Angels--Good and Bad--at Work in the World

In today’s first reading, Revelations 12: 7-12, we are told about the war in heaven, when “Michael with his angels attacked…Satan, who had led all the world astray...” Satan and his angels were defeated and “hurled down to earth…”  Our salvation had been won by the Blood of the unblemished Lamb, the Son of God Incarnate, who gave His life on the cross as a ransom for our sins and rose triumphant over death.  Satan, our accuser, “who accused our brothers [and sisters] day and night before our God, has been brought down. They [Michael and the good angels] have triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word to which they bore witness…” We are warned, though, that “disaster is coming—because the devil has gone down to [us here on earth] in a rage, knowing that he has little time left.”   In a prayer to St. Michael, we pray: O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

We are never left alone! God has given each of us a Guardian Angel. Also, the archangels—Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel--whose feast we celebrate today, continue to work on our behalf. Michael, whose name means “Who is like God,” continues defending and protecting us from Satan’s snares and lies. Raphael, whose name means “God has healed,” continues healing us, as he had healed Tobit’s blindness. Gabriel, whose name means “God is my strength,” continues, as he did with Mary, to strengthen us in giving “birth” to Jesus in our world and embracing the will of God for us as revealed in our everyday life.

May you and I, each day of our lives, grow more and more aware of the angels at work on our behalf, ask for their aid and cooperate with them in being sources of healing, protection, and intensification of a person’s desire to bring forth Jesus, especially in areas where individuals have striven to cast God out of sight, out of mind, and out of hearts!

Genuine Prayer: Its Honesty, Humility and Trust

In today’s first reading, Job 3: 1-3, 11-17, 20-23, Job curses the day that he was born, saying: “Perish the day on which I was born, the night when they said, ‘The child is a boy!’ Why did I not perish at birth, come forth from the womb and expire? Or why was I not buried away like an untimely  birth, like babes that have never seen the light?  Wherefore did the knees receive me? Or why did I suck at the breasts.”  The Psalmist, in today’s responsorial psalm, prays: “O Lord, my God, by day I cry out; at night I clamor in your presence. Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my call for help.”  In the Gospel, Luke 9: 51-56, James and John ask the Lord whether He wants them to call down fire on a village that does not allow them to enter. Jesus’ response to their petition is “No!” And they move on to another village.

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Both James and John and Job honestly share their feelings--their frustrations, anger, and grief-- and thoughts with the Lord in prayer. We, too, are encouraged to be honest with the Lord when we pray, to cover up nothing.  We may get a “yes” or a “no.” The important characteristics of genuine prayer (communication with God)  are honesty, humility and trust. Jesus also teaches us this, especially in His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane when He cries out to the Lord: “Abba, Father! For you everything is possible. Take this cup away from me. But let it be as you, not I, would have it.'" (Mark 124:36); and again on the cross when He agonizingly prays:   “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me” (Mark 15: 34)?

What characterizes your communication with God?

Angels, Good and Bad, Roaming the Earth

In today’s first reading, Job 1:6-22,  when angels of God present themselves before the Lord, among them is a fallen angel, Satan, who has been “roaming the earth and patrolling it,”  and still does.  Know that Satan is not roaming the earth to protect us but to trip us up to curse the Lord our God, to rebel against God as he and the other bad angels had done.  Satan is jealous of us, as he has lost heaven eternally and does not, in any shape or form, want us to enter eternity as women or men who have accepted God as God and ourselves as creatures subject to our Creator.  God has secured salvation for all who obey Him, are grateful to Him and recognize God as our Savior, our Sustainer, our Comforter and Protector, who remain faithful even when things are rough and tough, even when nature  and the violence with humans turns against us. After all, God did not even spare His Son the worst that is within other human beings who are jealous of each other. The leaders, in Jesus’ time, put Jesus to death out of jealousy.  Jesus, as God Incarnate, did not lose faith in His Father, even as He died upon the cross.

 Satan’s jealousy is something all of us will endure and survive by the grace of God, as Job did! He lost all of his possessions and even his children, who, when the building in which they dwelt collapsed upon them in a vicious storm, died.  His response:

 “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb,

And naked shall I go back again.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;

Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

May our faith, like Job’s, never falter, even in the worst of times. God is at our side. God trusts us, knowing the strength of our faith, and, as with Jesus, endures what we endure, as Jesus was not alone on that cross. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, though three divine persons, are one God! In God, you and I live and move and have our being. So, we, too, are never alone in the sufferings we endure or will endure!

Paying Attention

In both of today’s reading, Ecclesiastes 11: 9-12 and the Gospel Luke 9: 43b-45, we are faced with realities that are difficult to embrace: that youth will give way to old age or that difficult times are on the horizon, as was the case with Jesus.  The time will come, Ecclesiastes says to the young, and to all of us, that the time will come when “the sun will be darkened, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, while the clouds return after the rain.”  Time also will arrive when “strong men [and women] are bent, and the grinders are idle because they are few, and they who look through the windows grow blind.”   Yes, Ecclesiastes reminds us, “the dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath returns to God who gave it.” In the Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples—that is us: “Pay attention…The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.”

It is very difficult to face the kind of realities to which both the OT and the NT prophets ask us to pay attention.  In the Gospel, the disciples do not understand what Jesus is talking about and, out of fear of hearing Jesus repeat the message, I suspect, they do not ask him any questions. Is that not how we, too, sometimes act in the face of impending disaster or challenging difficulties. I have heard myself say “I don’t want to know,” when someone is trying to open my eyes to troubling issues.  I may even be as blunt and arrogant as to proclaim “It is not true,” when I know it is.

Help us, Jesus, listen to the messages you send us in the Scriptures, in homilies, in nature itself, from friends and family members and, yes, even from persons we perceive as enemies or persons of whom we think little (and forgive us for those kinds of attitudes).

For All Things There is a Season

In today’s first reading, Ecclesiastes 3: 1-11, we are reminded that  there “is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every  thing under the heavens”: birth and death, dying and rising, peace and war, tearing down and rising up, building and destroying what was built, planting and reaping what was planted, weeping and laughing, killing and healing, rending and sewing, keeping and throwing away, speaking and being silent, embracing and refraining from embracing, seeking and losing, loving and hating. “Oh, my goodness”, we might exclaim. 

What the author of this passage is proclaiming is that nothing in this world last forever!  God alone is eternal! God alone is unchangeable! What is here today may be gone tomorrow! I may be enjoying success today but loss tomorrow. I may be enjoying peace now but be in turmoil this afternoon or vice versa: I may be struggling at this moment and rejoicing by noon today.  I may be sick this month and recover next month. I may be dying today and living forever in eternity tomorrow! I may have spent years building a fortune and see it dissipate in the future. The empire our forefathers and foremothers secured over time or which one administration built during its term may be collapsed by our successors.

 

The author of this Ecclesiastes passage states: “I have considered the task that God has appointed for [His] sons [and daughters] to be busied about. He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without [our] ever discovering, from the beginning to end, the work which God has done.”  In short,  as stated above, God alone is forever; God alone is unchangeable. Everything else is temporal and changeable.

"Blessed be the Lord, our Rock," we pray in today's responsorial psalm. To what "rock" am I clinging?

The Ultimate Reason We Have Been Put on Earth

In today’s first reading, Ecclesiastes 1: 2-11, Qoheleth reminds us that “[a]ll things are vanity! What profit has [a person] from all the labor which [one] toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes….There is no remembrance of [the people] of old; nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them.”  So what is life all about? And how vain is it for those who believe they are here on earth to make a name for themselves, to build “empires” with their pictures and names plastered all over them? Yet, we know that people spend a lifetime pursuing such honors and accolades. We also know that some peoples’ names are remembered for better or for worse: the “Herods,” the “Hitlers”, the “Napoleons,” the “Caesars,” the “Bushes,” the “Clintons,” the “Carters,” the “Obamas,” the “Mitchels,” the “Trumps,”  the “Dianas,” the “Bing Crosbys,” the “Martin Luther Kings,” of this world  and so on.  However, the majority of peoples will pass through this world without being remembered except by their immediate family and loved ones.  Some of these people will be remembered for the evil they promoted and others for the good they accomplished and the justice they pursued. For what and by whom will you and I be remembered?

“Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity” except the Way, the Truth, and the Life; except the faith journey of Ruth and Esther, Naomi and Judith,  Mary, Elizabeth and the Apostles, Paul and Barnabas, Aquila and Priscilla and so many other women and men who gave, and give,  their lives to proclaim the Kingdom and carry on the mission of Christ given to them and all of us by our Creator God. Yes, we all have one purpose given to us by the Lord God before we were born naturally through our biological births and spiritually in baptism and confirmation: to build the Kingdom of love, mercy and justice for all; to be reconcilers with God and one another.  Like Jesus, we are to live in this world as a passing reality. Like Jesus, we are to die and rise to new life here and in eternity, where, like Jesus, we will be glorified through the blood of Christ by the One who paid our ransom with His life. All else is vanity!

Jesus' Notices: Are We Ready?

Today is the feast of St. Matthew, an apostle and evangelist and also a former tax collector.  Tax collectors, in Jesus’ time, were despised and among the lowest of the low. They collected taxes for the Romans who occupied their land and took some of the proceeds for themselves. They might be likened today to those in public office or public service who are not about serving their constituents or being cooperative in creating policies that benefit the common good but are about lining their pockets and exploiting others for their personal gain.  Persons of this nature are, in the words of Scripture, building “their houses” on sand. When the winds and rains come, their “houses” will collapse.  They are the unwise stewards cheating their master and who, when the Son of Man comes in the dead of “night,”   are likely to be found wanting.

What about Matthew, then? The Gospel tells us, that, as Jesus passed by Matthew’s custom post, Jesus noticed him and said: “Follow me.”  Matthew’s heart was open to the Lord. Most likely he had heard of Him and had been pondering His teachings privately. He was ready and Jesus knew it. “Follow Me,” Jesus says. Matthew left the custom post and followed the Lord. Not only did he open his heart to Jesus, he also opened his home as well.  Jesus accepted Matthew’s openness and had a meal with Him and fellow tax collectors, persons in need of and open to conversion.

Are you and I ready? Are we waiting? Will we leave our “custom post,” that activity that is unjust, that is exploitative of others or by which we use another for our personal advantage? Are we ready to change our lives, to let go of that which shuts Jesus out of our lives? Are we ready to follow Jesus and become missionary disciples? Are we ready to carry out the purpose for which God created us, that is to become servants of others, messengers of His love and mercy and forgiveness, as Matthew did?