God's creation of us

In the psalm of today's liturgy is Psalm 139.  One of its verses reads:  "Truly you formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb.  A birthday prayer/reflection might go like this:  “Thank you, Lord, for the gift of life. You shaped me in my mother’s womb and brought me into existence on (the date of your birthday).  Now you shape me in the womb of this earthly life."  Another verse of this same psalm reads: “…[C]lose behind and close in front you fence me round,  shielding me with your hand” (Ps 139: 4-5).  “You know if I am sitting or standing, you read my thoughts from far away;  whether I walk or lie down, You are watching,” (Ps 139: 1-2), just as a parent watches every step a toddler takes.  God's care for us is profound. God's loving us is incomprehensible, infinite.  God watched the bones of each of us take shape.  God guided them. God guided the formation of each of our physical systems: hearts, lungs, eyes, ears, brain, etc.: all of it working perfectly. God breathe into each of us His  Spirit, creating us in God's likeness.  Each of us is an image of God that no one else reflects.  Yes, each of us God is created  as one of His masterpieces (Eph 2: 10)--and that creation is ongoing. 

I encourage you to reflect on all of Psalm 139 today--it's about God's intimate involvement in your life and His phenomenal love of you as His special creation.

Resolving differences in trust

In today’s first reading, 1 Cor 6: 1-11, St. Paul challenges us for not trusting the Spirit within ourselves and others to aid us in resolving personal conflicts but rather going outside of ourselves. This does not mean that, from time to time, need the help of professionals: lawyers, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, etc. However, are there not times when  we take our complaints to a third party, complaining bitterly and harshly about another, instead of sitting down in faith, face to face with one another, speaking our truth calmly, identifying the problem by using “I” statements and how we feel when the offensive behavior occurs and what we prefer would happen in the future and taking time to listen to the other’s response.  Do we not at times avoid  issues and, in effect,  show that we do not believe in  the power of the Spirit within us? Would we not more readily tackle the difficult issues that come up in our lives if we believed in the fact that each of us, in our baptism, confirmation and Eucharist “have had [ourselves] washed,…were sanctified,… were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” And therefore “power goes out from us,” as it did from Jesus (see today’s Gospel, Luke 6: 12-19) when we act out of the belief that the goodness of God exist in ourselves and in those  who may have hurt us or whom we may have hurt.

Yeast leavens all the dough

“Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough? Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough,…For our Paschal Lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”  (1 Cor 5: 1-8).

Every morning we awake “as a fresh batch of dough, [f]or our Paschal Lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed and His grace has been at work in the silence of the night.  We need to be alert so that, as the day goes on, we  live it, “not with the old yeast, the yeast of” selfishness, deceit, pride but with the unleavened yeast of sacrifice, discipline, humility, forgiveness, love, kindness, patience, hope;  in short, obedience to the Law of love written on our hearts.

"Do what, Lord?"

The homilist of today’s liturgy, Father Peter Filipkowski of St. Catherine of Siena’s parish in Mountain Lakes, NJ, asked us to imagine Peter, in today’s Gospel, as a professional fishermen.  He knows exactly where, on any lake, to fish. He also knows the time to go out fish. He knows all of the proper techniques. He’s  been involved in the fishing business for  all of his life.  In today “fishing” story, daylight is approaching—this is not the time of the day to be fishing.  Along comes Jesus and says: “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch” (Luke 5: 1-11). “Lord,” Peter says,   “we have been fishing all night and caught nothing…”  Imagine a more lengthy conversion that might go like this: “Master, this is not the time to be fishing.  Look, I know what I am doing. This has been my business all my life. I am a professional fishermen, for heaven’s sake.” Then something changes in Peter’s attitude and he says: Okay, “…at your command I will lower the nets.”  Luke tells us that  “when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing….They…filled both boats so that the boats were in danger of sinking.”

Many times what the Lord asks of us seems utterly foolish, as it must have seemed to Peter.  And, yet, like Peter, when we follow the Lord’s suggestions, we are overwhelmed by the results. May I have that kind of faith, Lord.

Co-workers, co-healers with Jesus

The Gospel of today, Luke 4: 38-44, relates the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law.  The apostles brought her plight to the attention of Jesus. “He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it left her.”  At sunset, the people of the village brought “the sick with various kinds of diseases to him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them. And demons also came out from many…” The power of intercessory prayer!  For whom do you want to intercede with the Lord?

I brought the following to Jesus’ attention: the sick world/our nation/our country in which we live and all of its inhabitants. I asked Jesus also to intercede for those determined to remove God’s name from our consciousness.  As I reflected upon the disciple’s cooperation with Jesus,  today’s first reading,1 Cor 3: 1-9, came to mine. Paul tells us that “we are God’s co-workers.”  Those reflections left me with  the question: Who in their right mind would not want God as a co-worker? Who would not want God, the creator of heaven and earth, the Creative Intelligence behind all that is, on their team?  Are we crazy or what!   

The Spirit who is from God

In today’s first reading, 1 Cor 2: 10b-16, St. Paul reminds us that “we have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.”  One of those free gifts is our liberty. We are free to live a life of the Spirit and follow God’s will or a life of self-indulgence, following our own will apart from our Creator’s plan for us.  God does not coerce us to do His will. St. Paul in Galatians chapter 5 addresses Christian liberty and states tha  each one  of us is called to be free, not to be a slave of sin.  When I am following the Spirit of the Lord, I will experience “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self control” (Gal 5: 22-23).  On the other hand, when I follow the spirit of the world and indulge myself under the guise of freedom, the results of such choices will be “…sexual vice, impurity, and sensuality, the worship of false gods and sorcery; antagonisms and rivalry, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels, disagreements, factions and malice, drunkenness, orgies and all such things” (Gal 5: 18-21). The Law of the Spirit, St. Paul emphasizes, can be summed up in one commandment: “You must love your neighbor as yourself. If you go on snapping at one another and tearing one another to pieces, take care: you will be eaten up by one another.”

 What a message as we go through the campaign experiences and listen to the rancor of the political parties attacking one another. However, Paul’s message also hits close to home:  am I building the community of the church, the community of my own family, the community I live in as a religious? Or am I snapping at others, tearing others to pieces?  In short, which spirit am I following: that of the world or that of God?

Faith built on the power of God and the wisdom of the Cross

We read in today’s first reading Paul’s  resolve “to know nothing…but Christ Jesus and him crucified. I came to you in weakness…and my message and my proclamations were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God”   (1 Cor 2: 1-5).

Many times we humans experience our weaknesses, our lack of knowledge and a short supply of wisdom when making a decision.   However, we also know when the strength of God, the knowledge of God, the wisdom of the Spirit is manifested in what we do and say.  Like Christ, the Father is at work in us. Jesus says in John 14: 10-12: "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves. Most assuredly, I say to you, ...[those] who [believe] in Me, the works that I do he [she] will do also (my emphasis); and greater works than these [she]/he will do, because I go to My Father.” 

Is that truth not what St. Paul is saying to us when he says that his words (and works) are a demonstration of the spirit and the power of God?

My prayer is that our eyes will be opened to the spirit and the power of God at work within us, through us, and around us in the lives of others with whom we live and work!