 5-6), which is to say, You belong to this world.  We also recall the story of how Jesus returned once to Nazareth and after he had preached, the people of his own town, among whom would have been members of his extended family, tried to kill him.

How are we to read the verses of today’s Gospel reading, then?  The text says that “the Mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him.”  The Lord must have been staying in Capernaum when they came.  He would have been hard to find if he had been preaching around the country just then.  But what had they come for?  St. Mark tells us: “And they [Jesus and his disciples] came to a house, and the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And when his friends had heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him, for they said: ‘He is become mad.’ ” (Mark 3, 20-21).  According to the context, the Lord had very recently moved to Capernaum at the beginning of his ministry and he was preaching to crowds of people and healing the sick.  News of his work made its way back to Nazareth, and his Mother and brethren came to see for themselves.  We do not know what they were told.  When news travels it changes, and those who gave their reports may have completely distorted the truth.  Nevertheless, the Lord’s brethren were all too ready to believe that he was “mad”.  The Greek word translated here as “mad” has several meanings, including to be “amazed” or “astonished”, but can also mean “to be beside oneself”.  Luke quotes some disciples using this word to tell others of the Resurrection: “Certain women also of our company made us astonished” (Luke 24, 22).  We can surmise, then, that the brethren came to him in order to take him back to Nazareth, for “they were scandalized in regard of him” (Mark 6, 3) — that is, “upset” with him.

“But [they] were unable to join him because of the crowd.”  It is almost as though the crowd, rapt in the Lord’s preaching, were protecting him from his brethren.  St. Mark, as if to confirm this, tells us that when Jesus was told that his Mother and brethren were outside, “looking round about on them who sat about him, he said: ‘Behold my mother and my brethren.’ ” (Mark 3, 34).  Now, the Greek word translated here as “join” really means “to meet”.  This implies a discussion, which “to join” does not. In using this verb, Luke tells us that the relatives meant to persuade Jesus to go back to Nazareth with them.  If they merely intended to “join” him, we would think it a sign of their support for him.

“He said to them in reply, ‘My Mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.’ ”  That is, to the extent that his Mother and his brothers and sisters hear and act on the Lord’s word, he will know them as his Mother and brethren.  Here, we see de facto praise for his Mother, the true Handmaid of the Lord, and at the same time the rejection of his earthly brethren who only wanted to protect their honor or the honor of their town.  This intimate place in the Lord’s family is open to any believer who strives to follow his commandments and to proclaim his Gospel.  We might wonder why the Blessed Virgin Mary went with these brethren.  We find the answer in St. John’s Gospel: “Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus, his Mother” (John 19, 25).  Where he was in danger, there she was to share it with him.

In these verses we see the prime example of how the Lord came to earth not to bring peace, but a sword, so that “a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household” (Matthew 20, 36).  If our own observance of the Lord’s commands causes division in our families, among our relatives, or within our neighborhoods, we ought to remember that our Lord experienced this himself.  We can draw consolation from this, ask for his grace, and do as he tells us. 

 

 The Feast of St. Matthew, September 21, 2020

Matthew 9:9-13

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” He heard this and said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.’ ”

The calls of St. Matthew and St. Peter share some similarities in that each of them was called in the midst of his work, which he immediately left, and in that each of them recognized themselves as sinners at the time of their call.  We remember how Peter told Jesus, “Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5, 8).  Matthew, on the other hand, did not need to say anything.  His collaboration with the Romans through collecting taxes for their puppet ruler Herod Antipas, was plain to see.  Peter and Matthew would have known each other, as Matthew served as the tax collector for the town of Capernaum.  For most of his life, Matthew went by the name of Levi.  “Matthew” seems to have come later, since not all the Gospel writers use it.  It has been suggested that just as Jesus changed Simon’s name to “Peter” and called the sons of Zebedee the “sons of thunder”, so might he have called the tax collector Levi “Matthew”, which means, “gift of God” in Hebrew.  Most likely he was a native Galilean.  St. Irenaeus tells us that after Pentecost, Matthew preached the Gospel through the land of the Jews for twelve years.  Others say that later he went off to the East to preach, probably in Syria.  He would have written his Gospel during his time in the Holy Land.  The very early Greek Father Papias (60-130 A.D.) tells us that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, by which he may have meant Aramaic.  Three hundred years later, St. Jerome writes that he has seen this book.  It would have been translated into Greek fairly quickly, some Fathers venturing that Matthew did this himself.  The Church in India maintains that St. Thomas brought a copy of this Gospel with him when he brought the Faith there around the year 50 A.D.  It is not certain where, when, or how St. Matthew died, but with the other Apostles he is accorded the honor of having died for Christ.

“As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.”  That is the entire story of Matthew’s call by the Lord, as Matthew himself tells it.  We see the other Apostle to write a Gospel, St. John, similarly circumspect.  In fact, John does not even mention his own name.  We can suppose a little though, at the details of this life-changing encounter for Matthew.  According to Matthew’s chronology, Jesus has lived in Capernaum, a town of some 1,500 souls, for a little time.  He has preached in the synagogue more than once, he has preached on the coast, he has spent much time there curing people.  Matthew would certainly have known about Jesus in such a small locality where not much happened from one day to the next.  He must have seen Jesus walking by before, and heard him preach outside.  Touched and moved by what he heard Jesus say and by the stories of people he knew who had been cured, Matthew must have longed to speak to Jesus, to listen to him from close by, and to ask him his own questions.  However as a tax collector, the people barely tolerated him.  They saw him as representing Herod Antipas, whom they despised.  But it was also true that tax collectors drew their pay from what they collected, an incentive for them to do their job thoroughly.  This led to overcharging and even extortion.  Tax collectors as a result lived better than their neighbors, even if they tended to live on the outskirts of town and associated with other despised folks like the prostitutes.  A respectable Jew would never associate with a tax collector, let alone enjoy his hospitality.

But this Jesus did.  Matthew recollects, “While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples.”  It is hard to say whether this dinner occurred the same day as that on which Jesus called Matthew to follow him or if it happened some time afterward.  Matthew as an author is very abrupt with his transitions, according to our modern western manner of reading.  The disciples may have found the dinner rather testing, surrounded by people they had always thought of as akin to being unclean.  Jesus, however, acts and speaks confidently.  When the local Pharisees show up — probably only appearing at the gate of the house’s courtyard and not actually entering — and ask the disciples pointedly why their Master is dining with “tax collectors and sinners”, Jesus is ready with an answer, as though he has come to this dinner in part in order to provoke them: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.”  Jesus speaks frankly about the spiritual condition of the people with whom he is associating.  He does not gloss over their sinfulness, but admits it freely.  At the same time, he calls himself their doctor, their “physician”.  He is the one who can heal them of the sickness of their sin.  This claim goes in hand with all the healing of physical sickness and conditions he had been doing in the town, at one point even forgiving sins.  If the Pharisees had eyes to see with, they would have realized that with this claim he revealed that the physical healing was a sign of the spiritual healing that was necessary, and the physical ailments mere signs of the more grievous spiritual wounds people had inflicted on themselves.

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  Jesus quotes or at least paraphrases Hosea 6, 6: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice; the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings.”  This verse contradicted the very core of what the Pharisees believed, that the worship of God consisted in following their particular interpretation of the law, which went into intricate details of what was allowed and what was not.  Jesus is telling the Pharisees that he is the Physician who is needed here, and there is no place for them.

He has dismissed the Pharisees with a curt, “Go.”  As they turn to leave, he tells them, “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  This would have stopped them in their tracks.  Who is he who can speak like this?  “I did not come”, that is, into the world?  Who comes into the world of his own accord and for his own purpose?  Who talks like this?  “I did not come into the world to call those who consider themselves righteous, but those who know themselves to be sinners.”  And to what does he call them?

St. Matthew witnessed this himself and tells it to us so that we might remember it as vividly as he did, and to know deep down that if we will admit that we are sinners, we will be able to hear the Lord’s call to us.

 The 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, September 20, 2020

Matthew 20:1–16a

Jesus told his disciples this parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. Going out about nine o’clock, the landowner saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’ So they went off. And he went out again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise. Going out about five o’clock, the landowner found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’ ”

Among the ancient people of the Mediterranean world, time was kept by the position of the sun in the sky.  The most important divisions of the day, or, “hours”, were the first, third, sixth, and ninth, followed by the hour of sunset, which was not named because it varied widely depending upon the season.  After sunset there were three “watches” in the night, that is, shifts for those who acted as the town watchmen.  From the earliest times, these hours were sanctified by the Holy Church by her prayers, following the practice spoken of in Psalm 119, 164: “Seven times a day I praise you.” The psalms and prayers said at these times became codified in the Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Divine Office (that is, divine “duty”), and the Breviary.  Since these hours also correspond to particular of the Lord’s sufferings on Good Friday, the Christian is able to follow the Lord’s Passion and Death in prayer through his own day.  

The day begins with the hours we call “Matins” and “Lauds”, which are said at midnight or, at any rate, before dawn.  These two hours, usually said together, correspond to the arrest of the Lord Jesus in the garden, his desertion by his Apostles, and his interrogation by the Chief priests and the Pharisees.  The first hour of the morning, “Prime”, marked the dawn, and is the time when the leaders of the Jews took the Lord to Pilate’s headquarters.  This hour would occur for us at 6:00 A.M.  The third hour, or “terce”, our 9:00 A.M., is the hour when Pilate condemned the Lord Jesus to death.  The sixth hour, or “sext”, our noon, is when the Lord was crucified on Golgotha.  He hung on the Cross for three hours and died at the ninth hour, “nones”, or 3:00 P.M.  Just before sunset, his Body was taken down from the Cross.  This hour we call “Vespers”, that is, the evening hour.  At compline, now dark, the Body would have been laid in the tomb and the stone pushed over the entrance.  We call this hour, “Compline”, a short form of “completiorum”, or, “completion”.  In the modern Liturgy of the Hours, Matins has been replaced with the Office of Readings, the hour of Prime has been abolished, Lauds has become “Morning Prayer”, and the three middle hours of the day are now called, “Mid-morning Prayer”, “Midday Prayer”, and “Mid-Afternoon Prayer”.  Vespers is now called “Evening Prayer”, and Compline is “Night Prayer”.

By marking these hours, following Jesus with our mediations and prayers, however brief, we will never hear the accusation from our guardian angels, who continuously worship God, “Why do you stand here idle all day?”

Saturday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 19, 2020

“This is the meaning of the parable. The seed is the word of God. Those on the path are the ones who have heard, but the Devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts that they may not believe and be saved. Those on rocky ground are the ones who, when they hear, receive the word with joy, but they have no root; they believe only for a time and fall away in time of temptation. As for the seed that fell among thorns, they are the ones who have heard, but as they go along, they are choked by the anxieties and riches and pleasures of life, and they fail to produce mature fruit. But as for the seed that fell on rich soil, they are the ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.”

A persistent theme throughout the New Testament is that of perseverance.  The Lord and his Apostles tell us persistently that it is not enough to believe vaguely in the Lord Jesus as divine but to persevere in this belief.  That is, the Christian must hold steadfastly to the Faith despite persecution from the state, one’s own community, and even one’s own family.  As the Lord tells us, “A man’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matthew 10, 36).  This persecution does not consist mainly of psychological pressure, but “they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death” (Matthew 24, 9).  But this perseverance serves a purpose, for “he who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24, 13).  

This virtue “bears fruit” in the one who possesses it as well as for others by the example it gives and by the grace won by it.  During the mid 1980’s my sister and I worked at the Gift of Peace in D.C., operated by the Missionaries of Charity as a hospice for indigent AIDS patients in their last months of life.  Without the Missionaries, these men and women (and their infected babies) would have died on the street.  They had been rejected by their families, kicked out of their homes, and even thrown out of hospitals.  One of these abandoned souls was a young man who went by “Skip”.  One of the first things we had to do for Skip, when he arrived, very sick, was to wash him and dress his wounds.  He had been “released” from the hospital with no place to go and the Missionaries found him.  The nurses at the hospital had refused to touch him because they were so frightened of catching this terrible new disease about which so little was known.  They left him to lie in his bed, and because of the weak state to which the disease had reduced him, he could not leave it on his own and he developed horrific bed sores.  After we cleaned him up we put some salve on his sores and then dressed him in a clean, dry hospital gown.  For weeks afterwards he stayed in his bed but we fed him, changed him regularly, and sat by his bed and kept him company.

Skip had gotten mixed up with drugs and a host of related vices and when he came down with AIDS his family forced him out of the house.  They were afraid of the disease, and ashamed of the stigma it brought as well.  He had wandered around for a while, eating food from charity outlets when he could, and scrounging through trash cans for it when he could not.  Finally, he collapsed on a sidewalk and was rushed to the local hospital when someone saw him and called the emergency line.  When he arrived there and he was tested for AIDS, he was put in a ward where he was just kept, and not tended.  At the time there was no real treatment and rumors flew around that the disease could be caught through the air or simply by touching someone infected with it, even with hospital gloves.  He was given food, but he was not able to feed himself and no one helped him.  He lost a good deal of weight as a result. And when his insurance ran out, he was sent out of the hospital with nowhere to go.  When the sisters found him, he was skin and bones and bedsores.

We set about “fattening” him up, at first feeding him broth with a spoon, then later cutting up his food into small bites and feeding this to him on a fork.  He could not move or talk much at first, but he would look around with wide eyes at the room in which he lay, at the freshly painted walls, at the holy pictures, and at the crucifix across from his bed.  Wonder filled his slightly bulging eyes as he gazed at these things, and at the people taking care of him.  After some time had passed, he was able to sit up in a wheelchair and we would take him for walks up and down the long corridor outside his room, and we even got his chair down the stairs to the main chapel on the ground floor for Sunday Mass.  He was not a practicing believer, although he had been baptized, but he liked to come to Mass and see all the sisters in their habits, and to be in a crowd of friendly people.

The example of the sisters and volunteers led him to faith in the Lord Jesus, and one day he asked to become a Catholic.  The sisters called one of the priests who came to say Mass for us and he did a brief catechesis with Skip, appropriate for people who were facing death, and he was brought into the Holy Church at a special Mass in the hospice — with his family in attendance.  The superior of the house, Sister Rochelle, had called on the family and pleaded with them to reconcile with Skip, telling them how he had fallen in love with Jesus, and they were moved.  We had a big celebration in honor of this two-fold homecoming, with a reception of donated food and much singing and laughing.

Skip came into the Church at just the right moment because the next day he began to fail.  Gradually, day by day, we saw his health decline.  One day he lost the strength to sit up; the next day, he lost his ability to chew; the next day, he had to be given water with an medicine dropper.  The sisters, seeing this, brought in a table close to his bed and set a large free-standing crucifix on it.  For the next three days he kept his eyes fixed on the crucifix and he repeated the name of Jesus over and over.  It was the only word he spoke, and he spoke it to the day when he could no longer speak.  Still, he kept his eyes fixed on the crucifix and he never took his eyes off of it until the night he died.  That night, the sisters came and filled the room and prayed for him, and as they did so, his soul leaped into God’s open arms. 

This is perseverance: that of the sisters and volunteers who took care of him    day and night (the last week, one of us was always with him), and also his, as he lay dying in terrible pain but with great faith.  The perseverance of others bore fruit in Skip’s conversion and salvation, and his example bore fruit also in the lives of those who helped him.  

It is a precious virtue for which we must pray.

 

Friday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 18, 2020

Luke 8:1-3

Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. Accompanying him were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their resources.  

During the three years of his public life, the Lord Jesus primarily preached the repentance of sins and the coming of the kingdom of heaven “from one town and village to another” within an area of less than forty miles long by less than thirty miles wide.  Between one and two hundred towns of any size existed there in Galilee at that time, with many more villages and hamlets, some inhabited by as few as fifty people.  Possibly one hundred thousand people lived in the region.  It is moving to think of the Lord limiting himself to this tiny corner of the world, away from the big cities such as Rome and Alexandria, going to the little out-of-the-way places to hunt for his lost sheep, if only to find one of them in any given village.  He does this methodically and thoroughly, as is clear from his sending his seventy-two disciples in pairs to all the towns and villages he would visit, teaching the Apostles how they are to work when they receive the Holy Spirit.

We catch some of the day-to-day routine of the Lord’s work in the verses from today’s Gospel reading.  The writers of the Gospels tell us of the most significant encounters, words, and miracles, but much of the work the Lord did could be summed up just as St. Luke puts it: “Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.”  He would have preached the same message in the various places where he stopped, healed the people who came to him for healing, and then moved on to the next town.  Jesus and his Apostles and the women who assisted them would have spent a lot of time walking in the countryside, on roads when there were roads.  Jesus would have led the way with Peter, James, and John close by, then the other Apostles and maybe some followers who had gravitated to him, and then the women.  Luke gives us the names of a few of the women, and mentions that Jesus had healed them in some way: “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, [and] Susanna.”  He also tells us that there were “many others” who “provided for them out of their resources.”  The Greek word translated here as “resources” means, more specifically, their “goods”, “property”, and “possessions”.  We know from the other Gospels that the mother of the sons of Zebedee was one of these, as well as the mother of the Apostle James the Lesser.  Not all would have had the “resources” of the steward of Herod Antipas at their disposal, but each did or gave what she could.  Their quiet dedication would prove more resilient than that even of the Apostles, for some of them were on Cavalry with the Lord and his Mother, marked where the Body of the Lord was buried, and came early on Easter Sunday to provide the anointing which they could not do as the sun set on Good Friday evening.  According to the Gospels, to these humble servants Jesus appeared before he appeared to anyone else. 

The tenacity of the faith of these holy women gives the good example that whoever we are, we do the work of the Lord wherever he goes, offering what we can for him out of our talents, abilities, and wealth, through each day.