The Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 8, 2020

Matthew1:18-23

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.”

The most ancient tradition of the Birth of the Virgin Mary comes from a document sometimes called the Proto-Gospel of James.  The identity of the author is unclear.  The document itself seems to have been composed in the East between the years 60 and 1oo A.D.  It is quoted or referred to by some of the earliest Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria.  It provides us with the names of the Virgin’s parents, Joachim and Anne, and tells us of the time she spent in the temple in Jerusalem, which is celebrated by the Feast of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary, on November 21.  The story, in brief, tells of how the childless yet devout couple of Joachim and Anne pray for a child, and Anne receives a visit from an angel promising that her child would be “spoken of by all the world.”  Anne replies that she will dedicate her child to the service of God.  At the time of the birth of her child, Anne asked the midwife whether it was a boy or a girl. When the midwife responded that it was a girl, Anne answered, “This day has God magnified my soul.”  Since this book is not considered canonical Scripture, we do not have to uphold it as accurately reporting on the actual events it contains, but in the opening chapters in which these events are described, nothing esoteric or heretical appears, lending, lending them credibility.  Certainly, the medieval Christians accepted the book as history.  And although a certain folktale style permeates the work, it is not so different from, say, the canonically received Book of Tobit.  The Feast celebrating the Virgin Mary’s birth originated in the East some time following the Council of Ephesus in 431, which proclaimed, in opposition to a heresy denying the divinity of Christ, that she was the Theotokos, that is, the “God-bearer” — the Mother of God.

The translation of the Gospel reading for this Feast is somewhat problematical, to go by the opinions of the two greatest biblical scholars of ancient times, Origen and St. Jerome.  That is, the modern translation reflects a point of view that these men contested even in their own time: that St. Joseph suspected the Virgin Mary, his espoused wife, of committing adultery, and that he planned, essentially, to abandon her.  Both of these scholars offer a very different way of reading the text.  For instance the verse translated as, “Joseph her husband . . . unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.”  By considering the context of these words and considering what the words really mean, we can also translate it as, “Joseph her husband . . . not wishing to publicly lead her to his home [as the final part of the wedding celebration], decided to release her [from the marriage agreement] privately.”  Let me quote from my own translation of St. Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew: “According to Jerome and Origen, he [Joseph] did not suspect adultery.  Joseph knew the chastity of Mary.  He read in the Scriptures that a virgin would conceive, as it is written in Isaiah 7, 14.  And from Isaiah 11, 1: A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up from his root, he also knew that Mary was descended from the line of David.  It was, in fact, easier for him to believe that this [prophecy] was fulfilled in her than that she had committed fornication.  Accounting himself unworthy to live with such sanctity, he wished to send her away secretly, as Peter said, Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man (Luke 5, 8).  He did not wish to make a public display of her – leading her to his house and taking her as his wife, accounting himself unworthy.”

We give thanks to Almighty God for the gift to the human race of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who brought into the world his own Son.  No one but him ever walked the earth with as much virtue, grace, and love of God.

Bestow upon Your servants, we beseech You, O Lord, the gift of heavenly grace, that, as the child-bearing of the Blessed Virgin stood for the beginning of our salvation, so may the solemn feast of her Nativity bring about an increase of peace.  Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end.  Amen.

Monday in the 23d Week of Ordinary Time, September 7, 2020

Luke 6:6-11

On a certain sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely to see if he would cure on the sabbath so that they might discover a reason to accuse him. But he realized their intentions and said to the man with the withered hand, “Come up and stand before us.” And he rose and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” Looking around at them all, he then said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so and his hand was restored. But they became enraged and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

Interestingly, in today’s Gospel reading, St. Luke thought it significant enough that he supplied the detail that the man’s right hand was withered.  Most likely, the man was right handed, and the loss of the use of this hand meant an inability to work.  His lot would have included the resultant poverty but also loneliness because even today, healthy people tend to edge away from the deformed, the handicapped, and those suffering from deadly diseases like cancer.  Yet this man came to the synagogue.  Probably he did not intend to beg, as it was the Sabbath, when most work was forbidden, but to pray, and perhaps to take some solace in human proximity, of not their company.  The Greek adjective translated here as “withered” does not tell us much about the cause of his condition.  The word itself can also mean, “a desert-like dryness”.  St. Mark uses a perfect passive participle to describe the man’s hand, in Mark 3, 1: “whose hand had been withered”.  This tells us his condition arose not from a birth defect but from an illness or accident.

“The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely to see if he would cure on the sabbath so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.”  They note the presence of the man with the shriveled hand and think that he will approach Jesus for healing.  Since apparently the synagogue in today’s reading was located in Capernaum, and since Jesus had spent entire days and nights healing people from all around the city, this man came some distance to see Jesus.  It is possible that the Pharisees, seeing him enter the synagogue, brought him to a seat where they knew Jesus, standing up front, would have to see him if the man’s own courage failed him.  At any rate, the Lord moved before anyone else could: Jesus “said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Come up and stand before us.’ ”  Now, this was quite out of order for a synagogue assembly.  The Jews came together here on the Sabbath to study the Scriptures and to pray.  Discussions might ensue, but no actions outside of that.  When the man stood up and came to Jesus, the Lord did not heal him immediately.  Instead, he spoke to the crowd: “I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?”  Now, what did Jesus mean by this?  He seems to open up the possibility of destroying the man with the withered hand.  But while the Lord is speaking aloud so that all might hear, his intended audience is the group of Pharisees and scribes, who are already plotting to destroy him.  He challenges them to see the evil that they were committing.  In doing so, he seeks to “save” their lives, that is, from hell.  In considering this verse, it helps to know that the verb here translated as “to save” also means “to heal”, which we can also understand as “to forgive”.  

The minds of the Pharisees are so darkened with hate that they do not see what Jesus is trying to tell them.  Indeed, they seem hardened against the miracles Jesus has performed, and what that signifies.  They do not challenge the reality of the miracles.  They simply look past them.  All they can see is a man who pays them no deference and does not follow their interpretation of the law.  After the Lord spoke to them, he let the words sink in.  He “looked around”, looking into the eyes of men who discounted the healing of the lame, the sick, the blind as signs that God had truly come among them.  

And then he turned to the man with the withered hand and told him to hold out the afflicted appendage, and all could see that it was whole.  Flesh and tendons had suddenly appeared.  The man could wiggle his fingers and open and close his fist.  The sense of touch returned to it.  We have to imagine the reaction of the man, for it was so overshadowed by the bitterness of the Pharisees that this is what Luke describes: “They became enraged and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.”  They probably bolted from the synagogue, unable to bear the presence of the Lord and the man whom he had healed.  They go off to break the Sabbath by their plotting the Lord’s death.  Jesus, in fact, did not break the Sabbath here, but went against the interpretation the Pharisees baselessly put upon the Sabbath laws. 

We can see here that God will not allow us to decide what he can and cannot do, but we can also see in this account how God comes to the earth, signified by the synagogue, in order to heal the human race from the sin which has withered it, that is, the original sin which wounded human nature.  The devil, that is, the Pharisees, is powerless to stop him, but howls about the healing and forgiveness that he brings and looks for ways to destroy him.  Looking at the account this way helps us to understand something of the mindless and senseless state of those who hated (and continue today to hate) the Lord.

The Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 6, 2020

Matthew 18:15–20

Jesus said to his disciples: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, amen, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

“We piped you a tune, and you did not dance; we cried you a dirge, and you did not mourn” (Matthew 11, 17).  We act as misbehaving children who insist that all others conform to our fantasies, and then we throw fits when someone wavers in doing so.  And instead heeding the warning to walk, not run across the street, we endanger ourselves and others.  It is for this reason that the Lord provides laws for us.  We may think of ourselves as adults, but if “we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8, 26), as St. Paul says, then how less likely that we know how to act as we ought.

The Lord lays down laws for us in order to guide us, support us, protect us, and warn us.  If they seem onerous, it is only because we have become unaccustomed either to self-discipline or to following another’s directions.  It is like when a person wears down his shoes and at last buys new ones.  At first they hurt and their stiffness is troublesome, but if they fit properly, they benefit the structure of our feet and enable us to walk or run better.  The old shoes felt more comfortable, but they provided no support for our arches and had dangerous holes in the soles.  Now, over time, the new shoes wear down and become more comfortable, but in the case of God’s law, by continuously conforming ourselves to it, we become more “comfortable”.  

Who is this God who gives us laws?  He is the One who loves us so much that he would die on the Cross for us.  He shows no ordinary love in this, but a love that is “strong as death”, and with a “jealousy as hard as hell”.  If we would live with him in his eternal embrace in heaven, we must love him in exactly the same way.  Because of this, we must love him a love all things, and above all people: “He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10, 37).  Or, to put it another way, “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law” (Matthew 10, 34-35).  He also warns us that obeying his laws, while gaining us heaven, also necessarily gains enemies on earth: “The brother also shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the son; and the children shall rise up against their parents, and shall put them to death. And you shall be hated by all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved” (Matthew 10, 21-22).

Today, some folks declare themselves to be “autonomous”, which is only another way of saying that they are omnipotent, and therefore lawless.  (It is always funny to see bumper stickers on cars promoting or announcing autonomy because it is on the highway that we are least autonomous).  Still, whether they want to be or not, they are as subject to natural law as much as to physical law, both of which are established by God.  Those who transgress either will suffer the consequences.  Heaven is for those who follow the directions to get there.

Saturday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time

The Feast of Blessed Theresa of Calcutta

Luke 6:1-5

While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry? How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

Travelers customarily cut through grain fields in ancient Galilee, over time creating more or less permanent paths, and farmers expected people to help themselves to the heads of grain as they went along, though leaving the path to gather them was not allowed.  The Pharisees walking with Jesus and his disciples, in today’s Gospel reading, would not have spoken up if the plucking of the grain heads had happened on a day other than the Sabbath.  The fact that they object here comes from their interpretation of the Torah’s laws concerning the Sabbath.  One of the sticking points between the Pharisees and the other Jewish sects, such as the Sadducees, arose because the former insisted on making adaptations of the ancient law to modern times.  They permitted themselves to make a number of adaptations to the law governing the Sabbath which went into considerable detail, and so they could say that plucking the heads of grain constituted an act contrary to that law.  The Lord Jesus goes beyond merely defending his disciples and shows the Pharisees that their adaptation went too far, and had no basis in the Scriptures that they venerated: “Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry? How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions?” The passage in question is found at 1 Samuel 21, 3-6.  

In the Old Testament story, the priest is concerned only about whether David and his men are ritually clean.  The bread in question had been placed “before the face of the Lord”, that is, before the ark of the covenant, as a sacrifice, but by the time David asked the priest for them they had been replaced by fresh loaves.  According to the law, the priest and his assistants, were permitted to eat them, but no one else.  Jesus uses this account from the Scriptures to show the Pharisees that even if they were correct in their interpretation of the law, the need for nourishment in this case outweighed the exact following of the law.  And Jesus does something more: he claims: “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”  By making this claim of lordship over the Sabbath, Jesus does not merely insist that he possesses the authority to interpret the law, putting himself on the same basis as the Pharisees, but that he himself made the law.  He claims to be divine.  St. Luke does not describe the reaction of the Pharisees.  They probably could not believe that they heard him right.  But afterwards, their belief that Jesus broke the Sabbath formed part of their argument against him.

An important feature of this account is often missed because translators try to smooth it over or because they simply do not understand it.  The translation here for instance has it that this event occurred on “a Sabbath”, but Luke says very specifically, in the Greek, that this happened on “the second first Sabbath”.  Now, few non Jews would understand what this means and assume it is a misprint.  However, the term “second first Sabbath” indicates the first Sabbath after the Sabbath of Passover, which is called the “first Sabbath”.  This tells us that Jesus and his disciples were walking through this field during the Spring when the grain would be nearly ripe.  We can also interpret this spiritually, that the Lord died on the day before the Sabbath in Passover (the first Friday) and rested from the work of his Passion on the Sabbath itself.  By his Passion he delivered all men from sin, and instituted the new law, loosing the bonds of the old.  Therefore, his disciples were free from its restrictions when the next Sabbath (the second first Sabbath) arrived.  This means for us that the Death of Jesus opens the way for us to enjoy the ground wheat of his Body in Holy Communion, and prepares us for the eternal Sabbath in heaven.

We celebrate today the Feast of Blessed Theresa of Calcutta.  The Lord permitted me to me her on a couple of occasions so that I might speak a little about her from a personal point of view.  In the years before I entered seminary, my sister and I used to spend our summers as live-in volunteers at the Gift of Peace in Washington D.C., which served as a hospice for the indigent dying from AIDS at that time (the mid 1980’s).  Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity worked there, bringing care and consolation to people suffering the last horrible stages of an incurable disease, and who had been abandoned by family, friends, and even hospitals.  Mother Theresa used to visit about twice a year.  Her visits filled the thirty or so sisters with great joy and excitement.  It was like Christmas for a child, when she came.  And she herself was like a little child.  She was short and bent-over in those days, but if she had stood straight she would only have come up to my shoulder, so about five feet.   But what made her child-like was her own joy, her own playfulness.  She would hide from the sisters giving her a tour of the facility, causing them to scramble all over to find her.  She also joked with them and would laugh at their jokes.  There was a lot of teasing, back and forth.  Such a small face contained such a wide smile, and when she smiled, her eyes sparkled, but her expression turned to attentive concern when a resident talked to her about his sufferings.  She was a very practical woman, too.  When something needed to be done, she did it or got it done.  The story goes that on a visit to D.C. in the early 1980’s, a large building that had been a Catholic school near the National Shrine attracted her attention.  Later in the day, Cardinal Hickey, very full of himself, asked her what he could do to help her work.  I suspect that he thought she would say, “Just pray,” and he would be off the hook.  Instead, she told him to give her that big building she had noticed.  Hickey stammered that he could not do that since he was using it for Catholic Charities (I think it was).  She looked at him and told him again that she wanted it.  Cardinal Hickey, surrounded by the press and “important” people, was in the same position as King Herod when his niece asked for the head of John the Baptist, and he gave it to her.  Her order continues to use the building for their work today.  The love of God burned fiercely in her tiny body and her great soul and gave life to her every action and word.  People felt her presence when she entered a room.  And now she reigns in heaven with God.  

Friday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 4, 2020

Luke 5:33-39

The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, “The disciples of John the Baptist fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same; but yours eat and drink.” Jesus answered them, “Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.” And he also told them a parable. “No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not match the old cloak. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

In today’s Gospel reading we see the Pharisees attempting to force Jesus to conform to their views on religious behavior.  They also feel annoyed that Jesus does not claim allegiance to any particular group.  This makes it hard for them to tell who he thinks he is.  He has not announced himself as the Messiah, or as a prophet, and he preaches on his own authority.  This question on fasting might give them an answer.  The reply Jesus gives them provides them something to consider: “Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?”  The answer comes in the form of a question, indeed, of a parable.  The Lord speaks to them of a “bridegroom”.  John the Baptist, who made it known far and wide that he was sent for the purpose of preparing the way for the Messiah, referred to the Messiah as the “bridegroom”: “He that has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice” (John 3, 29).  Previously, the prophets had spoken of God as the Bridegroom for the unfaithful Israel, so when the Lord applied this term to himself, he would have angered the Pharisees and at the same time compelled them to look more closely at his preaching and miracles.  Neither John the Baptist nor the Lord allowed the Pharisees or anyone else to define them.  When the leadership from Jerusalem demanded that John identify himself, he replied, using Isaiah’s words: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’ ” (John 1, 23).  And when the demons cried out that Jesus was the Son of God, he silenced them.  

“But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.”  These words would have baffled them even if they had understood what he spoke to them of himself as a bridegroom.  The Lord uses the figure of the bridegroom “taken away” in order to speak of his Passion and Death for the salvation of the world.  But this teaching would prove so beyond the grasp even of his disciples that he would spend much time after his Resurrection explaining it to them.  Here, he begins to speak about who he is, what he has been sent to do, and how different he was as their Savior from their limited expectations.

Following this, he offers them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not match the old cloak.”  He speaks of cloaks and of wineskins, ordinary items.  He uses them, though, to speak of the new age of grace which has come upon the world with his entrance into it.  The “old cloak” is the Old Law, and the “new cloak” is one who has been transformed by faith in Christ and by baptism.  The believer transformed in Christ can belong only to the New Law, and one who clings to the Old Law cannot belong to the Lord Jesus.  Similarly in the case of the wineskins.  We can also understand by the “old cloak” any belief system or worldly attachment.  One who is baptized is not simply initiated into a new society, but is in fact transformed into a new person — a new kind of person.  St. Paul refers to this new kind as “the new man”: “Put off . . . the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of error and be renewed in spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth” (Ephesians 4, 22-24).  St. Paul, in speaking of the incompatibility of the new man and his old attachments, says: “And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has the faithful with the unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (2 Corinthians 6:15–16).

If we belong to Jesus, we cannot belong to anyone or anything else.

Thursday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 3, 2020

The Feast of St. Gregory the Great

Luke 5:1-11

While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They came and filled both boats so that the boats were in danger of sinking. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him, and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.

St. Luke calls the large freshwater lake around which Jesus did most of his preaching and healing “the Lake of Gennesaret”, the Greek version of the original name found in the Old Testament (cf. Joshua 13, 27).  The Jews living in the region of Galilee after the return of the exiles from Babylon called it “the Sea of Galilee”.  When Herod Antipas built the city of Tiberias on the lake’s western coast in 20 A.D., it became known as “the Sea of Tiberias”, although local usage retained the older name.  It runs in length to thirteen miles, eight miles in width, and 157 feet at its deepest point.  It is largely fed by the Jordan River.  In The Wars of the Jews, III, 3, 7, the historian Josephus describes the water as very good for drinking, and that the lake abounded in fish of a wide variety. 

In today’s Gospel reading we find the Lord Jesus preaching on the lake’s shore in the early morning.  Since little room for a crowd existed in the small town of Capernaum’s marketplace, it should not be surprising for him to have gone there to announce the kingdom of heaven.  The gathering crowd pressed up against him, forcing the Lord back almost into the water.  Seeing two boats pulled up on the sand nearby, he walks towards the boat of one of the tired, wet fishermen who are washing their big nets, and gets in it.  It sounds to us as though he were treating this boat as his own.  He then asks Simon, the owner, to put out a little from the shore, and when the weary Simon obliges, he preaches from the boat.  He probably preached for another hour or two, until people began to grow hungry.  We ought to consider how much Jesus was asking of Simon here.  The fisherman had already spent the night in the lake, casting the nets and hauling them in empty, time and again.  Soaked, cold, and exhausted, Simon delayed his own going home in order to row Jesus out for him to preach, leaving Andrew his brother to wash their net.  He could easily have excused himself from doing all of this, and no one would have blamed him, but he did not.  Jesus’s presence and his words captivated him.  And yet, Simon and his men pushed the boat back into the water.

“After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, ‘Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.’ ”  The carpenter from Nazareth has commandeered Simon’s boat and now he gives orders.  The Lord instructs him to “put out into the deep water” — which meant a few miles out to sea.  Simon could not do this on his own.  It meant getting his brother and his small crew to come back to the boat, dragging the heavy net with them, and then heading out at a time when the fishing was over until the next night and all the other fishing boats had returned.  It also meant that if they cast their net, they would have to wash it all over again.  What could they have expected to happen when they cast their net this time?  After a long night of hard frustration, they could have had no serious expectations of anything.  At most, they were going through the motions at the behest of a man they hardly knew.

“When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing.”  At mid to late morning in the deep water, they should have pulled up their net empty.  But so full of fish was it that their net was tearing.  Simon and Andrew waved their arms and cried out to the distant shore for their partners James and John to come help them.  Their partners must have remained behind on the shore to mark the sequel.  They would have scrambled to put out into the water in order to lend their aid.  Meanwhile, Simon and Andrew and their men were struggling with the net, not daring to pull it out of the water but not loosing it and losing their windfall.  Jesus watches them closely.  Does Simon cast a glance at him or even remember him in the action of the moment?  He has his hands full.

“They came and filled both boats so that the boats were in danger of sinking.”  In 1986, the fairly well preserved remains of a fishing boat were discovered in the mud on the shore of the lake and were dated to the first century A.D.  Nothing like it had ever been found before.  It measured 27 feet long, by 7 feet wide, by 4 feet tall.  These dimensions help us to imagine the enormous haul of fish the fishermen got that morning, and something of the work and time that must have been involved.  Now, to see the significance of the natural impossibility of this catch, we ought to compare this with the sacrifice offered by Elijah the prophet after the prophets of Baal failed in their sacrifice to their god: “And he laid the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid it upon the wood.  And he said: ‘Fill four buckets with water, and pour it upon the burnt offering, and upon the wood.’ And again he said: ‘Do the same the second time.’ And when they had done it the second time, he said: ‘Do the same also the third time.’ And they did so the third time. And the water run round about the altar, and the trench was filled with water . . . Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the holocaust, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench” (1 Kings 18:33–38).  Clearly, the hand of God had caused this.

“When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’ ”  As the fish spill into the boats to the shouts of his men, Simon turns and faces Jesus, who is looking intently upon him.  He knows that it is Jesus who has done this.  He may be a sinful man, but he is an honest and clear-sighted one.  His admission is heartfelt, and rather than attempt to curry favor with this man, he acknowledges his unworthiness: “Depart from, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”    The fact that Jesus could do this, and that he did it for him, Simon, the son of John, dumbfounds him.  “Astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him.”  The word translated here as “astonishment” might be better rendered as “shocked amazement”, particularly due to the utterly unanticipated nature of the catch.  It ought to be our feeling at the time of the consecration at Mass, when we also know that we are face to face with God.

“Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”  The Lord meant this also for Andrew, James, John, and the others whom he would choose later as his Apostles.  They would be catching men in the net of the truth, the net of the Faith, with all its teachings closely connected together.  The net of the Church, the Body of Christ, with all the members bound together and together to Christ the Head of that Body.  They would catch a superabundant amount of men, too.  In this way Jesus fulfills what the Father had told Abraham long before: “I will bless you, and I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is by the sea shore; your seed shall possess the gates of their enemies” (Genesis 22, 17).  This reference to the gates of the enemies should remind us of Matthew 16, 18, in which the Lord will say to this same man: “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  That is, the Church, his “seed”.  

“When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.”  The call of Simon Peter and the first Apostles is told differently by Sts. Matthew and Mark.  St. Augustine, in his marvelous work, On the Harmony of the Gospels, says that Matthew and Mark give us a quick summary of the calling.  For them, what is essential is the effect the Lord’s preaching had on others, such that they would leave everything at once to follow him.  We also see this in the call of St. Matthew.  Luke, however, provides personal details and in so doing shows that the Lord has come for all people (the overflowing catch), and even makes ordinary men his helpers, repentant sinners though they may be.  The simple nobility of Simon Peter’s obedience to the Lord’s commands, the clarity of his confession, and the Lord’s calm promise would have impressed his Greek audience as well.

St. Gregory the Great ruled the Church and even directed civil affairs during a lawless time in the Italian peninsula following the fall of the Western Empire.  His sermons and books are full of gold for priests and laity alike.  We pray through his intercession for the conversion of all our bishops that they may lead lives worthy of their calling and so lead us to eternal pastures.

Wednesday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 2, 2020

The Feast of the September Martyrs

Luke 4:38-44

After Jesus left the synagogue, he entered the house of Simon. Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a severe fever, and they interceded with him about her. He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up immediately and waited on them.  At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them. And demons also came out from many, shouting, “You are the Son of God.” But he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak because they knew that he was the Christ.  At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place. The crowds went looking for him, and when they came to him, they tried to prevent him from leaving them. But he said to them, “To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.” And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

St. Luke does not include in his Gospel the story of the call of the first four men who would become his Apostles, which St. Matthew tells (cf. Matthew 4, 18-22).  Including it at this point would complicate his chronology, which he altered somewhat already in order to show how and why Jesus was rejected by his own people, beginning at the very start of his ministry.  Because of this, the visit to the house of Simon Peter in today’s Gospel reading seems abrupt.  

“Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a severe fever.”  We can infer from the fact that Simon had a mother-in-law and that she was living in his house that his father-in-law was already dead and that either she had no other children than the woman who was Simon’s wife, or that they were dead.  Normally, a widow lived with her eldest son, not the son-in-law.  From the fact that Andrew was living there as well tells us that he had not married yet and probably had not reached the age for marriage.

Now, in ancient times, a high fever usually led to death.  After witnessing Jesus exorcising the demon(s) from the possessed man in the synagogue, Simon must have felt especially eager to bring Jesus to his home, and as soon as Simon and Andrew arrived with Jesus, “they interceded with him about her.”  Here, we see intercessory prayer at work, for this is exactly what takes place: Simon Peter and Andrew ask Jesus for his help.  “He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it left her.”  Just as the Lord had rebuked the demon and it fled the possessed man, so Jesus rebukes the fever and it at once leaves the woman.  Luke emphasizes the simple command and immediate result because the Greeks would have been impressed by this.  No strange foreign rituals or drawn-out spells or use of expensive potions, but a simple exercise of raw power.  “She got up immediately and waited on them.”  The fact that she got up at once and went to work confirms the completeness of her cure and also shows how one is to respond to God’s grace: she offered service, she “waited on them”.  

“At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him.”  News of the miracle for the woman whom all the neighbors expected to die imminently would have spread pretty quickly along with the news about the former demoniac.  Excitement and some desperation brought the people with their sick to the door of the house Jesus was visiting, but the people wait until sunset to do so.  Until sundown, it was still the Sabbath and they were prohibited from carrying anything or even their sick who would be unable to walk.  “He laid his hands on each of them and cured them.”  Jesus could have cured them all at once without leaving the house and not have tired himself.  He laid hands on each of them in order to show his personal love and care for each, and also to make certain that the people knew that the cures came by his own power, and by this know that the kingdom of heaven had arrived.  “And demons also came out from many, shouting, ‘You are the Son of God.’ ”  Demonic possession was not uncommon in the days before grace.  It would become less common as the Faith spread over the succeeding centuries.  It has become not uncommon again in these dark, faithless times.  The demons address the Lord as the “Son of God”, but they do not yet understand that he is divine.  The term was used for angels, prophets, kings, and even judges.  The demons may be tempting him to reveal himself.  But Jesus reveals himself in his own time and in his own way.

“At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place.”  St. Mark writes, “And rising very early, going out, he went into a desert place: and there he prayed” (Mark 1, 35).  Jesus healed the sick for several hours, and perhaps slept for a short time.  But he got up before anyone else in the house and went out to the grassy country beyond the city in order to pray without disturbance.  While the Lord counsels communal prayer, we often see him praying alone for hours in the wilderness and on mountains.  He sets an example of prayer for us too.  While prayers of praise and intercession may be made with others, we must go into solitude for contemplation.

“The crowds went looking for him, and when they came to him, they tried to prevent him from leaving them.”  They wanted to keep him because he brought renown to the town, but in general they did not follow him.  Later, Jesus will cry out, “And you, Capernaum, shall you be exalted up to heaven? You shall go down even unto hell. For if in Sodom had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, perhaps it had remained unto this day” (Matthew 11, 23).  

“To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.”  Luke shows Jesus going forth into the rest of Galilee and Judea, and even venturing into Gentile lands, just as later his Apostles will spread out into Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome, doing the work of the Savior.  “I have been sent.”  Jesus is both sent by the Father and comes of his own free will.  He shows his power in his miracles in Capernaum, and then tells the people that he has been “sent”, leaving them to consider that the “sender” must be more powerful even than the one he sent.  In the same way, our works of sacrifice and charity point others to the God who likewise “sends” us into the world.  We do not appear randomly into a world which exists for no particular purpose, but are sent by God unto this world which he has made in order to show people that God has created them, that he loves them, and that, if they will love him in return, they can live with him for all eternity.

Today we celebrate the feast of 181 Catholics — bishops, martyrs, priests, religious sisters, monks, and laity — martyred in Paris in 1792 at the time of the French Revolution by leftist fanatics.  We pray during these violent times that we may imitate the fortitude in faith of these holy men and women.