Welcome!
Thank you for visiting. I hope you will enjoy the variety of topics to enhance your spiritual life. You can read them below or download them and read at your leisure. I have also added my Sunday Homilies.
CURRENT TOPICS: Notes on Mary + God Is Beautiful + Hosea, The Unwanted Prophet+
ENJOY!
29th Sunday OT – Luke 18:1-8
Instead of being a person exploited and without resources, as widows are usually portrayed in scripture, she was active, enterprising and persistent. She won her cause by allowing the judge no peace, who had power to help her. This judge fell far short of the ideal of the judge in Israel; he neither feared God nor respected man. He only gave way and did his duty to save himself further battering from the widow. The word he uses is taken from boxing; he did not want a black eye!
The Christian is to pray, “Your Kingdom come.” This prayer is not made to an unjust judge nor to a friend in bed at midnight, but to a loving and watchful Father. The prayer is for the vindication of all those in this world who suffer injustice like the widow in the parable. Such prayer is to be accompanied by action such as the widow took. God will surely vindicate his faithful if they pray to him day and night like the widow. Meanwhile, prayer for an increase of faith must continue. Faith is what the Son of Man will be looking for when he returns to this world.
From Give Us This Day, Jessica Coblentz writes, “The Gospel is simple, but not easy.” Jesus’ teaching on prayer exemplifies this truth. His instruction to the disciples is simple: Pray always without becoming weary, and God will bring about justice.” I would like to add that Saint Ignatius’ advises us to do whatever we can as if everything depended on ourselves and pray as if everything depended on God.
She continues, “Our Jewish forbearer, Moses, provides a useful and inspiring model. Like Jesus’ disciples, Moses takes on a simple task. When his raised arms grow tired, Moses does not resign in failure as we might be tempted to do. Instead, the faithful leader joins with others to persevere. Offering a place for Moses to sit and for their own strength to support each of his hands, Moses’ companions enable him to carry out a task he is unable to do on his own.”
In a way that is what we do when we come to Eucharist each Sunday, we join with each other like Moses’ companions and support each other, our ecclesia, through our prayers. But praying constantly also has its benefits in that it will change us over time if we keep at it.
Well, what will this change look like in us?
This is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. He mentions that without love we are nothing. “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, nor pompous, nor inflated, nor rude, it does not seek its own interests, nor is it quick-tempered, nor brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all thing, hopes all things, endures all things.”
This is what we will look like, simply people of love. If God is love then our goal is to become like God. If we do not become loving like God, then what are we becoming?
If this is how people describe us, then our prayer life is bearing fruit. That is why the gospel of prosperity will not make us like God, a God of prosperity. Our God has other attributes besides love, which even the Greek philosophers knew, which are goodness, truth, beauty and justice. It is interesting that they never mentioned love. They did know about love, since the Greeks have at least four words for love that are specific to how love is expressed, as in family love, and love between husband and wife, and love of God, etc.
It is agape love, or divine, that Jesus points us to, which is beyond just philia love which is love for our neighbor and friends. Agape love is a love we are willing to die for, which Jesus asked Peter after his resurrection, at the fire where he had just grilled their fish on the seashore. If we have agape love, we will certainly have the faith that keeps us praying always without becoming weary, since love never grows weary. It is that love a mother has who prays for her children when they are sick or in trouble.
I am sure my mom prayed with agape love each time her sons left home and headed out into the world. I am sure that it was agape love my mom prayed each time I headed to Africa for missionary work as a Marianist. It is agape love that I pray each day for my parishioners and that every one of you pray for each other here at Saint Francis de Sales parish.
GOD IS BEAUTY – BEAUTY IS GOD
“Go Back To Where You Came From!”
Amos, The Unwanted Prophet: Part Three
Complacent Theology: more than ever the elite were confident that Yahweh was with them and that, Yahweh being who he is, the greatest of gods, they were the first of nations. Indeed, there appears to have arisen at this time an expectation that Yahweh might soon act on a certain day to bring them as a people to a position of unprecedented preeminence over all others. It is this complacent theology which comes under attack in several of Amos’ most memorable words.
Soporific Worship: Amos’ abhorrence of these practices in his famous diatribe against solemn assemblies, is transparent. And this is what is wrong with it. In and of itself it may be all right, but it distracts from doing what is really important, what Yahweh really wants. “But let justice flow like water and uprightness like a never-failing stream.”
“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them…But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”
“Father,” his son Joshua looks at him. “You look startled.”
“I am son,” Amos replies. “I had another vision.” Amos was speechless but tried to describe what he experienced. “At first I wasn’t sure whether I was daydreaming or having a vision or seeing the real thing.”
“Mother said you had these visions often,” Joshua said.
“This is only the third one.” he said. “I had thought they had ended after the last two.”
“Why is that, father?” Joshua said. “Mom said that the Lord God had relented and it would not happen.”
“This is more shocking than even the catastrophe of Locust and drought!” Amos said still shaken.
“I am afraid to ask what the vision showed you this time.”
Amos begins to explain the vision. “I saw a man standing by a tottering wall. It was a military invasion that would soon sweep through the land!”
“What does that mean,” Joshua asked, “a tottering wall?”
“It came to me that it represents the House of Jacob’s moral condition,” he said. “The high places of Isaac will be ruined, and the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste, and the sword in hand, says the Lord God, I will attack the House of Jeroboam!” Amos felt exhausted.
“Father,” Joshua looks worried, “Why is the Lord God doing this?”
“From what I have heard from our merchant friends from Edom, is that basically good people are being sold by the rich into debt-slavery for piddling sums,” Amos said angrily. “They are the ones who are bringing on this catastrophe that will punish the guilty rich and the innocent poor as well.”
“Our Edomite brothers that pass through our way north know a lot from their travels,” Joshua said with awe.
“Yes they do. From their travels they glean a lot of information that would otherwise be hard to come by,” Amos said. “Unfortunately, unless you live in Jerusalem or are the rich in Samaria, the rest are considered outside the covenant, especially the Edomites and the Moabites.”
Amos continued, “Another reason is that certain oppressed ones who prior to this time had been living on small ancestral estates were now being forced to sell under pressure from an upper class elite who were taxing and cheating them to death.”
“How unjust!” now even Joshua was indignant. “The very ones sold into debt-slavery could have been landed owners like ourselves!”
“Exactly!” Amos replied. “And to make matters worse, the rich keep the cloaks taken in pledge from the desperately poor as collateral for small loans and holding them beyond nightfall!”
“That is expressly forbidden in the Torah!” Joshua added.
Amos was proud of his son for remembering well the teachings of the Law. “And that is why my son we have the Law from God through Moses. Unless we keep the Law of the Lord God, then they are useless, but more important, it will make our people vulnerable to the pagans from other lands around us.”
“Father,” his son asks. “When will this happen?”
“Son,” and now Amos looks him in the face and answers. “I do not know for certain, but it may be soon. All I know is that when the vision is delivered to the North, the Lord God will put into action what he has warned he will do, unless the people repent. By then, all my pleading will have no effect.”
“But, Father, why you?”
“I do not know,” Amos honestly said. “Who knows the mind of God.”
Joshua asks one more time, “Will we be safe?”
“If we put our trust in the Lord and keep his commandments,” Amos said, “we will be safe. The Lord God has promised this.”
Go Back To Where You Came From pt 3
Go Back To Where You Came From pt 2
Go Back To Where You Came From pt 1