God Mounts His Throne with Shouts of Joy: The Readings for Ascension Day

In the Diocese of Steubenville, as well as in most of the USA, Ascension Day is observed this Sunday.  I wish the traditional observance on Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter was retained, but reality is what it is.

Therefore, this weekend we will look at the powerful readings for Ascension Day. 

Jesus Prays for Unity (The Mass Readings Explained)

This weeks Mass Readings Explained is now available for the 7th Sunday of Easter.  In it we discuss Jesus' prayer for unity among his disciples and the casting of lots in Acts to replace Judas with Matthias.

Mary Arose!

Although it is the Easter Season and this might be more appropriate for Passion Week, I thought I'd share this beautiful song, "Qamat Mariam," ("Mary Arose"), sung by Fairuz, who is something like the Celine Dion or Barbara Streisand of Lebanon.  It was sent to me by someone who spent 8 years in a Syrian Catholic monastery, serving the Syrian Catholic community.  

Here is the English translation:

All You Need is Love! 6th Sunday of Easter

In 1967 the Beatles wrote and performed a song for one of the first world-wide TV broadcasts called, “All You Need is Love.”  It became a classic and as late as the 1980’s I can remember working on the trombone line of an adaptation of it for high school band.  It’s one of a number of Beatles songs where they stumbled on something true out of their Christian heritage, without understanding the full implications.  In fact, they actively distorted the real implications.

Be that as it may, “All You Need is Love” could serve as the theme for this Sunday’s readings, but as we will see, the Readings define “love” in a far more demanding way than the Beatles would have. 

1.  The first reading is the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Roman centurion, Cornelius:

Jesus’ Commandment: Love One Another (The Mass Readings Explained)

My latest video for The Mass Readings Explained is now out.  You can check it out below.

How Do You Know That You Are Saved? 5th Sunday of Easter

Back in the nineties, when I was serving as an urban pastor/missionary in West Michigan, I did a lot of door-to-door and contact evangelism.  I was trained to talk with people and hone in on their assurance of salvation: the key question was, “If you died tonight, are you sure you would go to heaven?”  This would often lead to a follow-up where I would share some Scriptures with them that seemed to show that you could know with certainty that you were saved provided you “believed” in Jesus. 

Book on Work Comes Out

I was delighted to find in my mail today my contributors copy of the book Work: Theological Foundations and Practical Implications (eds. R. Keith Loftin & Trey Dimsdale; London: SCM Press, 2018).

I was given the opportunity to write the first chapter of the body of the book (after the intro), on the theology of work in the creation narratives and the Pentateuch. 

This was a lot of fun, as the other contributors included luminaries like Miroslav Volf (Yale), Jay Richards (CUA), Jürgen von Hagen (Bonn) and Darrel Bock (Dallas Seminary).

I thoroughly enjoyed writing the chapter, and am indebted to my colleague Jeff Morrow, who has written several similar essays.  As is often the case, I started off with some ideas I knew were present in Genesis 1-2, but as I pursued those themes through the canon, many new insights arose that I had never seen before.  Human work is an important theme in Scripture and is an integral part of salvation.  I really encourage economists, theologians, Bible scholars, and those interested in social justice to pick up a copy of this essay collection.

Cajetan and His Continued Relevance

A student who is something of an expert on Cardinal Cajetan sent me a brief essay that I found very edifying and relevant for Catholic believers soldiering forward nowadays in this valley of tears, so I thought I'd share a portion of it:

The Scandal of Jesus: The 4th Sunday of Easter

The readings for this Sunday’s Masses are truly “scandalous” in more ways than one. Our English word “scandal” comes ultimately from the Greek skandalon, “a stumbling block.”  A “scandal” is something that causes people to “stumble,” i.e. that offends or injures them in some way.  As we will see, the exclusive claims made for and by Jesus in the readings for this Sunday are scandalous to the “inclusive” and “diverse” culture we live in today, which does not recognize the possibility of a religious truth binding on all humanity.

1.  The first reading is Acts 4:8-12:

Jesus the Good Shepherd (The Mass Readings Explained)

This week's The Mass Readings Explained is now out.

Salvation History as a Good Movie: The 3rd Sunday of Easter

One of my favorite movies is M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs.”  It’s a cross between Robert Benton’s “Places in the Heart” and Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day,” and probably a couple other movies I’m forgetting at the moment.  Anyway, one of the marked features of the movie is its foreshadowing.  Shyamalan introduces all sorts of strange themes associated with the different characters who surround Fr. Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), an (Anglican?) priest who’s lost his faith and left his ministry: the strange last words of his dying wife, his brother’s obsession with hitting home runs, his son’s asthma, his daughter’s water-drinking compulsion.  The significance of these motifs does not become clear to the viewer until the final scenes, where one discovers that a strong hand of Providence was guiding the life of Fr. Hess through it all.

The Risen Jesus is Not a Ghost (The Mass Readings Explained)

This week's video for The Mass Readings Explained is now out.  See below.

The Readings for Divine Mercy Sunday

Behind the readings for this Sunday lies a Gospel text which is never read, but whose influence is felt and whose concepts and images serves as a link between the texts that are read.  That passage is John 19:34:

John 19:34 But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.  35 He who saw it has borne witness — his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth — that you also may believe.

The blood and water flowing from the side of Christ is the background for the Divine Mercy image seen by St. Faustina. 

This “river” that flows out from the side of Christ is understood in the Church’s spiritual tradition as a river of mercy, but there is also a rich biblical background to this passage of John.  

Divine Mercy Sunday (The Mass Readings Explained)

The latest Mass Readings Explained video is now out for Divine Mercy Sunday.

Easter Sunday Readings

The Mass of Easter Day is one of the most joyful in the Church calendar, as the Church basks in the afterglow of the most remarkable intervention of God into human history, the resurrection of his own son. 

1.  The First Reading is Acts 10:34a, 37-43:

Easter Vigil Readings

The Readings for the Easter Vigil recount the history of salvation by focussing on the various covenant stages throughout the Biblical storyline.  My book Bible Basics for Catholics follows this same pattern, using stick figure drawings to illustrate these various stages.

I'll proceed to point out how all these covenants appear in various forms in the seven Old Testament readings that form the backbone of the Liturgy of the Word for the Vigil.

1. The First Reading:

Readings for Good Friday

Every year on Good Friday, we read St. John’s account of the Passion from John 18-19, together with Isaiah 52-53  and Psalm 31.

One of the themes that runs through these reading is the Priesthood of Christ.

1. There is priestly language already in the First Reading, from Isaiah 52 & 53, the famous “Suffering Servant” Song:

The Readings for Holy Thursday

The Readings for the Holy Thursday Mass focus on the continuity between the ancient Jewish Passover and the institution of the Eucharist.  As the Passover was the meal that marked the transition from slavery to Egypt to the freedom of the Exodus, so the Eucharist is the meal that marks the transition from slavery to sin to the glorious freedom of the children of God.

1.  Our First Reading is from Ex 12:1-8, 11-14:

Easter Vigil (The Mass Readings Explained)

The video for this week's Easter Vigil is now out.  Have a holy Holy Week.

Why Have You Forsaken Me? The Readings for Passion Sunday

How could the Messiah die?

Despite a few mysterious prophetic texts that seemed to intimate this possibility, the idea that the Messiah could arrive and subsequently be killed was radically counter-intuitive to most first-century Jews. 

Yet the conviction of the early Christians, based on Jesus of Nazareth’s own teachings about himself, was that the radically counter-intuitive impossibility was actually prophesied, if one had the eyes to see and the ears to hear it in Israel’s Scriptures.

The Readings for this Mass offer us two of the most poignant prophecies of the suffering of the Messiah.

Palm Sunday (The Mass Readings Explained)

This week's Mass Readings Explained is now out for the readings on Palm Sunday.  Hope it is helpful!

The New Covenant: The Fifth Sunday of Lent

In this Lent of Year B, we are taking a survey through the Old Testament of the great covenant moments. We have seen the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the covenant failure of Israel resulting in exile, and now finally, on this fifth week, we witness the promise of the New Covenant through the voice of the prophet Jeremiah.  In the Gospel, Jesus speaks in ominous terms about the coming suffering that will be necessary for him to undergo in order to establish that New Covenant.  

The Grain of Wheat and Jesus' "Hour" (The Mass Readings Explained)

Check out the latest video in The Mass Readings Explained series for this Sunday's Mass Readings.  The 14 day free trial is still available.  God bless.

Parish Mission in Alexandria, LA

If you're in the Alexandria, LA, region, I'll be giving a parish mission at Our Lady of Prompt Succor parish on Tuesday-Wednesday nights this upcoming week:

Laetare Sunday Year B: The Readings

 

We've reached the midpoint of Lent!  Congratulations, and I hope your Lenten practices have helped you to grow closer to Jesus!

At this midway point, our Readings are filled with themes of judgement, exile, and mercy.  

Jesus and the Bronze Serpent (The Mass Readings Explained)

The video for this Sunday's Mass Readings is now out.

Parish Mission in Geneseo NY

If you are in the Rochester NY vicinity, I'll be doing a parish mission at St. Mary's in Geneseo next week Sunday and Monday, March 11-12.  Info below:

Jesus, the Law of God: Readings for 3rd Sunday of Lent

What is the best way to communicate law?  Written law has its limitations, because we are all familiar with the concept of the “loophole.”  There always seem to be methods of interpreting the written law in ways that run contrary to its intent.  The constitution of the United States, for example, says that the “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” but somehow in American jurisprudence that has morphed into “a wall of separation between church and state,” such that there are lawsuits to remove memorial crosses from government land.  

Jesus Cleanses the Temple (The Mass Readings Explained)

My latest video for this upcoming Sunday's Mass readings on the Ten Commandments and the Cleansing of the Temple is now out.  Check it out -- You can still get your 14 day trial for free.

Premonition of Calvary: The 2nd Sunday of Lent

 

One week into our Lenten journey, the Readings for this weekend’s Masses focus on passages that look ahead or anticipate Christ’s self-sacrifice on Calvary, which awaits us, as it were, in the “liturgical future,” on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

1.  The First Readings is one of the most pivotal texts in the Old Testament, the “Calvary” of the old covenant era.  This is what the Jewish tradition calls the Aqedah, the “binding” of Isaac:

The Transfiguration (The Mass Readings Explained)

My video for this Sunday's Mass readings is now out.

The Temptation of Jesus in the Desert (The Mass Readings Explained)

The first video in Lent for The Mass Readings Explained is now out.  Have a holy and blessed Lent!

Spiritual Leprosy and Healing: The 6th Sunday of OT

In this weekend’s readings, a healed leper disobeys Jesus and spreads the news of his miraculous cure everywhere, impeding the Lord’s ministry.  Why did Jesus tell him to be quiet about the healing?  What is the role of miracles in the Jesus’ ministry, and in the life of the Church today?

1. The First Reading for this weekend’s masses was obviously chosen to provide the background for understanding leprosy as it was experienced by the Jews and other ancient peoples.

Jesus, Healer of the Broken-Hearted: The 5th Sunday of OT

I went to a public high school in Hawaii back in the late 1980’s, and the social group I hung around with had more than its share of young cynics.  For some reason, it was cool to be morose, and one of my buddies was fond of responding to anyone’s account of some problem or difficulty that they were facing with the lovely couplet, “Well, life s***ks, then you die.”  At the time, we thought it was amusing, a kind of gallows humor, but in hindsight I regret showing any approval for such expressions of pessimism.  Life is difficult, but it neither helps nor is it virtuous to utter expressions of stoic fatalism.  The true virtue, the true courage, is to maintain hope (and also love, and joy) in the face of what can sometimes look and feel like an ocean of darkness.

This Sunday’s Readings raise the problem of the great sorrows of life, the reverses, difficulties, and especially illnesses that can seem to sap life of all joy. Yet in the Gospel, Jesus travels through Galilee relieving the ills and oppressions which have reduced so many to a life of “drudgery.”  The Readings leave us to ponder: how is it that even today, Jesus still comes to us to heal our broken-heartedness, restoring joy and hope?

The First Reading is from the Book of Job:

Jesus the Physician (The Mass Readings Explained)

This week's video is now out for The Mass Readings Explained.

Listen to the Ultimate Prophet: 4th Sunday in OT

In the Readings for this Sunday, we are following 1 Corinthians and the Gospel of Mark ad seriatim, so there is less cohesion between the Second Reading and the Gospel than on a high feast day.

Nonetheless, the Readings this week can be linked by the theme of “hearing the voice of the prophet.”

1.  The First Reading is a very famous passage from the Book of Deuteronomy that should be familiar to every Catholic student of biblical theology:

Jesus the Exorcist (The Mass Readings Explained)

My latest video for The Mass Readings Explained is now out for this upcoming Sunday's Readings: Jesus the Exorcist.

Come Now! Readings for 3rd Sunday of OT

In my house, not everyone comes for dinner when called.  “It’s dinner time!  Come for dinner!” I’ll call up the stairs, but only a spattering of children materializes in the kitchen—maybe three or four, but where are all the others?  So I have to search the house to find them in various corners, engrossed in some activity—reading, building something, or typing something on their laptop.  They’ve ignored my summons, or didn’t “hear” it.  A wave of frustration sweeps over me, tempered by memories of having been the same way when I was their age.  Then the words pass my lips: “Drop what you’re doing and come now!”  We can’t postpone dinner indefinitely for everyone to finish their pet project before coming to eat.

“Drop what you’re doing and come now!” fairly well summarizes the urgency of the call to repentance that forms the major theme of the Readings for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.  The Scriptures have been chosen to emphasize the immediate response to the call of God.

We begin with a reading from the Prophet Jonah:

Just in time for your Ash Wednesday gift giving ...

Looking for that Ash Wednesday gift for that special person who's hard to buy for?  Look no further than Ave Maria Press and my most recent book in the Basics series ... Psalm Basics for Catholics!

 It's now available for order on Amazon and other book retailers.

I use a series of stick-figure sketches to take the reader by the hand on a tour through the "plot" of the Psalms, which turns out to be the history of the Davidic Kingdom.  (For this I am indebted to Michael Barber, Singing in the Reign, and before him, G.H. Wilson's work on the redaction of the Psalter.)

I also discuss in greater depth twenty-five psalms—five from each book—that fall into the "Absolutely Must Know" category.  The famous, the unforgettable, the pivotal ones fall into this category:  Psalm 1, 2, 8, 22, 23, 51, 72, 89, 90, 100, 110, 136, and many others.  

Did I mention that Brant Pitre and Mike Aquilina say nice things about this book, which should motivate you to purchase it?  If I didn't, let me mention that.

The Call of the Disciples: "Fishers of Men" (The Mass Readings Explained)

The video for The Mass Readings Explained for this Sunday is now out.  I hope it is helpful!

Lastly, Catholic Productions still offers a 14 day free trial for all those who may be interested in subscribing.

The Personal God who Calls Us By Name: 2nd Sunday in OT

George Lucas’ concocted an interesting religion for his Star Wars film series by combining elements of Christianity and eastern religion.  Ultimate reality, or “God,” in Star Wars turns out to be “the Force,” an impersonal power with a “dark” and “light” side, similar to the way many forms of eastern religion conceive of the divine.  So, instead of the Christian farewell “May God be with you,” Star Wars characters say, “May the Force be with you!”

Is that the ultimate nature of reality?  An impersonal force which is neither good nor evil but somehow combines both?  Or does nature ultimately come from a loving and personal Being, who created us for a relationship with Himself?

The readings for this Sunday’s Mass come down clearly in favor of the personal view of God and reality.

1. Our First Reading recounts the call of Samuel, one of Israel’s greatest prophets, the one who would ultimately anoint Israel’s greatest king, David:

Peter and Andrew First Meet Jesus (The Mass Readings Explained)

The video for this Sunday's Mass Readings is now out.

The Readings for Epiphany

The word “Epiphany” comes from two Greek words: epi, “on, upon”; and phaino, “to appear, to shine.” Therefore, the “Epiphany” refers to the divinity of Jesus “shining upon” the earth, in other words, the manifestation of his divine nature.

The use of the word “epiphany” for the revelation of divinity predates Christianity.  The Syrian (Seleucid) emperor Antiochus IV (reign 175-165 BC), the villainous tyrant of 1-2 Maccabees, named himself “Epiphanes,” because he considered himself the manifestation of divinity on earth.  His people called him “Epimanes,” which means roughly “something is pressing on the brain,” in other words, “insane.”  Antiochus eventually died in defeat; apparently mankind would need to wait for a different king to be the “Epiphany” of divinity.

The Readings for Epiphany remain the same through Years A, B, and C in the Lectionary.

1.  Our First Reading is taken from Isaiah 60:1-6:

Readings for Mary, Mother of God

January 1 is the Solemnity (Holy Day) of Mary, Mother of God.  To call Mary the “Mother of God” must not be understood as a claim for Mary’s motherhood of divinity itself, but in the sense that Mary was mother of Jesus, who is truly God.  The Council of Ephesus in 431—long before the schisms with the Eastern churches and the Protestants—proclaimed “Mother of God” a theologically correct title for Mary. 

So far from being a cause of division, the common confession of Mary as “Mother of God” should unite all Christians, and distinguish Christian orthodoxy from various confusions of it, such as Arianism (the denial that Jesus was God) or Nestorianism (in which Mary mothers only the human nature of Jesus but not his whole person).

Two themes are present in the Readings for this Solemnity: (1) the person of Mary, and (2) the name of Jesus.   Why the name of Jesus? Prior to the second Vatican Council, the octave day of Christmas was the Feast of the Holy Name, not Mary Mother of God.  The legacy of that tradition can be seen in the choice of Readings for this Solemnity.  (The Feast of the Holy Name was removed from the calendar after Vatican II; St. John Paul II restored it as an optional memorial on January 3.  This year it is not observed in the U.S., because Epiphany falls on January 3. In the U.S. this year, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God is not a holy day of obligation, because it falls on a Monday.)

1.  The First Reading is Numbers 6:22-27

The Readings for Holy Family Sunday

The Sunday that falls in the Octave of the Solemnity of Christmas is dedicated to celebrating the Holy Family.  The Readings for this Sunday focus on the rights and responsibilities of family members toward each other, and the Gospel focuses on the role of the “most forgotten” member of the Holy Family, St. Joseph, who cared for and protected the Blessed Mother and infant Jesus through the dangerous early years of Jesus’ childhood.

The Lectionary provides different reading options for this Sunday: the celebrant may opt for the “standard” (ABC) readings, or choose the more recently proposed readings for Year B.  (The USCCB website provides both, although not the standard (ABC) Gospel Reading, for some reason.)  It what follows, we will try to cover all the options:

1.  The First Reading (ABC) is Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14:

The Readings for Christmas

I'm putting up my annual commentary on the Christmas Readings already, lightly edited from previous years.  The comments on the Fourth Sunday of Advent are the post below.

The Christmas Solemnity has distinct readings for four separate masses:  Vigil, Midnight, Dawn, and Day.  There’s such a wealth of material here to meditate on, that not everything can be covered.  In fact, there is almost an entire biblical theology in the sequence of readings of these four masses.  In what follows, I am going to offer just a few brief comments on the more salient points.

 Christmas Vigil Mass

1. Reading 1 Is 62:1-5