The End is Near! The 33rd Sunday in OT

 

I was driving my son to his orthodontist this past week, and while touring through the back hills of Ohio, we passed a billboard in a farmer’s field that advertised to all passing by on OH-45: “God has a Judgment Day coming!” 

My son asked me if the farmer who had placed the billboard in his field was Catholic or Protestant.  I suggested he probably was a Protestant.  My son asked why Catholics didn’t put up billboards like that.  I theorized that perhaps fewer Catholics owned farms close to the highway, or maybe they were less convinced that announcing the coming judgment was really an effective means of evangelism. 

Billboards announcing judgment day are not a part of American Catholic culture.  Nonetheless, the Readings for this coming Sunday affirm the truth of that well-meaning farmer’s sign.  God does have a day of judgment coming.  Is that good news or bad news?  It would depend, I suppose, on whether we have suffered injustice or committed it.

1.  Our First Reading Malachi 3:19-20a:

Hope for a Hopeless World: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Some of the readers of our blog are aware that I wrote a little book, Bible Basics for Catholics (Ave Maria Press), that introduces people to the basic outline of the biblical storyline, in seven chapters from Creation to Jesus. 

 

Last week, a bishop sent me an email saying he liked the book, but thinks I should add a final chapter on the Book of Revelation, the resurrection, and the life to come.  One of the reasons for the suggestion, he said, was that people nowadays are experiencing not just a crisis of faith, but also of hope.  They feel like there is nothing to believe in, but just as importantly: there is nothing to look forward to.

The bishop’s comments ring in my ears as I look over the Readings that the Church has selected for us this coming Sunday.  We are in the month of November, the time of the Church Year given over to contemplating the Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell.  The Readings this week focus our thoughts on a topic intertwined with each of the Last Things: the Resurrection.  They remind us that, as Christians, we are not a people whose hopes are tied to this life.  It they were, how sorry we would be! 

1.  Our First Reading is from 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14:

The Importance of Making Things Right: 31st Sunday in O.T.

 

Happy November, everyone!  This month constitutes its own unofficial liturgical season, focused on the Last Things.  We begin the month with All Saints and round it out with the Feast of Christ the King.  This Sunday’s Readings introduce themes that will be developed throughout the month: repentance, the Kingdom of God, and final judgment.  In particular, the Gospel Reading urges us not merely to repent while we still have time, but also to make right the wrongs we have done to others, that is, to make reparation.  Some non-Catholic theologies deny the need for reparation, but it is a biblical concept that has within it the power of healing and reconciliation.

1. Our First Reading is Wisdom 11:22-12:2:

What Does it Mean to Be Poor? The 30th Sunday in OT

Several years ago, an experiment was done in which three American families were taken to a remote part of the Midwest and left to survive with few belongings and 19th century technology (horse-drawn plows, etc.) for a year.  

As I recall, two families were able to persevere through the year without being rescued, and at the end of it, they returned to their twentith-century lives, with video games, TV, etc.

When interviewed a year after the end of the experiment, almost to a person the family members agreed that the year "in the past" had been very difficult, but they were happier during that year than they were now.  

Which raises the question: what is true poverty?  Were the participants poorer during the experiment, or in their present lives?

The Readings for this Sunday take up the question of true poverty, and the Gospel reading puts a "spin" on the previous three Scriptures.

 

1.  Our First Reading is Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18:

Prayer as Warfare: The 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Usually we think of men of prayer and men of war as complete opposites.  A monk in a habit—such as St. Francis—is a man dedicated to peace, a total contrast to one clad in armor brandishing weapons.  Yet the Readings for this Sunday combine the imagery of war and prayer in interesting ways that provoke our thoughts about the nature and reality of supplicating God.

1.  Our First Reading is Exodus 17:8-13:

Is Anyone Grateful? The 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

The themes of the Readings for this Sunday focus on the gratitude for God’s salvation.  Gratitude is an important psychological and spiritual disposition.  Dr. Daniel G. Amen, the popular brain researcher and public health spokesman, identifies gratitude as a key character quality of persons with physiologically healthy brains.  That’s right: gratitude affects your physical health, including the shape and functioning of your brain.  This Sunday’s Readings focus particularly on gratitude to God, and how it should be expressed.

1.  Our First Reading is 2 Kgs 5:14-17:

Does it Matter How We Treat Others? The 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Does it matter how we treat others?  What does my neighbor’s suffering have to do with me?  Can I continue living in comfort while bypassing those around me who are in misery?   

 

These are questions that the Readings for this Sunday raise, and to which they provide uncomfortable answers.  Let’s read and let the Holy Spirit move us outside our comfort zone.

1.  The First Reading is Am 6:1a, 4-7:

Thus says the LORD the God of hosts:
Woe to the complacent in Zion!
Lying upon beds of ivory,
stretched comfortably on their couches,
they eat lambs taken from the flock,
and calves from the stall!

God and Mammon: The 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

As Jesus continues his “death march” to Jerusalem in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 9–19), he challenges us this Sunday to choose, in a clear and conscious way, our goal in life: God or money.  The First Reading reminds us that wealth was a seductive trap for the people of God throughout salvation history.

1. The First Reading is Amos 8:4-7:

Prodigal Son Sunday: 24th Sunday in OT

This upcoming Sunday marks one of only two times in the main Lectionary cycle that we hear the Parable of the Prodigal Son proclaimed (the other being the 4^th Sunday of Lent [C]).  The Readings are marked by the theme of repentance and forgiveness. 

1. Our First Reading is Ex 32:7-11, 13-14:

The LORD said to Moses,
“Go down at once to your people,
whom you brought out of the land of Egypt,
for they have become depraved.
They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them,
making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it,
sacrificing to it and crying out,
‘This is your God, O Israel,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’

The Cost of Discipleship: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the most famous German opponents of Adolf Hitler and Nazism was the Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom the Nazis executed by hanging in April 1945 for his involvement in a plot against Hitler himself.  Bonhoeffer’s most famous work was a meditation on the Sermon on the Mount entitled (in English) The Cost of Discipleship.  In it, Bonhoeffer parted ways with a Protestantism that understood “salvation by faith alone” as some kind of easy road to heaven.  Bonhoeffer criticized “easy-believism” as “cheap grace”:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.

Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Bonhoeffer was a Protestant, but there is much in his writings that a Catholic can affirm, including the passage above.  Like St. Maximillian Kolbe, he died at the hands of a totalitarian government because he would not compromise his faith in Christ.  I could not help thinking of Bonhoeffer as I meditated on the Readings for this coming Sunday, which stress the high cost of discipleship to this mysterious man Jesus of Nazareth, who is nothing other than the Wisdom of God in the flesh.

1.  Our First Reading is Wis 9:13-18b:

A Protestant scholar on the miracles at Lourdes

There is no more comprehensive work on the credibility of New Testament's account of miracles (e.g., Jesus'), than the two-volume monograph written by Craig Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

Keener, of course, is a Protestant. Yet one of my favorite aspects of his book is his treatment of the miracles at Lourdes, the site where the Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have appeared (vol. 2, pp. 675-686).

Scholars have long turned to Lourdes as a stunning example of well-documented instances of miraculous healings. A great treatment can be found in John P. Meier's work. Meier writes that even though numerous cases have been certified by impartial medical examiners as inexplicable (1,300 between 1948 and 1993) only 18 have been recognized by the Catholic Church as legitimately “miraculous” (cf. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2:528, n. 528).

I won't reproduce the whole section but Keener has numerous reports, including ones from non-Catholic sources (e.g., a Methodist source).

He concludes with the following:

Whether one feels free to count the religious context at Lourdes affects one's interpretation of the results. One scholar skeptical of supernatural approaches readily grants that the healings occur. He affirms that "some utterly extraordinary cures" have occurred there 1, noting that enemies of the Catholic Church and leading medical scientists like Alexis Carrel have been persuaded by the data.2 He concedes that some cases cannot even be explained psychosomatically;3 among examples, he lists "the instant healing of a terribly disfigured face, and the instantaneous healing of a club foot on a two and one half year old child," showed by non-Catholics to be permanent. Further, he cited a news article about a three-year old with terminal cancer and the bones being eaten away; after the healing, even "the bones in her skull grew back. Her doctor, a Protestant, said that 'miracle' would not be too strong a word to use."4

Yet this same scholar notes that scientists can reject the supernatural interpretation at Lourdes by suggesting that some sort of naturalistic interpretation would arise if only we had sufficient evidence. The collocation of natural factors in this case might occur together only one in ten million times, he argues, but, because he assumes the miraculous impossible, must have occurred here.5 Scientists need autonomy to do their work, he insists, not having to wait to see if theologians will pronounce some event miraculous.6 Some theologians might wish to retort that they need some autonomy to evaluate miracles without the theological premise of their entire discipline being ruled out by thinkers committed to antisupernaturalist assumptions. The scholar's antisupernatural assumptions in this case have made a fair evaluation of the data impossible.

Graphic Novel on "The Big Questions"

I have to give a plug for a great new book released by Catholic Answers called "The Truth is Out There".  It's a graphic novel that follows the adventures of two eccentric characters, Brendan and Erc, as they travel space while debating fundamental philosophical and theological issues: why do we exist?  Is there a God?  Is there any right or wrong? 

I gave it to my teenage boys, and they were through with it in 24 hours and loved it.  It's a great book to share with teens, especially in this culture of "New Atheism" that thinks Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were just "idiots."

Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner? The 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

-->

In 2005, a quasi-remake of the famous 1967 movie “Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner” was released.  Entitled “Guess Who?” it starred Bernie Mac as an African-American father who struggled to deal with his daughter’s Caucasian fiancé (played by Ashton Kutcher).  Much of the comedy of the film revolved around the clash of cultures at the dinner table.  Usually we only share meals with people like us, family members or friends from our own “circle.”  When someone from “outside” comes in, it upsets the our balance. 

If anything, Jews of Jesus day were even more careful than contemporary Americans about who they invited around their table.  The Readings for this Lord’s Day are going to conclude with Jesus calling his followers to invite people from “outside”—the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind—to dine with us.  This takes humility, for it requires us to recognize we are not “too good” to share as equals with those people overlooked by the rest of society.  Thus, we also observe a strong theme of humility running through the Readings.

1. Our First Reading is Sir 3:17-18, 20, 28-29:

Will Many Be Saved? The 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

If Jesus was walking through your town and you had ten seconds as he passed to ask any question you wished, what would it be?  “Why is there evil in the world?” “How can I be saved?” “What is heaven like?”

In this Sunday’s Gospel, an anonymous bystander gets his chance to ask Jesus one of the “big questions”: “Will only a few people be saved?”  Jesus’ answer is complex, indirect, and very well worth examining!  The Readings leading up to the Gospel help prepare us to understand Jesus’ response.

1.  The First Reading is Is 66:18-21:

Thus says the LORD:
I know their works and their thoughts,
and I come to gather nations of every language;
they shall come and see my glory.

“Family Values”: 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In recent decades, the term “family values” has almost become a code word for “Christian culture” in American society.  Influential Christian organizations have adopted names like “Focus on the Family” and the “Family Research Council,” and on the Catholic side of things we have “Catholic Family Land” or The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, better known as “C-FAM.”  The natural family unit—based on a husband and wife who have made an exclusive, permanent, public commitment to share a common life and raise children together—has been under such political and social pressure that at times we almost identify Christianity as a social movement to promote family life.

In this context, this Sunday’s Mass Readings can be unsettling.  Jesus says he has “not come to bring peace but division.”  Come again?  Lord, with due respect, isn’t one of your messianic titles “Prince of Peace?”  Then again, the Lord speaks of causing division and struggle within families—strife in the family unit caused by Jesus!  How can this be?  Doesn’t Jesus believe in “family values”?

1.  Our First Reading is Jer 38:4-6, 8-10:

Apologies for Technical Difficulties

Last week I went on vacation with my wife and eight kids to Pennsylvania's "Dark Area," a remote region in north central PA noted for excellent star-gazing due to lack of light pollution.  Knowing that I would be without internet access for the week, I actually wrote the reflection on the Readings for Week 19 of Ordinary Time on Friday August 2 and set blogger to publish it last Tuesday morning (Aug. 6).  Unfortunately, something didn't work right, because when I returned to the online universe today (Mon. Aug. 12) I realized it had never posted.  I apologize to our faithful blog readers for the mishap. 

Staying Vigilant: The 19th Sunday in OT

[Technical difficulties prevented this post from appearing as planned last Tuesday, while I was on vacation.  I apologize for the confusion.  See post above.]

My father once served as the chaplain for the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.  (U.S. Navy chaplains also serve the Marines and the Coast Guard).  I have fond memories of that beautiful seaside city.  In any event, perhaps the only bit of Coast Guard culture that I absorbed during my dad’s tour of duty was the motto: Semper Paratus, “Always Prepared,” which seems an appropriate summation of the theme of this Sunday’s Readings, which stress vigilance in the Christian life.  In fact, these Readings feel like something we might get in November, closer to Christ the King, but here they are coming to us in the middle of Ordinary Time.  Yet perhaps that’s appropriate, because it is not just at the end of our lives (or the liturgical year) that we need to be vigilant, but at all times—even and especially when its literally or metaphorically “summertime, and the livin’ is easy …”

1.  Our First Reading is Wisdom 18:6-9:

Church of the Poor: The 18th Week of OT

“How I long for a poor Church for the poor!”

These were some of the first words of Pope Francis’ pontificate, and the Readings this week seem providentially to support our new pontiff’s emphasis on the spiritual value of poverty.  Texts from the Old and New Testaments remind us that human happiness is not to be found in the accumulation of material goods.  Riches are fleeting and empty.  We are called instead to “store up treasure in heaven, where neither rust nor moth destroy, where thieves cannot break in and steal.”

1.  Our First Reading is Ecc 1:2; 2:21-23:

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!

Here is one who has labored with wisdom and knowledge and skill,
and yet to another who has not labored over it,
he must leave property.
This also is vanity and a great misfortune.
For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart
with which he has labored under the sun?
All his days sorrow and grief are his occupation;
even at night his mind is not at rest.
This also is vanity.

Bargaining With God: The 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

With the Bible Conference going on at Franciscan this week, I have to offer a shorter reflection on the Readings:

Who has the guts to bargain with the Divinity?  Abraham, our Father in , does.  In the Readings for this Sunday, we find united several themes: persistence in prayer, the justice and mercy of God, the generosity of God.

1.  Our First Reading is Gn 18:20-3:

Entertaining God: The 16th Sunday of OT

This Sunday, as we continue to accompany Jesus on his fateful journey to Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke, we are confronted with a pair of Readings in which human beings host a meal for God: Abraham for the LORD in the First Reading; Martha and Mary for Jesus in the Gospel.  But is it really possible for us to “do God a favor” by giving him a nice meal?  We are going to discover that, while God graciously accepts our services, it’s really about what God does for us, not what we can do for him.

1.  The First Reading is Gn 18:1-10a:

A Palace of King David Found?

The Israel Antiquities Authority is reporting the finding of a palace probably built by and for King David in the hill country of Judah, in a location known as Khirbet Qeiyafah, identified as the biblical city Sha'arayim.  One of the articles announcing the discovery can be read here.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? The 15th Sunday of OT

Fred Rogers used to sing at the opening of his classic children’s show:

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood

A beautiful day for a neighbor

Would you be mine? Could you be mine? …

Won't you be my neighbor?

Won't you please, won't you please?

 Please won't you be my neighbor?

Fred Rogers was a highly theological educated man, an ordained Presbyterian minister who also gave generous grants to St. Vincent’s College and Seminary (Roman Catholic) in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.  I think he was well aware of the theological significance of the concept of “neighbor,” which we will explore through the Readings for this Sunday.

This Sunday Jesus issues us a strong challenge to break down the barriers and prejudices that prevent us from showing love to other human beings.  Jesus’ teaching is in continuity with the best synthesis of the moral instruction of the Old Testament and Judaism, which views every human being as a “neighbor.”

1.  The First Reading is Dt 30:10-14:

Gathering the New Jerusalem: 14th Sunday of O.T.

 
In the Readings for this Sunday, Jesus continues his final journey, his fateful "death march" toward Jerusalem (Luke 9–19, the "Travel Narrative") that began formally in Luke 9:51.  The past several Sundays have foreshadowed Jesus' coming suffering and death, but this Sunday we get a reprieve as themes of suffering recede into the background.  We are temporarily caught up in the joy of Jesus' ministry, as he assembles around himself a congregation of disciples who constitute a spiritual "Jerusalem."  In the healing ministry of Jesus and his disciples, we see a fulfillment of certain prophecies of peace and restoration to the "holy city" of the LORD.

1. The First Reading is Is 66:10-14c:

The Radical Call to Discipleship: The 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time

The Readings for this upcoming Sunday continue the strong call to discipleship issued in last Sunday's Readings.  Jesus stresses that following him must be an immediate and complete commitment of one's entire person.  As someone once said, "Jesus did not come to suffer, die and rise from the dead in order to create 'cultural Catholics.'"

1.  Our First Reading is from 1 Kgs 19:16b, 19-21:

The LORD said to Elijah:
“You shall anoint Elisha, son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah,
as prophet to succeed you.”

Join us in Austin, July 12-13!

Dr. Hahn, Michael Barber, and I will be leading a weekend conference on the New Evangelization in Buda, TX (near Austin) next month.  If you are in driving distance of Austin, fill your van with friends and family and come on out!  Info and registration is here.

A Turn Toward the Passion: The 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time

As the Church reads through the Gospel of Luke this year, we reach a transition point in this Sunday's text (Luke 9:18-24) where the focus of the Gospel begins to shift toward Christ's coming passion and death.  Sorrowful though his suffering will be, ironically it shall serve as the source of the life-giving "water" about which the other Readings speak.

1.  Our First Reading is from Zechariah 12:10-11; 13:1:

Thus says the LORD:
I will pour out on the house of David
and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem
a spirit of grace and petition;
and they shall look on him whom they have pierced,
and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only son,
and they shall grieve over him as one grieves over a firstborn.

On that day the mourning in Jerusalem shall be as great
as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo.

On that day there shall be open to the house of David
and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
a fountain to purify from sin and uncleanness.

Faith, Love, and Forgiveness: The 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time C

-->

The Readings for this Sunday revolve around a constellation of fundamental issues in our relationship with God: sin, repentance, forgiveness, faith, and love.  Two of the passages used in this liturgy have been battlegrounds in the theological polemic between Protestants and Catholics, but ought not to be so.

1.  Our First Reading is 2 Samuel 12:7-10, 13:

Nathan said to David:

“Thus says the LORD God of Israel:

‘I anointed you king of Israel.

I rescued you from the hand of Saul.

I gave you your lord’s house and your lord’s wives for your own.

I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah.

And if this were not enough, I could count up for you still more.

Why have you spurned the Lord and done evil in his sight?

You have cut down Uriah the Hittite with the sword;

you took his wife as your own,

and him you killed with the sword of the Ammonites.

Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house,

The Logic of Biblical Scholarship

(1) If a biblical book presents a clear structure and literary elegance (e.g. Ruth): "This composition is obviously the product of a long history of redaction during which original traditional material was shaped into the elegant structure we now observe in the final form of the text."

(2) If a biblical book presents an obscure structure or signs of disorganization (e.g. Micah): "This composition is obviously the product of a long history of redaction during with original traditional material was interpolated and supplemented with later additions, thus disrupting the structure and resulting in apparent disorganization."

How about this alternative hypothesis for "untidy" biblical books? "This composition was thrown together overnight from oral tradition and fragments of written oracles by a scribe fleeing for his life from Babylonian soldiers."

Just kidding, of course.  : )

Fr. Spitzer on Atheism and Education

A friend sent me this link to a video of Fr. Robert Spitzer, whose masterpiece New Proofs for the Existence of God (Ignatius Press) I have been reading for the past month.  I think Spitzer is excellent and want to share his insights.  His talk really starts at 10:10:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWiggyq1NMw

Hallelujah Chorus in Haitian Creole

I didn't finish my commentary on this Sunday's readings because I'm still recovering/catching up from a week long trip to Haiti, where I spoke at the first Eucharistic Congress of the Diocese of Anse-a-Veau et Miragoane, and at various parishes and missions of the diocese.  It was an incredible experience.  There is much I could say, but for now I just want to post one of my favorite experiences: the Hallelujah Chorus sung by about a hundred teens of the diocese, just after communion (with about 2000 people) during the outdoor mass to close the Congress.  The teens are singing in Haitian Creole.  All parts were learned by ear, as written music is unavailable.

The teen choir isn't visible in the recording, unfortunately.  They are hidden behind the band and a wall.

If the link doesn't work for you, try this You Tube link.

VIDEO: Curtis Mitch on the Four Marks of the Church in Ephesians

One of my favorite people on the planet--and one of the finest biblical commentators I know--is Curtis Mitch, co-editor (with Scott Hahn) of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. Curtis is known mainly for his work on the Study Bible.

I just ran into this video of Curtis presenting at the Institute of Applied Biblical Studies Conference in Steubenville, a conference I look forward to speaking at myself each Summer.

It is wonderful to find a video of him online. I hope you enjoy it!