28C19.   2 Kings 5:14-17.  “Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of Elisha, the man of God.”  Jesus himself had been baptized in the Jordan.  The symbolism of plunging below the water and rising up can be seen for Naaman as a cleansing as well as a resurrection from all that was sinful and a life lived in the belief of false gods.  Naaman “stood before Elisha and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.” He had found not only good health in place of leprosy but even more important a holiness that gave him eternal life.  Elisha rejects Naaman’s gift because he acts only to receive his reward from God and not any human being.  As well as Naaman Elisha lives for what is eternal and not just for what is temporary.

Luke 17:11-19.  Jesus has compassion on the lepers and cleanses them. Only the Samaritan, (who was deemed to be a wretched traitor to what was considered the only true Judaism because worship was thought only acceptable that was centered in Jerusalem) “realizing he had been healed, returned glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.” Jesus “said to him, ‘Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.’” Apparently the other nine were so self-absorbed and self-centered that they could not think beyond and outside of themselves to the Giver of the incredible gift they had just received. The nine received a gift that could only last to the grave; the Samaritan received the gift that was temporary also but more importantly the gift of faith that was eternal. The nine probably thought just of themselves returning to a normal healthy life. Living our lives within the boundaries of our own self is to live in a small insular world; living our lives with God as the center is to live in a world that is boundless.

2 Timothy 2:8-13.  Paul is witnessing from the sufferings of his own life to the necessity to endure the difficulties of staying on the narrow way in world that cannot understand or accept anyone who is not self-serving but is God-centered instead.  Jesus says in John 17:14a, b: “I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world.”  Paul writes, “This saying is trustworthy: If we have died with him we shall also live with him; if we persevere we shall also reign with him.”  This world apart from God is only empowered to provide for us up to the grave and not beyond.  Only God can give what is eternal.

28C – 10/4/16

In the first reading from 2Kings 5:14-17 and in the third, from Luke 17:11-19, lepers are cured.  In the OT reading, the prophet Elisha cures the Aramean general Naaman who returns in thanksgiving to embrace the God of the Jews, and reject the gods he had previously worshiped; in the Gospel reading Jesus cures the 10 lepers but only the Samaritan returns to glorify God and kneel before Jesus in thanksgiving.  Both were foreigners.  The Jews had always seen themselves as God’s only Chosen people and consequently all other peoples as rejected, worthless trash, rejected by God.  However, since God cures both Naaman, the Syrian, and the Samaritan (who returns to thank Jesus/God and, in effect take him as his Savior,) both   foreigners/non—Jews, (have been cured and have embraced God as their Savior and, in turn,) God has embraced them as saved and valued by God as his People.  Both of these events contradict the Jews’ belief that they are God’s only People.

Both the OT & the NT readings are asserting that God’s People are those who live in thanksgiving to God for His goodness to them and who worship him as their God, the God of their lives.  God chooses those who choose him to be their God and who recognize Him as the Ultimate Giver of all things good.  God chooses those who consequently live in thanksgiving to God for his daily goodness to them (“Give us today our daily bread).  It is His goodness, his goodness alone that sustains us and that makes us good which is to say, holy, able to live with Him forever in heaven.

Some people might think that they are the ones who work hard to produce the goods that their family has.  Indeed they have worked hard with the life that God gave them, with the talents & capabilities that God gave them, with the education and training and opportunities that God gave them through others.  As a thankful people we choose to recognize that daily our God acts a generous, kind, thoughtful, caring Father.  We choose to be His grateful children who live in his abundance.

St. Paul writes in 2 Timothy, “Therefore, I bear with everything for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, together with eternal  glory.  This saying is trustworthy:  If we have died with him, we shall also live with him.”  Paul uses the words “bearing,” “dying.”  Following Jesus means leaving something of ourselves behind forever.  It is quite natural, that is to say, an essential part of human nature to want to run our own lives, provide for ourselves, go with feelings that makes us feel in charge of our person.   For me to choose God as the God, that is Lord and Master, of my life is to die to something that is naturally a part of me.  To follow Christ means to leave something of me behind that is quite naturally a dear part of me, to gain something infinitely greater and more precious. “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.(Galatians 2:19c – 20

27C19.   Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4a.   “How long, O Lord?  I cry for help but you do not listen!”  The disloyalty of Judah to their God brings on their destruction by the Babylonians.  God punishes the evil people but the just suffer too.  “But the just one, because of his faith, shall live.”  Those who remain faithful to the Lord need to remain faithful despite their sufferings.

Luke 17:5-10.   “The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”  These fishermen were practical people.  You cannot eat the fish that got away but you could have fun talking about them.  It is one thing to know what you see and have in your hand but another just to simply believe that the Lord will provide while right now you have nothing in hand.  I love this example of the mulberry tree.  When I lived in the country, the mulberry tree was like an unwanted weed because the birds would eat the berries and their droppings would plant them in every place they were not wanted.  For this reason I believe Jesus selects the mulberry tree to be uprooted and destroyed.  The point is not that the purpose of faith is to destroy mulberry trees but to destroy what is malevolent and destructive.  Faith is a life lived in the power of God’s hand and not in the illusion of our own.

This next line can be difficult for many because we wish to be recognized for our own good faith efforts.  We live in a world of hours and wages and files in the personnel office of our work.  Our natural instinct is to be rewarded in proportion to our service and so we are busy calculating that in our own mind and heart.  In the spiritual world, in God’s world, we leave all that to God, free from judging ourselves and others as to what our efforts are worth.  To the degree that we are recipients of the gifts God has given us, we do our best and do not waste our useful time and resources mulling over what rewards we deserve. Leave the measuring our merits to God.  The household of God is like many of our own family households here.  Little will get done if we are measuring what we have done against what others have done or failed to do.  God has entrusted his love for us to move us to love him in return.  God rejoices in love returned for love given but is not dissuaded for love that is not accepted and responded to but continues to love whether accepted or rejected.  If gratitude is given or not, God is our example to never stop loving.

2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14. Some precious verses in this reading are: “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.”  “Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God”.  God gives us the strength we need in persecution or temptation. “Guard this rich trust with the help of the Holy Spirit that dwell within us.”  The ‘trust’ is like a savings in the bank.  We have been given much; recognize what a treasure it is.  Guard it through the power of God, the Holy Spirit, who is our spiritual life within us.  Without him we will become nothing but the dirt of this earth.

26C19.   Amos 6:1a, 4-7.   Judah and Israel wallow in their luxury, “yet they are not made ill by the collapse of Joseph!”  The House of Joseph is the kingdom of Israel or northern kingdom which was facing total collapse and destruction yet the people were lost in their material and physical pleasures, refusing to face the consequences of being lost in their ‘wanton revelry.”

Luke 16:19-31.  This parable of the rich man and Lazarus does not incriminate the rich man because he was rich but because he did not accept the obligation that his wealth put upon him to share out of his superabundance with Lazarus who had nothing.  In the parable of the separation of the sheep from the goats, Jesus said in Matthew 25:45-46: “The Son of Man will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”  As Jesus poured out himself in love for us, we must extend ourselves in love for one another.  In refusing to aid the poor man in his torment the rich man had to face the consequences of his behavior.  Jesus said in John 5:28-29: “Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, and but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.”  This is called the final judgment because God has given us our time to live out our choice: to accept him and his reign over us or to go some other way.  He has set our time here.  Once that runs out, there is no more.  What we have chosen we have chosen.  Jesus continues in the parable, saying through Abraham: “Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.”  The rich man appeals yet again, saying, “’If someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’”  Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.’”

1 Timothy 6:11-16.   I want to quote some of the lines from this reading, blending them together in my own way. “Lay hold of eternal life.”  I charge you” “to keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ,” “who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, and whom no human being has seen or can see.”  We must prepare to enter heaven by living a heavenly life now.  Moses said in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and all your strength.”

25C19.   Amos 8:4-7.      Amos bemoans the fact that the well-to-do could follow the Law on one hand but on the other behaved like the devil in the way they mistreated the poor and those who could not defend themselves.  However, the Lord promises just retribution when he says through Amos: “Never will I forget a thing they have done.”

Luke 16:1-13.  In this parable the rich man dismisses his wasteful, squandering steward.  In considering his options the steward shrewdly and ruthlessly develops a plan to provide for his future at the expense of his master.   The parable continues, saying, “And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.”  The word ‘prudently’ in this case means that he cunningly calculated what he needed to do to turn things around to his advantage. The parable continues by saying, “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”  What I think Jesus is saying is that the children of darkness are more diligent, industrious and sophisticated in promoting their dishonesty that the children of light in promoting their Lord and Master.  Jesus goes on to make it clear that we must first be worthy of his trust in us by doing well with the small things he gives us.  The ‘true wealth‘ that Jesus refers to, that we will be entrusted with, is his life in us, his dwelling within us, that will make us fruitful in bringing others to him.  Jesus continues by saying: “No one can serve two masters,” meaning that we must be wholly devoted to one or to the other.  He goes on: “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”  Life in this world challenges us day after day. To whom do we belong: the material, the flesh, self-centeredness or God, the spiritual, self- surrender.  Paul in 1 Timothy 6:9-10 wrote, “Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation and into a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.  For the love of money is the root of all evils.”  The center and love of our lives must be God, for he is the one and only God, and from our love for him must flow all our other loves.  Jesus said in Matthew 6: 20-21: “But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

1 Timothy 2:1-8.   In offering “supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings” we are implicitly saying that it is God upon whom we depend for any and all of goodness in this world.  Then Paul gives a short and concise creed to establish the hub or center around which everything turns: For there is one God.  There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as ransom for all.”  This is the truth that Paul was commissioned to speak.  Paul continues, “It is my wish, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.”  Paul is asserting that, if we want anything truly good in our lives, we must go to God in pray.

24C19.   Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14.   God brought his people out of Egypt BUT they had something of Egypt in them that they brought with them, the worship of idols.  They had lived in Egypt for so long that they had taken on some of the Egyptian ways. Moses had gone up the mountain to listen to what the Lord had to say to him and so Moses had left Aaron in charge of the people in his absence.  However, Exodus 32:25b says, “Aaron had let the people run wild,” saying to Moses who had returned in Exodus 32:22c, “You know well enough how prone the people are to evil.”  Exodus 32:9-10b relates: “I see how stiff-necked this people is.” continued the Lord to Moses. “Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them.”  However, Moses then convinced the Lord to be merciful to them.  Exodus 32:14, states, “So the Lord relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people.”  In Exodus 34:6, “Thus the Lord passed before Moses and cried out, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin.”

Luke 15:1-32.   First with two short parables and with the lengthy parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus relates how joyful God and all the heavens are at the repentance of even one sinner.  God has this great joy because of his love and mercy toward and for all his people.   In the parable of the Prodigal Son the older son represents the scribes and the Pharisees who fastidiously follow the Law.  For the older son there is no mercy or forgiveness.  The father represents God our Father.  In the prayer that Jesus taught us are the lines: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Jesus says in Luke 7:37c, “Forgive and you will be forgiven,” and also in Luke 7:38b: “For the measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you,”   Jesus demands that those who follow him love as he loved, even to the cross.

1 Timothy 1:12-17.  Paul wrote, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  Of these I am the foremost.  But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those come to believe in him for everlasting life.”  Paul makes it clear that it was by God’s merciful, patient love and not by Paul’s works that he is saved.  Paul, who was very prominent in so many peoples’ lives, wants to stand out as a sinner who has been put well on the road to sanctity by the merciful, loving forgiveness of God.

23C19.    Wisdom 9:13-18b.  The Book of Wisdom says: “For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns.”  This earth offers many good things but we must always pay a price.  Often the goods of this earth cost more than the goodness they give us.  On the other hand, what our God gives us is worth more than anything this world can give.

Luke 14:25-33.   Jesus say in this gospel: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  And Jesus finishes with the words: “In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciples.” The word ‘hate’ should be understood as meaning renouncing anything or anyone as belonging to me, as my personal possession and not to God.  I believe what Jesus is in effect saying is that nothing and no one, not even our very selves, belong to us but only to God.  That is the cross and cost of being a follower of Jesus.  He is the Creator and the Maker.  Everything good, at its very root, comes from God and God alone.  He has not given us anyone or anything so that we can live in our world as the master and  sole owner.  What we have is on loan to use to make it all the better through the Holy Spirit working in us, ready to give it all back with the gain that we, with divine help, have achieved.  This world, our human nature and the devil demand that we see ourselves as being in charge and in possession, as it were, god of our own world.  To have God as truly God, it is all his.

Philemon 9:10, 12-17.  Tradition understands Onesimus, as someone who was of utmost usefulness to Paul, to be a runaway slave who fled his owner Philemon, without permission, to serve Paul.  Paul writes this epistle or letter to Philemon graciously requesting that Onesimus be welcomed back without punishment and be given his freedom to be received by Philemon as a brother Christian.  This reading carries through with the theme that all, at their very root, belongs to God and to no one else.  When we live on earth with this way of thinking then God will take us from this earth one day as his possession, as his child to be a part of his household in heaven..

22C19.   Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29.  “Humble yourself the more, the greater you are; and you will find favor with God.” To be humble really only means that we live with our hearts and minds in planted in reality, in what genuinely is, as opposed to what we would like to fantasize. The word ‘humble’ comes from the Latin word ‘humus’ that means ground, earth, soil.  Therefore, to live and think humbly means to live with our two feet firmly planted on the ground, on what is real. This world, our dealings with human beings and our very own human nature that seeks pleasure and avoids pain can lead us to construct within our hearts and minds a very unreal world.  Being delusional and not genuinely realistic has always been more fun than any drug that has been and will ever be sold on the streets.  Avoiding reality and living in a fantasy that makes us feel good, pain free, is a choice that all too many make.  Demanding of ourselves that we respond to what really is, can be painful and upsetting.  However, in the end living the truth and not a lie will make us healthy, whole and holy. God is ready to help us do that.  As God, he alone can see the whole of reality, the fullness of the truth.  In seeking to avoid reality that we may find it painful to accept, we may naturally choose to delude ourselves by changing the world we choose to live in within our minds by constructing a pain-free fantasy filled world in our minds.  Pain is not enjoyable but life in this world demands that, with God’s help, we will not only live through the bad times but prosper because we endured, as Jesus did on the cross.

Luke 14:1, 7-14.   The social culture among those of high standing was to take pride in one’s elevated stature among the upper echelon and demand that their position was recognized by their peers.  Jesus was indirectly trying to get them to realize that what truly matters was what God thought of them and not their peers.  Those who live humbly before God will be exalted by the One whose opinion of us really counts for something.  The recognition they sought from their peers would disappear at one’s death but the rewards that God gives for one’s good works, especially for the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, will last forever.

Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a.   God does not come as “a blazing fire and a gloomy darkness and storm and a trumpet blast and a voice speaking words such that those who heard begged that no message be further addressed to them but, rather humbly yet at the same time majestically, as a magnificent vision of “the heavenly Jerusalem and countless angels” with God the Father, Jesus and the saints.

21C19.   Isaiah 66:18-21.   “I come to gather the nations of every language; they shall come and see my glory.”  God now chooses all peoples as his people and not just the Hebrews.

Luke 13:22-30.   “Someone asked Jesus, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” He answered them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.”  The narrow gate is that one must do the will of God and nothing else.  Jesus said in John 15:14, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”  We must strive, make every effort or do our utmost to obey the will of God.  In verse 27 b & c, Jesus said, “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me all you evildoers!”  They were friends of Jesus socially but not friends of the will of God.  They let him walk into their lives as acquaintances on the street but not into their hearts as the source of their life.  They did not come to Jesus from or out of a life lived in God but from some other source that treated God as someone only tangentially relevant to their lives.  Their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah earned them the title, ‘evildoers’. For that they will go to a hell that is a “wailing and grinding of teeth,” while their ancestors will go to the ‘kingdom of God’.  While they were born into the people of God, they will not get the inheritance that was to be theirs because they did not choose to follow the will of God so as to enter through the narrow gate.  Others, who were not born into the people God but nonetheless did “strive to enter through the narrow gate,” “will recline at table in the kingdom of God.”

Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a.   “Endure your trials as ‘discipline’; God treats you as sons.”  “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit or righteousness to those who are trained by it.”  In Hebrews 5:8 we read, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”  God gives us life to be lived advancing day by day on the road to heaven.  Daily we follow Jesus who gives us the Holy Spirit so to enable us to grow spiritually in a material world that poses many great obstacles to our entering “through the narrow gate.”  In Matthew 19:25c-26, the disciples said, “’Who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible’” Paul writes in Philippians 4:13, “I have strength for everything through him who empowers me.” The joy that problems and difficulties give us is that by necessity we are driven to be much closer to God than peaceful times can ever do.  We are forced to go back and back to God to train our mortal flesh to be spiritual.  When the day our judgement comes, let us make God proud of the work he has done in us and through us.

20C19.   Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10.   Jeremiah had prophesized that, since the King of Jerusalem had made an alliance with Egypt against the Chaldeans, the Chaldeans would defeat Judah and take everyone into captivity.  For this, Jeremiah was hated and thrown into a muddy cistern to die.   However, God was merciful by sending a court official to get the king to have Jeremiah drawn out of the cistern so that he not die there.

Psalm 40.   God had come to the aid of Jeremiah and will come to the aid of anyone who calls out to him.  He is our help and deliverer.

Luke 12:49-53.  “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were blazing!’”  In John 12:31, 14:30 & 16:11, Jesus refers to Satan as the ruler of this world who will be judged and condemned. Those who are followers of this world, its ways and its leader, Satan, are dedicated to fighting against Jesus and his followers to the very end.  Jesus said to Pilate in John 18:36: “My kingdom does not belong to this world.  If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.  But as it is, my kingdom is not here.”  Jesus’ followers do not belong to this world (John 17:14) any more than Jesus does.  There can be no peace between Satan and his followers and Jesus and his followers, only war to the end.  To be at peace with Jesus means to be at war with Satan and what is his, this world.  “There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”  The baptism Jesus is referring to is the fire of pain and death in which he will be immersed and subjected to by Satan and this world.  Waging war against Satan and this world has and will always give us pain and suffering but will also always result in glorious victory for those who remain loyal to the Lord.

Hebrews 12:1-4.  Paul writes, “Persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.”  What can be a more wonderful way to grow in holiness than to have in mind and heart that I am now following Christ, saying within ourselves, “Lead me, Lord, lead me!  Jesus said to his first Apostles, “Come, follow me.” The ordinary daily tasks of life and even the seductive temptations of sin can lead us to lose focus on the Lord.