Saint Francis of Assisi was an ardent advocate of the doctrine of the indwelling of God in man. It enabled him to love everyone equally whatever his status in life. One day he met a fellow who had no love for God. As they walked along, they met a man who was blind and paralyzed. St. Francis asked the sightless cripple: “Tell me if I were to restore your eyesight and the use of your limbs, would you love me?” “Ah,” replied the beggar, “I would not only love you, but I would be your slave for the rest of my life.” “See,” said Francis to the man who maintained that he could not love God, “this man would love me if I gave him his sight and his health. Why don’t you love God who created you with eyesight and strong limbs?” — That is what Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel. If we love Jesus because of the countless blessings he has given us, and so keep his word as the center of our life, he will start dwelling within us in the company of his Father and the Holy Spirit, making us the temples of the Triune God.
Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 15, 2022
“I WOULDN’T DO THAT FOR A MILLION DOLLARS.”
One day, as St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa, 1910-1997) and her Missionaries of Charity were tending to the poorest of the poor on the streets of Calcutta, they happened across a man lying in the gutter, very near death. He was filthy, dressed in little more than a rag and flies swarmed around his body. Immediately, Mother Teresa embraced him, spoke to him softly and began to pick out the maggots that were nesting in his flesh. A passerby was repulsed by the sight of the man and exclaimed to Mother Teresa, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.” Her response was immediate, “Neither would I!” –Obviously, monetary gain did not motivate the diminutive woman known as the Saint of Calcutta; love did. In her writings, Mother Teresa frequently affirmed the motivating power of love. Quoting Jesus in today’s Gospel, she wrote, “Jesus said, ‘Love one another. Such as my love has been for you, so must your love be for each other.’” She continued, “We must grow in love, and to do this we must go on loving and loving and giving and giving until it hurts – the way Jesus did. Do ordinary things with extraordinary love: little things, like caring for the sick and the homeless, the lonely and the unwanted, washing and cleaning for them.” Elsewhere, Mother Teresa remarked that the greatest disease in the West today is not tuberculosis, leprosy or even A.I.D.S.; it is being unwanted, uncared for, unloved. That she did her part in trying to “cure” this disease was attested in everything she did and in every word she said.
Fourth Sunday of Easter: May 08, 2022
MOTHERS AND MOTHERLY WOMEN IN THE BIBLE
Certainly, the Bible recognizes women in positions of power – women who have contributed to making the world a better place. There was Miriam who led the people in praising God after the crossing of the Red Sea (Ex 15:21); Ruth who put God first and became the ancestress of King David (Ruth 1:16; 4:17); Deborah, a judge in Israel (Judges 5); Hannah who “gave to the Lord” the child of her prayers (1 Sam 1:28); Esther who took her life in her hands to plead for her doomed people (Esther C:14-30); the pagan widow whose obedience sustained the prophet Elijah (1 Kings 17:9-16); a little captive Jewish maid who told Naaman’s wife of the man of God in Israel who could cure Naaman of his leprosy (2 Kings 5:2-4). The most important mother in the New Testament is Jesus’ Mother, Mary, to whom Jesus, on the cross, gave John, his beloved friend, to be her son; at the same time, Jesus gave His Mother to John, and all the rest of us for whom He was dying, to be our Heavenly Mother. Jesus praised the poor widow for her gift of two mites to the Temple (Mk 12:43). The New Testament also presents some women who showed maternal love. There is the woman who anointed Jesus with the expensive ointment (Mk 14:3); Martha who served and Mary who sat at the feet of Jesus (Lk 10:38-42); Mary Magdalene who brought spices to anoint Jesus, who first greeted the risen Lord, and who received the first commission –“Go, tell….” (Jn 20:17-18; Mk 16:9); Lydia one of the first converts in Macedonia (Acts 16:14); Tabitha, called Dorcas – full of good works (Acts 9:36); Phoebe and Priscilla – servants of the Church (Rom 16:1-4); Lois and Eunice who had sincere faith (2 Tim 1:5), Persis “the beloved,” and Tryphena and Tryphosa who labored for the Lord (Rom 16:12). So being a mother does not suggest lack of initiative and ability; it does mean getting one’s priorities straight. It doesn’t mean freeing men from all responsibility with young children; it does mean a mutual sharing of responsibilities with the recognition of individual gifts and needs.
Third Sunday of Easter: May 01, 2022
DO YOU LOVE ME?
Fiddler on the Roof is a musical by Sheldon Harnick which had 3000 Broadway performances. It is based on the book Tevye and his Daughters by Joseph Stein, set in TsaristRussia in 1905. The story centers on Tevye, the father of five daughters who owned a milk business, and his attempts to maintain his family and Jewish religious traditions while outside influences encroach upon their lives. Finally, he had to move out of his village because of the edict of the reigning Tsar who evicted the Jews from their village. There is a very tender and moving scene in the play, Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye and his wife Golda are being forced to move from their home in Russia. One day Tevye comes into the house and asks his wife, “Golda, do you love me?” “Do I what?” “Do you love me?” Golda looks at him and then responds: “Do I love you? With our daughters getting married and this trouble in the town, you’re upset, you’re worn out, go inside, go lie down, maybe it’s indigestion.” Tevye interrupts and asks the question, “Golda, do you love me?” Golda sighs as she looked at him and says, “Do I love you? For 25 years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cows. After 25 years, why talk of love right now?” Tevye answers by saying, “Golda, the first time I met you was on our wedding day. I was scared, I was shy, I was nervous.” “So was I,” said Golda. “But my father and my mother said we’d learn to love each other,” Tevye continued, “and now I’m asking, Golda, do you love me?” “Do I love him?” Golda sighs. “For 25 years I’ve lived with him, fought with him, 25 years my bed is his! If that’s not love, what is?” “Then you love me?” Tevye asks. “I suppose I do!” she says. “And I suppose I love you too!” he says. “It doesn’t change a thing, but after 25 years it’s nice to know.” — “Do you love me?” is the same question Jesus is asking Peter in the closing scene of the Gospel of John. Jesus knows that Peter and the other disciples love him because they show him. They bear public witness in the face of opposition and persecution they accept martyrdom out of love for him. “If you love me” Jesus had said “keep my commandments.” Show me by loving other “as I have loved you.”
Second Sunday of Easter:April 24, 2022
SKEPTIC THOMAS,” PUT YOUR HAND INTO MY SIDE….”:
The London Times of November 27, 1982, announced that on that very day the noted British journalist and television personality, Malcolm Muggeridge, and his wife, Kitty, were to be received into the Catholic Church. The Times followed its announcement with an article in which this 79-year-old former editor of Punch explained why he and his wife were finally taking the step. Muggeridge’s lower middle-class family were of Christian nondenominational background. His father, a member of the Labor party, liked to play the agnostic. So, religion in the Muggeridge home was pretty much secularized. Malcolm took this secular view with him to Cambridge University, and then into the journalistic profession. Although Punch was a humorous magazine, it was based, under his editorship, on a serious outlook on life. It often featured articles on all sorts of religious manifestations, Christian and non-Christian. Editor Muggeridge was critical of many aspects of Christianity, and he felt he could view religion more objectively if he himself were affiliated to no religious organization. Still, he always felt that, as the human race was becoming increasingly secularized and absurd, God was pursuing him, like the “Hound of Heaven. “After his retirement from Punch several years ago, Malcolm became increasingly interested in the Catholic Church. In a decade when thousands of people, including many Catholics, were deploring Pope Paul VI’s reasserted condemnation of contraception in Humanae Vitae, this non-Catholic “skeptic” praised it as the only reasonable view. Then Muggeridge met Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and saw her at work among Calcutta’s “poorest of the poor.” Frankly, it was her example, he said, that brought him into the Catholic Church: “She has given me a whole new vision of what being a Christian means; of the amazing power of love.” St. Thomas the Apostle was an earlier skeptic who “came around.” It was the sight of these signs of Jesus’ love – the wounds in His hands, feet and side – that moved Thomas to cry out with conviction, “MY LORD AND MY GOD!”
Easter Sunday: April 17, 2022
A REAL EASTER EGG
A small chick begins the long journey to birth. The not-yet-a-bird weighs little more than air; its beak and claws are barely pin pricks. The bird-to-be is in its own little world: protected by the rigid shell, warmed by the mother hen’s body, nourished by the nutrients within the egg’s membrane. But then the chick begins the work of life. Over several days the chick keeps picking and picking until it can break out from its narrow world — and into an incomparably wider one. But for this to happen, the egg has to go to pieces. New life demands shattering the old. — That is the real Easter egg. Not a complete egg dyed and painted with so many designs and colors. Not an egg that has been hardboiled, impossible to shatter. Not an egg made of chocolate. The real Easter egg is shattered and destroyed. The real Easter egg exists in broken pieces. The real Easter egg is cracked and opened, yielding new life that has moved out to live in the open. For centuries, the world has marked the Resurrection of the Lord with eggs. But the Easter meaning of the egg is found in the struggle of the chick to free itself from its confines so as to move into much bigger world beyond it. We struggle to break out of a world that we perceive is going to pieces; we pick away at an existence that leaves us dissatisfied and unfulfilled. The promise of the Easter Christ is that we can break out of our self-contained little worlds and move into a world where peace and justice reign, a world illuminated by hope and warmed by love, a world that extends beyond time and place into the forever of God’s dwelling place.