Tuesday, March 31, 2020, the Fifth Week in Lent

I was called to the hospital this morning to give Last Rites to a man who was drawing his last breaths.  He did not have the corona virus, but the hospital was enforcing serious cautionary protocols and it took some time for me to be cleared so I was allowed inside.  There was hardly anyone in the hallways, and there were a very large number of empty patient rooms.  I got the impression that the hospital is preparing for an influx of patients with the virus.  The unconscious patient died just after he had received the Last Rites. (He did not have the corona virus).

John 8:21-30

Jesus said to the Pharisees:

“I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” So the Jews said, “He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?” He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.” They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father. So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.

Today’s reading from St. John’s Gospel features some intriguing grammar, both in the Greek and in English translation.  Let’s look at, “For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.”  The two words “I am” are capitalized in this version because Jesus seems to be giving the Hebrew name that God gives himself, which we usually translate into English as “I am” or “I am who am” — the word is a form of the Hebrew verb “to be”.  Now, let’s read this sentence without the capitalization and our presuppositions: “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am.”  This does not make much sense in English and it does not make sense in the Greek that John writes in.  It sounds like Jesus did not finish his sentence.  The Jews listening to Jesus were struck in the same way, and they respond, “Who are you?” This is a very understandable question if Jesus is speaking to them in Greek or even in Aramaic.  But if Jesus was speaking the name of God, he could only have used the Hebrew word for it.  And so we might imagine Jesus conversing with the Jews in the common Aramaic language, and in the middle of it he uses the Hebrew word for God, which the Jews misinterpret as Jesus simply using the verb “to be”, or not understanding the word at all.  One possibility is that these Jews had never heard God’s name before.  While it was written in the Torah, when it was read aloud in the synagogue, the reader would simply use the word for “Lord” instead.  Only the high priest was permitted to speak the name of God, and then only in the holy of holies. In the temple.  If the Jews had understood that Jesus had not only spoken God’s name, but applied it to himself, they would have stoned him on the spot.  

The conclusion that we may draw from these considerations is that Jesus is planting seeds in the minds of the people that will have a chance to cultivate with deeper thought and discussion among themselves.  They do not understand what he means when he says, “Where I am going you cannot come.”  They certainly would not be able to understand what he he meant by, “I do not belong to this world”, and, “When I am lifted up”.  This begs the question, Why does Jesus talk in this difficult way?  Why was he always speaking in parables, usually leaving the meaning unclear?  Even the Apostles had a hard time with his sayings.  Later, when he is speaking at the Last Supper, they will say, “Behold, now you are speaking plainly and are not speaking a proverb.”  The answer, indeed, proves the Lord’s divinity as well as any of his miracles.  The truth about Jesus is ultimately beyond the comprehension of any human or angelic being.  He is speaking of eternal realities and putting them in a human language.  If his words were easy to understand, he would not be God.  Our languages have a capacity for what is human and of the world.  They strain when we try to use them to talk about God, and we wind up having to invent terms like “transubstantiation”.  This is why the Jews were forbidden to speak the name God gave himself, because then it would seem that God himself was comprehensible.  If we can understand God, then it is not him.

So let us worship with all our beings this One “who dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 1, 16), who promises a reward which “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor which has entered into the mind of man, to those who love him” (cf. 1 Corinthians 2, 9).

Monday, March 30, 2020, the Fifth Week in Lent

John 8:1-11

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” 

This is the longest narrative in the Gospels that does not feature a miracle, but rather portrays Jesus as a wise man or prophet providing a teaching.  Earlier, Jesus had spoken to the woman by the well and he performed no miracle of healing there, but he did impress the woman with a knowledge that went beyond the human, informing her that he knew about her several previous marriages and her current state.  No miracle is necessary here.  Jesus, in fact, does the very minimal in order to protect this woman.  He hardly even seems to look at her and only speaks to her at the very end.  Certainly the Lord could have summoned angels to disperse the crowd or to take the woman to a safe place, but he does nothing of the kind.  He treats the Pharisees with contempt here, not even bothering to argue with them.  Now, the Pharisees bring the adulteress before him in part to see how he would act with respect to the law, which would tell them something about the sect he identified with, and also partly to turn the crowd against him, since they evidently expected him to defend her life.  All he says is, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  He makes no judgment, as he has not been asked to make one, and he allows the law to stand.  Yet he does challenge the right of the Pharisees to carry the law out.  Although the law does state that those who commit adultery should be put to death, they, in fact, have no right to kill her.  They did not have the authority to try her and certainly not to condemn her.  According to the understanding of the law at the time, a person accused of a crime like adultery would be brought before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council which presided over trials involving criminal affairs as well as religious ones, and the Sanhedrin would pass judgment.  What the Pharisees wanted to do was to lynch the woman.  Jesus refuses to go along with them and, more than that, shows the crowd that they know very well that they do not have the authority to stone her.  

Now, we also ought to note that Jesus does not forgive the woman.  She does not ask for forgiveness and he does not grant it.  He saves her life and warns her not to commit adultery in the future, as though this was not her first time, but he does not forgive her.  Perhaps she does not know who he was and so it does not occur to her to ask him.  She does not thank him, either, unless John does not record this.  But this ought to make each of us think whether we have sincerely and remorsefully begged forgiveness from God for all of our sins.  Do we examine our consciences daily?  Do we excuse ourselves easily of acts that, deep down, we know are sinful?  Are we in denial of our sinfulness?  

On the last day, we will be exposed before the court of heaven and the whole human race and our sins laid out for all to see.  Let us repent now, while we have time.

Sunday,March 29, 2020, The Fifth Sunday of Lent

I received an interesting question yesterday from a parishioner: What do I do if I have the virus and I need to go to confession?  Working it out, it seems safe to say that the person would not want to risk infecting others by going to confession, and the sacrament cannot be done remotely.  Also, at this time, priests are permitted in the hospitals only when it is case of Last Rites.  The answer is very simple: After confessing our sins, we should not sin again.  Some folks look upon confession as a way of getting clean until next time, but we ought to intend for our last confession to actually be our last confession.  It is fully within our power, by the grace God gives the baptized, to reject temptation and to refuse to commit mortal sin, the only sin that must be confessed.  That is the answer to this question.

The Gospel reading for today is that of St. John’s account of the raising of Lazarus.  It is a long and detailed account, laid out very dramatically.  We can see in this how these events deeply affected John.  He writes as though he is still struck with wonder, and as though trying to understand what happened, even after the passage of years.  One of the most touching passages in his account is this, in John 11, 32: “When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ ”  John carefully identifies her as the woman who had washed the feet of Jesus with her tears.  Here she is at his feet again, and once more in tears.  Her faith brings her to his feet.  Her tears on these two occasions result from her heart-felt belief in him as the Savior of the world.  Her faith is as rock solid as that of the Apostle Thomas, who had urged the others, “Let us go, that we might die with him” (John 11, 16).  But she is torn: How could Jesus seem to deliberately let her brother die, despite the love she knew Jesus had for her and her brother and sister?

John shows Jesus answering this question: “That you may believe” (v. 15).  Jesus will show the Apostles his power to raise the dead so that they might believe he has the power to raise himself from the dead.  And if he can raise Lazarus after four days in the tomb, certainly he can raise himself after three.  And if he can raise himself, then we can believe that he will raise us from our graves as he has promised.  

This “sign” that Jesus works, as well as the sign from last Sunday, the healing of the man born blind, shows two individuals who have suffered from the results of original sin, and John shows how Jesus overcame these for them.  The greatest work against original sin that Jesus will perform is still to come as we near Holy Week: the overcoming of the eternal death which is the punishment for our own sins.  

Saturday, March 28, 2020

John 7:40-53

Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said, “This is truly the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But others said, “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he? Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. 

So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?” The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.” So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.” Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?” They answered and said to him, “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.” 

Then each went to his own house.

The Gospels show the confusion of the people and their leaders as to the identity of Jesus.  They see the miracles he performs, they hear his words, but they struggle to understand what it all means.  Even the Apostles would ask each other, “Who is this, that both wind and sea obey him?” (Mark 4, 40).  The scribes and the Pharisees, witnessing the exorcisms he performs, are reduced to explaining his power by saying that he is Beelzebub.  Peter does get it right when he says to the Lord, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16, 16).  Even so, he does not seem to understand what that means, to the extent that he denies him after his arrest.  It is only with the Resurrection and with Pentecost that we see understanding among the Apostles, and true faith, as when St. Thomas declares to him, “My Lord and my God” (John 20, 28).  

We Catholics of the twenty-first century have the benefit of knowing even as children raised in the Faith that Jesus is God, that he is a divine Person who has assumed a human nature.  And yet we struggle with what this really means.  For instance, if we believe that Jesus is the Almighty God who has created us and to whom we must answer, why would don’t we fill the churches at times when he is exposed in the Blessed Sacrament for Adoration?  Why do we not pray more?  Why are we not better missionaries?  Why are we not more active in parish life?  During this time of plague when we cannot go to Mass and when parishes are closed, we ought to consider more deeply the identity of Christ and our personal response to this reality.  And even now, we can go before the Lord in the tabernacle and confess our sins in the Sacrament of Penance.

Friday, March 28, 2020

John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

Jesus moved about within Galilee;

he did not wish to travel in Judea, because the Jews were trying to kill him. But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near. 

But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret. 

Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said, “Is he not the one they are trying to kill? And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.” So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said, “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.” So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.

St. John quotes some of the ordinary citizens of Jerusalem: “He is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”  This stands in sharp contrast to what St. Matthew tells us.  In Matthew 2, 4-5, King Herod asks the chief priests and scribes where “Christ should be born”.  They tell him that he is to be born in Bethlehem, and they quote the Prophet Micah in support.  Why do the people in Jerusalem say they no one will know where the Messiah was to come from?  Perhaps this is merely popular opinion, that no one will know, a sort of urban legend.  Or maybe the people John is quoting belong to a sect that holds this as doctrine.  We might also wonder where they thought Jesus was from.  Since he was known as “Jesus of Nazareth” to many people they could have assumed he was born there.  Did anyone outside of his family know that he had been born in Bethlehem, at this point?  It would seem unlikely.

Jesus uses the occasion to insist that the people do not actually know where he is from: he is from the Father, and they do not know him.  If they did, they would know the Son as well.  “I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”  The Son, begotten of the Father from all eternity, knows the Father intimately.  He “comes down” from heaven in order to teach us who the Father is, not as a teacher speaking of what he has learned from other teachers, but as one who is the embrace of this Father, even as he speaks to the folks in Jerusalem.  But they do not want to hear him and they try to arrest him.  Jesus does not make his claims in a void but in the context of the countless miracles he has performed, especially the miracles he has performed in the temple area, where he is speaking in the Gospel reading today.  If Jesus was committing the blasphemy that he was accused of, making himself equal to God, then God would not enable him to perform these miracles.  They are signs, witnesses, that God the Father validates the claims of his Son.

To know the Father, we must know Jesus, and we can find him in our tabernacles now, even if we cannot see at present on our altars.

Thursday, March 26, 2020

John 5:31-47

Jesus said to the Jews: 

“If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true. But there is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that the testimony he gives on my behalf is true. You sent emissaries to John, and he testified to the truth. I do not accept human testimony, but I say this so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and for a while you were content to rejoice in his light. But I have testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. Moreover, the Father who sent me has testified on my behalf. But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you, because you do not believe in the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life. 

“I do not accept human praise; moreover, I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I came in the name of my Father, but you do not accept me; yet if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father: the one who will accuse you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus seems more intent on concealing his identity as the Won of God that in revealing it.  This is most pointedly true in the Gospel of St. Mark.  Jesus forbids the demons whom he casts out from saying who he is; when Jesus heals someone, especially outside a city, he tells the person not to say that he did this; he even tells his Apostles not to talk to each other about what they have seen and heard, as in the case of the Transfiguration.  In Matthew 16, 16, when Jesus asks his Apostles who they think he is, and Peter answers correctly, he strictly forbids them from repeating this to others.  Why does he act this way?  How does preventing people from learning who he is further his mission?

In this passage of the Gospel of St. John, we hear Jesus saying, “I do not accept human testimony”, and “I do not accept human praise”.  The Son of God has come to announce to the world the Father’s love.  Jesus does this with words: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should have eternal life.”  And he does this with deeds.  The deeds testify and validate the words he speaks: “The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.”  The Son does not seek love and worship for himself, but for his Father.  The crucifixion is the ultimate sign of the Father’s love, and Jesus, in his obedience, shows us how to love the Father, with all our heart, mind, and soul.  For the Son of God, everything was about loving and serving the Father.  He does nothing for himself, but accepts pain, derision, and misunderstanding in order to love and serve the Father.  When he does make himself known as the Son of God, it is in order to point to his Father: If this One who performs these great deeds for us is the Son, how great the Father must  be! 

For the Christian, the imitation of Jesus, which is the heart of the spiritual life, means living like this, for the Father.  The love of the Father must be our motivation for all that we say and do.  Jesus declares himself to be “The Way, the Truth, and the life”, and in this he lowers himself, in his human nature, to be the means to the Father.  We see this plainly when Jesus tells us, in the Gospel of John, to pray in his name.  And so the Church ends her prayers with the words, “Through Christ our Lord”.  In hearing the Son’s words and in seeing the Son’s deeds, we see the Father, and his infinite love for us.

We see this love reflected in the lives of saints like St. Margaret Clitherow.  She lived in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. She was arrested several times for breaking the law for her non-attendance at the mandatory Protestant services.  She also hid priests, who traveled throughout the country offering Masses in secret for small groups of believers, at a time when our religion was outlawed.  It was for this that she was executed, even though pregnant with her fourth child at the time, in the year 1586.  In a time such as now when society and even law presses us to be silent in the face of evil and to be content with merely being nice to one another, we ask St. Margaret to intercede with God for us, that we might be made strong to proclaim God and his love in our own words and actions.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020, The Solemnity of the Annunciation

Luke 1:26–38

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

On this solemn feast day, we celebrate the Incarnation of the Son of God in the chaste womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  While we rejoice at a mercy we cannot imagine and could never deserve or repay, we also pause to reflect on the Lord’s chosen instrument in his coming among us.  The angel Gabriel descends from heaven and greets her in the traditional way, with Shalom, translated by Luke into the customary Greek greeting,  kaire .  In place of her name, however, the angel calls her by a word that acts as a title.  He calls her, in Greek, κεχαριτωμένη, which we might transliterates as kekaritomenei, with the accent on the next to last syllable.  This word is in fact a perfect passive participle, indicating that the action indicated by the root verb has been completely accomplished.  In this case, this word can be translated as “having been graced”, or, “having been transformed by grace”, since that is the implication of an action being performed on a person or thing in the past.  This is what Gabriel the angel calls her.  He has seen no human like her before, not even since Eve in the Garden so long ago, for this is not only a woman created free from sin, but a woman who has rejected sin throughout her life, setting her quite apart from our first parents.  Further, God called Adam and Eve to the vocation of marriage, but he called Mary to the even higher vocation of a Virgin consecrated to him.  We see this in Mary’s reply to the angel’s words, which literally translated, are: How can this be, since I am not knowing man?  That is, she  treasures her virginity.  Following the custom of the time for a young woman of her age, she had been engaged to marry, but still she felt deeply in her soul that she was called by God to virginity.  It was no wonder that she felt perplexed.  On the one hand, she felt the divine call to a state in which she would remain unmarried and childless, a state which the Jews of the time would have considered both mad and accursed, and on the other, the herald of God was telling her that she would be the Mother of his Son.  Gabriel restores her peace of mind by explaining that she would “conceive by the Holy Spirit”, that is, the Child would not be conceived with the help of a human Father, but by a heavenly One.  God had decreed that Mary would be both Virgin and Mother.  This revelation brought her total clarity regarding the vocation God had prepared for her.  Luke tells us how she gratefully accepts God’s will: “I am the Handmaid of the Lord.  Be it done to me as you have said.”  And then she rushes off to her relative Elizabeth.  Perhaps she had sought Elizabeth’s counsel previously, and now she wishes to share God’s revelation to her.  

Beginning with an anonymous Christian author in the year 236, ancient and medieval Christians associated this day with other important days in the history of mankind.  It was thought that March 25 was not only the day of the conception of our Lord, but also the date on which he died on the Cross.  This author further speculated that this was the date for the creation of the world, for the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham on Mount Moriah, where the temple was later built, and for many other events.  While improbable, what all this tells us is how Christians throughout the ages have seen this day as a sign of God’s mercy and of his marvelous providence for our salvation.  We too ought to rejoice, meditating on the joy the Virgin Mary found in serving and loving our God.  This is a joy which we can “catch” from her and which will carry us through these perilous times.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

John 5:1-16

There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked. 

Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was cured, “It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” He answered them, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’“ They asked him, “Who is the man who told you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” The man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there. After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him, “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went and told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a sabbath.

St. John adds these words to his account of this miracle: “Because he did this on a sabbath.”  John takes for granted that his original readers, the Jewish Christians of the first century, would have understood his implication.  John is referring to the fact that the Pharisees — and this is who John means when he says “Jews”, here — understood the Sabbath in their own way, and taught this to others, insisting that this was the authentic teaching of the law.  Jesus challenged their interpretation on this and other points of the law throughout his public life.  We can thus read this Gospel account as Jesus proposing the proper understanding of the law regarding the Sabbath.  More than that, though, Jesus, indeed, is showing himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath himself (cf. Matthew 12, 8).  He tells the lame man, on his own authority, to pick up his mat and walk.  He doesn’t quote the law to show that this is permitted, he simply issues a command.  And let us note that it is a command.  Jesus does not heal the man and then walk away, leaving the man to decide what to do with his mat.  He tells him directly to carry it, knowing that this will attract the attention of the Pharisees.  Now, John does not show the Pharisees as praising God for his mercy to this man.  He shows them instead fastening on what they consider a breach of the law.  This ought to strike us as remarkable.  One would think that they would be so amazed at the healing that they would completely forget that he was carrying the mat.  As learned men, we might also expect that understanding the lame man to be healed, and that the healing could only be done by God, they should conclude that God would not have healed him if he knew the man was going to break the law immediately afterwards.  The miracle is quite extraordinary.  The attitude of the Pharisees is nearly so.  It reminds us that the Jewish leaders did not strive to kill Jesus because they didn’t know who he was, but because they did.

One of the reasons John and the other Evangelists include the disbelief of the Pharisees in their accounts of the Lord’s miracles is to show that the obstinate blindness that led them to demand the Lord’s crucifixion was also behind the early persecutions.  As the Lord tells his disciples in John 15, 20: “If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you.”  We Christians ought to keep this in mind as we go about our business in the world.  There are people who turn themselves inside out in their desperation to suppress our Faith.  While their actions are sometimes harmful and even deadly, these people themselves are actually rather pathetic.  They are like small children throwing temper tantrums and whom nothing will calm down.  While we pray for the strengthening of our faith and the peace of Christ’s Church, we pray also for the conversion of these unhappy folks.

Today is the traditional date for the Feast of St. Gabriel the Archangel.  It was moved to this date by Pope Benedict XV in 1921, after having been celebrated on March 18 for many centuries.  With the reform of the Church calendar after the Second Vatican Council, the feasts of the three archangels were merged into one, and their collective feast is celebrated on September 29.  It is appropriate for his festival to be placed on the day before the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, since he had carried the message of the conception of Jesus to the Blessed Virgin Mary and received her answer.  We also read of Gabriel in the Book of Daniel, where he shows signs to the Prophet.  His name, in Hebrew, means “God is my strength”.  He is thought to have been the angel who appeared to St. Joseph, confirming that the Virgin Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit, and also to the shepherds at Bethlehem.  In addition, some speculate that he was the angel sent by the Father to comfort his Son in the Garden of Gethsemane (cf. Luke 22, 43).  Finally, the prayer, Regina Caeli, contains the words believed to have been spoken by Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in announcing to her the Resurrection of her Son.

Monday, March 23, 2020

I have gone long periods in which I was unable to offer Mass publicly, as in the months after the surgery to remove part of my pituitary tumor.  For some time afterwards I was not able to stand or even sit up long enough to offer Mass in public.  I could only offer it in my room.  This was very hard.  No priest gets ordained to say Mass only in his room.  Offering the Sunday Mass in private yesterday was hard, too, as I know it was hard for so many of you not to go to Mass.  We are made to worship God, and our worship of him here is our preparation for the eternal worship in heaven.  May our present circumstances whet our appetites to worthily offer God our adoration at Mass and to receive the Body of his Son in our churches one day soon!

I want to continue our discussion of the healing, the enlightenment, of the man born blind, from yesterday’s a Gospel reading.  It would be incomplete if we did not consider what Jesus was telling this blind man to do.  The temple, in which the Lord found this man begging, was built to the north of the old city of Jerusalem.  The Pool of Siloam is located to the south of the city and down a slope.  In order to get to the pool, the blind man would have had to pass all the way through the bustling old town.  Even if someone was assisting him, this would have been very time consuming and arduous.  But the man went, with only the assurance of a man he had never met before to urge him on.  Very many people would have seen him struggling down the streets of the city, and would have been knocked against or tripped over by him.  They would have known him to be a blind man, and his rags would have given him away as a beggar.  And they would have been amazed when this same man came running back, able to see, his eyes wide with sight.  He would be seeing the world for the first time, and he must have felt overwhelmed with the reality of the miracle.  He could have hurried back to his parents in the city to tell them the news of his cure, but he went back to the temple to look for Jesus, to give him thanks.

This should remind us of the story of the leprous Syrian general Naaman, who was told of the power of the prophet Elisha and went to him for healing.  Elisha, rather than heal him on the spot, sent him to wash in the Jordan River.  Having done so, he was healed (the story is told in 2 Kings 5, 1-17).  The Pharisees must have thought of this when they strove to show that no miracle had occurred.  We might ponder their reasons for doing this.  They certainly showed some desperation.  They questioned the man himself, they questioned witnesses, they threatened his parents, they even argued with the man as though to get him to deny that he had either been blind or that he had been healed.  Why not simply glorify the God who shows his mercy in this way?  But the Pharisees were trying to convince themselves and others that Jesus could not be the Messiah, for that was the meaning of the sign he had performed.  This might remind us of how Luke describes their reaction to the preaching of St. Stephen when he proclaimed Jesus as the Son of God, in Acts 7, 56: And they, crying out with a loud voice, stopped their ears.  

In our own way, we do this when we resist the prompting of the Holy Spirit to go to confession or Mass when we already have other things planned, or to pray the rosary or the Stations of the Cross, or to come before the Blessed Sacrament to make holy hours.  We note that the water did not come to the blind man, but the blind man to the water.  Jesus wants us to take trouble to come to him.  He wants us to take part in our own growth in grace and spiritual maturity.  

Sunday, March 22, 2020

John 9:1–41

As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him. We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes, and said to him, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam”—which means Sent—. So he went and washed, and came back able to see. 

His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said, “Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is,” but others said, “No, he just looks like him.” He said, “I am.” So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?” He replied, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went there and washed and was able to see.” And they said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I don’t know.” 

They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees. Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath. So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.” So some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, because he does not keep the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” And there was a division among them. So they said to the blind man again, “What do you have to say about him, since he opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a prophet.” 

Now the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and gained his sight until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight. They asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How does he now see?” His parents answered and said, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. We do not know how he sees now, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him, he is of age; he can speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone acknowledged him as the Christ, he would be expelled from the synagogue. For this reason his parents said, “He is of age; question him.” 

So a second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give God the praise! We know that this man is a sinner.” He replied, “If he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.” So they said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?” They ridiculed him and said, “You are that man’s disciple; we are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but we do not know where this one is from.” The man answered and said to them, “This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.” They answered and said to him, “You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?” Then they threw him out. 

When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, he found him and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered and said, “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him. Then Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” 

Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.” 

The Pool of Siloam was a freshwater reservoir which stored water from the intermittent Gihon Spring, the main source of water for the region in which the city of Jerusalem was built.  It was first constructed by the Canaanites, and was last reconstructed about a century before the birth of our Lord.  It was formed in the shape of a trapezoid.  Recent excavations reveal that the pool had a width of over two hundred feet and featured steps leading to its floor.  Completely covered over by dirt and debris for the nearly two thousand years since the Jewish Revolt, it was only rediscovered in 2004.  Its finding adds confirmation of the Apostle John as an eyewitness to the events he describes in his Gospel, providing accurate details of Jerusalem during our Lord’s lifetime.

Throughout his Gospel, St. John shows how the Son of God uses our ordinary words to reveal heavenly realities.  The Lord uses “birth” for baptism; “wine” for grace; “temple” for his Body; “bread” for his life-giving Flesh.  In today’s Gospel reading, John shows how Jesus uses “sight” for faith.  In ancient Hebrew and Greek, the verb “to see” can mean what we do with our eyes and with our mind: it can mean “to perceive”, as in English we say “I see” when we mean that we perceive an idea.  In the reading, Jesus calls himself “the Light of the world”: Jesus is not an idea but something much greater, a Person.  The one who “sees” Jesus in faith, perceives him in a way that goes beyond mere human sight or understanding and sees him as he is, as Light.  This is not reflected light, as that of the moon, but Light itself.  This “light” of which Jesus speaks is his divinity.  With the eyes of faith, we can know Jesus as God.  John, in his painstaking account of the miracle or “sign” of a blind man’s healing, shows the steps by which earthly understanding grows into supernatural belief, the virtue of faith.  First, the man knows him as a prophet, then as a man of God, and finally as the Son of man, the Christ.  This might remind us of how St. Mark also used the healing of a blind man by Jesus to show the steps of faith (Mark 8, 24).  John shows us besides that the people who knew the man when he was blind did not recognize him after he gained his vision: someone who is baptized and becomes a Christian is transformed by grace and so can act and live in a manner unlike in his previous existence.  

St. John in addition gives his account of this event in order to show Jesus teaching on what today we call “the problem of evil”: If God is all good, all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere present, why is there evil in the world?  The Apostle relates how his fellow disciples asked Jesus what sin had caused this particular man to be born blind.  Jesus brushes aside their primitive thinking and replies that he was born blind “so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”  Jesus uses the word “visible” and refers both to the healing of the man and to the gift of faith which the man receives, and in which he now lives as a disciple, as witnessed by the crowd in Jerusalem.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Luke 18:9-14

Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. “Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity - greedy, dishonest, adulterous - or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’ But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

In this reading from the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord Jesus presents a parable featuring two seemingly contrasting characters: a Pharisee and a tax collector.  They would seem to have nothing in common: the first was a learned member of the dominant branch of Judaism during our Lord’s lifetime, and the second was a collaborator with the Roman occupiers.  The first presented himself in public life as honorable and virtuous, and the second kept to the edge of society and were widely reviled by their fellow citizens.  And in addition to working for the Romans, the tax collectors engaged in the practice of adding to the taxes for their own benefit.  Yet a bond did exist between the two.  According to the historian Flavius Josephus, the Pharisees brought the Roman general Pompey to Jerusalem to end the civil war then taking place there.  They even opened up the gates of the city to the Roman army.  The Romans began to rule Judea and Galilee at that time and, as part of their rule, the Romans commissioned tax collectors.  

The Pharisee is shown standing in the temple and thanking God that he is not “like this tax collector”, but in fact, he was more like the tax collector than he could admit.  His pride in himself and in his sect blinded him to the history of his sect and to his own personal faults.  His “prayer” is actually nothing more than a boast.  The tax collector, on the other hand, had come to repent and to beg God for mercy.  Perhaps Jesus is telling us about Matthew, resolved to give up his post when he returns to his town.

The tax collector, in order to be saved, was willing to give up his position.  The Pharisee would have needed to give up his sect.  Each us likewise must examine ourselves honestly and give up what we cling to so that we might have the mercy of Christ.  

The Roman Martyrology lists the Feast of St. Benedict on this day.  His holy life has inspired untold numbers of men and women to leave the world for the religious life.  The Rule he wrote for his followers, founded on the foundation of “Work and Pray”, remains a great spiritual classic to this day.

May the intercession of the blessed Abbot Benedict, commend us to You, O Lord, so that through his merits we may obtain that which we cannot accomplish by our own. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.  R. Amen.

March 20, 2012

Mark 12:28-34

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.

The great question about Jesus for the Jewish leaders concerned which of the several Jewish sects did he belong to.  At the time when Jesus walked among us, four major Jewish sects claimed followers: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and that of John the Baptist.  Smaller groups following local leaders formed and dissolved with regularity, as well.  Each had a distinct way of praying and a distinct way of understanding the Law, particularly regarding the Sabbath, the purity ordinances, and their attitude towards the Temple.  The largest and most dominant group was that of the Pharisees, which began to form about 200 years before our Lord was born.  We see members of this group asking Jesus to tell them to identify himself according to his sect throughout the Gospels.  

In today’s Gospel reading, one of the scribes, most of whom belonged to the Pharisees, asks Jesus to tell him what he considers the most important commandment.  In this way, he hopes to start a line of questions which will pin Jesus down into revealing the sect to which he belongs.  The scribe fully expects the first part of the answer Jesus gives: “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.”  Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy 6, 4-5, a passage the Jews refer to as the Shema, from the Hebrew word “hear”.  But Jesus goes further in his reply: “The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”  Jesus thus links following the Law to the love of God, and this delights the scribe, who praises him: “Well said, teacher.”  And in his turn, the scribe elaborates on what Jesus has said: “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.”  The scribe seems to recognize Jesus as a Pharisee himself and he quotes from Hosea 6, 6 (for the Pharisees held the works of the Prophets to be Scripture): “It is mercy I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God than burnt offerings.”  He is floored when Jesus says to him: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”  Jesus here subtly rejects the scribe’s conclusion about him and in turn asserts his own teaching, which is particularly centered on the coming of the Kingdom.  In short, Jesus is telling the scribe, I do not belong to your sect, but you should leave your sect and belong to me.  It is no wonder, then, that “no one dared to ask him any more questions”.  

Today’s saint, St. Cuthbert (d. 687), lived and worked in the northeast corner of what is now England and southern Scotland.  Constantly on the move, he preached the Faith among the many pagans and helped in the slow conversion of the region.  He was aided in this by the performance of miracles.  Although consecrated a bishop towards the end of his life, he lived out his days as a hermit.  The Venerable Bede wrote an early life of this saint.

The following prayer is taken from the Roman Ritual:

We beseech thee, O Lord, grant us a hearing as we devoutly raise our petitions to Thee, and graciously turn away the epidemic of plague which afflicts us; so that mortal hearts may recognize that these scourges proceed from Thine indignation and cease only when Thou art moved to mercy. Through our Lord.

March 19, 2012, St. Joseph’s Day

During this terrible time of disease and distress, it is more necessary than ever for us to fasten onto the fundamentals of our lives.  Nothing is more fundamental than God and our faith in him, for he is the very foundation of our existence, the Cause of our love, the Giver of all good things.  In order to help us all to persevere in the Faith and even to grow in it, despite the lack of public Mass, which is the center of Catholic life, I will provide reflections on the daily readings, the saint of the day, and any parish news that I have.  Please feel free to comment, to ask questions, and to suggest topics you would like to read about.  First, let me say that all the priests here at Blessed Sacrament are in good health.  We grieve at not being to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass in public, but we are praying for you and offering our Masses, in private, for the intentions listed in the parish Mass book.  We are hoping and praying for an end to the virus so that we can all be together again, praising and thanking God for his mercy.

Today is the Solemnity of St. Joseph.  Joseph’s family was originally from Bethlehem in Judah, and since his family was of David’s lineage his ancestors were likely officials in the Kingdom of Judah at the time Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in the year 597 B.C.  As such, they would have been carried into exile in Babylon.  They would have returned to Judah after the Persian conquest of Babylon.  Some of Joseph’s ancestors moved to Galilee about a hundred years before the birth of Christ.  At that time few Jews lived there.  The land had been depopulated as a result of the Assyrian conquest in the 8th venture B.C., and over the centuries had been slowly resettled by Gentiles from the north.  Many of Joseph’s neighbors may have been the descendants of pagan converts to Judaism.  

In today’s Gospel reading, Matthew 1:16, 18–21, 24a, the Evangelist tells us of how Joseph struggled to know what to do in the face of Mary’s pregnancy.  St. Jerome and the early Greek Scripture scholar Origen tell us that Joseph surely knew that Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit and that Mary had revealed this to him.  It was his humility that made him hesitate to take her into his home as his wife.  As a “righteous man” he would have been looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, but the thought of his own unworthiness to be the husband of the Mother of the Messiah must have overwhelmed him: not only was the Child the Messiah, but the Son of God!  He was faced with a seemingly impossible dilemma: he was unworthy to be in the life of this Woman and her Child, and yet he was espoused to her and must take care of them.  His first thought was that he should “release her” or “separate himself from her”, better translations than “to divorce her quietly”.  He could reassure himself that since God had given her this Child, his own Son, God would take care of Mother and Son, and that he, Joseph, was not needed, and was certainly undeserving of being part of this mystery.

But God, in his wonderful providence, did will for Joseph to be an important part of this mystery.  He sent his angel, probably Gabriel, who had spoken to Mary, to tell him that he need not “be afraid” to take Mary into his home as his wife, for indeed “it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her”.  That is, the miraculous conception of the Child is given as the reason for why Joseph should not fear to take Mary into his home.  The angel was telling Joseph that God meant for him to take an intimate part in what was happening, despite his unworthiness.  Once Joseph understood this, he immediately resolved to do as he was told.  This determination ought to remind us of how immediately Mary consented to become the Mother of the Son of God the moment she understood what she was being asked.  The angel tells Joseph that he is to name the Child “Jesus”.  As a result, Joseph understands that he is to be considered his father, not merely his caretaker.  When the newborn infant was named by his or her father, the father was publicly claiming his paternity.  Joseph did this, naming the Child at the time of his circumcision, which must have taken place at his ancestral home, Bethlehem.  

The immediate carrying out of orders is not an easy thing to do.  A person requires considerable training to do this, whether as a soldier, an athlete, or a musician.  Joseph was able to rise from his sleep and immediately begin preparations to take Mary into his home because he had always been obedient to God in the past, following the law and rejecting temptation to sin.  Always thinking of God and his will for him, Joseph was the one man among all the men who had ever or would ever live who could have been the foster father of the Son of God.  We have him to pray to so that we might become more obedient to God’s will and his law, and so come into the inheritance promised by his foster Son, Jesus Christ.

As a side note, the angel’s words, “You are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins”, remind us that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, as the Church Fathers tell us.  Only in Hebrew does this verse make sense: You are to name him Yeshua, for yasha his people from their sins.  Yasha means “he saved” or, in the historical present, “he saves”.  This verb is the root for the Hebrew name we know in English as “Jesus”.  We see this only in Hebrew.

Let’s end with this ancient prayer:

Be with us, we beseech You, O merciful God, and by the intercession of blessed Joseph, Your Confessor, graciously keep safe the gifts You have given us. 

Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.

R. Amen.