Today’s Thoughts: Today we have a very brief, two-line Gospel. One in which we hear a woman call to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” But Jesus’ responds, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
I think in our Gospel today Jesus is suggesting that we change our focus. That we look at life through a different lens. He is not discounting his own mother and their close relationship, for Jesus family is more than biology, more than DNA, family is hearing the Word of God and living it. Jesus is telling us that our own relationship with God can be blessed if we use God’s word as a lens through which we look at and then live life. In today’s Gospel we are invited to be family with others beyond our immediate family relationships. We are to include others because we have been included by Jesus. As we have encounters over the last five plus years with Pope Francis, he is a person who has heard the word of God and who lives it. He finds Jesus in the faces and lives of the poor and struggling in our world. And by his words and actions Pope Francis asks us to open our hearts to the hungry, the poor and the marginalized. He asks us to open our hearts to those struggling in the world because they are family. We are called be the Word of God to reach out to others who are in need as a way to really be united to Jesus and his mission. What does Jesus want from us? Jesus wants a family. Jesus wants a friendship. Jesus isn’t looking for us to read more about him or discuss the theology of his ministry. Jesus longs for a close and personal friendship with us as we speak to him about our lives and lean on him for support in times of need. Blessed by his love, we hear the call to keep his word by loving as he has loved us, by being family to all. Jesus invites us today to reach out to those who need us. Pope Francis calls us repeatedly to be a society, a church, a family of inclusion, dialog and service for all. Have a great Saturday everyone!
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Today’s Thoughts: I have always struggled with this passage in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 11:15-26). If Jesus is taking the time to case out demons, why are people upset? Why are they casting a negative light on Jesus and his ministry? You would think that they would be pleased. You would think that they would be open to all the help they can get!
Perhaps the reason for their negativity is that they have become accustom, even comfortable with these demons. How does the old saying go, “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know!” Sometimes we become comfortable with the devils that make a home in us. We look at them and begin to rationalize our encounters with the devils of our life. “They are just small problems, personal things, they really don’t hurt anyone. – Everybody does it. Everybody is doing it.” Looking at it another way we might say that Beelzebul is the strong man who guards his palace. His possessions are hatred, anger, prejudice, greed, and injustice. Through them he tries to control the world. By ourselves, we are helpless against his power. But this parable is one of hope. It proclaims the gospel message. There is one stronger than Beelzebul who can overpower him and cast him out of our lives if we let him. Christ is our strength, who by his resurrection has defeated the power of evil. We are called to live each day in the faith that Christ can help us overcome our demons. If we do our heart becomes a place where no demons dwell only Christ. O Lord create in us a clean heart and a faithful spirit! Have a great Friday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: Today’s Gospel (Luke 11:5-13) encourages us to be persistent, to persevere, to pray, to stay connect with God because God is so eager to help us. As Jesus says if a reluctant friend can be persuaded to help, how much more will God be willing to help!
As Kathleen Norris puts it, “Prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine.” Or as St. Teresa of Calcutta puts it, “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.” Today we are asked to put ourselves in God’s hands and let God change us in ways that we cannot imagine. This does not mean that God will always give us whatever we ask but it does mean that God always hears our prayer! Have a great Thursday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: The passage we find in Luke’s Gospel today (Luke 11:1-4) always causes me to remember my father and the morning after my ordination day.
The morning after my ordination I was to celebrate mass with my family. It would be my very first mass! I had not looked at the readings because of all the busyness leading up to my ordination day, so early that morning now some 32 plus years ago, I awakened and wandered down the hall to the retreat house chapel to look at the readings and prepared for my first mass. When I got to the Gospel I could not believe what I read. It was Matthew version of today’s Gospel about Jesus teaching his disciples to pray, specifically to pray the Our Father. I put the book down and tears welled up in my eyes and I just sat there for some time unable to prepare any more. For you see the Our Father was one of the last prayers I prayed with my “Abba,” my dad, my father, before he died some four years before. It was a December night and I was in my father’s hospital room late at night and as I was about to leave he asked me to pray with him. I was more than happy to do so, I asked him what prayer he wanted to pray, and he said, “The Our Father.” I began to say the words and notice that my dad was not praying so I stopped and asked what was wrong. Dad said, “I don’t remember the words.” His illness had begun to affect his mind. So, I said, “No problem” and suggested that I say a few words of the prayer and that he should repeat them after me. Do you know how hard it is to say the Our Father when you must stop and think about what you are saying? Well, we got through the prayer and dad became very peaceful and for the most part remained peaceful over the last few days of his life. I have always remembered that moment. I had wanted my dad to see me ordained but that was not to be but on that Thursday morning I realized that he was with me and had been with me all along. I have never prayed the Our Father at mass, or at any other time and not thought about that moment. What power there is in this simple prayer, what a gift this simple prayer is to all who pray it. I would invite you at some moment today to pause and slowly, deliberately pray the Our Father. Listen to the words. Realize what God offers you through the words of this simple prayer and what God asks of you. Just a little thought about the Our Father, Jesus uses the word, Abba, which if translated literally would be “daddy or dad.” I wish that the first translators of the prayer had used the informal rather than the formal it might have made a difference in how we think about this simple prayer today. It certain would have made the prayer more intimate! Have a great Wednesday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: Here we are once again beating up poor Martha. Is that really what today Gospel is about? (Luke 10: 38-42) Is Martha really doing the wrong thing? I think not!
I have often felt that Martha has gotten a bad rap because of the way we have looked at this Gospel over the centuries. We seem to think that a person who is hardworking, hospitable and concerned about her guest is somehow less faithful, less holy than a person of formal prayer and that is just not true. Martha is a good and faithful person, her mistake in the Gospel today is that she focuses on someone else; she is concerned about what someone else is doing rather than focusing on what she is doing. If Martha had just done her work with joy, enthusiasm and unselfishness this story in Luke’s Gospel would have never taken place. Let us for a moment reverse the roles. Suppose Mary had come to Jesus to complain about Martha. “You know Jesus she is always working, always running around being hospitable. She should stop when you come into the house and sit and listen to you!” What would Jesus have said? My guess is that he says, “Mary, Mary, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Martha has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” You see each woman in the story chooses her journey. Choose what she does best and that becomes her better part. Martha is a worker, she does it well. Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, she listens, and she does it well. There will always be tension between action and contemplation, between ministry and prayer, between work and quiet time. But the challenge is to pick what is best for us at that moment. What is our better part at each moment or stage of our life? What will help us to recognize God? Martha and Mary remind us that there are many gifts and that each gift is important. We just need to recognize what is important for us and not be worried about what is important for others! Have a great Tuesday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: Who is our Neighbor? “The Samaritan lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him.” (Luke 10: 34) The scholar in our Gospel story today thought he was being clever. He asked questions to enhance his self-regard. Jesus told the Good Samaritan story so that the scholar could recognize the right answer himself. No country or religion or border defines our neighbor. When we look up from our daily struggle or busyness and take the time to stop, look and listen, the lives of others come into focus and compassion stirs. When we hurry to the other side of the road, indifference wins.
The Jesuit teacher and author John Kavanaugh, S.J., wrote in his book, Following Christ in a Consumer Society, that that we all inhabit a gospel that reveals who we are. In our society of capitalism, the reigning gospel measures worth by what we produce, consume, and possess. People without money, jobs, health, home, education, or status do not count for much. St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians today, warns us that a false gospel is a curse. To measure life solely this way can smother us in emptiness. The Good Samaritan was an outsider. He was familiar with insults: people moving away to avoid contact. No surprise that a person at home on the margins would notice a stranger sprawled in a ditch. Privilege, wealth, power, importance, anger, and fear had not compromised his vision. He was willing to stop, to look, and to listen. He was willing to act. Transformation often begins when we allow others into our life, when we are willing to allow the world around us to touch our life in real was. No wonder that the poor often open their doors to those in trouble, they are not afraid to let the world in. Up close, suffering and injustice become real. As our moral vision grows, the situation of those at a distance become visible. When children fleeing violence show up at our border, we must find ways to help. God says: you will find me in the poor. That road will lead us home. Have a blessed Monday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of one single candle.” (St. Francis of Assisi) – Children are our candles… (Note a special prayer today for the four wonderful candles in my family - Emilia, Kristina, Natalie Ann and Michael!)
I have always liked the Gospel reading for today, Jesus’ welcoming of little children. It is imagery that can speak to us even when we are not little anymore. It seems to make things a lot less complicated and it reminds us of the gifts that children and childhood to us. When I think of what we as a culture, a society and as a church have done to children and childhood down through the centuries I feel a profound sadness. I know that my childhood was very instrumental in helping me be the man of faith that I have become. I am profoundly grateful that I had wonderful people in my life as a child who showed me the Kingdom of God even thought I probably didn’t understand at the time. My prayer each day is that all children can and will experience the wonder and joy that should be part of growing up. My hope is that all children get a chance to live in the moment. That they experience the joy of playing baseball or flying a kite or jumping into the deep and making it to the side. I hope and pray they feel the joy of swinging on a swing or running down a hill or eating the biggest ice cream cone ever. Children are special. They make God ever so real and anyone who take away a child’s joy, wonder and innocents does not deserve the Kingdom. As we listen to the words of Jesus remind us of the value of children today let us remember that each new day holds a surprise for us if we approach it with the wonder and awe of a child and if we do so God just might be around every corner! God invites us to experience joy and wonder in our lives, to be in the present moment, and to find his presence around every corner. God always offers us unconditional love and acceptance perhaps something we first felt as a child, but it is available every day and every moment of our life. Let us embrace the child in us and get ready for God’s blessings. Perhaps St. Francis says it best – “We should seek not so much to pray but to become prayer.” Isn’t that what children do! Have a wonderful Sunday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: In our readings today, we encounter what happens when our relationship with God begins to make sense. After Job’s long journey and struggle to understand the pieces finally fit together. His understanding of God’s presence in his life becomes real and lifegiving. For this moment in Job’s life God’s face shines upon Job!
In our Gospel the 72 are commissioned to go and “cure the sick . . . . and say to them, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’” (Lk 10:9) They have been given the power, through their relationship with Jesus, to recognize and help others recognize the Love that is God and to claim it. They share in Jesus’ intimate relationship with the Father and wonderful things happen. For the disciples and Job, it is a long journey full of struggles and challenges but once they recognize God’s presence the impossible becomes possible. The darkness becomes light. The curses become blessings. The same can be true for us. When we recognize the presence of Christ within us, our darkness, our fear, our struggles, our challenges, our curses can be transformed, and we too will live out of a place of light, love and blessing. Have a blessed Saturday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: “Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.” This response to the Responsorial Psalm for today mass seems like a fitting place to start as we consider today’s readings. It seems that Job has struck a nerve with God, who seems to stay, “Job, do you really know what being God is all about? Have you ever stood in my shoes, even for a day?” And Job responds, “Oops, I will shut up now!”
A nerve has been struck in Jesus too; the towns that are so much a part of his life and ministry just don’t get it. They don’t recognize the presence of God in their midst. Jesus has done all kinds of great things for them and yet they are slow to respond to his message. They have had the advantage and done nothing with it. I am always been struck when this Gospel passage comes around that the towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum exist no more. If you go to the Holy Land and visit the places where these towns once existed all you will find are ruins. For various reasons these town no longer have life, could it be because when they had the chance to be blessed, to celebrate the gift of God in their life, to follow along the everlasting way they missed it? We often get focused on our own needs, thoughts, feelings, dreams and desires. In these moments at times we miss God invitation. We think we know better. We think we have it all figured out. We think we are in control, but we are not! O God, I know I haven’t walked in your shoes. I know you have the words of everlasting life. Help us to see beyond ourselves. Guide us today and always along your everlasting way! Have a great Friday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: Some of the thoughts and wisdom of and about St. Francis of Assisi.
“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” (St. Francis of Assisi) “Blessed is the servant who loves his [or her] brother [or sister] as much when he [or she] is sick and useless as when he [or she] is well and maybe of service to him [or her]. And blessed is he [or she] who loves his [or her] brother [or sister] as well when he [or she] is far off as when he [or she] is by his [or her] side, and who would say nothing behind his [or her] back he [or she] might not, in love, say before his [or her] face.” (St. Francis of Assisi) “The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.” (G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi) “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of one single candle.” (St. Francis of Assisi) “We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.” (St. Francis of Assisi) “It is not fitting, when one is in God's service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look.” (St. Francis of Assisi) “Always tell of God's love. If necessary, use words.” (St. Francis of Assisi) “We should seek not so much to pray but to become prayer.” (St. Francis of Assisi) St. Francis of Assisi is truly a man, a saint for all seasons! Have a blessed and peaceful Feast of St. Francis of Assisi everyone! |
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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