Challenges to our Faith

In today's first reading, Daniel 3: 14-20, 91-92, 95,  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are asked to sacrifice to a golden statue that the king set up:  "Be ready now to fall down and worship the statue I have made.....[If you don't", he says to them,] "you shall be instantly cast into the white-hot furnace;and who is the God who can deliver you out of my hands?"  When the three men refuse, the king has the furnace "heated seven times more than usual and had some of the strongest men in his army bind" them and throw them into the furnace.  The King is amazed as he peers into the furnace and sees four men unbound walking around in the furnace.  He asks his nobles:   "'Did we not cast three men bound  into the fire?' 'Assuredly, O king,' they answered. 'But,' he replied, 'I see four men unfettered and unhurt, walking in the fire, and the fourth looks like a son of God.'"  The king then praises God!

I can imagine the king raging against these three men. "How dare they refuse what I ask of them?" As his anger mounted, he increased the heat of the furnace and called forth his strongest men to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Is that not what our egos do when someone refuses to "worship" us and do what we ask of them? Does not our ego, at that point, become like this furnace heated 7xs greater than usual?  In some cases does not the rage lead to violence of some kind, even murder?

This passage also challenges us to look at the faith of the three men who stand up against the king and do not flinch in the face of death, a horrible death in fact! "There is no need for us to defend ourselves before you in this matter.  If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue that you set up."

How strong is our faith in the face of danger? temptation? bullies? wickedness? Do we stand  so firm in our faith that all we need to do is calmly state our position; or do we need to loudly defend ourselves?

Empowered by Faith and Convinced of God's Promises

In today's first reading, Romans 4: 20-25, we read about Abraham's faith: "Abraham did not doubt God's promise in unbelief; rather, he was empowered by faith and gave glory to God and was fully convinced that what God had promised he was also able to do. That is why it was credited to him as righteousness . But it was not for him alone that it was written that it was credited to him; it was also for us, to whom it will be credited, who believe in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over for our transgressions and was raised for our justification."

May I, Lord, like Abraham, not doubt your promises to me: the promise of salvation, of being justified, of being made righteous by the Blood of Jesus!  May I not doubt the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out upon me at baptism and confirmation and reconfirmed throughout the events of each day when I call upon you for the help of the Spirit, that is, for the gift of wisdom, courage, prudence, understanding, counsel and fear of the Lord; and for the gift of piety.  May I not doubt your presence, Lord, at the core of my being and existent in every human being.  Every human being is an image of you; may I see your image in each person. Also, Lord, may I seek you in all that is, including the universe and all in it!  May I not doubt your promise to set me free and that you will save me from all of my enemies, especially those within me: pride, fear, envy, avarice, lust, covetousness, greediness, selfishness, and anything that blocks me from surrendering to Your will and serving you and others in faith, hope and love.  May I not doubt your mercy, compassion, and unconditional love.  May I not forget that you are forever freeing me to "worship you without fear" (Luke 1: 75) and that, in your sight, I am holy and righteous, made so by the blood of Jesus!  I ask for these graces in Jesus' name and through the intercession of  Mary, the mother of Jesus and my mother, too. Amen.

God Has Done Great Things for Mary and for Us!

Today we celebrate Mary's assumption into heaven!  God does not allow her body to return to dust or to rot in the grave! God's  purest mother "stands at [Jesus'] right hand, arrayed in gold!," we [pray in the responsorial psalm of today's liturgy!  In 1 Cor 15: 20, St. Paul reminds us that "Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."  Mary, too, is one of those firstrfruits who have fallen asleep.

Elizabeth, Mary's elderly cousin whom Mary visited immediately after being impregnated by the Holy Spirit with the Son of God taking on human nature in her womb, recognized Mary as " the mother of [her] Lord."  As Mary entered her house, Elizabeth, "filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice," saying "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb...[T]he moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled."

Mary also recognizes her blessedness and the great things the Lord was doing in  her life and, I believe, in the life of all of us.  She says to Elizabeth  in her Magnificat: 

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed: 
the Almighty has done great things for me
and holy is his Name."

Those great things culminate in Mary's Assumption into heaven, where God has prepared a great and a safe place for His Mother.  God has also prepared a safe place for you and me, saving us in the same way that Mary was saved from the one described in today's first reading from Revelation: A dragon "stood before the woman about to give girth, to devour her child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and his throne. The woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God."  That place was heaven for her when she completed her mission here on earth and will be for us, as well, when we, likewise, complete the work God has given us to do here on earth!

May you and I , like Mary, give birth to that which brings healing, love, joy and peace to that part of the world which we temporarily inhabit!  May we grow in confidence that the one who wants to snatch "the child" from us will and has been defeated by Jesus, our Savior and God-with-us.

The Coming of the Lord

In today's first reading, Revelation 22: 1-7, St. John is shown "the river of life-giving weave, sparkling like crustal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb [Jesus Christ, our Risen Savior] down the middle of the street. On either side of the river grew the three of life....; the leaves of the trees serve as medicine for the nations. Nothing accursed will be found anymore....Night will be no more, nor will [we] need light from lamp or sun, for the word God shall give [us] light, and [we] ball reign forever and ever....Behold I am coming soon [to take us to this Kingdom that last forever and in which "nothing accursed shall be found]."

Imagine! Nothing accursed shall be found in the everlasting Kingdom nor in you or me or anyone else allowed to enter that Kingdom!  The gates to that Kingdom were opened for us by Jesus' life, death and resurrection. The blood of the Lamb has purified us white as freshly fallen snow!  Our sins are as far from God's mind as East from West.  They are remembered no more, as we learn from Jesus' response to the good thief on the cross when he asked Jesus to remember him when He entered His Kingdom. Jesus' response:  "This very day you will be with me in Paradise."  Jesus says the very same thing to you and me when we turn to Him and ask to be remembered!

May you and I be ready when our last day on earth arrives, be that today, tomorrow or years to come! God eagerly awaits that day!

The Death of Jesus

Today we commemorate Jesus' death upon the cross.  The first reading of today's services is from Isaiah 52: 13-53:12, in which Isaiah reminds us that: "it was our infirmities that he bore..."--yes, mine and yours,  my sins and yours.  It was "our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted."  It was my sufferings and yours--sufferings we deserved for our sins, for our rebellion, for our disobedience to the Lord.  Jesus "was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed. We had all gone astray, like sheep" Isaiah reminds us, "each following his [or her] own way; but the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all."

That guilt, the offenses of all humankind, including mine and yours--past, present and future offenses--crushed Jesus beyond words. The pressure was so great that Jesus' sweat in the Garden of Olives was actually blood oozing from his pores, leaving the slightest touch to cause Him great pain. The scourging was horrible, gouging chunks of skin from his back. Mocking Him and pushing a crown of thorns on his head and driving those thorns through His head--blood everywhere--was also torturous and inhumane treatment!

Being incredibly weak from the scourging and crowning with thorns, Jesus must have fallen many times on the way up to the hill where He would be crucified. Fearful that Jesus would not make it up the hill to Calvary, Simon of Cyrene was forced to carry the cross up to the place of crucifixion. Then Jesus was stripped of his clothes, thrown upon the cross beam and nails driven through His wrists. He was then hoisted upon the wood anchored in the ground waiting for the crossbeam. Once the crossbeam was in place, nails were also driven through Jesus' feet, one on top of the other.

To breathe, the crucified ones had to lift themselves up by their painful legs/feet. When the crucified could no longer lift themselves up, they died of asphyxiation.  That is why the legs were broken. The executioners did not break Jesus' legs because he had already died.

"When [Jesus] was cut off from the living," Isaiah prophesies, "and smitten for the sin of his people, a grave was assigned him among the wicked and a burial place with evildoers, though he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood....If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him.....[H]e shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses"--yours and mine. That is how much God loves you and me!  He held nothing back!  Will you? Will I?

God Is on Our Side

In today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 9, we "give thanks" to the Lord for all of His "wondrous deeds".  We tell God that we "will be glad and exult" in the Lord, sing God's praises "because [our] enemies are turned back, overthrown and destroyed before [God]." We acknowledge that it is the Lord who "rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked; their name, you blotted out forever and ever.  [We have realized, we tell God,  that the] nations are sunk in the pit they have made; in the snare they set, their foot is caught. For the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor shall the hope of the afflicted forever perish." 

What a prayer, as true today as in the times of the Israelite's battles with their enemies, as reported in today's first reading, 1Maccabees 6: 1-13, in which we hear of King Antiochus' attempt to "capture and pillage the city"  of Elymais, "famous for its wealth in silver and gold, and that its temple was very rich, containing gold helmets, breastplates, and weapons left there by Alexander, son of Philip, king of Macedon, the first king of the Greeks."

The rich and famous, to this very day, are out to pillage wealth from other countries, wealth that is not theirs.  Some of the rich and powerful are also out to increase their wealth by exploiting the poor, the sick and the needy. Labor and human traffickers are bent on increasing their wealth by forcing children and young adults, women and girls and young boys into the sex trade and into forced labor with little or no pay and atrocious living situations.  In faith, we know that, eventually, those who engage in crime will sink "in the pit they have made."  Their own feet will be "caught in the snare they set" for others.  These enemies of a just society will "be turned back, overthrown," for "the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor shall the hope of the afflicted forever perish."

The questions that each one of us faces is: Am I involved in activities that bring suffering to others? Or, what can I do to alleviate those who are victims of crime?  Am I educating myself about human trafficking, slave labor and those at risk to be exploited by criminals involved in these situations, some also victims of persons who have exploited them!  Information is available on the Internet. Your parish may have a social concerns committee, from whom educational materials could be sought, as well! And, above all, prayer for victims and perpetrators of these crimes is desperately needed. God is  
still God--the same today as in the time of the Israelites, whose enemies were destroyed!  And, yes, we all have a Savior, Jesus Christ, who destroyed death and will do so in whatever form it takes today! Prayers are needed individually and communally, in private and in public!

We "will rejoice in [God's] salvation"  (Psalm 9).

Jesus: Savior and Master of our Lives

St. Paul, in today's first reading, 1 Tim 1: 15-17,  states the obvious; namely, that Jesus came into this world to save sinners and that he, Paul, is the worst of such.  Recall that Paul was pursuing Christians to put them to death. He would, today, be a member of ISIS or of any group killing Christians.   He would be a member of tribes in Africa killing other tribes, a member of gangs in any city out to destroy other gangs. He was not someone you or I would want to meet anywhere.  He would be despised by most, hunted down by police, his face among the "Most Wanted" ones.

God knocks him down on his way to Damascus to seek out Christians. He finds him at his worst and transforms him into an apostle, His disciple. Jesus transforms the passion that he used against the gospel into a passion to spread the gospel.  The ugliest sin in him--treating persons as objects to be destroyed--was transformed by grace.  He  now, through God's grace and mercy, works for the good of all, proclaiming the Good News of salvation. He becomes the Light and abandons the darkness.

You and I have the same choice.  We, too, are persons who are sinners, who need God to intervene i our lives, turn us around often and put us on the right path.

How has God intervened in your life?

Anchored in Christ Jesus

In today's first reading, Acts 16: 22-34, Paul and Silas are attacked, beaten with rods and thrown into prison.  It would seem as though all is lost, that there is no escape, as their feet are chained to the floor in one of the most secure cells of the prison.  In the middle of the night,  a sudden earthquake opens all of the prison doors. They are free to escape but do not.  The prison guard  panics and is about to kill himself when Paul and Silas  intervene. What follows is the conversion of  the guard and his entire family.

The guard panics. Paul and Silas remain calm; their relationship to the Lord is unshakable.  You and I have at times remained calm in the midst of a crisis while others have panicked and vice versa. Panic blocks our awareness of God's presence and His power. It is important to realize that if I seek God on a daily basis, I am more likely to seek God in crisis situations.  When I am having a difficult time, my first thought is to call upon my best friend. So, too, if I have chosen Jesus as my closest friend and developed an intimate relationship with Him. I will automatically think of Jesus and call upon Him in both the good and bad times of life.

When, in a crisis, the Rock to which  I cling is Christ Jesus, I will be as strong as that Rock. I will not be shaken even if every one around me has entered the crisis mode. To whom do you cling?

Jesus, the Strong One, who Walks beside Us

In today’s Gospel, Mark 3: 22-30, Jesus, the Son of God Incarnate, is accused by the Scribes that he casts out Satan by the prince of demons, Satan himself.   They refuse to recognize that Jesus’ power over Satan is of divine origin and does not, in any way, originate from Satan.  Satan delights in causing division upon the earth. He is permanently cast out of heaven and will not re-enter the reign of God. Neither does he want us to be one with Christ and certainly not for all eternity.
Jesus tells the Scribes that “…[N]o one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man.” Jesus is that strong man who ties up Satan, not allowing him to “plunder” the property that belongs to God.  Oh, the   greatness and the love of our God, who comes to this earth to take on Satan, a force too powerful for us, on our own, to overcome.  Left to our own weaknesses, we easily fall into the traps Satan sets for us.  God will not allow it. Through Jesus’ obedience to the Father to the point of death on the cross, Satan is rendered powerless over those who seek the Lord above all, who recognize their sinfulness, repent and believe in the Gospel. With Jesus, in Jesus, and through Jesus, we are one with our God and destined to enter His reign for all eternity.
The Lord says to us in the responsorial psalm of today’s liturgy, Ps. 89:   “I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him, that my hand may be always with him, and that my arm may make him strong. My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him, and through my name shall his horn be exalted….”   This can be reread as follows:  “I have found you (insert your name), my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed you, that my hand may be always with you, and that my arm may make you strong.  My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with you, and through my name shall your horn be exalted….”

Thank you, Lord, for your mercy and compassion. Thank you for your companionship, for always being at my side to make me strong!

Blessed by the Lord, our God, our Deliverer

In today’s first reading, Dan 3: 14-20, 91-91, 95, the King asked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, “is it true…that you will not serve my god, or worship the golden statue that I set up? Be ready now to fall down and worship the statue I had made, whenever you hear the sound of the trumpet, flute, lyre, harp, psaltery, bagpipe, and all the other musical instruments. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do not succumb to the King’s demands and are bound and thrown into the white-hot furnace. When the King peers into the furnace and sees three men unfettered and unhurt walking  on the red-hot coals with the Son of Man in their midst, he proclaims “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel to deliver the servants who trusted in him.”

In the Gospel , Jn 8:31-42, Jesus, the one true God, reveals the Father’s will and  challenges the Scribes and Pharisees who are planning to kill him.  They carry out their plans and Jesus is executed by crucifixion on the cross.  Death has no power over Him.  He is risen from the dead and now sits at the right of God in glory as king “until he has made his enemies his footstool” (1 Cor 15: 25-26).

The three men in Daniel testify to the power of the one true God to save us from harm and set us free.  Jesus actually does save us and set us free from Satan’s snares to worship false gods. Those false gods are the focus of many of our commercials. Marketing experts “sound the trumpet, flute, lyre, harp, psaltery, bagpipes and all the other musical instruments” to  lure people into worshipping consumerism, materialism, individualism, sexism, and the ego’s demands to exert  power over others, use pleasure at other’s expense, and accumulate wealth for selfish ends.

We, too, are faced every day with the choice Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego made when they said to the king:  “…we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue that you set up."  Yes, every day we, too, are faced with the blaring invitations to worship the gods of this world, of pagan cultures and pagan societies or to worship the one true God and to listen to Jesus’ Gospel messages. Which choice will I make today?

Jesus: Savior

Today’s first reading, Heb 2: 14-18, opens with the following statement:

                Since the children share in blood and Flesh, Jesus likewise shared in them, that

                through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is,
                the Devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery
                all their life.

We may think of the phrase “fear of death” to mean only our physical dying.  However, it means far more than that. It refers to fear of dying to selfishness and rising to the new life of generosity in giving one’s 100%, fear of dying to pride and rising to new life through humility, the fear of dying to anger and rising to new life through peaceful negotiation and compromises, the fear of dying to deceitfulness and rising to new life through honesty, the fear of dying to fear itself and rising through acts of courage and so on.

When I am afraid of something, my energy goes into protecting that of which I am afraid. I become a slave to the behavior I engage in to protect myself: a slave to hiding the truth, a slave to selfish behaviors, a slave to acts motivated by pride and so on.  Jesus came to set us free!

From what do I need to be set free today?

               

Ransomed by the Blood of Christ

In today’s first reading, 1 Peter 1: 18-25, Peter says  to us: “Realize that you were ransomed from futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious Blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished Lamb.”   I imagined Jesus saying to you:

                “______(Your name)________, you are being ransomed today from the futility of

                complaining about others or about situations over which you have no control. I am

                ransoming you today from the slavery of sin, any sin, all sin.  I paid your ransom today

                as I offered my body and blood to God the Father in today’s liturgy, when I reminded

                the Father of the price I paid for you on Calvary, where I was tortured, crucified, taunted,

                pierced, ridiculed, mocked, spit upon, kicked, humiliated in all sorts of ways.

                “I was patient so you would learn patience.

                I was humble so you would learn humility.

                I was forgiving so you would learn to forgive.

                I was silent so you would learn the wisdom of silence in certain situations.

I surrendered to that over which I had no control so you would learn the value of surrender at appropriate times.

I spoke up where appropriate so you would learn the value of speaking your truth.”

Truly, God is a God of our salvation!