Saturday after Ash Wednesday, March 8, 2025

Luke 5, 27-32

Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”

These events took place in Capernaum, the town where Jesus made his headquarters during the three years of his Public Life.  St. Luke calls St. Matthew by his Hebrew name, Levi, perhaps to emphasize to his Greek readers that it was a Jew who was collecting taxes from his own people for the Romans.  This being so, the Jews held him as an outcast and treated him as they would a Gentile, like the Greeks.  

Leaving everything behind.  The dead do this, they leave everything behind.  When the Apostles and the Lord’s other followers did this, they were dying to this world so as to enter the Kingdom of God.  It is both a sign to others as well as a step from the things that formerly filled their lives towards the things of heaven.  Levi probably gave up more of these earthly things than any of the other Apostles.  He was a wealthy man with a sizable house.  And followed him.  The tense of the verb indicates that Jesus did not mean for him to follow him to a particular location at which point he could stop following, but that this would be a continuous action, for the rest of his life — not merely on foot but with his heart and mind.

A great banquet.  It is likely that Levi gave this banquet not on the same day as he was called: he would have had no time to make the arrangements since he was going with the Lord.  He would have given it on the next day or perhaps even during the next week.  Food and wine for a large banquet would take time to gather and entailed the purchase of beef cattle or goats, among other things.  Invitations had also to be sent out to all Levi’s friends and associates, and there would need to be musicians to encourage  a festive atmosphere.

“Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”  The Pharisees and scribes do not ask this of Jesus but of his Apostles, seeking to undermine their faith in him.  The Pharisees and scribes see Jesus as a pretender to the title of messiah because they do not understand the purpose of the messiah promised by the Prophets.  It had nothing to do with military victory over the Romans and the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel but rather with something far greater: the salvation of the world.  For the Pharisees, the messiah they expected would never eat with tax collectors and sinners: he would smite them.

“Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”  Jesus, the Divine Physician who heals us from our sins.  The Lord’s answer is a rebuke to the Pharisees who do not seek the conversion of sinners but only to justify their own behavior.  But the Lord declares that he has come into the world specifically in order “call” sinners, that is, literally from the Greek, to “invite” them.  It is these tax collectors and sinners whom he invites to the Kingdom of God, not the Pharisees, who account themselves as just, as though they have no need of salvation.

It is so necessary for us to admit our sinfulness despite temptations to deny this or to water down or excuse our sins.  It is those who confess their sins and do penance who are following the Lord Jesus.

Friday after Ash Wednesday, March 7, 2025

Matthew 9, 14-17

The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Todays’s reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew consists of two unrelated teachings.  Oftentimes, Matthew seems to write down little sayings of Jesus as he remembers them, and mostly they are linked by a common subject, but not always.  This is how you and I would write if we were to sit down and make a biography of a person we knew fairly well.  One saying or anecdote would lead to another, and then some saying or event would pop into our memory that had nothing to do with what came before.  In the case of an ancient writer, he would simply mark it down as it came to him, whereas a modern one would edit it in at a place that seemed more appropriate.  

The first part of the reading concerns a question that arose frequently during the public life of our Lord: that of his religious identity.  While the question itself is asked about the Lord’s disciples, it is really about the Lord.  The actual question runs thus: You are not of the company of John the Baptist, but you are also not a Pharisee, so who are you?  Here, the disciples of John are asking, but the Pharisees and the Sadducees ask this too.  Each group sees his the Lord’s teaching as similar to theirs, but each notices important differences as well.  

“Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”  Jesus answers their question with a question, using John’s own words to speak about himself.  In John 3, 29, John the Baptist declares to his followers, “He that has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and listens for him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled.”  John likens himself to the bridegroom’s friend, whose responsibility it was on the wedding day to open the door of the bridegroom’s house so that the bridegroom may lead his bride into it.  This would seem to be a teaching John’s disciples were very familiar with.  To follow the thinking, the Bridegroom had arrived and so had the time for feasting.  No one feasted in the time prior to the bridegroom’s arrival because then everyone was preparing for it.  “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”  That is, they will cease to feast.  Jesus does not explain further, but the Bridegroom’s guests will cease from feasting in order to prepare for this second and final arrival, when he comes to take his friends with him into the eternal feast of heaven.

The second teaching here, in which the Lord speaks of old and and new cloth and wineskins, is about free will and grace.  In the example of patching the cloak, we see that grace is not magic: new cloth does not somehow confer newness on old cloth so that the whole is transformed.  Either an old cloak is patched with old cloth, or the old cloak is abandoned for a new one.  In the second example, we see the necessity of this change: a person must desire grace in order to be transformed for receiving it.  He must become a ‘new wineskin’.  This means, first of all, repenting of one’s sins.  We might remember here St. Paul’s words: “Put off the ‘old’ man, according to your former way of life, who is corrupted in the deceit of unlawful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind: and put on the ‘new’ man, who is created, in the likeness of God, in justice and holiness of truth” (Ephesians 4, 22-24).  A man who is weakened by his sins, cannot contain grace, and a single “patch” on him — a random good deed or occasional thought of repentance — will not do.  

Thursday after Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2025

Luke 9, 22-25

Jesus said to his disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  Then he said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”

According to St. Luke’s chronology, these words of Jesus come after Peter has confessed that Jesus is “the Christ of God”.  The participle that opens the first verse of this reading (which is omitted from the lectionary translation) connects the verses that make up this reading with the Lord’s response to what Peter has declared.  Thus, Peter answers the Lord that he is “the Christ of God” and then the Lord orders them not to make this known to anyone else.  According to the Greek, by way of a reason for this he says, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  That is, to announce that Jesus is the Son of God to the crowds would raise their hopes for the reestablishment of Israel, which the Lord did not intend to do.  His coming Passion and Death would then make it appear to them that they had been deceived.  The crowds were not ready to hear that Jesus was the Son of God.  Much preparation remained to be done first.  The Apostles, on the other hand, at that time had a need to know what the Lord would undergo.  

The Lord seems also to have told them that he would suffer and die in order to test their resolve to follow him.  We can surmise this because of what he tells the crowd directly after he has spoken apart to the Apostles.  He says, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  The Greek word translated here as “deny” can also mean “repudiate”.  This gives us a sense of the hardness of this saying.  It is an astonishing thing to say.  It would have been enough to drive people away from him, leaving them to demand, “Who does he think he is?”  No mere teacher or philosopher or military or political leader had a right to say such a thing.  How does this carpenter from Galilee say this?  And yet, for the Apostles who believe that he is the Christ of God, what he says makes perfect sense.  “He must take up his cross.”  The Lord speaks simply and directly about what his prospective follower has to do.  He also hints that he himself will carry a cross, for the follower does what he sees his master doing.  We can understand this daily “cross” as our mortality or as the persecution or hardship we suffer, after our Lord, in living the life he commands us to live.

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”  We lose our life for the sake of Jesus when we prefer his will to our own, no matter what he might will for us.  He wills for the sinner to become virtuous, and the virtuous to become perfect.  But he defines perfection, not us.  We note that he says, “for my sake”.  To follow him entails carrying a cross for his sake and of losing our lives for his sake.  “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”  “Gaining the whole world” means to live as though not needing God.  It is a rejection — of God, for the world belongs to him.  The one who “gains the whole world” is deluded, then, and will suffer eternal frustration: losing or “forfeiting” himself.

The Lord offers us a clear choice: God or self, life or death, glory or disaster.

Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Matthew 6, 1-6; 16-18

Jesus said to his disciples: “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”

These words of the Lord Jesus are used by the Church each year to open the holy and ancient season of Lent.  They are taken from the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel, a three chapter compendium of how the follower of Jesus is to act, to think, and to pray.  In it we find the Lord’s rules for how believers are to behave with one another and with unbelievers; how they are to act with and within the world; how to pray; and how the commandments the Lord gives them fulfill the commandments in the Jewish Law.  The Sermon is capped by the Lord’s revelation that those who follow his commandments will be saved while those who do not will be lost.  

Three practices, or, “righteous deeds”, taught by the Lord in the Sermon are particularly urged by the Church on her members during this season: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting.  The Jews had long performed these deeds, and they are commanded by the Law at various times of the year.  The Lord Jesus takes for granted that his followers at the time and in the future carry these out regularly: he says “when” you give alms, pray, and fast, not “if”.  Along with the worship of God — at that time, in the Temple — these are the foundational activities of the believer.  The Lord, however, is not satisfied with merely commanding these but he also tells how they are to be done versus how they are not to be done.  This shows his care for us.  If almsgiving, prayer, and fasting were to be done to benefit Almighty God or another person, it would not matter how they were done.  A hungry widow or orphan does not care what is in the heart of the person who gives them money with which to buy food.  But how we do these things affects us.  If we perform them out of love for God and neighbor, they become virtuous acts which win us further graces so that we become more and more like Christ, so that we might share his life in heaven.

When we perform these three actions in the state of grace and in the way the Lord teaches us, we perform signs of what he himself has done to save us.  In our giving alms, we show something of the alms giving of Jesus Christ, who gave up his life in heaven to dwell among us poor creatures; who worked tirelessly during his earthly life to preach the Gospel and to heal the sick; who feeds us with his Body and Blood; and who paid the price for for our sins on the Cross.  In our prayers, we show something of him who “with a great cry and tears” (Hebrews 5, 7) offered up prayers and supplications for our salvation to the Father.  In our fasting, we show something of his fasting as he moved continuously on the road to preach the Gospel and in the long hours between the Last Supper on Thursday evening and his Death on Friday afternoon.  There is also “fasting” in his leaving the joy of heaven to live a hard life with us.

As we begin Lent let us strive to live as our Lord lived, practicing those righteous deeds which he perfected in his life and calls us to perform in ours.  By dying to self in this way during Lent we prepare ourselves for sharing in his Resurrection at Easter.

Tuesday in the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time, March 4, 2025

Mark 10, 28-31

Peter began to say to Jesus, ‘We have given up everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come. But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

Today’s Gospel Reading follows after yesterday’s, in which a man asked the Lord Jesus how he could be saved, with the Lord telling him to sell all he had, give the money to the poor, and follow him.  After the man, grieved, departed, the Lord declared that it would be next to impossible for a rich man to be saved.  Peter, at the beginning of today’s Reading, is responding in exasperation.

“We have given up everything and followed you.”  In Peter’s time, success in life was the sign of righteousness.  In his mind, he is thinking that he gave up everything to follow the man who would restore the Kingdom of Israel, who would reward him with a high position, wealth, and property.  Now Jesus is saying that there will be no earthly reward for loyalty and fighting for him.  This comes at Peter and the other Apostles as a total betrayal.  

The Apostles are victims of their own false expectations.  They believed deeply in the Messiah whom the Pharisees had assured them would come.  When Jesus came and performed works of great power and preached about the Kingdom of God, they ran to him and clung to him because they believed  him to fit the description of the Messiah they believed in.  The skirmishes with the Pharisees worried them a little, but they set this down to the fact that the Messiah was supposed to rid Israel of religious corruption and they saw this in the Pharisees and in the Jewish priesthood.

Jesus assures the Apostles that they will indeed receive a great abundance of what they gave up for persevering in him.  Jesus means this, though, in a way no one could have foreseen and so he does not explain it.  The Apostles, through their work in spreading the Gospel after the Lord’s Ascension into Heaven, would receive a multitude of “houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands”.  We should recall here how the Lord Jesus understood these: “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12, 50).  The houses of the men and women whom they converted would be open to them, and the whole world was given to them for sowing the seed of faith.  

The Apostles heard the word “persecution” as well.  They expected a fight, a war.  They also heard “eternal life”, meaning, for them, a continuation of all the rewards they received on earth for standing by their Master as he took Jerusalem and fought the Romans.  It was not until the Pentecost after the Lord’s Resurrection that the truth dawned on them that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard: neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2, 9).

Monday in the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time

Mark 10, 17–30

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.” He replied and said to him, “Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.” Peter began to say to him, “We have given up everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.” 

“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” St. Mark translates into Greek the the Aramaic or Hebrew words the Lord, his Apostles, and others in his Gospel used.  Here he tells us the young man who came to Jesus used a word that should be translated using the Greek agathos, which means “(intrinsically) good”.  He does not call the Lord a “skilled” or “helpful” teacher, but something more like “holy” teacher.  The Lord questions him as to his use of good, not denying that it rightfully applies to him, seeking to draw the man out and cause him to verbalize his meaning, but the young man seems to reconsider his statement.  That there is a pause during which the Lord gave the young man a chance to answer him, is clear from the change in subject in the Lord’s words: “No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments.”

The young man addressed Jesus as “good” but then refrained from explaining what he meant.  The Lord shows, in his answer, what it means for a person to be good.  He begins by quoting the Jewish Law: “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.”  Obeying the Law makes a person good.  This “goodness” is sufficient for eternal life.  But the young man feels a deeper calling: “Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.”  St. Mark tells us that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”  The Lord looked upon him with evident affection, the way we would at a child trying his best to do something for a little brother or sister.  And then he said to the man, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  Obeying the commandments may make a person good, but voluntary poverty for the sake of following the Lord allows a person to become perfect, as we see Jesus saying in St. Matthew’s account of this event (cf. Matthew 19, 21).  

When the young man walked away sadly because of his attachment to his possessions, the Lord commented, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”  This seriously alarmed the Apostles who had been taught by the Pharisees that wealth was a sign of God’s favor, leading to the widespread belief in Israel that those who would be saved were wealthy.  The Apostles, to this point, had expected that in following the Messiah the temporary poverty they incurred for his sake would be rewarded, when Jesus, as Messiah, came to power.  At that time, they would wield wealth and power, and these would serve as signs of God’s favor of them.  Thus, Peter’s heartfelt cry: “We have given up everything and followed you!”

“There is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age, etc.”  The Lord reassures Peter and the others in terms they understand, yet he means inconceivably more in spiritual terms.  The poverty the Apostles have voluntarily accepted makes them capable of receiving far greater things than what they had given up.  They are called not to mere goodness, but to perfection.

We should never be satisfied with being good, but to seek perfection.  Since it is in our giving up that we are able to receive, we ought to drop what we cling to here and now in order to embrace the Lord with both arms, in the same way he embraces us.

The Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, March 2, 2025

Luke 6, 39–45

Jesus told his disciples a parable, “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye. A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thorn bushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles. A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass is a collection of the Lord’s sayings.  St. Luke calls the following a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?”  This may seem a commonplace, but the question raises questions.  Did the blind person deliberately seek out another blind person to lead him?  Did a person offer to lead him not knowing that he himself was blind?  Did the blind person have no one else to lead him?  Where did he want to go?  The blind person is one without faith.  If he follows another faithless person, both will fall into hell.  It is inevitable.

“No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher.”  The Lord himself had no teacher, and this was well known at the time: “And the Jews wondered, saying: How does this man know letters, having never learned?” (John 7, 15).  Even so, he teaches his disciples that they will never grow wiser than he, nor anyone else.  The disciple can become like the teacher, but no more.  All those who teach what is contrary to what he teaches is blind.  

“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?”  The “splinter” and “beam” could be moral or doctrinal.  Now, a splinter may fall into a person’s eye, but a beam going into an eye requires negligence or deliberate action, either by the self or another.  The Lord warns that a person who has left the Faith has no standing for assisting someone who struggles with Church teaching or making moral choices.  “You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.”  We remove the beams from our eyes by returning to the Faith and through absolution in the Sacrament of Penance.  

“A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thorn bushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles.”  This may also seem a commonplace, but how often we fail to apply the lesson!  We are attracted by the apparent beauty of a person, philosophy, or movement without examining whether it is true or not, and this we can see by its application or “fruits”.  We might wonder why we so often fail to do this, whether we find something appealing because of our own inward turmoil or  through peer pressure or through wishful thinking.

“A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”  We find this saying only in Luke’s Gospel.  It is related to the saying about the trees and their fruit.  A person may seem unattractive, unusual, or backward and yet may act with great charity.  We can tell something of what is in the person’s heart by his actions, especially over a period of time.  The Lord himself seemed primitive, uneducated, and smacked of the back country to the sophisticated Sanhedrin.  We should be careful not to dismiss a saint simply because he does not look like what we think a saint should look like.