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.

 

19C19.   Wisdom 18:6-9.   The Hebrew people had sworn their commitment to God because they had the faith that God would never let them down.  “Your people awaited the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes.”

Psalm 33.   “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.”  The Lord “is our help and our shield.  May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us who have put our hope in you.”

Luke 12:32-48.  In this Gospel Jesus is calling upon his people to enthusiastically prepare themselves to be called to judgement by acting in way that is pleasing to God, our Lord and Master. For those who do so, they will be rewarded; those who do not, they will be punished.  Jesus also makes it clear that there will be proportionality.  To the degree that we do not serve God’s will, we will to that degree be punished.  Finally Jesus says, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”  In other words, those who have received more graces from the Lord, more will be expected of them.

Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19.  Believing that something is true because we put our trust in someone (God) who says and knows that it is true; but, not seeing or finding from our own investigation that it is true, is faith.  Abraham believed the promise God made to him, that from Abraham there was to be God’s own people, who were to be given their own homeland.  Abraham entrusted his future into the hands of God without having any evidence or proof that he had outside of the fact that God said it.

Seeing is not so much believing as it is knowing because we see for ourselves and have the truth. Faith is not k

nowing but trusting that some else knows.  Believing means that we don’t see or know the truth firsthand yet believe because we surrender our judgment into the hands of the one in whom we entrust our belief that they have given to us the knowledge of the truth, a knowledge that we did not have on our own.  Faith requires that we surrender the judgment of what is true to the one in whom we entrust ourselves. God knows firsthand but we do not.  We trust that God is passing on to us the truth that God himself knows.   Living each day trusting in God leads us to become people of a deeper and deeper faith in God because he shows his infinite faithfulness all the way to our heavenly homeland.  He is an ever faithful Father.  At times he allows our faith to be challenged as he did with Abraham in the case of his son Isaac; but the challenges will help us to be evermore trusting in the Lord, as he enables us to work through those challenges.  Isaac’s spared life was a symbol or sign to Abraham that God never fails those who entrust themselves to him.

18C19.    Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23.   This first reading makes the statement: “All things are vanity!”  It later continues on to say: “For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?”  That seems to me to be saying that our human efforts fall short of achieving what we set out to do or of holding onto whatever we did achieve.  Psalm 90 says, “You turn man back to dust.”  In other words what growth there was over the years in our bodies, minds, and whatever else we were, is turned back to nothing but dust.  “All things are vanity!”  What we accomplish is a flash of light that disappears in the darkness.  What is done humanly, seemingly without God, is done in vain, useless.

Luke 12:13-21.  “Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, ’Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.’ He replied to him, ‘Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?’”   I understand Jesus’ reply to mean, “Here it is that I have come into this world to lead you to what is of value beyond this world.  You, however, insist on clinging to what is worldly and ignoring what is eternal.  The desire for worldly goods or greed are blinding to what is eternally good.  Filling up with the goods of this world will leave little or no room to have the life-giving presence of our God who makes us to be the good person we need to be to inherit eternal life.  Having goods is not the same as being good.  This world insists that having the goods of this world is all that matters. On the other hand, God insists that being good in his eyes is all that matters.  In the end all this world can give us is the rot or decay of the grave; in contrast God gives us the eternal and glorious life that flows from his love for us.

Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11.   “Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.”  Our baptism commits us to living a heavenly God-filled life while still living physically here on earth.  We have chosen to be infinitely more than just homo sapiens, just another animal of this world, born here to terminate in a grave here.  “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.  Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly.” “You have taken the old self with its practices and have put on the new self.”  That new self is still located in this world but now without this world as its life, only the life-giving presence of the Jesus for whom “Christ is all and in all.”

17C19.   Genesis 18:20-32.   In the account of God’s dealing with Sodom and Gomorrah, God is pictured almost as a royal but human manager or overseer.  He is seen as one who needs to go down “to see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them,” as if God cannot see or know from heaven what is going on in the world. That same characterization of the Lord continues as Abraham bargains humbly but skillfully with his attempt to save the cities.  At the bazaar of the middle-east the opening asking price is not the final asking price but the beginning price at which to start the negotiations.  In our prayer life, is God someone we bargain or negotiate with or who already knows what his final answer will be no matter how much we want to bargain?  Personally I think that the Lord knows what he wants, no matter how much we try to make a deal BUT does not mind a negotiation process to get us to come to his terms.  In this episode I think that God wants us to realize he will do his most to save us, as he later did on the cross.

Luke 11:1-13.  Jesus himself was often going off to pray or communicate with his heavenly Father.  Seeing his example and that John had taught his followers to pray, one of his disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray.  First Jesus teaches them the ‘Our Father’; then the parable of the man who, having an unexpected guest, requested three loaves of bread from a friend to feed his guest.  At first the friend refused to get up from bed to give him the bread but then acquiesced because of his persistence.  Jesus’ point was that, if persistence will work with people who can be wicked, how much more it will work with our God, who only knows how to give what is good.  In fact, as Jesus said to Martha in last week’s Luke 10:42a, “There is need of only one thing,” that is, the Holy Spirit.  Our prayer should be persistent or patient with God, not because his patience will wear thin but because our patience is waiting on him for the good he will certainly give us in his good time.  To be people of faith means to live in God’s goodness.  “Give us each day our daily bread” is to live each day in the hand of God’s daily goodness. To treat God as the one who is truly and fully the God of our lives we must be daily totally dependent upon him.  Let us find that whatever goodness comes our way is from the hand of God.  Secular people will interpret the goodness that appears in our lives as only happenstance without any divine source.  When we pray: “Forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,” we are obligating ourselves to be good to others as God is good to us.  On the phrase “do not subject us to the final test” I was only able to find that at the end times some Jews believed there would be a final great test.  I can only wonder that Jesus was saying that, if we put our lives into his hands, he would take us through the final test by his death on the cross to our resurrection with him.

Colossians 2:12-14.   Baptism by immersion and then our emergence from the water is symbolic of our joining ourselves to Christ’s death and resurrection.  We were dead because of our sins and limiting ourselves to just a life in the flesh.  He brought us to spiritual life along with him by forgiving our sins and obliterating the bonds of the Jewish Law, “nailing it to the cross.”  Real life is Christ living in us, sharing his life with us.

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16C19.   Genesis 18:1-10a.   Abraham understood that God held him responsible to be hospitable to the guests that he sent his way.  Abraham responded generously to the guests God sent to him. “One of them,” perhaps God himself promises that Sarah will have a son a year later when he will return.  Abraham gave much but God, far more.

Luke 10:38-42.   When Jesus arrived, Martha assumed that the traditional hospitality was the duty that she had to attend to immediately.  Jesus saw it differently.  On his arrival Jesus felt that it was his duty to bring divine life to anyone who wished to receive it.   Heaven had a greater responsibility to offer hospitality than earth because what heaven has to offer is far more important than what earth has to offer.  The Lord said to Martha in response to her concern that many things needed to be done: “There is need of only one thing.”  “Mary, who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak,” was seeking that one thing that was necessary: the love of God that enables us to be as loving as God is loving, by opening ourselves to have Christ live in us sharing his divine life with us.  In this Sunday’s second reading, Paul declares what Jesus had already made known to Mary, the mystery that was hidden for ages: “it is Christ in us, the hope for glory.”  In John 17:26, Jesus says, “I made known to them your name (that is, God himself) and I will make it known (continue to make God known), that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”  The only way to have God’s love in us is to have God himself in us.  Jesus said in John 15: 5b: “Whoever remains in and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” The fruit that we will bear is his love and the results of having his love within us.  Jesus is calling upon us to make his presence within us and his never ending hospitality of his being our life source.   His hospitality is his pouring his life into us as the core of our lives.  Without him pouring his divine life or grace into us we become just another animal of this earth, spiritually dead.

Colossians 1:24-28.   “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.” It is not natural but rather above the natural to rejoice in sufferings.  I have always thought of what is natural to the living beings of this world is to seek pleasure or good feelings and avoid pain and upset. Although this definition is quite simplistic I think it is helpful.  As long as we are in this world there must be some degree of suffering and pain. This world is not paradise. In John 14:27 Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.  Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”  Did Jesus have peace on the cross: humanly, no because his body was racked with horrific pain; spiritually, yes, because he was at one with the Father’s will.  We live in a world that was paradise but with the tree of good and evil: something good and something bad.  Until we are in heaven completely and totally separated from what is evil, there must be pain and troubles.

 

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15C19.   Deuteronomy 30:10-14.  Moses is encouraging the people to be faithful to the Law, especially the great commandment to love God with all one’s heart and soul.  To love God is to do what our hearts and mind already know is good and right.

Luke 10:25-37.  The scribe or scholar of the law responds to Jesus’ question, saying, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” In turn, Jesus responds, “Do this and you will live.”  Death comes from disobedience to God’s will; but life, from love of God and his will.  The scribe, who did not wish to appear shallow, since he had to move on so quickly with such an easy answer that did not show any depth of knowledge, continued by asking Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  Usually the term neighbor only included someone who was connected to one by blood, ethnic or religious lines and not the alien.  In the Old Testament this issue of welcoming the alien or foreigner was addressed because there were times when the Israelite himself was an alien.  The priest and the Levite passed the victim by because they would have become ritually impure according to the Law by coming into contact with wounded man’s blood.  Besides that it was an oxymoron, an impossible contradiction, for there to be a ‘good Samaritan’.  The Jews who worshiped in Jerusalem considered the Jews who worshiped in Samaria to be fake Jews who desecrated true Judaism by worshiping in Samaria and not Jerusalem.  Jesus was saying to the scribe that loving as God loves all of us is the love that God calls us to.  Then “Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’”

Colossians 1:15-20.  The notes in ‘The New American Bible’ says concerning this reading: “As the poetic arrangement indicates, these lines were probably an early Christian hymn,” that declares the absolute centrality of Jesus to our faith.  As we love God with everything that we have, so too we must love Jesus totally.  In Jesus is the invisible God made visible.  At one and same time, he is created and so he is a creature, yet also at one and the same time, the creator.  “Through him to reconcile all things” he makes “peace by the blood of his cross” so to bring to God all that was aliened from God by sin.  He is preeminent, the head of the body, the church, drawing all to himself and then through him to God the Father.  All is made whole and holy as he leads his followers to be made new in him.  As the Old Testament reading said, “For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you.”  We only need to have Jesus as the measure of all things.  Jesus says in John 15:12, “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.”