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

Luke 7:36-50

A certain Pharisee invited Jesus to dine with him, and he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee. Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said. “Two people were in debt to a certain creditor; one owed five hundred days’ wages and the other owed fifty. Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both. Which of them will love him more?” Simon said in reply, “The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.” He said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet, but she has bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The others at table said to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” But he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

The anointing of Jesus which is recalled in today’s Gospel reading bears a similarity to the anointing of Jesus by Mary, the sister of Lazarus, of which St. John tells us in his Gospel (12, 1-8), but various details tell us that these are two separate events.  The woman in St. Luke’s account, for instance, is known as a “sinner”, while the woman in St. John’s Gospel is Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus.  Again, here, Luke tells us specifically that the woman anointed the feet of Jesus, and John tells us that it was his head.  

Jesus also uses each anointing to make very different points.  In John, the Lord says that Mary has anointed him in preparation for his coming Death and burial.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus takes the occasion to teach about the forgiveness of sins.

Luke says that, “There was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee.”  Luke does not tell us which city this occurs in.  Since Luke locates Jesus in Galilee during this part of his ministry, this may have occurred in Capernaum, the city Jesus moved to after leaving Nazareth.  The “sinful woman” of whom Luke speaks would not have come to the synagogue to hear the Lord preach but could have heard him when he taught on the shore, as he did on at least one occasion.  She could very well have known some of those whom he had healed from their diseases or whom he had released from the devil.  As a prostitute, though. she would have kept her distance.  From her subsequent actions, we know that she possessed a certain humility, a recognition of her own lowliness.  Perhaps she had thought of going before Jesus on previous occasions, but she had shrunk from this out of her shame.  Here, a strong urge, a prodding by the Holy Spirit, moved her from within and she determined that come what may, she must humble herself before the One who had touched her heart, however remotely.  We can wonder if she had heard the story of how the Lord had forgiven the sins of the man carried on the mat by his friends, and desired with all her heart to be forgiven too.

She brought with her “an alabaster flask of ointment”.  Alabaster is a soft stone that is easily carved.  In ancient times the highest quality alabaster was mined in a particular place in Egypt.  A bright white stone, in those days it was often carved into vials for perfumes and ointments.  “She stood behind him at his feet” must mean that she positioned herself behind him, since she could hardly have kissed his feet from a standing position.  She “began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.”  Why does she cry?  Perhaps she was overpowered by the Lord’s powerful presence.  She may have looked into his eyes briefly and seen the love for her in them, a love which she had never felt before in her life from anyone.  At the feet of this holy man, she would certainly have wept over her sins.  She completely abases herself here, her hair disheveled, sitting on the floor where only the lowest servant would have gone, subject to shameful rejection.  But she would rather be there at the feet of Christ than anywhere she had ever been.

The Pharisee, who had most likely invited Jesus to his house to learn from him who he claimed to be, reasons: “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”  This is a fair question.  If the woman is unclean, then she makes Jesus unclean by her touch.  Would not a prophet know the clean from the unclean?  Jesus, without making any claims, shows himself to be something more than a prophet by taking up the man’s unspoken question.  In so doing, he brings up the Pharisee’s shocking lack of courtesy: he had provided no water for Jesus’s feet, had given him no kiss, and had not anointed his head, all expected ways of welcoming guests.  This behavior on the part of the Pharisee came through no accidental oversight but was purposeful and calculated to make clear that Jesus was not honoring him by his visit; he was honoring Jesus by inviting him to his house.  The omissions flew in the face of eastern culture which prized the guest, and represented a jarring breach of etiquette.  It is, in fact, a sign of contempt.  Jesus contrasts this with the behavior of the woman who has washed his feet with her tears and hair, kissed his feet, and anointed them with her perfume.  

“So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  A better translation might read: “Her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much.”  There is no justification for “she has shown great love.”  For one thing, this would have the verb in the perfect tense, whereas it is in the aorist.  The aorist tense is used to show that a single action happened in recent past, and so Jesus is referring to her washing, kissing, and anointing his feet, rather than some action completed before this one, as indicated by the use of the perfect tense.  This woman did not love in the past, but now she did.  The word translated here as “hence” (that is, “therefore”) actually means “because”.  The lectionary translation makes it sound like the woman loved because she was forgiven, rather than that she was forgiven because she loved.  Jesus then implicitly compares to the Pharisee the woman’s state with his own: “Her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much.  But he who has not loved much is not forgiven much.”  We note here that Jesus is referring to love for himself, as well as claiming to be able to forgive sins, which only God can do: “He said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven . . . Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’ ”  He makes an unequivocal statement here regarding his divinity, and the people at table with him know it: “Who is this who even forgives sins?”  

Jesus shows here how love and faith lead to forgiveness and salvation.  Love of Jesus leads to faith in him, which leads us to seek his forgiveness knowing that he is himself the source of forgiveness, and this leads us to peace with him, and salvation.  It all begins with the spark of love, which induces humility in us, allowing us to truly love.

Let us look deep into the eyes of the love of God in prayer and fall deeply in love with him so that we might also rejoice in hearing the words, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Wednesday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 26, 2020

Luke 7:31-35

Jesus said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.’  For John the Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”

Long ago, when children still played outside, they often played games that featured calls, or call-and-response.  These games included “Red Rover”, “Marco Polo”, “Ring Around the Rosie”, and various rope skipping rhymes.  The ancestors of these games go back as far as history allows us to see.  The Lord Jesus alludes to one of these games in today’s Gospel reading.  Perhaps it is a game the Lord himself played in his childhood.  What it comes down to is to cause someone, maybe a child who was “it”, as in the game of tag, to behave in a certain way.  This would make it akin to “Simon Says”.  The Lord refers to the game in order to point out to the people around him that they were not truly seeking to learn from him, particularly concerning his identity, so much as they were trying to impose an identity on him and so control his words and deeds.  The Lord rebukes them for this, and in so doing tells them that they are acting childishly.

“The people of this generation.”  The Hebrew word for “generation” is dor, and like its Greek equivalent, it has a more general meaning than the one we usually associate with the English word.  Dor could mean generation as in a period of forty years), or an age, or a cycle of time.  The Jews of the time of Jesus believed that they were living in the sixth age, that of the Messiah; the seventh age being the age of the Sabbath.  The early Christians adapted this, understanding the sixth age, or generation, as beginning with the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and concluding with the end of the world and the final judgment.  The resurrection of the just and their entrance into heaven would inaugurate the seventh age or eternal Sabbath.  Jesus is speaking here of this sixth age, which continues to the present time.  The people of “this generation” attempt to interpret him according to their ideas, conceits, ideologies, cultural norms, and even their own personal sinfulness.  Many seek in Jesus a political liberator, a mere heroic example, a wise man, a misunderstood prophet, a wandering story-teller, or a man as sinful and given to weaknesses as any of us.  So few these days (or any other days) seek to understand him as he knew himself to be.  This requires, among other things, setting aside all preconceptions and foreign cultural prisms — indeed, our pride.  More than anything else, it is this pride that makes Jesus so hard for people to know.  Only the little ones, the child-like, can know him well.  The merely childish cannot.

“For John the Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ ”  In preparation for the feast of grace the Lord would bring when he came, John and his disciples fasted often.  They fasted to such a degree that people felt intimidated, and so they accused him, at least among themselves, of being “possessed by a demon”.  But the people seeing that the Lord and his disciples did not fast, said, “Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”  In this way, they also let themselves off the hook: Fasting is bad, just look at that John the Baptist fellow; and, There is no need for us to talk with sinners so as to bring them back, just look at that Jesus of Nazareth character.

So let us throw off our pride and learn who Jesus truly is, which we can do through the study of the Gospels and through gazing at him on the crucifix and at the altar.

The Feast of our Lady of Sorrows, Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Luke 2:33-35

Jesus’ father and mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this Child is destined for the downfall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

The commemoration of the sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary became a subject of meditation, prayer, and preaching during the Middle Ages as a consequence of the renewed devotion to the sufferings of the Lord, especially fostered by the Franciscans.  An example of this devotion to Mary is the hymn Stabat Mater, now often sung during the observance of the Stations of the Cross.  We first see this feast honoring her sorrows celebrated in the 1400’s in Germany, and it became a universal feast in the 1600’s.  By this time, popular devotion recognized seven particular sorrows: the prophecy of Simeon; the flight into Egypt; the loss of the Child Jesus in the temple; the meeting of Jesus and Mary on the Way of the Cross; the Crucifixion; the taking down of the Body of Jesus from the Cross; and the burial of Jesus.

What came to be known as the first of her sorrows is recounted in the Gospel reading for the feast.  Following the harrowing journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem (the Virgin, heavily pregnant, is often pictured as riding on a donkey on this occasion, but most likely that is not true), the giving birth in the stable, the visit of the Magi, and the Infant’s circumcision and naming, Joseph and Mary took their Baby the short distance to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated to God, as per the law regarding the first-born male.  They would have stood in line with dozens of other couples with their new-borns, with nothing to distinguish them.  At the point when it is their turn in the temple, the elderly Simeon approached them and took the Child in his own arms to announce that “this Child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted.”  The Greek text may be more literally translated as, This One is appointed for a sign [to be] spoken against.  The literal translation helps us to see that Jesus was not merely “destined”, as though by disinterested fate, but was “appointed” by a Superior to a station or position.  The Child was in fact appointed as a “Sign”, against whom people would speak, presumably those whose “downfall” was signified by his Nativity.  The Evangelists all use the Greek word we translate as “sign” to mean an event or an appearance that provides confirmation of a claim, or as an indication of supernatural power.  For instance, in Luke 11:16: “And others tempting, asked of him a sign from heaven.”  The Pharisees press Jesus to give them some physical proof of his divinity somehow greater than that which he had already shown them.  Or, in Luke 21, 7, when Jesus speaks to his disciples about the end of time: “Master, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign when they shall begin to come to pass?”  Jesus then warns them of “signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars” (v. 25).  

All this, the Virgin Mary heard and pondered.  And then Simeon told her that she would play her own part in the Lord’s “contradiction”, his Passion: “And you yourself a sword will pierce”.  The Greek helps us out again: And a sword will pass through your soul.  Now, the word translated as “sword” can also mean a “piercing sorrow”.  This “passes through” the Virgin’s psyche, which can mean “soul”, or, literally, “breath”, which takes us back to Genesis 2, 7: “The Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath [psyche] of life, and man became a living soul.”  That is to say, A piercing, mortally wounding sorrow will pass through your very being.  Her sorrow will be utterly unlike any sorrow any person has ever felt.  But this agony will have a purpose: “So that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”  In the Greek, the “thoughts” may be either good or bad.  The intimate connection of which Simeon speaks between Jesus, appointed as a Sign, and her suffering points to the fact that Mary did not suffer only on account of Jesus, but also with Jesus — tied to her Son in a way no other ever could be, through the purity of her faith in him as the Son of God.  And Jesus knew exactly how much she herself sacrificed on account of him and with him as he gazed down at her from the Cross and committed her to St. John’s care.  The thoughts of many hearts are “revealed” through Christ’s Passion and her suffering within it: those of the Apostles, those of the Sanhedrin, those of Pilate, of Judas, and the hearts of those alive today, for the Passion of Jesus reveals the extent of God’s love for man, and the story of the human race since that time is the story of how mortal men and women accept or reject it.

By living holy, penitential lives, we too may stand by Mary at the Cross of Jesus, looking up into the eyes through which infinite love cascades out to us, and prepare ourselves for our own resurrection.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2020

John 3:13–17

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  For 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.

On October 28 in the year 312, the general Constantine fought his rivals for the imperial throne at the Battle of Milvan Bridge.  According to the Church Father Lactantius, before the battle, Constantine received a vision of the Cross of Christ, and he was told that, “In this sign, you shall conquer.”  Subsequently, Constantine had the Cross marked on the shields of his soldiers.  After fierce fighting, the opposing general drowned in the Tiber River as he tried to escape, and Constantine emerged as the victor.  One of his first actions as emperor was to make Christianity a legal religion within the empire.  Later, his mother, St. Helena, went to Jerusalem and funded an excavation which resulted in the finding of Golgotha and three crosses, one of which was thought to be the Cross of Jesus Christ.  Another Father, writing around the year 400 tells us that these three crosses were touched to a woman who was deathly ill, and at the touch of the last, she fully and instantly recovered.  This was deemed proof for the true Cross.  A feast was later celebrated in honor of the Holy Cross on September 14, the date on which it was brought into the new basilica Constantine had built for it.  

Interesting legends surround the origin of the wood for the Cross.  One, from the Middle Ages, tells that it came from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from which Adam and Eve ate, committing the Original Sin.  The idea that the Lord was crucified on the hill in which Adam had been buried is perhaps connected with this.  Another, from the same time, has it that the wood came from the bridge over which the Queen of Sheba walked to meet King Solomon.

What we honor on this feast is not so much the wood itself as the fact that our Lord and Savior died upon it for our sins.  We celebrate a love stronger than death, more powerful than hell (cf. Song of Songs 8, 6).  We regard the wood of the Cross as a relic and honor it accordingly.  We show our love for the Cross of Christ on Good Friday when we kiss or otherwise venerate the crucifix during the celebration of the Lord’s Passion.  When we kiss the crucifix, we kiss the infinite love Christ continuously pours out upon us.

In the Gospel reading for this feast, Jesus says to the Pharisee Nicodemus, “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven”, thereby claiming his divinity, but in the next breath he tells him, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”  Here, the Lord speaks of the fact that he has taken up a human nature purposely that he might be “lifted up”.  By believing in him as God and man, we might be saved: “So that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  But what is it to the eternal God, supremely joyous in himself, and having no need of anything, as to whether sinners are saved?  According to the punctuation in the lectionary, the following words were a commentary by St. John on what the Lord had just said. From ancient times, it has been held that the Lord himself said them: “For 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.”  That is, God did this for the sake of his love for us.  Love does not act out of need, but out of desire for the good of the beloved.  Even a partial realization of his love stuns us.  By essentially trading his Son for us, he shows how great is his love is for us.    “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  Even with all the contempt the people of the world have shown the Lord throughout our history, he sends his Son into the world to tells us of his love for us, and even more, to show us how great his love is by dying on the Cross for us, as though to say, There is nothing, my beloved, that I would not do for you.

The 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, September 13, 2020

Romans 14:7–9

Brothers and sisters: None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For this is why Christ died and came to life, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

Since today’s Gospel reading came up in the daily cycle of Mass readings not long ago, let us examine this significant text from today’s second reading.  We have here a snippet from a larger argument St. Paul is making to the Christians at Rome who are still learning how to be Christians.  The argument has to so with pious practices such as fasting.  An issue has arisen at Rome with those who did not fast feeling annoyed with those who did, and with those who fasted with those who did not.  Paul makes the point that they ought not to fight over ascetic practices of this kind which were a personal spiritual matter and did not involve commandments of the Church, for in the end all are striving to serve God to the best of their ability.  He reminds them that they are each of them servants.  Now, servants performed a number of roles and tasks in the Roman household which required specialized training.  There were secretaries who could read and write, cooks, entertainers, lady’s maids, valets, kitchen servants, dining room servants, stewards, and many other types.  Each had his or her prescribed place and set of expectations.  Paul points out that though this is true, they are all servants and belong to one master.  One servant had no business criticizing another, particularly a servant with a different job which the other did not understand.

“None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself.”  The servant did not work for himself.  He was owned by his master, and it was expected that the servant had no private concerns of his own but only those of his master.  This was ensured by the fact that the master supplied the servant’s basic needs of shelter and food.  Paul teaches here that the Christian is this servant.  God takes care of his servant’s basic needs, for as the Lord Jesus said,  “Be not anxious therefore, saying: What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed?  For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knows that you have need of all these things.” (Matthew 6:31–32).  Thus, the Christian is free to “seek therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice.”  The true servant does not even “die for himself”, that is, defending his own property or honor, or the like.  Absolutely everything he has comes from the master, and so the servant would be expected to die for the master’s property or honor, of it came to that.  The Christian, likewise, does for God, not for himself or his own interests.

“We are the Lord’s.”  This simple statement sums up the entirety of the moral and spiritual life.  We are to act as servants; we are to think as servants.  By thinking as servants, by “becoming” servants of God, we act as his servants, and so lead moral and virtuous lives.  In order to become these servants we are baptized, where we receive the graces that makes this servitude possible in the first place.  And then we work hard to defeat our pride, to learn humility.  We strive to look, speak, and act as those already committed to the Lord’s service.  We follow his laws and imitate the lives of his saints.  We realize that our only interests are his interests.  All of this takes time and work.  When a foreign captive was brought to Rome and sold as a slave, he did not become docile and perfectly obedient at once.  He remembered his previous life of freedom and longed for it.  He might well harbor rebellious tendencies.  But if he saw his fate now tied to his master and that he faced starvation or violent death without his protection, then he learned these things, and might eventually rise to a place of trust within the household. As Christians we struggle with docility and obedience too, but we have the grace of God to help us.

“For this is why Christ died and came to life, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”  Jesus shows himself the perfect Servant of the Father by his Life and Death, and in order to perfect us, he entered into our life and death, touching them from the inside and making them the means of serving Almighty God.  

The Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary, Saturday, September 12, 2020

Galatians 4, 4-7

Brothers and sisters: When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. As proof that you are sons, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then also an heir,  through God.

The feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary was instituted in 1684 by Pope Innocent XI in thanksgiving for the victory of the Christian forces under the Polish King John III Sobieski against those of the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Vienna the previous year.  The Ottoman Turks had pushed through the Balkans and most of Hungary up to the gates of Vienna.  Had the Turks won the battle, the whole of Europe would have fallen into Muslim hands.  Beginning with this battle, the Christians slowly pushed the Turks out of Europe until today they hold only a tiny corner of it.

The feast itself is concerned with the honor due the Blessed Virgin Mary’s name.  The Virgin, that is, herself renders honor to that name by her sanctity, and we honor the sanctity which we find reflected in her name.  The origin of the name which we know in English as “Mary” goes back to the Hebrew, where we find the sister of Moses named Miriam.  The name passed over time into the Aramaic and was common among Jewish women at the time of Jesus.  While nearly all Jewish names have a meaning in the 

Hebrew language,  the original meaning of “Miriam” remains unknown.  Some have thought it connected with the Hebrew word for “bitter”, mara, but the similarities between the two words may be merely coincidental.  With the transference of the name into the Latin “Maria”, Christian writers, especially of the medieval period, considered that it was connected with the word for “seas”, maria, and that the Virgin Mary was the “Star of the sea”, stella maris: Mary as the morning star leading us through the troubled waters of this life.  However, she herself gives a new meaning to this name through her holiness.  

The first reading for the Mass for this feast is taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.  The Galatian Christians were Gentile converts living in the center of Asia Minor.  The term “Galatia” does not refer to a city but to a region settled a few hundred years before by Gauls who had come over from Thrace.  Paul had spent some time among them and understood their culture and their particular needs as new Christians.  Throughout his letter, for instance, we find numerous references to the historicity and the physicality of the Lord Jesus, which stands in contrast to the mythical origins of the gods formerly worshipped by the Galatians as well as to the Gnosticism emerging at that time, which Paul refers to as “another Gospel” (Galatians 1, 9).  He even reminds them of a public vision which many of them had of Christ Crucified (cf. Galatians 3, 1).  

It is in this context that St. Paul states that Jesus was “born of a woman, born under the law”.  If we think about it, it appears very strange that Paul would feel the need to point out that Jesus was “born of a woman”.  But Paul was insisting that though Jesus was truly the Son of God, he was also truly man, and so truly among us.  Only the Son of God made man could “ransom” us from death.  We see in his phrasing how essentially did Mary play a part in the work of redemption.  Paul does not name her, but he shows that her compliance with God’s will for her to give birth to his Son proved to be the linchpin for the Lord’s work on earth.  Taking his Flesh from her flesh, humanity itself is involved in its own being saved.  Because he thus becomes our brother according to the flesh, he can teach us to call God Abba, the Aramaic word for “father”.  It is worth noting that Paul uses this term from another language — Jesus’s own language — with the Greek speaking Galatians.  Abba was how Jesus addressed the Father in prayer, as the Gospel writers tell us.  The use of this Aramaic term rather than the corresponding Greek patros may indicate its use by the ancient Christians in their prayer.  Perhaps the newly baptized person, on coming up out of the water, was directed to call out to God, Abba, as Paul seems to say in a later letter: “You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba — Father” (Romans 8, 15).  All this hinges upon the Virgin Mary’s consent to God’s plan.  This makes a man “no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then also an heir,  through God.”  And if an adopted son of God, then an adopted child of the Blessed Virgin, whose name, “Mary”, we honor today.

“Grant, we beseech You, almighty God, that through the protection of the most holy Virgin Mary, Your faithful people who delight in her name may, by her loving intercession, be delivered from all evils on earth and be found worthy to attain everlasting happiness in heaven.  Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Friday in the 23d Week of Ordinary Time, September 11, 2020

Psalm 83

How lovely are your tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord. Yea, my heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God. For the sparrow has found herself a house, and the dove a nest for herself where she may lay her young ones: your altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.  Blessed are they that dwell in your house, O Lord: they shall praise you for ever and ever. Blessed is the man whose help is from you: in his heart he has disposed to ascend by steps, in the vale of tears, in the place which he has set. For the lawgiver shall give a blessing, they shall go from virtue to virtue: the God of gods shall be seen in Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold, O God our protector: and look on the face of your anointed. For better is one day in your courts above thousands elsewhere. I have chosen to be an abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners. For God loves mercy and truth: the Lord will give grace and glory. He will not deprive them that walk in innocence of good things: O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusts in you. 

Psalm 84 (83, in the Septuagint and Vulgate), used for the responsorial psalm for today’s Mass, consists of a prayer expressing a deep desire for God and his “courts”.  It expresses love for God, confidence in his power, and it describes the glory of God’s dwelling on earth, the temple in Jerusalem.  It would seem to be a psalm sung by Israelite pilgrims making their journey to the temple on the occasion of the one of the great feasts.  The Christian can interpret this psalm according to its spiritual sense as describing the soul’s longing to be with God in heaven.

“How lovely are your tabernacles”.  The Hebrew word here translated does mean “tabernacles”, and not “tents”, as the word is sometimes rendered.  A “tabernacle” is a more permanent abode.  In the days before the temple was built, the ark of the covenant was kept in a “house”, as at Shiloh, over which a tent was pitched.  The house is a “tabernacle”.  We might think of it as the sanctuary of the ark, where the priest would minister.  To say that these tabernacles are “lovely” is to express one’s desire to be present within them, as the priest is, that is, to be on intimate terms with the Lord in his service.  “O Lord of hosts!”  “Hosts” is a translation of the Hebrew sabaoth, which means “armies”.  The “hosts” are military in nature and for the Israelites the hosts could have meant the angels (commonly called the “sons of God”), or simply as an indication of God’s raw power, his omnipotence.  We pray at Mass, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts”, a phrase taken from .isaiah 6, 3.  The Latin prayer transliterates the word directly from the Hebrew: Dominus Deus sabaoth.  

“My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.”  The Israelites used parallelism in their poetry, and we see an example of it here.  The first phrase, “My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord”, expresses a thought either complete in itself, or nearly so.  The phrase immediately following it then either adds detail to this first phrase, or completes it.  This devise provides a rhythm to the text and also aids in its interpretation.  Here, the second phrase, “My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God”, tells us that not only does the psalmist’s nephesh — his life-force, his soul — long and faint for God’s courts, but so does his heart and his basar— his flesh — rejoice in the “living” God — as opposed to the “dead” gods of stone whom the Gentiles worship.  The psalmist’s whole person, mind, body, and soul, longs for God and rejoices to know him.

“For the sparrow hath found herself a house, and the dove a nest for herself where she may lay her young ones: your altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.”  This verse also consists of a parallelism: the sparrow and the dove.  St. Augustine says that these two birds are figures for the “heart” and the “flesh” spoken of previously.  The restless sparrow — the heart — at last finds of a home for itself while the dove — the flesh — can bring forth young, that is to say, it may perform good works.  The context for this is “your altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God”.  The priest offers some prescribed animal or other food to God on the altar dedicated solely for this purpose.  The victim that is offered is a figure for the one on whose behalf it is offered, and the altar is a figure for God himself.  The offering is sacrificed, that is, rendered in such a way that it cannot be reused.  Here, then, we see the heart and flesh of the offerer given up entirely to the service of God.

“Blessed are they that dwell in your house, O Lord: they shall praise you for ever and ever.”  Those who dwelt in the temple of Jerusalem, that is, the temple complex, were those concerned with the worship of God.  These would have included the priests, the Levites, and those who sang in the choirs.  The worship of God continued all day and all night and so it was necessary for those who led it to live in the temple’s vicinity.  Spiritually, we understand these dwellers as the member of the Body of Christ, who worship God continuously (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18: “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”), and belong to him — dwell in him — no matter where they go.

“Blessed is the man whose help is from you: in his heart he has disposed to ascend by steps, in the vale of tears, in the place in which he has been set. For the Lawgiver shall give a blessing, and he shall go from virtue to virtue. The God of gods shall be seen in Zion.”  The believer in Christ “ascends” step by step in virtue and good works, just as a temple or an altar is built, stone by stone, brick by brick.  The virtuous man makes progress in this “vale of tears”, ascending Mount Zion to where the heavenly Temple is set.  The phrase “God of gods” is a Hebraism that expresses the superlative.  It can be rendered as “the all-powerful God”, or “the God whose power is beyond imagining.”  We see this expressed in Latin at the end of prayers: in saecula saeculorum, which can mean “world of worlds”, or “world without end”, or “ages of ages.”

“O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold, O God our protector: and look on the face of your anointed.”  Here, the psalmist prays for the king, the “anointed”, whose capital was at Jerusalem, or, perhaps, the priest in the temple, offering the psalmist’s sacrifice.  Looking upon his “face” meant looking favorably upon the offering, that is, the one on whose behalf the offering was made.

“For better is one day in your courts above thousands elsewhere. I have chosen to be an abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners.”  The psalmist expresses his thoughts here in another parallelism.  The courts of the Lord is the psalmist’s sole, longed-for home.  He would rather spend one day there than thousands of days in any other place, including the palaces of kings and of rich merchants.  In fact, he would rather be destitute in the courts of The temple than to be rich in the company of nobility.  True wealth, he knows, is the possession of God.  To love the Lord with all his might, strength, and mind is not simply to obey the law; it his his every joy to do so.  The Christian begins to do this here in performing good works and in contemplation, and he is made perfect in it in heaven, for “God loves mercy and truth”, and so he “will give grace and glory” to the one who truly loves him.  The lover of God does not need fear destitution on this earth incurred for the service of God: “He will not deprive them that walk in innocence of good things.”  

The psalmist brings his prayer full circle with: “O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusts in you.”  He begins by praying, “My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord”, a personal expression of trust in the fulfillment and joy found in God’s presence, and he concludes with the general, “Blessed is the man”.  The psalmist reflects on how God has blessed him, and knows that this almighty, all-loving God blesses all others who similarly trust in him.  This trust flows from hope, and hope is a kind of knowledge.  We can give ourselves entirely to him because we know who he is, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.