15B21.     Amos 7:12-15.   Amaziah, priest of Bethel, rejects Amos as a prophet.  Nevertheless, Amos declares that, even though he was only a humble shepherd, the Lord said to him, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”  Likewise, Jesus and his followers found that, though chosen by God, they too would be rejected by some.

Mark 6:7-13.  In last Sunday’s gospel Jesus had brought his disciples to his own hometown of Nazareth but was rejected by the people who knew him in the days before he started his public ministry, when he was still just a carpenter.  In this Sunday’s gospel Jesus sent out his Apostles “two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits.”  They were to bring almost nothing for their personal physical needs but be dependent on the accommodating hospitality of those who welcomed them.  For those who rejected them, Jesus told them to “shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.”  They “preached repentance,” “drove out many demons,” and “anointed with oil many, who were sick, and cured them.”  For using the spiritual power that Jesus gave the Apostles, they were to be justly compensated, “for the laborer deserves his payment.”  (Luke 10:7b)   Those who reject the spiritual grace that God gives in his paternal care will be without any resources whatever after death.

Ephesians 1:3-14.  God the Father chose us “to be holy and without blemish,” that is God chose us to be saints by living our lives in Christ and not as people buried in the ways and spirit of this world.  We were chosen from all eternity to be saints “so that we might exist for the praise of his glory.”  In baptism we “were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit, which is the first installment of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s possession, to the praise of his glory.”  May our lives be living acts of praise and worship of the God who has lavished us with the riches of his infinite love!   Accepting God’s love daily we are rich because of his infinite care for us.

15B18.   Amos 7:12-15.   Amos tells Amaziah, priest of Bethel, that he had a way to earn bread as a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores.  The reason why he is a prophet was not to earn bread, but that God himself called him to be a prophet.

Mark 6:7-13.  As God had sent out Amos, Jesus sends out the Twelve, representing his founding the new Israel, to preach repentance to bring the people into his new People of God.  He sends them out with the spiritual authority over unclean spirits but with little material resources.  Those who accept the invitation to follow Christ are to supply for the material needs of the Apostles; those, who do not, will have testimony given against them.

Ephesians 1:3-14.  This text is incredibly rich.  We have been blessed because God the Father has chosen us in Christ, “before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.  In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with  the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved” Christ.  To be the sons and daughters of the Father, God’s People, we have been called to be holy as he is holy so that we may live with him who is our Father in our new family home, heaven.  To become holy as he is holy is the work of the Spirit in us through the grace that our Father has lavished on us.  In accepting his redemption of us, we gain our inheritance to become “God’s possession, to the praise of his glory,” God’s holy People made new in Christ.” Life on the way to heaven is a daily experience of growing in our friendship with God by cooperating with the Spirit.  Every day is a wondrous joy because more and more Christ becomes our life, helping us to live a little more of heaven even while we are here on earth.

14B21.       Ezekiel 2:2-5.     God said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, rebels who have rebelled against me.” “Hard of face and obstinate of heart are they to whom I am sending you.”  They were locked into their way of thinking and feeling.  How natural it is for humans to become self-complacent and self-indulgent, and to make that our normal way of being.  We can easily think, ‘I know what I think and who I am,’ and that’s that.  So many say to God: “I feel right at home with the way I am.  Go away and do not disturb me by demanding that I change what feels so comfortable and right for me.” We do not want to trade what feels so normal and comfortable for something else.

Mark 6:1-6a.    Jesus returns to Nazareth but with his disciples, which is to say he is a wholly different person than the boy those towns people knew when he left there.  The people of Jesus’ hometown were astounded at the change and refused to accept that he was so different than the boy and young adult they knew for so many years.  “Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary?”  “Where did this man get all this?”  For them, he was asking too much of them to accept him to be so much more than what they had so long  thought of him to be.  “And they took offense at him.”  “So he was not able to perform any mighty deed (miracle) there.”  Jesus performed miracles to enable and lead people to believe in him as the Messiah or Savior.  When they locked the door against belief in him as Messiah, performing miracles made no sense because they refused to believe in him no matter what he did.  “He was amazed at their lack of faith,” their obstinance of heart.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10.  Apparently Paul had an affliction, which he does not name, that he “begged the Lord about,” “that it might leave.”  However, the Lord responded, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”  In other words, the Lord was saying to Paul, ‘Your weakness invites me and enables me to be your strength.’  And so Paul writes: “For when I am weak, then I am strong,” because I am strong by the Lord’s strength and not my own useless attempt at self-sufficiency.  Our weakness leaves us open to replace our weakness with God’s strength. We live from what God supplies.

14B18.   Ezekiel 2:2-5.   God sends his spokesman to his people who do not want to be God’s People but rather want to belong to themselves and not to God.  God says, at least, they will know that Ezekiel is a prophet sent to them by God.

Mark 1-6a. Jesus “came to his native place.”  He preached in the synagogue to the people who knew him from birth.  “Many who heard him were astonished.  They said, ‘Where did this man get all this?’”  “’Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?’  And they took offense at him.”  As Catholics we understand that using the terminology ‘brothers and sisters’ does not mean that they are the children of Mary but rather that they are the cousins of Jesus and so members of Jesus’ extended family.  Also, I understand that they “took offense at him” to mean that all those who knew him from birth or for many years before his public ministry thought that they really knew this fellow Jesus and that now Jesus was falsely trying to come off as someone totally different than the person that they had known all those past years.  However, he was proving himself to be someone who had come of age to be the person he was really meant to be all along.  Now he was manifesting the divine call he had received by the authority he was showing in his words and miracles.  The people in Jesus’ native place, his hometown, were too locked into a previous conception they had of the person of Jesus.  They were being too human and nature bound and not allowing the spiritual (Holy Spirit) to change them.  “So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people.”  The object of the miracles of curing people was to build on their faith in him and help increase their spiritual life.  Jesus had no basis to work miracles since they refused to have any faith in him.  “He was amazed at their lack of faith.”

2 Corinthians 12:7-10.   “Because of the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given me, an angel of Satan, to beat me to keep me from being too elated.  Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’”  The notes that I read claim that Paul was afflicted, not by a physical or spiritual problem but, by person whom he found to be particularly challenging.  Paul had been gifted with quite many visions and ecstasies but, since he was not in heaven dead to this world, he still needed to live in the dirt of this earth.  Paul continues, “Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insult, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”  Paul is content because he knows that hardships endured with Christ on the cross lead to the joy of the resurrection. If we in our own right feel strong without God, that means that we have filled up ourselves with our own selves, leaving no room for God to be in us.  Feeling strong on our own right means that we have deceived ourselves into thinking that we can do for ourselves what only God can do for us.   Coming to the recognition and acceptance that only God can give us the strength we need to prosper spiritually against the difficulties of this world is the first step toward holiness. Jesus in John 15:5 said: “I am the vine, you are the branches.  Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”

13B21.    Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24.    “God did not make death.”  For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him.”  In Genesis God the Creator made only good things.  God is the source of all goodness, then and now.  When we live in God, the source of all goodness, our lives are filled with endless blessings.

Mark 5:21-43.  There follows two stories of two females who needed Jesus to supply their needs: one, an adult who suffered for twelve years without any source of relief; another, a twelve year old girl who needed to be brought back from what seemed to be an apparent death.  Both were helpless.  Jesus said to the synagogue official and, in a sense to us, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”  It was the woman’s faith that released the curing power from Jesus without Jesus knowing exactly what had happened.   The synagogue official was willing to put his faith in Jesus despite the apparent death of his daughter and the negativity of the mourners.  God is ready to supply for our needs but we must have faith.

2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15. Paul tells the Corinthians that they have excelled in every way but there was yet another way in which they should excel.  Paul calls upon the Corinthians to supply monetarily for the needs of the impoverished Christians in Jerusalem.    Just as Jesus, in a gracious act, left the richness of living in heaven to embrace the poverty of living in this world as a human being, so should the Corinthians be willing to share some of their abundance to help those who have almost nothing.  As God supplies for our needs, we ought to be willing to help others in need.

13B18.   Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24.   “God did not make death nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.”  God did not create death but only life.  Death entered the world through the sinful disobedience of Adam and Eve (Romans 5:12).  “God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him.”  He made us to be his sons and daughters in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:27), living forever happily with him.

Mark 5:21-43.  Jairus pleads, “My daughter is at the point of death.  Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.”  Despite the report that the daughter has died, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”  Jesus goes and tells her to arise and she does.  Jesus gives her physical health as a sign to all that he wishes to give us the health that is eternal, called holiness.  He is the God that robs death of its power to be the eternal termination of life.  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:52b:  “For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”  Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 15:54c-55: “Death is swallowed up in victory.  Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?”

The woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years says to herself, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.”  “She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.  Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who has touched my clothes?’”  Although he was jostled about in the crowd and many people were rubbing up against him, none had done so with the faith to be cured at that moment.  Her faith had released the curative energy from Jesus without Jesus even knowing who had done it.  The power of faith is that we hand ourselves to the power of God.  The God who created us to be loved by him and to live in his love forever is the God who will give only good things to those who wish to live in his love.  In Matthew 7:11 Jesus says, “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.”

2 Corinthians 5:21-43.  Apparently, expecting Jesus to return soon after his ascension into heaven to end the world and take all who believed in him to heaven, the Christians in Jerusalem sold all they had, shared the proceeds with one another and waited for the Second Coming of the Lord.  When the Lord did not come, they were living in abysmal poverty.  In this Sundays’ second reading, Paul makes an appeal to the Corinthians to support the Christians in Jerusalem.  Basically Paul is saying be generous as Jesus was generous, giving his life for us.  You who have much should give to those who have nothing so that both of you should have something.  This message blends in with the other two readings in that God is the generous giver who gives good things to those in need, even health to the sick and life to the dead.  Live in the goodness of God!

12B21.    Job 38:1, 8-11.     God uses his divine power to master the unruliness of nature, seen as the sea bursting forth as from the womb with wild abandon.  “When I set limits for it and fastened the bar of its door, and said: Thus far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stilled!”  God’s divine power overrules the power of nature.

Mark 4:35-41.     The violent squall came up.  It was not the storm that awakened Jesus but his disciples in their terror.  Jesus overpowered the storm with his quiet might.   As he rebuked the storm, he rebukes them: “Do you not yet have faith?”  In effect, he was saying, “Why do you choose to live in your own weakness and not the strength of God?”  “They were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?’”  We can easily slip into a mode where we think of Jesus as just another person or some especially gifted human.  He was infinitely more.  We are so finite that we do have not the capability to grasp, even minutely, the awesome infinity of God.   Daily and often, we must confront ourselves as to whom our God really is by worshipping and adoring him.

2 Corinthians  5:14-17.    “The love of Christ impels us,” “so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”  “So whoever is in Christ is anew creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”  Immersed in Christ through our union with him in prayer, his love for us becomes our life.  Our bodily life or this world is no longer what it is all about.  In Galatians 2:20 Paul wrote, “Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me: insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.”  Our lives are so radically changed when we live in Christ and not in the spirit and the ways of this world.  For we who walk in the Way of Christ, the Spirit is the breathe of life by which we live.

11B21.   Ezekiel 17:22-24.    Our Almighty Wondrous God takes off a tender shoot and makes it to “become a majestic cedar.”  “I, the Lord bring low the high tree, lift high the lowly tree, wither up the green tree, and make the withered tree bloom.  As I, the Lord, have spoken, so will I do.”  What is important is not what happens on its own naturally BUT rather what God accomplishes by his power and might.  What is natural, rots; what is supernatural, is eternal.

Mark 4:26-34.   “This is how it is with the kingdom of God.”  The man scatters the seed.  It sprouts and grows and “he knows not how.”  “When the grain is ripe,” “the harvest has come.”  The seed is God’s power within us to make his divine life grow.  When his power with our cooperation has produced holiness in us, “he wields the sickle,” and God takes us off to heaven.  Then Jesus offers a second parable in which “the smallest of all the seeds” “becomes the largest of plants.”  This is to say the power of God, which in earthly terms seems of little or no visible value, is what has the greatest value, because God makes much happen from small beginnings.  In speaking in parables Jesus is saying we must join our hearts and our minds to his, to be able to comprehend what he says.

2 Corinthians 5:6-10.   To be courageous means to be people of full and wholesome heart.  As long as our heart is feed by the heart of Jesus, “we are always courageous.”  Even while we are in this world with all its earthiness, we are called to be a Godly, heavenly people.   That means “we walk by faith, not by sight,” living our lives in the hands of God and not our own. “Therefore, we aspire to please him,” because his opinion or appraisal of us, is all that matters.  “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.”  What I think or what anyone else thinks or does, must be in full accord with what God thinks and wills, or else, it is worthless.

11B18.   Ezekiel 17:22-24.  “Thus says the Lord God: I, too, will take from the crest of the cedar,” “a tender shoot, and plant it” “on the mountain heights of Israel” and it shall “become a majestic cedar.”  After the Babylonians had enslaved the Israelites and exterminated the ruling family in Jerusalem, Ezekiel is saying that God will reestablish the Davidic line of rulers and his kingdom in Israel again.  Referring to Israel God says he will “lift high the lowly tree”  “and make the withered tree bloom.” As Christians, we see this as foretelling of Jesus founding the kingdom of God on earth.

Mark 4:26-34.  Using parables, Jesus hopes to give the crowds some idea of how it is with spiritual kingdom of God that he seeks to create.  The man who scatters the seed is perhaps the good follower of Christ whom the Spirit uses to bring the word of God to others.  The one who makes the seed sprout, grow and become fruitful is the Holy Spirit himself.  The harvest is the gathering into heaven of the souls who have cooperated with the work of the Holy Spirit in them and grown day by day in the faith.  In the next parable Jesus emphasizes the smallness of the mustard seed, perhaps to say that, with just a little willingness in one’s heart, God can make a wonderful saint out of anyone.  Mark writes: “Without parables he did not speak to them, but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.”  Learning requires readiness and preparation.  What we have learned in the past enables to add or build on to achieve even more learning as one grade in school builds on the year’s previous learning. Learning is not only with the head but also with the heart.  Past experiences and choices help us to develop yet further our character and emotional commitment.  Jesus explains the parables in private to his own disciples because, having been with Jesus far more than the crowds, they know more and are more committed to Jesus.  Jesus builds on our readiness and dedication to grow spiritually.

2 Corinthians 5:6-10.  Paul writes: “We are always courageous; although we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.  Yet we are courageous, and we would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord.”  To get a better understanding of these lines it helps to get a Bible and to read the verses that precede the ones we have above.  In this life while we truly do have the Lord because of our God-given faith; yet we will have God far more when we can actually see him in heaven.  We have the first installment on our home in heaven because God has given us the Holy Spirit who helps us to develop further as saints, who are the only people God allows to see him in heaven.  We need to have courage each day because life in this world is a struggle against the temptations from the devil and the world itself.  Life is this world was not easy for Jesus and likewise is not easy for us.

Paul continues: “Therefore, we aspire to please him, whether we are at home or away.  For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.”  In my own mind we should love to please him because we enjoy his loving us so much.  Receiving recompense naturally flows from being loyal and faithful.  Family is family just for the joy of being loved and loving others because we are so filled with love that we cannot do anything else but love.  With Christ living in us and we living in Christ, we are already living the heavenly life to the degree that life in this world will allow us.  Jesus said in John 15:4a: “Remain in me, as I remain in you.”

 

CorpChristiB21.     Exodus 24:3-8.   The Israelites offered holocausts and sacrificed “young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord.”  Moses took the blood from the offerings and splashed half on the altar.  I view this blood as a symbol of the people offering their life as the People of God to God. Secondly, Moses took the rest of “the blood and sprinkled it on the people,” symbolizing that God was giving something of his life to the people.  That blood sealed the covenant or union with God. Jesus employed the language or mode of the Old Testament sacrifices, when he offered up himself as a sacrifice.

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26.  Traditionally the Jews celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because long ago they were preparing to leave Egypt quickly, when they could not wait to leaven their bread.  At that first Passover, they also marked the lintels and the two doorposts with the blood of a lamb to indicate the ones who were the Jews whom the angel would spare from death.   Jesus celebrated that Passover Meal but now offering up himself as the Passover lamb when he took the bread and said: “This is my body” and took the cup and said: “This is my blood of the covenant which will be shed for many.”   In offering up his body and blood he uses the imagery or language of the Old Testament sacrifices to offer up himself at the Passover Meal.  What he does at the Passover meal symbolically but really, he later does physically on the cross.  In receiving the body and blood of Christ at the Eucharist, we receive in a spiritual way Jesus himself into us to be our Messiah and Savior.

Hebrews 9:11-15.   “For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a heifer’s ashes can sanctify those who are defiled so that their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.”  In giving us his blood to drink, Jesus is pouring into us a share of his life-giving force so that the life we live is infinitely more that the natural life of this world.  It is rather the supernatural life of heaven, while yet we still live physically here on this earth.  His blood, not only spiritually energizes us, but also cleanses and washes away what is not of God so that we may be wholly of God, his holy people.