Today’s Thoughts: Our Gospel today from Luke follows a section where Jesus speaks about how much more importance each person is than the lilies of the field and birds of the air who are beautiful and known by God. Today’s section opens with the affirming embrace that we already belong to God’s flock and the treasure has already been given to us, so we need not fear about our eternal futures. What we encounter in the Gospel today has to do with the implications of our being so precious and cared for by God. The kingdom is being given to those of us who have faith in the Creator. If we trust, then our treasure does not rely on or support the things of this world.
Jesus puts forth the challenges of belonging to this other kingdom. Our preciousness in God’s eyes is contrasted with the preciousness of material things. We get our value from God and not the accumulation of things, of wealth. The desires of our hearts will identify to which kingdom we belong. The challenge is how patient and watchful in terms of God’s Kingdom are we? Jesus is God’s love in us. We are invited to make a similar investment in the holiness of humankind and the love of God. As usual the parable today makes the tension between God and the things of the world quite clear. There is a master who has gone away, promising to return, but the when is indefinite. The servants who remain in the house are to act justly, live soberly, aware, and above all are to expect the master’s return at any moment. This is a direct challenge to the listening-disciples. The opening of this chapter in Luke reminds the friends of Jesus to avoid “the yeast of the Pharisees”. The disciples are the servants in whom Jesus has invested the treasures of his teachings. Unlike the Pharisees they are to be faithful in tending to the household and the people of the household. The emphasis of our Gospel is on living the teachings of Jesus until he returns. God has created us, made us part of the human family. God has invested totally in our human recovery through Jesus Christ. We are asked to believe in this and to live reverently and gratefully for this infinite support of the human family. The other option is to live unjustly, drunkenly, and unaware of our dignity. To live in a way that, we deflate our value and the value of all humankind. Yes, we are more important than the “lilies of the field.” Jesus calls us his flock and stewards of creation. When we hear who we are through the stories, pictures and deeds of how God has invested in us, we are reminded to trust in God’s investment. Our real problem or challenge is having the faith that there is a kingdom to come in which we are to invest “now” and that the payoff is in the “then” to come. In other words, there is the “here” and the “here-after” – where is our focus, where is our heart! Have a great Sunday everyone!
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Today’s Thoughts: “A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness.”
(St. Teresa of Calcutta) Today is the Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr, a Third Century saint. It is because of his feast that we have deviated from the daily readings from the Old Testament and Matthew’s Gospel. And I have called upon Mother Teresa again to give us a little focus. It is my feeling that St. Teresa of Calcutta give us another way of understanding our Gospel (John 12:24-26) today. The cost, the struggle, the giving of ourselves might seem like weakness but when lived in friendship with God it becomes the power of wonderful things. Let us believe in God’s love so that our weakness will become our strength! Have a great Saturday everyone. Today’s Thoughts: The disciples left behind rather normal lives, fishing, collecting taxes, among other things and they did it all in order to follow Jesus. As we here in Matthew’s Gospel today now comes the hard part. The kingdom that Jesus speaks about will not be established by might but by suffering and death. Jesus is not a political or military leader. His power is not to take things by force. His way is not the way of the world. It is to die to self. It is to let go of what the world think is important. It is to grab onto a relationship with God and not let go.
Following Jesus and dying to self, letting go, is not an easy task. The cross presents itself to us daily in many different ways. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once put it “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” So, we are called today and every day to find that place deep within each one of us, where God is calling us, through the paschal mystery, into a relationship of love – and it is that relationship that holds the promise of a joyful, rich, and never-ending life in the kingdom. Have a holy and blessed Friday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: In or first reading for the Book of Numbers, the Israelites are unwilling to trust God and pay a rather high price for their rebelliousness. Even Moses and Aaron get caught in this miss adventure. They were unwilling to hear the voice of the Lord and they let their hearts become hardened. Hearts that became a place where God could not get in.
In our Gospel, we encounter what can happen when we let God into our heart. Who does Peter say that Jesus is? “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” When Peter lets Jesus into his heart, he recognizes Jesus’ divinity. However, as we discover later in our Gospel, Peter returns to his old way and begins to think like a human being again, not like God. He does want Jesus to suffer and die. He does not want his friend to talk in such a way, to go through that. He does not want to lose his friend. He is thinking like a human being with earthly limits, rather than thinking like God. Peter fails to see the bigger picture. When we see religion, church, faith as an external construct, as accidentals rather than essentials, we get caught up in earthly thinking, with inexplicable puzzles, and problems. When we accept that God is in our hearts, we see beyond our small little world, we see a much bigger picture. If we let God in our hearts, we can begin to think like God, to see like God and that can make all the difference! Have a great Thursday everyone. Today’s Thoughts: “Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts.” (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, MC)
The Israelites in our first reading from the Book of Numbers fail to put themselves in God’s hands. They think they know better. They are afraid. They have not trust in God’s plan. However, the Canaanite woman in our Gospel (Matt. 15:21-28) today is a woman of prayer. She puts herself in the hands of God. She is at God’s disposition and she knows it. But she remains persistent, she hears God’s voice deep in her heart and because of her faith her daughter is healed. Will we have faith enough today to put ourselves in the hands of God? Will we have faith enough today to listen to God’s voice in our hearts? Will we have faith enough today to bring hope to those we love? Have a great Wednesday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” (Thomas Merton)
I used these words from Thomas Merton not long ago in another one of my daily reflections, but I thought they spoke to our scriptures today on this Feast of the Transfiguration. We might not know how or why but by God’s grace our lives can be transformed into something wonderful if we are willing to embrace this moment with courage, faith and hope. We also need to remember that on this day 74 years ago an atomic bomb was dropped and three days later another one was dropped. We live today in the hope that Jesus’ transfiguration will always remind us that, despite our human tendency toward acts of violence and death, our lives, the world, can be changed by God’s power to give new life! Blessings on this Feast of the Transfiguration to everyone and please pray for an end to all war and violence in our world. Have a great Tuesday everyone. Today’s Thoughts: “Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers [and sisters], go out and share, go out and ask. Become the Word in body as well as spirit.” (Pope Francis)
Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he asked the disciples what they had when they were confronted with such a large crowd. Yes, the miracle of the loaves and fishes took place that day. Yes, Jesus took a few loaves and fishes and fed over five thousand people. But before he did it he asked the disciple what they had. Jesus asked the disciple to give out what they had. God always provides and most of the time it is through us. Often, we look at ourselves and think, “There is not much here! I certainly don’t have enough to satisfy the crowd!” But we do and as Pope Francis says, if we go and share, if we go and become the Body of Christ then great things will happen. Miraculous things will happen. The world will be fed! The question for today is “What do we have?” The challenge is to “go and share!” Have a great Monday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: All of our readings today seem to focus on the same thing but in different ways. Our first reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes opens with “Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” (Ecc 1:2) Now Qoheleth seems to be a collective name rather than a single person or at least means “assembler” (of students, listeners) or “collector” (of wisdom sayings). The figure is a representative of the wisdom community. expressing the community’s wisdom.
Vanity for the writer is more like mist or smoke rather than the falseness of glamour. Vanity is like the early morning mist which is gone as soon as the sun hit it. Or a puff of smoke the lingers for a moment then disappears. In today’s passage the community is wondering what life is really all about? The wise and skilled person knows that the things of this life are fleeting. A person labors, frets and sweats and for what? As with mist and smoke, everything vanishes eventually. Remember, these are words inspired by the communal voices of the human heart which desires solidity, permanence, and security. For all the laboring, holding fast, nothing seems to last. It does sound like the familiar saying, “Don’t sweat the small stuff and everything is the small stuff.” St. Paul in his Letter to the Colossians reminds the community that they have been created anew in Christ so their focus should not be on the world but on God. Christ needs to be the center of their life. Finally, in today’s Gospel using a parable Jesus echo’s Qoheleth and prepares the way for St. Paul. In a simple story Jesus reminds us that, “You cannot take it with you. – You don’t ever see a U-Haul behind a hearse!” Except this summer someone tag me on Facebook, and it was a video clip of the U-Haul behind a hearse! The Facebook post withstanding you can’t take it with you and you never know when life in this world will end, just ask the people of El Paso and Dayton! The point of our readings is where is our focus? Who or what is the center of our life? If we believe, if we have wisdom, if we don’t want our labors to be in vain, if we are followers, disciples of Jesus then our focus, our center, always needs to be on God. When we do good work like the farmer in our Gospel today, we don’t lock it away and then sit back and eat, drink and be merry. We invest it in our world, the people around us and our relationship with God. Remember each time you received Holy Communion God demands your life of you! Have a blessed and holy Sunday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: Something to think about from Thomas Merton as you journey through the day. It is certainly something that Herod did not think about in our Gospel (Matt. 14:1-12) today!
“To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, and is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.” (Thomas Merton) Have a great Saturday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: The Gospel reading today focus on the human struggle, lack of faith. Often, we think we know what is right. We think we know what is best for ourselves and those around us. We think we know what God wants. Then someone comes along, like a Rosa Parks, a St. John XXIII, a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Thomas Merton, a St. Teresa of Calcutta, an Oscar Romero, a Pope Francis and they point us in a different direction, sometimes telling us we are headed down the wrong path, but always showing us just where God can be found.
We don’t like to be wrong and we are not always excited to have someone ruin our plans after all what do they know about us, about our life, about our faith. We might not put them to death like the Israelites often did to their prophets, but we reject their way of thinking, their insights, their spirits, the gift of their faith, hope and love. We call to mind tradition, dogma, or doctrine. We point to order, cost and what makes us comfortable. We at times dismiss them as misguided and unimportant or we point to their faults and failings. When we do this like the people of Nazareth we make it almost impossible for God to work in our lives. We make it impossible for the ordinary things in life to become extraordinary. O God, in your great love keep us always open to the voices of your Word and strengthen our faith so we will always recognize your presence amongst us! Friday blessings to all! |
Fr. Paul R. Fagan, C.P. "Preacher on the Run"Just a few thoughts to help you on your journey through life...let me know from time to time what you think... Archives
April 2024
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