Wednesday in the 14th Week of Ordinary Time (I)
Memorial of St. Benedict, Abbot
The Authority of the Shepherd

Readings: Genesis 41:55-57; 42:5-7a, 17-24a; Psalms 33:2-3, 10-11, 18-19; Matthew 10:1-7

We come to this Eucharistic celebration as people who wear different hats. We are teachers and students, parents and children, leaders and led… In other words we come as people who both exercise and submit to authority. But from where does this authority come? For what is it given? And how is it supposed to be exercised? These are among the questions that our readings help us to ponder today. For in both readings we see the bestowal and exercise of authority. In the first reading, Pharoah makes Joseph the man in authority over all of Egypt. And in the gospel, Jesus gives the twelve apostles authority over unclean spirits.

Even so, the true source of this authority becomes clear to us upon deeper reflection. We know, for example, how the circumstances of Joseph’s life – the jealousy of his brothers, his being sold into slavery, his interpretation of Pharoah’s dreams – become the means by which God raises him to his current position. His authority actually comes from God. The same can be said for the Twelve. Jesus summons them and lets them participate in the mission entrusted to him by his heavenly Father. The authority they receive is a sharing in the authority that comes ultimately from God. Can we not say the same for the authority that we exercise and to which we submit?

And this divine authority is given for a very specific reason. In a time of famine, Joseph is tasked to feed the starving people. Similarly, the apostles are sent to gather and feed the lost sheep of the House of Israel. God gives authority so that God’s people can be fed. Of course, none of us here is lacking in food to eat. More likely our difficulty is that we have too much. Famines are the problem of people who live far away. Still, do we not live among people who suffer famines of a different sort? Do we not know of lonely people, for example, who continually endure a famine of the heart? Or are we not familiar with those who suffer from a famine of the spirit, those who are so busy with so many things yet don’t quite know why? Doesn’t God bestow authority so that these might be fed as well?

Finally, there is also a very distinctive way in which the authority that comes from God is exercised. In the first reading, we see this expressed especially in the weeping of Joseph. In spite of all that he has endured at the hands of his brothers, Joseph not only recognizes them as his own kin, but he also allows his heart to be moved by their plight. Although he has the prerogative to reject their plea for help, Joseph exercises his authority with compassion. He acts as Jesus acts when, for example, he weeps at the tomb of his friend Lazarus (see John 11:36), or when he takes pity on the people who seem like sheep without a shepherd (e.g., Mark 6:34). And it is with this same compassion of Christ that the apostles are invited to minister in the gospel.

This then is what true authority looks like. It has its source in the Divine Shepherd who bestows it so that the sheep might be fed with compassion.

How does this image compare with our own experience of authority today?

Tuesday in the 14th Week of Ordinary Time (I)
Bow Your Heads and Pray for God’s Blessing…

Readings: Genesis 32:23-33; Psalms 17:1b, 2-3, 6-7ab, 8b and 15; Matthew 9:32-38

Many people receive a blessing in our readings today. The dumb demoniac is blessed with speech. The harassed and dejected crowds are blessed in the preaching and healing of Jesus who felt sorry for them. And even in Jesus’ invitation to pray for more labourers for the Lord’s harvest there is an implied blessing of vocation. Such an impressive and awe-inspiring array of different expressions of God’s compassion! It seems as though the people have only to open wide their hearts and hands to receive from God’s bounty.

And yet, not all are able to receive the blessings that are offered. We are told, for example, that the Pharisees said, ‘It is through the prince of devils that he casts out devils.’ As generous as God is to all, not all have what it takes to receive that which is freely bestowed on them. Not all are able and willing to bow their heads to receive God’s blessing.

Indeed, if the experience of Jacob in the first reading is anything to go by, receiving a blessing from God can often be something of an ordeal. The most striking characteristic of the story is probably the wrestling match between Jacob and God. And although it might at first seem strange, at some level, most of us can probably identify with Jacob’s experience, especially those of us who have been through crises of some sort, those who have struggled to come to terms with various situations or circumstances in our own lives.

There are also at least two other noteworthy characteristics to the story. First, we might notice how Jacob comes to wrestle with God. We are told that Jacob had taken his wives and slave-girls and children and all his possessions and sent them across the stream. And Jacob was left alone. It was in this solitude, after Jacob had voluntarily allowed himself to be stripped of all his material possessions, that Jacob comes face-to-face with himself and with his God. And it is out of this terrible face-off that a blessing is received. Wasn’t this the main reason why the Pharisees found it so difficult to recognize, let alone to receive, God’s blessing in the ministry of Jesus? Were they not too full of themselves and of their possessions? Were they not unwilling to face the solitude that each one must endure in order to meet God?

Also, isn’t it significant that Jacob did not emerge from his ordeal unscathed? The encounter leaves a mark on him. His hip is dislocated and he walks with a limp. Are we then to imagine that God wishes to maim us even as God blesses us? Or isn’t it rather the case that any authentic encounter with God transforms us and renders us ever more aware of our total dependence on God. Isn’t this part of the blessing God offers us: that we can no longer pretend to walk wherever we wish, relying only on our own strength? As Jesus tells Peter in John 21:18: when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go (RSV). God’s blessing enables us to hand over our lives to God, to follow and lean on the One who guides us on our way and who strengthens us to labour in the harvest of the Lord.

How might we bow our heads and pray for God’s blessing today?

Monday in the 14th Week of Ordinary Time (I)
Memorial of St. Augustine Zhao Rong & Companions, Martyrs of China
Awakening to Faith

Readings: Genesis 28:10-22a; Psalms 91:1-2, 3-4, 14-15ab; Matthew 9:18-26

More likely than not many of us know how difficult it is to find God. It is also likely that we might envy the various characters in the bible – in both Old and New Testament alike – for whom finding and speaking with God seems to come so naturally. Take the characters in today’s readings, for example. Jacob has only to sleep on a stone pillow in a special place, and he experiences God making wonderful promises to him in a dream. The synagogue official has only to tell Jesus about his dead daughter, and immediately Jesus sets out with his disciples and raises her to life. The woman with the haemorrhage has only to touch the fringe of his cloak and she is healed of her affliction. It all seems so easy. But is it really?

On the one hand, we can truly say, yes. Yes, it is easy to find God. It’s easy because, as these bible stories show us, God wishes to be found. Indeed, it is God who constantly seeks us out. It is God who seeks out Jacob even as he flees from his family home after stealing the blessing that was meant for his brother Esau. And, in Jesus, God continues to seek out the descendants of Jacob. In Jesus, God enters into their lives to free them from the bonds of sin and death. Yes, it is easy to find God, simply because it is actually God who is looking for us.

Even so, there is also another side to the story, isn’t there? We know this from our own experience. Is it really all that easy to find God in a particular place – even if it is a particularly holy place? Isn’t it possible, for example, to be bored rather than inspired when one enters a church or when one witnesses a beautiful sunset? Is it really easy to recognize God’s voice and trust in God’s promises, especially when it comes to us in a dream? Do we find it all that easy, for example, to recognize the presence of God in the story of Jesus, a story that we hear and re-enact each time we celebrate Mass? Do we find it any easier to recognize this same Jesus in the people who cross our paths daily?

To do this something more is needed. Something enabled Jacob, in his time of need, not only to remember his dream, but to place his trust in and to commit his life to the God who spoke to him in it. Something enabled the synagogue official, in his time of need, to humble himself before a wandering preacher, even when his daughter was already dead. Something enabled the woman, in her time of need, to believe that touching Jesus’ cloak could do for her what doctors had failed to do in the previous twelve years. Jesus himself identifies what this something is. Courage, he says, your faith has saved you. More than anything else, this is what we need to find God. This is what we need to recognize our respective Bethels and to reach out and touch the fringe of the Lord’s cloak as he passes by.

Which is why it’s quite striking that there is in each of the readings today an awakening. Jacob awakens from his dream with a renewed sense of God’s presence. The little girl awakens from the sleep of death to find Jesus taking her by the hand and helping her to stand up. Isn’t this the very thing that we need too? In our own attempts at finding God, each of us needs to be awakened to the faith that enables us both to recognize and to reach out to the Lord.

How is the Lord awakening us today?

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Bible Sunday
Listening to the Cry and the Lullaby

Readings: Isaiah 66:10-14c; Psalm 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20 or 10:1-9

Sisters and brothers, can you hear it? Can you hear the sound? Just keep very quiet for a moment and listen. It’s quite audible, but only if we listen carefully. Can you hear it now? Doesn’t it sound like a baby crying? Yes, somewhere there’s a baby crying. And we’ve all probably heard a baby cry before. We know how distressing the sound can be. We may not know where the baby is or to whom it belongs, but the sound can still move our hearts, even to the point of breaking. But only if we listen carefully and not let it be drowned out by the many other noises that compete for our attention, only if we let it pierce our minds and hearts, only if we allow it to affect us. Yes, somewhere there is a baby crying. Can we hear it? Let’s be still and listen together for a moment...

Perhaps the sound seems at first to come from far away. Perhaps it sounds like the loud lamentation of the many victims of war and violence in places like the Middle East and the Sudan. Perhaps it’s the muffled cry of malnourished children and their anguished parents trying to scratch out an existence in the poverty stricken parts of the African continent. Perhaps it’s the voiceless cries of undocumented migrant workers many of whom are victimized by unscrupulous employment agents. Perhaps it’s the wheezing of AIDS patients struggling to draw their last breath…

And even as we listen more carefully, doesn’t it seem as though the baby’s cries are also coming from closer to home? Doesn’t it sound like the angry voices of couples newly married but already heading down the road to divorce? Doesn’t it sound like the despair of students who have not made it into the ranks of the elite, who have been labeled mediocre or problematic or simply normal tech? Doesn’t the sound seem to emanate from the cyber-café’s they frequent, where they try to numb the pain of boredom, and to achieve some sense of accomplishment in the World of Warcraft? Or doesn’t it sound like the stressed-out sighs of those heading home after a tiring day spent in a tiny cubicle in the Central Business District? Don’t these cries sound more familiar? Perhaps some of them are coming from the house, or even the room, next door…

And if we listen even more carefully, we may even be surprised to discover that the cries we are hearing are also our own. Perhaps we are the ones crying out, we are the ones groaning from the sting of past hurts or the burden of present illness or the pain of ongoing loneliness. Or perhaps we can’t quite identify where or why it’s hurting, except that we feel within us a vague sense of restlessness and unease that makes us cry out for comfort.

Whatever might be its source, sisters and brothers, can we not hear it now? Can we not hear the baby crying? It’s important that we do. Otherwise, our readings today make little sense. After all, what sense is there for a mother to sing a lullaby if her baby is already sleeping soundly? It’s the crying baby, the troubled infant, who needs comforting. And isn’t this what God is doing in our readings today? Isn’t God mothering us, singing us a lullaby?

Today, even as we allow our hearts to be moved by the baby’s cries, even as we find ourselves crying out in our distress, God proclaims to us a joyful message of hope and of peace. Today God assures us that, as a mother does her crying child, God will carry us at the breast and fondle us on the lap. Like a son comforted by his mother will I comfort you, says the Lord.

And this isn’t simply empty talk spoken to calm a noisy baby. For hasn’t God fulfilled God’s promise to us? Hasn’t God carried and fondled us in the arms of Christ the Son, the same arms that were stretched out and nailed to a cross? And, in baptism and confirmation, have we not all nursed at the breast of Christ, the side that was opened by the soldier's lance and out of which poured blood and water? Even now, at this Eucharistic celebration, is Christ not nourishing us in Word and Sacrament? Indeed, do we not all share in Paul’s boast in the second reading? Can we all not boast about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Such is the joyful lullaby with which God is comforting us today. But just as the baby’s cries do not come only from us, so too is the lullaby meant also for ears other than our own. Even as we allow ourselves to be mothered and consoled by our God, like the seventy-two in today’s gospel, are we not also being appointed and sent out to all the towns and places that Jesus himself is to visit? Are we not also being called to proclaim to others, both in word and in work, that the kingdom of God is very near to you? Are we not being invited to share God’s lullaby with others?

But in order to respond generously to this call, we must first have had the experience of being comforted ourselves. Only then can we learn to hear the cries of others, as well as the lullaby with which God wishes to comfort them. Which is why it’s so appropriate that we should be doing two special things today. First, we are celebrating Bible Sunday. And isn’t the Bible important precisely because it is here that we find Christ, God’s comforting Word to a troubled world? Isn’t it in the Bible that we hear God’s lullaby?

But the Bible isn’t just another book to be read from cover to cover. We can only truly appreciate its contents when we learn how to listen to what is being said, to listen prayerfully. Which is why it’s a happy coincidence that at the end of today’s Mass we will also be announcing the Week of Guided Prayer, which will be conducted in our parish from the 15th to the 22nd of this month. This is an excellent opportunity for us to listen even more carefully both the baby’s cries and to God’s lullaby.

And even as we consider how we might take advantage of Bible Sunday and the Week of Guided Prayer, it seems appropriate to end our meditation today with this prayer:

Teach me to listen, O God, to those nearest me,
my family, my friends, my co-workers.
Help me to be aware that
no matter what words I hear,
the message is,
"Accept the person I am. Listen to me."

Teach me to listen, my caring God, to those far from me--
the whisper of the hopeless,
the plea of the forgotten,
the cry of the anguished.

Teach me to listen, O God my Mother, to myself.
Help me to be less afraid
to trust the voice inside--
in the deepest part of me.

Teach me to listen, Holy Spirit, for your voice --
in busyness and in boredom,
in certainty and in doubt,
in noise and in silence.

Teach me, Lord, to listen. Amen. (Adapted by John Veltri, S.J.)

Sisters and brothers, the baby is still crying, even as God continues to hum a comforting lullaby. How might we listen more carefully and respond more generously today?

Friday in the 13th Week of Ordinary Time (I)
Memorial of St. Maria Goretti, Virgin and Martyr
Choosing the Weak and Making Them Strong

Readings: Genesis 23:1-4, 19; 24:1-8, 62-67; Psalm 106:1b-2, 3-4a, 4b-5; Matthew 9:9-13

There’s a well-known principle (if we can call it that) of the spiritual life that’s not easy for many of us to accept. The reason being that it contrasts so sharply with our everyday experience. In the world, we are often conditioned to make ourselves strong so that we might be chosen. We study hard to qualify for scholarships, or simply to be promoted to the next grade. We undergo training and try to build up impressive resumes so that we can be chosen for the jobs that we want. Such is the way of the world. One has to make oneself strong so as to be chosen. And such is also the way in which some approach the spiritual life. Such is the approach, for example, of the Pharisees in the today’s gospel. They try to strengthen themselves, to make themselves holy, so that God might choose them. They pride themselves in their spiritual discipline.

Which explains why they are so surprised and even scandalized by Jesus’ actions. Not only does Jesus mix and eat with tax collectors and sinners but he also calls them, chooses them to follow him, to share in his life and mission. Jesus comes to call not the virtuous but sinners. In the words of the preface for martyrs, which we will be using today, God chooses the weak and makes them strong. And we see this also in the experience of the martyr we celebrate today. Twelve-year-old Maria Goretti was a mere child. Yet she was given the grace of martyrdom when she died resisting rape. But not before she had forgiven the one who had stabbed her. God chooses the weak and makes them strong.

And, in Maria Goretti’s experience, we also see just how God strengthens the weak. Unlike what we might expect, God doesn’t quite do this by shielding the chosen ones from life’s hurts, or by making them invulnerable to pain. Consider Abraham and Isaac in the first reading. Though chosen and blessed so richly by God, they are not spared the pain of Sarah’s passing. But even in their grief God consoles them. The departure of Sarah also marks the entrance of Rebekah into their lives. God chooses the weak and makes them strong.

How is this true in our own experience? How does God choose and strengthen us today?