29B21.     Isaiah 53:10-11.  “The Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.”  “If he gives his life as an offering for sin,” “the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him.”  “Through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear.”  We do not know about whom this was originally written.  However, clearly the Church places this selection here as a prophetic reference to the suffering Jesus.   Christianity places a positive value on suffering in our redemptive plan.

Mark 10:35-45.  “James and John, the sons of Zebedee,” said to Jesus, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”  Jesus makes it clear that to sit with him in his glory requires that one drinks the cup of suffering or undergoes the baptism of the fire of painful hardship.  Jesus assures them that one day they would have to endure the pain that he would later suffer.  The other Apostles were indignant that James and John were attempting to make a ‘power grab’.  Jesus makes it clear to them all that he was not about seeking worldly power but rather in bringing us to be servants of the God who is love.  “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Loving is to love “in the good times and in the bad” and never to “lord it over”others.  Greatness means to be holy in the eyes of God which often means to be lowly in the eyes of this world.

Hebrews 4:14-16. Jesus in his humanity was as vulnerable as we are, so that life was just as much a test, trial or challenge as it is for us.  For that reason in Jesus we have a mediator between us and God the Father who can truly “sympathize with our weaknesses.” “So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.”  Accepting that we are weak so that we may live in the power of God will enable us to arrive to heaven.

29B18.    Isiah 53:10-11.  Suffering for the sins of others because God wishes it of him, God’s servant will be rewarded abundantly.

Mark 10:35-45.   The brothers, James and John, ask of Jesus that, when he comes into glory and power, they want to be closest to the center of power which would mean that the other ten would be in lower and lesser positions than they.  Of course, the other ten became indignant on hearing the boldness of their request.  Jesus denied their request saying that that was not his to give.  However, much more important to Jesus was that seeking power over others was not his goal but rather serving others.  “Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to first among you will be the slave of all.”  God is love and he is the model of what we should be.  Though all-powerful he did not impose himself on us because he wished us to be loving as he is loving.  He created us with free will so that we could make the choice on our own be loving or to reject love.  To be loving means that we must be lowly when to be lowly is what love requires as when Jesus chose to be a helpless infant; to suffer as when he suffered for us; to die as when he died for us.  He made God’s almighty divine power subject to his desire to be loving rather than overwhelming us with might.   For God love lords it over power and might, making power and might the servant of love.  “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Paul writes in Philippians 2: 5-8: “Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, ‘Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found to be human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross’”

Hebrews 4:14-16.  Jesus, always remaining God, nonetheless became human so to become the great high priest who offered up himself on the cross to redeem us from our sins.  In his humanness Jesus came to “sympathize with our weaknesses,” being “tested in every way yet without sin.”  As the song says, “We have a friend in Jesus.” We can live with confidence and without fear knowing that his infinite love for us  drew him from the heavens so to be close to our side by embracing humanity into his very being.  His humanity and his human life on this earth assures us that he can sympathize with us so to help us when we need it and be merciful to us.

Psalm 33.   The last verses of this Sunday’s psalm say: “Our soul waits for the Lord who is our help and our shield.  May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us who have put our hope in you.”

28B21.      Wisdom 7:7-11.   “I prayed, and prudence was given me; I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me. I preferred her to scepter and throne.”  “Beyond health and comeliness I loved her.”    Wisdom perceives things as God does and not as the world, our bodies and the devil see things.

Mark 10:17-30.  The rich young man doubtlessly led a good superficial religious life but he felt the God-implanted desire for something far richer.  Jesus invited him to that richness when he said, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; come, follow me.”  The rich young man found that that was too much to ask of him, “for he had many possessions.”  His material possessions possessed him emotionally and bodily so that he was not free to walk away from them so to live with God and God’s love of him as the riches of his life.  “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’” Jesus continued that in order to be saved, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.  All things are possible for God.”  Then in response to Peter’s statement, “We have given up everything and followed you,” Jesus said that they will get far more than what they left for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the gospel, “with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.”  God will not be outdone in generosity.

Hebrews 4:12-14.    Nothing is unseen or unknown to God.  God sees into the depths of our beings.  “Everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account.”  To follow Jesus through the day each day requires that we life with him as the soul and source of our being.  Nothing else is life for us, only God.  We possess God; God possesses us.  (John 17:6 & 9)

28B18.   Wisdom 7:7-11.  “I prayed, and prudence was given me; I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.  I preferred her to scepter and throne, and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her.”  As I see it, the wisdom that is sought is to see things as God sees them to the degree that we as finite beings are capable of grasping a part of the whole of things. This world seems to be willing to have an almost infinite number of its visions of what it wishes to call the truth: whatever one feels to be true whenever one wishes to feel a particular way.  Truth is not a personal choice or selection process.  There is only one truth or reality and only God is capable of seeing the whole of it.  However, God can, according to his will, give to whomever He wishes the wisdom to understand or grasp whatever that person needs to know for his salvation.  Without wisdom we will waste away our lives without achieving anything that has true lasting value.

Mark 10:17-30.   A man asks Jesus, “’Good teacher, what must I do to inherit everlasting life?” To ask this question he must have felt that he was not getting the job done by just being a faithful Jew.  Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.’”  Interestingly Jesus does answer him solely out of his humanness perhaps because that was all that the man could see in front of him, Jesus in his humanity; secondly, because he had not come to the point of recognizing Jesus’ divinity.  Jesus is saying that God is the root or radical source of all that is truly good.  For anyone else to have any goodness, they must draw it from God.  “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, ‘You are lacking in one thing, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me.’ At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.”  Jesus was calling on this man to let go of his earthly possessions so that, in turn, he would be free to take ahold of spiritual ones but he had not come to the point of having the wisdom to see the timeless value of the heavenly treasure and the passing value of the earthly ones.  Following Jesus daily we have, even here on earth, the greatest treasure that exists.  When Jesus looked at him with love, Jesus had given himself to him.  Not having the wisdom to recognize what he had been given, the gift that was Jesus himself, he rejected the greatest of all gifts.  The Holy Spirit works with everyone daily to mature gradually, growing more and more in the Lord so that our eyes of our hearts see more clearly and we are no longer blind fools. “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.” To give up everything does not necessarily mean that we must dispossess ourselves of our material things, because, while still living in a material world, we need material things.  Rather we do need to develop spiritually so that, at the very root of our being because we live so deeply in Christ, we recognize that we belong to Christ, our very self and all that we own, even our bodies.  We have no need to have anything because we have the one and only thing that is necessary, Christ.  Jesus himself belongs to us because he has given himself to us and daily we grow in accepting that gift.  That is the true wisdom that lives in the one and only truth, Jesus who said ‘I am the truth’.

Hebrews 4:12-13.   “The word God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword.”  The word of God is the expression of God that comes from his heart of love for us to bring us to be love as he is love. God’s inner self does not want us to be just dreamy, affectionate, comfortable and lost in a painless world.  The word of God also wants us to bleed because pain and suffering should never stop us from loving as he loved, no matter the cost.  The divine love we are called to pierces through all obstacles.  His love cost him dearly to leave heaven and live as a helpless baby, cost him effable pain in his humiliating treatment, physical violence and excruciating death on the cross.  We read in 1 Corinthians 13:7-8a: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails.”  The word of God, his wisdom given to us, does not allow us to live in the illusion that we have done enough to be heaven-bound, but pierces through our desire to feel comfortable by walling out the challenges of divine love.  Yet the word of God allows us also to feel confident in God’s hands because nothing is impossible for God.

27B21.     Genesis 2:18-24.    Human beings are meant to live in a world of complementarity: Male/female; man/woman; masculinity/femininity.  It is the nature of all living creatures (animals) of this world.   Genesis 5:2a says, “God created them male and female.”  So to speak, marriage is the union of the two parts so that they may become one whole.  Even more importantly, when God says in Genesis 2:24c, “And the two of them become one flesh,” God establishes the sacredness of the conjugal union, far above the rest of this animal world because we alone are called to be a part of the spirituality of the divinity.

Mark 10:2-16.  Jesus explained to his disciples, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”  In the Catholic Church the annulment process is based on showing that something was lacking to having a truly valid marriage but not on dissolving a marriage commitment that was validly made.  For Jesus, there are commitments that are rooted in a God-centered life which are made for a life time.  As God is faithful, so must we be.  Jesus said in Matthew 5:48: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Also, Jesus condemns divorce and marriage to another but not a divorce that does not lead to a second marriage.  In other words, the bonds of the first marriage, as long as it was a valid marriage, remain though they no longer live together.  God calls upon us to be members of his heavenly world even though we are creatures of this earthly world.  Secondly, Jesus said, “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.”  To accept the kingdom of God is to accept God’s Will wholeheartedly, completely, with no strings attached, with childlike simplicity.  We can easily think and feel as members of this world, trying to get what we want for ourselves, which, in turn, means we reject the authority of God’s will over us.

Hebrews 2:9-11.  Jesus suffers and dies so to make salvation available to us all.  In the humanity of Jesus his obedience to his Father’s will makes him perfect.  He, who in his humanity is one of us, our brother, consecrates or makes us holy, bringing us, the Father’s children, to the glory of salvation.

27B18.   Genesis 2:18-24.  The Lord said: “It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a suitable partner for him.”  God created various animals and birds; “but none proved to be suitable partner for the man.”  Casting “a deep sleep on the man,” “God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said: ‘This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’” “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.”

Mark 10:2-16.   When questioned by Jesus, the Pharisees “replied, ‘Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss’” his wife.  However, Jesus recalls the divine authority who established the original inviolability of marriage in the Old Testament so to assert that marriage was never meant to be broken apart. He says: “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” Jesus proclaims that, if husband or wife divorce and remarry, the second marriage becomes an act of adultery against the first spouse.  On his way to creating a New Covenant, Jesus gradually does away with the old Mosaic Law bit by bit.  In John 13:34-35, Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.  This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Though Jesus reminds every one of the making of woman from man’s rib, he is fundamentally asserting the inviolable sacredness of marriage comes from the love that he has given us which is the measure of the love we must have for one another.  In 1 Corinthians 7:1-40, Paul gives a practical discourse on marriage & virginity in which he makes it clear that, if we choose to daily live by our faith in Christ, i.e., to truly belong to Christ, then we must live in love as Christ is love and not only not break our bonds of marriage but to daily live our marriage in Christ’s love.  For this natural world having sex is for the continuation of the species in the here and now.  For the natural world the concept of eternal love is non-existent because there is no eternity.  Nature just wants to keep things going as long as they can be kept going naturally for just as long as that works.

Hebrews 2:9-11.   “He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated all have one origin.”  He makes us who are of the flesh of this earth a holy people whom he can call his brothers and sisters.  In 1 Corinthians 15:44, Paul makes it clear that by our union with Jesus that what “is sown a natural body,” “is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.”  Living just naturally is to be just another animal of this earth; living spiritually is to activate our God-given potential to be children of Almighty Loving Father.

26B21.     Numbers 11:25-29.    The Lord gave “some of the spirit that was on Moses” to seventy elders with the result that they began to prophesy, which does not mean to make predictions but to speak out in enraptured enthusiasm or continued outburst of holy joy.  When word spread that others who were not of the seventy elders also prophesied, Joshua, Moses’ aide objected.  Moses answered, “Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets!”  Moses wishes that God give his gifts to everyone and not just to a select group.  What is important is not what group we belong to but rather that we belong to God.

Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48.   “John said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.’ Jesus replied, ‘Do not prevent him.’  ‘For whoever is not against us is for us.’”  Jesus did not require that anyone belong to a special group but, rather that they belong to Christ himself.  The people who were performing miracles or ‘mighty deeds,’ but were not a part of the immediate followers of Jesus, obviously had put their faith in Jesus. Continuing on, Jesus makes it clear that anyone who belongs to sin and not to God would end up in hell, i.e., Gehenna.  What we belong to is the source of the life we live.  Let us grow daily in living our lives more and more in Jesus.

James 5:1-6.  The rich all too often draw their life from their wealth and not from the Lord.  When we have the Lord as our most precious possession, we have what lasts forever.  When our material possessions are what is most precious to us and the center of our attention, we have something that lasts to the grave and no further.

 

 

26B18.   Numbers 11:25-29.  “Taking some of the spirit that was on Moses, the Lord bestowed it on the seventy elders; and as the spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied,” i.e., speaking in enraptured enthusiasm, but not foretelling the future.  When others who had not gone out to the special gathering were given the gift of prophesy, Joshua objected.  Moses responded, “Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets!  Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!”  Moses rejoices in the generosity of the Lord.

Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48.  That same generosity is given to someone who drives out demons in Jesus’ name but is not in the group that follows Jesus.  Jesus does not want anyone to prevent him, responding, “For whoever is not against us is for us.”  Jesus feels that anyone who does good in his name and out of belief in him will be rewarded as will any of his followers.  Then Jesus goes on to say that if anything precious to you or a part of you, such as a hand, foot or eye, causes you to sin, i.e. causes you to do evil, cut it out of your life because it will lead to your eternal destruction. As human beings we receive the capacity to do many things with the free will in how to use those God-given abilities. Choose to do all in Jesus as the root of all we do.  That will always lead us to do what is truly good.

James 5:1-6.  James makes it clear that it is worthless to treasure earthly things that will rot and corrode as will our very flesh someday but fail to do good for the needy that the Lord will remember forever.  Choose to value what will serve us eternally.

Psalm 19:8, 10, 12-13, 14.  The last verses say, “Cleanse me from my unknown faults!  From wanton sin especially, restrain your servant: let it not rule over me.  Then shall I be blameless and innocent of serious sin.”  As humans being it is easy for us to deceive ourselves, to not see ourselves as we truly are in the eyes of God.  True humility requires that we leave lots of room in our lives for God to lead us.  The childlike attitude of last Sunday’s Gospel demands that we always have an attitude that is willing to learn.

25B21.     Wisdom 2:12, 17-20.    “The wicked say: Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us.”  “With revilement and torture let us put the just one to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness.”  The wicked pose a challenge to see whose wisdom will win out: the wisdom of the worldly wise vs the wisdom of those who put their faith in God.

Mark 9:30-37.  Jesus began a journey through Galilee for the purpose of spending some private time instructing his disciples.  Jesus tells them that he is to be a Messiah who is executed on the cross to free us from our sins.  Lost in the ways of this world, his disciples not only cannot internalize his message but instead concern themselves over who will have the highest position in the politics of the government that they imagine that Jesus is to establish.  Jesus rejects their worldly way of thinking by telling them: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”  Then he points out to them that those who honor and value the least ones in this world, such as a child, would be doing the same as honoring and valuing Jesus himself and likewise God the Father.  As people saturated in the ways of this world, it is a lifelong task to die to ways this world thinks and feels so to be remade and reborn into the image and likeness of Christ.

James 3:16-4:3.  Which wisdom or way of thinking should we follow: the thinking of this world that is “jealousy and selfish ambition” or “the wisdom from above” that is “peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good works?”  To grow to be a person who thinks as God thinks while we still live in a world that thinks as the world thinks is to be in an endless struggle, but always strengthened by the Holy Spirit who lives within us.  However, Jesus reassures us and encourages us to be at peace when he says in John 16:33b, “In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”

25B18.   Wisdom 2:12, 17-20.  “With revilement and torture let us put the just one to the test.”  “Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.”  This was written a hundred years before Christ by a Jew who remained loyal to Judaism in spite of being persecuted by Jews who were won over by the Hellenistic (Greek) pagan ways of those who ruled at that time.  His circumstances prepare us for the situation that Jesus was to find himself in much later.

Mark 9:30-37.  Once again Jesus asserts that he will be killed and three days after he will rise.  “But the disciples did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him.”  In last Sunday’s Gospel Jesus had said, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  Emotionally and intellectually they were locked into the human way of thinking.  From what I can see, it was only by the grace of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that they were enabled to break free from their humanness and pass over to comprehend things as God does.  Jesus could not but notice that, on the way to Capernaum, they had been arguing among themselves.  After Jesus questioned them as what they were arguing about, interestingly enough the Gospel says that “they remained silent,” but does not say that anyone told Jesus that they had been discussing “who was the greatest.”  Once again Jesus recognizes that they were thinking as human beings do and not as God does.  So “he said to them, ‘If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.’”  Human thinking is to take advantage of any situation for one’s own personal gain.  God’s thinking is to bring everyone to love as God loves; not to take from everyone so that you yourself have more but to work to the advantage of everyone to have the most for eternity.  Placing a child in their midst with his arms around it, Jesus says, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”  We are to love everyone, no matter that they have little importance in the eyes of this world but simply to love them as God loves them.

James 3:16-4:3.  “Beloved: Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice.”  When we hand ourselves over to what is not of God, we are on the road to the destruction of ourselves and perhaps of some others around us.  What is of God is good through and through; what is not of God will eventually rear its evil head.  God is love that gives life; all else leads to annihilation. In John 6:53, “Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.”  Then in John 6:57, Jesus said, “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”  Only the God who first created life can continue to be the source of life for us because life can only come from love, i. e., from God, the only source of true love.  Everything that is not from Jesus is a source of death and destruction. Those are our passions.  They are not true love.  In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Paul writes: “Love is patient, love is kind.  It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it does not seek its own interest, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”