The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, June 7, 2020

John 3:16–18

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

A feast in honor of the Most Holy Trinity appears for the first time in parts of what is now France in the 8th century, and other dioceses and regions adopted it over the centuries.  St. Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, ordered it to be kept in England in the 12th century.  In the year 1334, Pope John XXII ordered it for the whole Church, and that it be kept on the first Sunday after Pentecost.  The purpose of the Feast is to commemorate the Holy Trinity following the feasts of the Resurrection of the Son and the Descent of the Holy Spirit.

The reading from St. John’s Gospel follows the discussion between Jesus and Nicodemus about the Holy Spirit and what it means to for a man to be “born again” through him.  It is unclear from the text who is speaking at this point, Jesus or John.  The Greek manuscripts containing the Gospel do not contain punctuation or paragraphs, or, in many cases, spaces between the words, which would help us to know.  It would seem from the context that John is speaking here, reflecting on the words of his Master.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”  These words cause us to catch our breath.  God loves the world unconditionally, despite the world not loving or insufficiently loving God.  The way John phrases the words tells us that God would refuse us nothing in order to save us.  And we do need saving because left to ourselves we will perish, and not merely our bodies will die but our souls, which cannot die, will endure the fires of hell for all eternity.  Not satisfied in saving us from this fate, God even offers us eternal life with him.  He does all this through his Son.  John emphasizes that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world”.  The world might merit condemnation based on its disobedience, but God still sends his Son to save it — to save us, who belong to it.  

We must believe in the Son: “whoever believes in him will not be condemned”.  That is, we must believe that he is the Son of God.  Nor is this a mere intellectual exercise.  The consequences of this belief are that we must obey his commandments.  “Whoever does not believe has already been condemned”, that is, those who reject Jesus and his commandments.  The one who rejects the Lord “has already been condemned” in that his fate remains what it would have been if Jesus had not entered the world.  In this sense, we encounter very many “dead men walking” each day, those who have “not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

God loves us passionately and he will never withdraw his love for us.  The enjoyment of his love is our heaven.  Let us enter this heaven by loving him in return, just as unconditionally as he loves us.

Saturday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, June 6, 2020

Mark 12:38-44

In the course of his teaching Jesus said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation.”  He sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.” 

In yesterday’s Gospel reading we saw how the large crowd cheered for Jesus when he offered his explanation of Psalm 110 in opposition to that offered by the scribes.  They “heard this with delight” because his explanation seemed full to them: he told them that the psalm meant that God himself would come into the world as the Messiah, that Jesus proved himself to be the fulfillment of the prophecy because only he could explain it, and because it was Jesus, and not the scribes, who could explain it.  In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus alludes to behavior which caused the scribes to be disrespected , if not outright scorned: they paraded  their wealthy persons around in fancy garments, distinguishing themselves from the common people, and they charged money for prayers, even from the needy.  Jesus speaks harshly of them: “They will receive a very severe condemnation.”  We might wonder here what “a very severe condemnation” means.  In Matthew 25, 41, we are told that the Lord will say to all the wicked: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”  Surely, this is severe condemnation enough!  But these are the words that the Lord Jesus will shout at all the wicked together.  The “very severe condemnation” he speaks of here is the actual punishment to which they will be sentenced.  In hell, there are what the poet Dante called “circles”, or levels, in which various types of sinners suffered punishment.  On each level, the damned suffer punishment horrible beyond imagination, but the sufferings of the damned on each descending level grow more excruciating yet.  The scribes, Jesus is saying, will suffer deep in the abyss of hell for their sins.  

As St. Mark tells it, which is as St. Peter remembers it, Jesus next speaks of the virtue of a poor widow, in effect contrasting her with the scribes.  Mark says that Jesus “sat down opposite the treasury”, most likely on the pavement, with his disciples gathered around him, probably standing, for the teacher always sat while the students stood.  He observed the crowd putting their coins in the temple treasury, which was in an inner courtyard of the temple complex.  This was where Jesus did most of his teaching when he was in Jerusalem.  This was the Court of the Women, beyond which women were not allowed to go, and so both men and women would move about within it.  The treasury itself consisted of a warehouse.  If we want to picture the scene to ourselves, Jesus was sitting outside on the ground, perhaps against a wall of the courtyard, watching the people bringing their donations to the treasury.  Perhaps some of the folks made a show of it.  At any rate, Peter remembered that “many rich people put in large sums.”  And then Jesus looked at a bent figure of an old woman in tatters approaching the treasury, perhaps jostled by others there as someone of no importance.  She would not have attracted much attention from anyone, but Jesus noticed her.  He knew her through and through.  He watched as she “also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.”  When she turned from the treasury then, did she see her God looking with pleasure upon her?  He called his Apostles nearer to him so that they could hear him clearly.  He first told them that the woman was a widow.  Jesus continued: “Amen, I say to you, This poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.”  Jesus doubtless paused here to let these words sink in.  Then he explained to them: “They have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”  Peter remembered the two small coins, most likely thin copper disks, worn smooth through the rubbing of many hands.

“They have all contributed from their surplus wealth.”  Jesus is saying that all the others had contributed from their excess wealth.  Certainly, not all who did so would have considered themselves rich, yet the Lord speaks of their excess wealth.  And he knows the wealth of each, for he had provided it to them.  That they do not contribute to the extent of this woman perturbs him, but he does not speak further of them.  Rather, he praises the woman.  She, he told his Apostles, gave “her whole livelihood”, all that she possessed: that with which she would otherwise have bought herself a bit of food.  This may well have been her whole day’s work of begging, or maybe two days’ worth of begging.  But she gave it and then walked away without any show, as though knowing that she done done nothing more than her duty to God.

We are not told that Jesus spoke of her eternal reward for her virtue, or that he rushed over to her and gave her money or food.  He remains on the floor of the courtyard.  Did an Apostle think to run after her?  We are not told that either.  Jesus does not praise the works of many people in the Gospels, but he praised hers.  We can think that at the end of her life she received a reward, with the words: “Give, and it shall be given to you: a good measure and pressed down and shaken together and running over shall they give into your lap. For with the same measure that you shall measure out, it shall be measured to you again” (Luke 6, 38).  May we hear these words as we open our eyes upon our Lord after we leave this world.

The Lord watched the people donating their money, paying their duty to him.  He offers this opportunity to us, to give of our wealth and abilities.  And he watches to see if we give with generous hearts, knowing that all that we have comes from him, or if we give only from our “excess wealth” — and not all of it, but only some of it.  He knows whether, in our hearts, we are “scribes” or poor and generous “widows”.

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Friday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, June 5, 2020

Mark 12:35-37

As Jesus was teaching in the temple area he said, “How do the scribes claim that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said: The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls him ‘lord’; so how is he his son?” The great crowd heard this with delight.

We see here some of the expectations the Jewish people had for the Messiah at the time of Christ. The words under contention are taken from Psalm 110.  We see here that the Jews understood this Psalm in terms of a prophecy of the Messiah, the Christ.  Several other psalms were understood in this way as well, Psalm 2, for instance.  

“The Lord said to my lord: Sit at my right until I put your enemies under your feet.”  The point Jesus makes here is that it is King David who is speaking, so this is not an anonymous composer saying that God is speaking to his king.  Since David is speaking, we understand that he is referring to two “lords”.  The first must be God, since he is the most powerful of the two.  But who is the other?  The scribes teach, and Jesus confirms this, that the second “lord” is the Messiah.  The question Jesus asks is, “David himself calls him ‘lord’; so how is he his son?”  That is, to the Jewish way of thinking, the father is always greater than the son, no matter if the son is an adult or not.  The son of a king would address his father as his “lord”.  The second “lord” in the verse, the Messiah, is either not David’s son, or, if he is, then the Messiah must be incomparably greater than the great David — he would have to be the Son of God.  

“The great crowd heard this with delight.”  The crowd understood what Jesus was saying: that the Messiah was their God come to earth, that Jesus and not the scribes explained the psalm, and that therefore Jesus must be the fulfillment of the psalm’s prophecy.  All the scribes could tell the people was that the Messiah was “the son of David”.  They could not say much more, or even interpret the rest of the psalm, which remained a strange puzzle to them and to the people.  The only one who could explain it would be the One to whom it pertained, the Son of God standing revealed before them.

Thursday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

2nd Letter of Saint Paul to Timothy 2:8-13

Beloved: Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David: such is my Gospel, for which I am suffering, even to the point of chains, like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. Therefore, I bear with everything for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, together with eternal glory. This saying is trustworthy: “If we have died with him we shall also live with him; if we persevere we shall also reign with him. But if we deny him he will deny us. If we are unfaithful he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.”

Mark 12:28-31

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.”.

We find a couple of mysteries in the two readings today.

The words “If we deny him he will deny us” seem clear enough.  St. Paul, writing from prison in Rome to St. Timothy, probably in Ephesus at that time, speaks of the Lord Jesus condemning the wicked on the Last Day.  As the Lord himself says: “But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10, 23).  That is, those who deny the Lord and do not repent of it.  We deny the Lord when we are persecuted and give up our faith under pressure.  But we also deny him when we sin publicly or condone or excuse sin and give scandal thereby.  Further, we deny him by making some thing our god and worshipping it instead, as through lust and gluttony.  The keys to preparing ourselves against temptations to deny our Lord are living lives of penance and prayer.  By living simply, in penance, we avoid things that could gain a hold on us.  By prayer we acquire the virtues with which to persevere in our faith in Jesus.  But to those of us who do deny the Lord, Paul says, “He will deny us.”  To be “denied” by Christ means to be condemned to the fires of hell.

Again, clear enough.  But then Paul adds, “If we are unfaithful he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.”  This sounds like a contradiction of the first statement.  If the Lord denies us, how can it be said that he is “faithful” to us?  In fact, the love and the faithfulness of Jesus the Lord is unconditional.  He will not cease to love us if we cease to love him.  Nor will he cease to be faithful to us — that is, pleading for us before the Father and sending us inspirations through the Holy Spirit and our guardian angel to draw us back to him.  Even after the death of the sinner, the Lord continues to love him, and his love is such that he respects human free will and allows one obstinate in his sin, to walk away.  The “denial” spoken of here is a figure of speech meaning exactly this, that the Lord will allow a person to walk into hell if he so chooses. 

The mystery in the second reading appears in the second of the two Great Commandments: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  At first sight, Jesus seems to mean that we should love our neighbors to the extent that we love ourselves, but this is not so.  What he means simply is that we should love our neighbor.  That is, we should love him, as opposed to hating him or envying him.  Although we find this commandment in the Law of Moses, Jesus raises it to second place after that concerning the love of God.  Now, after the love of God, our primary love ought to be for ourselves, who are passionately, madly, loved by God.  Our love for others must come after that.  Otherwise, it might be the case that we lose our own salvation in order to save another’s.  Also, God has created us in such a way that we have people in our lives for whom we have varying levels of responsibility.  First, there is our immediate family: our parents and brothers and sisters until we are married, and after marriage, coming before these, are our spouses and children.  Following immediate family comes other family members, such as grandparents, aunts, and uncles.  Then come friends, the closer ones more than mere acquaintances.  Finally, there are the people we do not know.  While we love them all, we love them differently, and prudence tells us how to act towards them, for it may necessary to avoid certain persons or even seek justice against them out of love for ourselves or others, including society at large.

We do our best, as those who bear the name of Christ, to imitate his faithfulness and love, with the help of God.

Wednesday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, June 3, 2020

Mark 12:18-27

Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and put this question to him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, ‘If someone’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers. The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants. So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants, and the third likewise. And the seven left no descendants. Last of all the woman also died. At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.” Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled.”

In this passage from the Gospel of St. Mark, God himself describes the life of heaven for us.  Notice how circumspectly he speaks, though, saying only as much as is needful for answering the question posed to him.  Notice also the authority with which he speaks.  He tells of heavenly realities not as a theologian, but as a witness.  He does not quote Scripture or use reason to validate his statement: “When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven.” Nothing in the Jewish Scriptures so much as hints at this.  We have the revelation from the very lips of God.

With these words, Jesus tells us that marriage is a living sign of the bond between God and the soul in the state of grace.  In heaven, there are no more signs, but rather the reality to which the signs pointed: perfect and eternal unity with God.  He tells us further that the blessed will be “like the angels in heaven”.  He does not say that they will themselves be angels, but “like the angels”.  Humans and angels are different species, just as whales and elephants are different species.  The angels are our cousins, in a matter of speaking.  We cannot really say “brothers” because while they are wiser and more powerful than humans, they are creations of God, and the baptized are God’s children by adoption.  The baptized possess a glory not even the angels have.  To be “like the angels” means, most of all, to have a direct view of the Beatific Vision, it means to see God as he is in all his splendor, Love overflowing (cf. Luke 6, 38).  

The Lord Jesus, after having answered the question posed by the Sadducees, addresses their teaching that there is no resurrection, the source of their question.  The Lord has already shown the existence of the angels and of immortal souls.  He spoke on his own authority in doing so.  Here, he quotes Scripture — the Book of Exodus, which they accept, rather than the books of the prophets, which they do not.  He speaks to them on their own terms: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  The Lord points out that God did not say, “I was the God of Abraham”, but “I am.”  At the time God is speaking to Moses, Abraham and the Patriarchs had been dead for centuries.  Yet, God says that he is — he remains — their God.  This can only be true if the Patriarchs are still alive.  The Lord’s explanation is so simple as to be deadly to any error or misunderstanding, and it sheds light for us on why God continually referred to himself in this way throughout the Old Testament.  He was revealing the truth of the resurrection from the very beginning.

The Lord’s final words to the Sadducees, “You are greatly misled”, ought to give us pause.  The Sadducees did not hold their views out of idiocy or because they did not read the Scriptures, and the Lord does not rebuke them with anger.  Out of his love for them, he points out that they are “greatly misled”.  From time to time we ourselves may come to hold mistaken ideas through misinterpretation of the Scriptures and Tradition, or from an obstinate willfulness to justify sinful behavior.  It is necessary for our salvation, and even for happiness on earth, to possess humility so that we may be open, and even eager, to correction by the Church.

Tuesday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, June 2, 2020

Mark 12:13-17

Some Pharisees and Herodians were sent to Jesus to ensnare him in his speech. They came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion. You do not regard a person’s status but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or should we not pay?” Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.” They brought one to him and he said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They replied to him, “Caesar’s.” So Jesus said to them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” They were utterly amazed at him.

The Pharisees arose in the years before the birth of the Lord Jesus, opposing the trend among the Jews to adopt Greek customs, and also opposing the Sadducees, who made up most of the temple priesthood, and who favored the adoption of Greek customs.  In order to get rid of the Sadducees, the Pharisees brought the Roman general Pompey to Jerusalem and opened the city’s gates to him and his army, thus delivering Israel into the hands of the Romans.  The Herodians, mentioned in this Gospel reading, were supporters of the local Judean rulers set up by the Romans.  In the time of Jesus, they supported the ethnarch Herod Antipas, the son of King Herod the Great.  Both the Pharisees and the Herodians were beholden to the Romans.

The question of the paying of the tax divided the Jews.  Most paid it reluctantly, but the Zealots did not.  The Pharisees and Herodians, evidently feeling threatened by Jesus, seem to assume that he would advocate against paying the tax.  This might indicate that they suspected him of being a Zealot, or that he led another revolutionary party.  If they can catch him speaking against the tax, they could drag him before the Roman procurator with a charge of sedition.  The Lord shows up the importance they give to politics, demonstrating the trivial nature of worldly politics, contrasting it with the eternal rule of God.  He says, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  His teaching, though, begs the question: What belongs to God?  The Lord essentially forces his questioners to answer a much larger question — one with potentially eternal consequences.  Of course, everything belongs to God.  To act as though a mortal man’s image or signature on an object makes him its absolute owner, is foolish.  We have what we have because God shares it with us.  All belongs to him: the existence of all people and things is due to his will and power, as is the conservancy of all people and things in their existence.

We who are baptized belong to God through an act of our will, as well.  When, through pride or some other vice, we try to assert ourselves (by stealing, murdering, fornication, and so on).  It is necessary for our happiness here and hereafter to act as though we are ever conscious of our commitment to God to be his.

Monday in Week 9 of Ordinary Time, June 1, 2020

Mark 12:1-12

Jesus began to speak to the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and left on a journey. At the proper time he sent a servant to the tenants to obtain from them some of the produce of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent them another servant. And that one they beat over the head and treated shamefully. He sent yet another whom they killed. So, too, many others; some they beat, others they killed. He had one other to send, a beloved son. He sent him to them last of all, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they seized him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come, put the tenants to death, and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this Scripture passage: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes?’ ”  They were seeking to arrest him, but they feared the crowd, for they realized that he had addressed the parable to them. So they left him and went away.

Until the calendar reform instituted by the Second Vatican Council, the weeks between the feast of Pentecost and the season of Advent were known as “the time after Pentecost”.  This term, used for nearly two thousand years, worked well in explaining where the Church was in the year since it related those weeks to Pentecost and the Easter season.  It had the effect of anchoring these weeks to that season, reminding believers that we have seen the risen Christ in the liturgy and the Scriptures, we have heard his Great Commission to preach the Gospel, and that we look forward now to the time when “this Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as you have seen him going into heaven” (Acts 1, 11).  The use of the term “ordinary time” does not sufficiently do this, I think.  The word “ordinary” is a translation of the Latin ordinalis, which means nothing more than “an ordinal number, e.g. “first”, “second”, etc.  

The resumed public Masses went fairly well this weekend.  About eighty people came to each on the seven Sunday Masses.  Everyone wore their masks properly.  And it was so good to see familiar faces again!

The behavior of the man who owned the vineyard should strike us as odd, not to say, reckless.  He works very hard and at great expense in transforming his plot of land into a vineyard.  Then he leases it out to people who presumably know how to tend a vineyard, and he goes on a journey of several months duration.  He might be making a tour of his other properties and enterprises.  When the time comes for the harvest, he sends servants to bring back some of the produce.  We would expect that the tenants would send him the best portion of the harvest in order to give him reason to keep them on for another year.  Instead, “they seized him, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed.”  Those who heard Jesus tell this parable would have been shocked at this.  In no way could the tenants have imagined their behavior would benefit them.  In the normal course of events, the owner or the local authorities would have come at once to drive them out.  More disturbing, however, is how the farmer reacts to this show of contempt.  He merely sends other servants on the same mission.  This seems to show, among other things, a preference for the well-being of the tenants to that of his own servants.  It was also plainly unreasonable to expect that the behavior of the tenants would improve.  The owner might just as well have written off the vineyard as a loss and ignored it from then on, at least sparing his servants.  Meanwhile, the servants show their love and loyalty for their master by carrying out his orders, no matter the danger, instead of running away once they got on the road. Most incomprehensible, though, is the owner’s sending his son to collect the produce.  Even beyond this, though, is the tenants thinking that somehow the vineyard would become their property if the son was killed.  Only after the son is killed does the owner come and put the tenants to death.

Now, the the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders recognized right away that the Lord was speaking of them as the tenants of the vineyard, and the behavior he ascribed to them enraged them to the point of seeking to arrest him.  But they had no cause for doing so, and this would only have caused the crowd to act against them, so they leave.

But what are we to do with the thoroughly insane behavior exhibited by all the characters in the parable?  What we need to understand is that Jesus is not merely telling a story; he is representing reality.  Sin is insanity.  To act against the God who gives us all that we have, including life and breath, is insane on the face of it, and yet “rational” people decide to do so, acting against their own interests in favor of some fantasy.  The loyalty of the servants does not seem possible, and yet perfectly reasonable men and women give up everything to follow the call of Jesus, even to the point of joining religious orders, becoming priests, and going out as missionaries.  When we consider these people and who God is, we may come to the conclusion that it would be more unreasonable if we chose not to follow his call.  Finally, we come to the owner, who appears to prize the tenants above members of his own household — indeed, above even his beloved son.  But this is the love of God.  This is how God loves us, even when we disobey him, even giving us a multitude of opportunities to repent of our past sins.  It is only when we “kill” his Son in our hearts, rejecting the Sacrifice his Son willingly made for us, that he is roused to anger.  We “kill” his Son in our hearts when we obstinately persist in sin until our last moments, rejecting all chances of repenting.  

Perhaps what offended the Pharisees and chief priests the most was not the Lord’s identifying them as the tenants, hurting their pride and undermining their authority.  Perhaps it was his portrayal of God’s love as going against all human expectation.  By any secular standard, God’s unconditional love for us is insane.  It does not make sense.  St. Alphonsus Liguori frequently comments on this in his writings on the Passion and Death of the Lord.  But with whose understanding of the world do we align ourselves?  That of the world, or that of the Lord?  Love will not make sense to those who do not know it, have not experienced it.  But for those in love with the Lord Jesus, who know his love for what it is, it is the only thing that does make sense.