Fasting that shines a light and heals wounds

 

Room For Christ at Christmas

 

Image credit: https://kelly-latimore.pixels.com/featured/tent-city-nativity-kelly-latimore.html 

Richard Rohr O.F.M. gives us this quote from Dorothy Day, Servant of God.

It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.

But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that He speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that He gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that He walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that He longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ….

It would be foolish to pretend that it is always easy to remember this. If everyone were holy and handsome, with “alter Christus” [“another Christ”] shining in neon lighting from them, it would be easy to see Christ in everyone. If Mary had appeared in Bethlehem clothed, as St. John says, with the sun, a crown of twelve stars on her head, and the moon under her feet [see Revelation 12:1], then people would have fought to make room for her. But that was not God’s way for her, nor is it Christ’s way for Himself.

...

In Christ’s human life, there were always a few who made up for the neglect of the crowd. The shepherds did it; their hurrying to the crib atoned for the people who would flee from Christ. The wise men did it; their journey across the world made up for those who refused to stir one hand’s breadth from the routine of their lives to go to Christ. Even the gifts the wise men brought have in themselves an obscure recompense and atonement for what would follow later in this Child’s life. For they brought gold, the king’s emblem, to make up for the crown of thorns that He would wear; they offered incense, the symbol of praise, to make up for the mockery and the spitting; they gave Him myrrh, to heal and soothe, and He was wounded from head to foot….

We can do it too, exactly as they did. We are not born too late. We do it by seeing Christ and serving Christ in friends and strangers, in everyone we come in contact with…. For a total Christian, the goad of duty is not needed … to perform this or that good deed. It is not a duty to help Christ, it is a privilege. 

Dorothy Day, Selected Writings: By Little and By Little, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983, 1992), 94, 96, 97.

Creating a Community of Compassion

 

Image Credit: 
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2021-04/philippines-community-pantries-bishops-caritas-kindness-stations.html

Creating a Community of Compassion
- by Fr Richard Rohr OFM

(Published by the Center for Action and Contemplation) 

When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick. 
— Matthew 14:14  

The gospel passage is quite good and delightful because it tells us very directly what God is about. Jesus is all about meeting immediate needs, right here and right now. There’s no mention of heaven at all. It seems we’ve missed the point of what the Christian religion should be about, but we see how the disciples themselves missed the point: “Tell them to go to the village and take care of themselves” (Matthew 14:15). But Jesus does not leave people on their own!  

Look at the setting. Jesus is tired. The gospel begins with him withdrawing to a deserted place to be by himself. Sure enough, the crowds follow after him, but he doesn’t get angry or send them away. He recognizes the situation and moves to deal with it. Then the passage goes further and states, “His heart was moved with pity” (Matthew 14:14). If Jesus is our image of God, then we know God has feelings for human pain, human need, and even basic human hunger. The gospel records that he cured the sick, so we know God is also about healing, what today we call healthcare. Sometimes, we don’t even believe everyone deserves that either! Jesus says, “There is no need for them to go away. We will feed them” (Matthew 14:16). 

The point in all the healing stories of the gospels is not simply that Jesus can work miracles. It is not for us to be astounded that Jesus can turn five loaves and two fish into enough for five thousand people, not counting women and children. That is pretty amazing, and I wish we could do it ourselves, but what Jesus does quite simply is feed people’s immediate needs. He doesn’t talk to them about spiritual things, heavenly things, or churchy things. He doesn’t give a sermon about going to church. He does not tell us what things we are supposed to be upset about today. He knows that we can’t talk about spiritual things until we take away people’s immediate physical hunger. When so much of the world is living at a mere survival level, how can we possibly talk about spiritual things?

The important thing that God seems to want to be doing in history is to create a community of compassion where people care about one another. It is not only the feeding that matters to us, it is also the caring for other people’s hunger and needs. Jesus never once talked about attending church services, but he talked constantly about healing the sick and feeding the hungry. That is what it seems to mean to be a follower of Jesus.  

(As published by the Center for Action and Contemplation) 

Being Living Lights

 

Image https://www.photos-public-domain.com

The following is an extract from a reflection on the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time by Sr Mary McGlone, CSJ.

Read the full reflection here.
https://www.ncronline.org/spirituality/scripture-life/fifth-sunday-ordinary-time-good-world

This week, our readings from the Hebrew Scriptures give the most detailed description of what is entailed in being living lights.

Isaiah's instructions are quite striking when we ponder them. He tells us to share our bread with the hungry, to shelter and clothe those who are vulnerable in any way and to never turn our backs on our own. Isaiah's subtext comes down to saying that we need to treat everyone in need as one of our own, as our clan, as the people to whom we owe first allegiance.

Psalm 112 continues that theme, emphasizing that the just person is a light in the darkness of an unjust and cruel world. Those who treat needy others as members of their family are people whose experience of goodness and trust in God has freed them from fear of want, from the need to accumulate what others need for survival...

...It takes little to realize that these messages apply to communities, not just to individuals. The community Isaiah wants to build, the community that we, too, are called to build, will bring a new dawn to the world.

Isaiah tells us that when we treat another's need as our own, we create the kind of society that reflects the very glory of God. In such a society, no cry for help goes unanswered — not because God swoops in, but because the people of God live their vocation to reflect and effect God's love.

This is exactly what Jesus, the Jewish preacher, was talking about when he called his listeners to be salt of the earth and light for the world. Jesus knew Isaiah's teaching and he prayed the psalms. He realized that neither salt nor light exist for themselves, but to call attention to something else.

As salt and light, the people of God do not simply note the needs of others; they prove by their activities that such needs can be addressed and alleviated. Their light demonstrates that the reign of God is a real and growing phenomenon in our world.

Read the full reflection here.

Our Father - the Just Judge

 

In the gospel reading from Luke for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary time, Jesus finishes his parable about the unjust judge by comparing him with God and asking, "Will not God see justice done to his chosen who cry to him day and night even when he delays? I promise you, he will see justice done to them and done speedily." In the plays of Ancient Greece, someone playing the part of a god would be let down in a basket by ropes, a "Deus ex machina (god in a machine,)" to resolve a hopeless knot of problems that humans had gotten themselves into in the plot of the play. But the God of Jesus and his disciples, our Heavenly Father, is not a "Deus ex machina." Our God works through ordinary people who seek out and follow God's will. People like you and me, and the politicians we elect when we vote wisely and compassionately with an eye to justice and the common good, rather than what is simply going to be best for me without regard to others and their just demands.

Here in Ontario we are in the midst of election campaigning. Although these are 'only' municipal elections, not Federal or Provincial, it behooves us as Christians, Catholics and Vincentians to exercise our civic privilege, and to do so responsibly as a duty, identifying and voting for those candidates whom we believe will best serve the interests of the common good. 

The cry of the poor for food and affordable housing is coming to the ears of our Heavenly Father who wants to see justice done for them. 

The cry of the earth for sustainable development and resource usage in the face of land exploitation by unscrupulous property developers is also going up to the ears of our God along with the cry of the poor.

As Vincentians, our mission is to live the Gospel message by serving Christ in the poor with love, respect, justice and joy. We are called to be disciples of Jesus, and Vincentians, 24/7 - not just when delivering food cards.

Happy voting.

The Wedding at Cana – From a Sermon by Faustus of Riez, bishop

 

Stone water jars. Image credit: Jerusalem Perspective

“To those who only see with the outward eye, all these events at Cana are strange and wonderful; to those who understand, they are also signs. For, if we look closely, the very water tells us of our rebirth in Baptism. One thing is turned into another from within, and in a hidden way a lesser creature is changed into a greater. All this points to a hidden reality of our second birth. There water was suddenly changed; later it will cause a change in all people.”

The water in the jars is not less than it was before, but now begins to be what it had not been; so too the law is not destroyed by Christ’s coming, but is made better than it was.

When the wine fails, new wine is served: The wine of the old covenant was good, but the wine of the new is better.”

From a Sermon by Faustus of Riez, bishop - from the Office of Readings for Saturday before the Baptism of the Lord. Selected by Deacon Steve

How does King Jesus want to be served?

 

Christ of the Breadlines - Fritz Eichenberg

Today's parable tells us that the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe, chose once and for all to be in solidarity and identify himself with the lowliest people. Maybe it's time to relegate the Sistine Chapel, awe-inspiring icons, and portraits of the royal redeemer to museums. If we want to respect Jesus' self-portrait, we would do better to contemplate Fritz Eichenberg's "The Christ of the Breadlines," a black and white etching of a slightly stooped, racially indistinct Christ, distinguishable from the destitute women and men with whom he waits by nothing more than how his presence radiates out to them. This etching illustrates Christ's choice to identify with the vulnerable. Whereas humanity tends to envision the divine as the utmost expression of magnificent "things that matter," Jesus tells us to seek God's self-revelation at the lowest end of the scales of power and prestige.

- Sr. Mary M. McGlone, a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet

An extract from The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ: The king of solidarity published in the National Catholic Reporter

Love and Faith Go Together

 Love and faith go together.
- a relection by Deacon Steve Pitre

"Our work to be fruitful and to be all for God, and to be beautiful, has to be built on faith - faith in Christ who has said, “I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, and I was homeless and you did that to Me.” On these words of His all our work is based…Faith to be true has to be a giving love. Love and faith go together. They complete each other."
- Saint Teresa of Calcutta

This passage (Matt 25) was the basis for St. Teresa of Calcutta’s conviction that Jesus is present in the poor: with absolute faith in His words, she regarded her apostolate as a service done to Jesus Himself. Her faith in His presence in the “least of His brethren” was so real that every encounter with the poor meant a mystical encounter with Jesus Himself: “We are contemplatives in action right in the heart of the world, seeing and loving and serving Jesus twenty-four hours in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor.”

“Where There is Love, There is God” Mother Theresa, ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C. p. 141-142

Deacon Steve Pitre is Spiritual Advisor to the Newmarket Conference of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul

Go and Look at Misery - October Spiritual Reflection

 

An extract from the October Spiritual Reflection  by Alain Besner, National Spirituality Committee, Quebec Regional Council

What most astonished Frédéric Ozanam during his university years became a turning point in his life (as happened to Paul on the road to Damascus, Ac 9:1-19, but less dramatically). That was to run out of arguments against those who, in March 1833, were objecting that most Christians paid no attention to the misery of their contemporaries and did not even join forces to alleviate it. Let us read excerpts from his letter to Léon Curnier, Paris, February 23, 1835, where this is mentioned:

The savants have compared the state of the slaves of antiquity with the condition of our workers and proletariat and have found the latter to have more to complain of, after eighteen centuries of Christianity. Then, for a like evil, a like remedy. The earth has grown cold. It is for us Catholics to revive the vital beat to restore it, it is for us to begin over again the great work of regeneration...

The humanity of our days seems comparable to the traveller to whom the Gospel speaks; it also, although it took its way in roads marked out for it by Christ, has been attacked by the cutthroats and robbers of thought, by wicked men who have robbed it of what it possessed: the treasure of faith and love, and they have left naked and wounded and lying by the side of the road. Priests and levites have passed by, and this time, since they were true priests and levites, they have approached suffering themselves and wished to heal it. But in its delirium, it did not recognize them and repulsed them.

In our turn, weak Samaritans, worldly and people of little faith that we are, let us dare nonetheless to approach this great sick one. Perhaps it will not be frightened of us. Let us try to probe its wounds and pour in oil, soothing its ear with words of consolation and peace; then, when its eyes are opened, we will place it in the hands of those whom God has constituted as the guardians and doctors of souls, who are also, in a way, our innkeepers in our pilgrimage here below; so as to give our errant and famished spirits the holy word for nourishment and the hope of a better world for a shield.

That is what is proposed to us, the sublime vocation God has given us.

Read the full spiritual reflection here

Resurrection, Not Resuscitation

Following is an extract from a reflection on last Sunday's readings by Stephen Bevans, SVD and
Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD of the Catholic Theological Union. The Gospel was Matthew 14:13-21, the feeding of the multitude.

It is the generous extravagance and abundance of “the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” that we need to keep in mind in this trying, difficult, almost unbearable time in our lives. We are in that “deserted place” and it is “already late.” If you are like me, it’s not just the COVID-19 pandemic that is terrifying — and that is terrifying enough. It is the racism and hatred that has revealed itself, the shocking individualism that is prolonging the agony of these months, the painful call (for some of us — liberating for others!) to revise our history and our heroes, the dangerous disregard for science and real wisdom that is harming an entire generation. It is the disregard for human lives, especially Black lives today, that is making us pant with thirst. It is a refusal to see the harm we are causing to our planet, and to future generations of plants and animals and human children, that is making us faint with hunger. We desperately need the love of God in Jesus to feed us with hope, with compassion, with patience, with perseverance.

He Had Compassion

Here is an extract from the Pope's noonday Angelus comments on todays's Gospel about the multiplication of the loaves and fishes:

The compassion and tenderness that Jesus showed towards the crowds is not sentimentality, but rather the concrete manifestation of the love that cares for the people’s needs.

Love covers over a multitude of sins

1 Peter 4:8    (Image credit: Zondervan.com)

Whenever I read the account of the sheep being separated from the goats in chapter 25 of the gospel of Matthew I am struck not only by what is listed in the "citation" but also by what is missing: the Ten Commandments are completely missing. The goats are not condemned for lying, cheating, stealing, adultery, fornication, homosexuality - or even murder - but for a lack of compassion! It's all about sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, assisting the sick and imprisoned. Read Matthew 25 and see for yourself.

I am reminded of 1 Peter 4:8: Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.