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.

11B24.    Ezekiel 17:22-24. “I, the Lord, bring low the high tree, lift the lowly tree, wither the green tree, and make the withered tree bloom.”  Some presume to be their own god who can do without God but eventually they will amount to nothing.  “I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no god beside me.” (Isaiah 45:5a)

Mark 4:26-34.  Jesus “said, ‘To what shall we compare the kingdom of God?’”   God begins almost imperceptibly with an effort that is like a small seed.  Without our knowing how, he makes his work magnificently fruitful and productive.  Jesus spoke in parables. To those who were not committed to the Lord he only lightly committed himself.  To those who fully committed themselves to him, Jesus committed himself fully to them.

2 Corinthians 5:6-16.  “We are always courageous,” that is, our hearts belong to the Lord.  While we are here on earth, although we cannot see the Lord, we put our faith in him.  Our faith in Jesus is so deep and strong that we desire to please him in every way.  When we finally die and go before Jesus, King of the Universe, he will recall the life we lived on earth and judge us accordingly.

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.”

 

10B24.   Genesis 3:9-15.   In Genesis 2:17, God told Adam that he was not to eat from “the tree of knowledge of good and bad;” otherwise, he would surely be doomed to die.  Once he did eat of the fruit of that tree he felt naked or vulnerable because he recognized that now there was evil in his world that might do him harm. So he felt the need to defend or shield himself from potential harm.  Eve too felt the presence of evil that might harm her with a special enmity between her and the serpent.

Mark 3:20-35.  The scribes claimed that Jesus had power over demons since they said he was in union with Beelzubul, the ruler of the demons.  Jesus answered, if he were in union with the prince of demons, the prince of demons would never allow Jesus to inhibit the work of the demons to do bad things to people. Since Jesus by driving out demons to help the people who being demonized, his power came from God because he was doing good and not evil.  Furthermore, if anyone denied that the Holy Spirit had the power to drive out demons, he would be blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, which is an unforgiveable sin.  Jesus also encountered opposition from his own relatives who thought that Jesus ought to be remaining back in Nazareth and leading a normal acceptable ordinary life instead of being involved in a work that did not even allow him to have his meals.  For his part, Jesus asserted that he was now working to create a new family who were doing the will of God.

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1. Adam lost paradise for us; Jesus brings us back to paradise.  “We have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven.” “We look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.”

CorpChristiB24.   Exodus 24:3-8.   The blood of the animals sacrificed to God and splashed on the book of the covenant (“all the words and ordinances of the Lord”) and on the people represents life that God has given to his people and to the covenant that binds his people to him.

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26.  Jesus was careful to see to the preparations for the Passover meal.  The sacrificing of the Passover lamb for the Passover meal and his offering himself in the sacrifice on the cross show the drama of our redemption.  Jesus, even though he was physically there, identified himself with the bread and wine: “this is my body;” “this is my blood.”  He used the model of the sacrificial action of the Old Testament world to convey his own offering up of himself as his one unique ‘once and for all’ sacrifice.  By Jesus’ offering himself in the Eucharistic action, he expresses his love for us in the deepest possible way.  We have Jesus himself in the Eucharist.  Jesus is saying to us, “Remain in me, as I remain in you.” (John 15:4a)

Hebrews 9:11-15.  With his own blood he obtained for us eternal redemption.  With our reception of him in Holy Communion, we celebrate both our redemption and our personal ongoing union with him.

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.

CorpChristiB18.  Exodus 24:3-8.  “When Moses came to the people and related all the words and ordinances of the Lord, they all answered with one voice, ‘We will do everything that the Lord has told us.’”  To accept God as one’s God we must submit to his authority over us.  This is not a horizontal relationship between equals but a vertical relationship between those who have been created and their Creator, between those who live in a state of absolute dependence and the One on whom we can utterly depend upon forever.  A second time Moses reads to them the covenant and a second time they accept but this time he sprinkles half of the blood of the sacrifice on them and the other half on the altar to symbolize that God and the people are bound together by the covenant. Blood which symbolizes life or the life-giving force is used to indicate that the covenant is now operative as the life giving relationship between God and his people.

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26.  At their celebration of the Passover, the last meal that Jesus was to eat before dying on the Cross, what we traditionally call ‘The Last Supper,’  Jesus establishes the new covenant that then super cedes that of Old Testament.  Of the bread he shares with the Apostles, Jesus says, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he shared the cup with them saying, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.”  This all precedes his actually offering up himself; body and blood on the cross as a once and for all time sacrifice to God the Father to atone for our sins.  At Mass we re-present that same sacrifice on the cross, since he is not dying over and over again.

Hebrews 9:11-15.  The offering up of the blood of goats and bulls was repeated endlessly in the old covenant to sanctify those who were defiled in any way.  In the new covenant the blood of Christ once offered up, only needs to be re-presented to God the Father to cleanse us from our sins, since the one offering on the cross has infinite, endless value before God.  Jesus is the “mediator of the new covenant,” who presents his sacrifice to his Father for our benefit. In Hebrews 9:24-26  we read, “For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a copy of the true one, but heaven itself, that he might now appear before God on our behalf. Not that he might offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters each year into the sanctuary with blood that is not his own; if that were so, he would have had to suffer repeatedly from the foundation of the world.  But now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages to take away sin by his sacrifice.” In Romans 5:8- 9, Paul writes, “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath.” Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Our reception of Jesus in the Eucharist enables us to go to the Father through the Son who is the only way to the Father, in other words, the only way to heaven.

 

TrinityB24.   Exodus 24:3-8.    God has shown himself as God: almighty, awesome, loving, caring, generous, and gracious.  “The Lord is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.”  Let us respect him as the God who alone is our life.

Matthew 28:16-20.  God the Father has put Jesus in charge with the power to accomplish his will, designs and plans.  Jesus said, “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”  His commandment is: “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” (John 13:34b) Jesus promises to be with us always so to pour his love into us so that we all have love to pour into one another.  Accepting God’s will is accepting God’s love so that we are one with him with his love as our life.

Romans 8:14-17.  “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”  As members of God’s family, we ought to live with our Father’s love for us as our life and not with this world as our life.  To reject this world as our life’s being we have to suffer this world’s rejection of us.  The source of our joy is the life the Holy Spirit gives us daily and not the earthly pleasures this world gives.

TrinityB21.    Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40.   Moses is calling upon the Hebrews to be captivated by how deeply God has embraced them as His People!  He is their God; they are his People!  This is the Lord, the “God in the heavens above and on earth below.”  “There is no other.”  They have been adopted by him; chosen out of the midst of many other nations.

Matthew 28:16-20.   In Matthew’s gospel the mountain is the height to which one goes up to meet God who comes down to his people.  How is it that they worshipped Jesus whom they met there but doubted at the same time?  My personal interpretation is that they were feeling lost as to where they were to proceed as Apostles from then on.  Jesus clears that up by sending them out to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Trinitarian God and teaching them to obey all that Jesus has commanded.  To be a disciple of Christ means to always follow Christ who is present in our lives through the power of the Spirit.  Baptism is the washing away of all that is not of God so that we belong to God wholly so to become holy.  And then Jesus promises “I am with you always, until the end of the age.”  In Matthew’s gospel Jesus refers to the ‘end’ or the ‘end of the age’ or when “the Son of Man will come” as a way of referring to his Second Coming as King and Judge of the world at the end of time. Although Jesus is not now present physically as he was before the Ascension, he is now present spiritually empowering and directing us through the Holy Spirit to bring the world to him.

Romans 8:14-17.  “Brothers and sisters: Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”  “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”  Through the day, each day, we must choose to be led by our bodies, the influence of the world around us and the devil OR by the Holy Spirit.  If we choose to follow the Spirit out of the power that the Spirit gives us to break free from the hold of all those forces that are not of the Spirit, we then become “children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” It is not easy to break free from the forces of this world. To follow Christ will cause us suffering but, nonetheless, lead us to “also be glorified with him.”