July 12, 1998Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time |
The readings for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time have a very clear message: The Great Commandments. In his reply to the lawyer who was trying to trip him up, Jesus takes the words of Deuteronomy and joins them with a passage from the Book of Leviticus to teach his disciples (and us) that Love of God is joined with Love of Neighbor. One without the other is incomplete. To illustrate His point, Jesus then goes on to give the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is perhaps, one of the best known parables in the Gospel, due to the fact that it is often heard on retreat weekends, and Faith experiences such as T.E.C., Koinonia, and G.I.F.T. One of the points of the story of the Good Samaritan is that those who would normally be expected to aid the man who had been robbed (the priest and the levite) do not do so for a variety of reasons. Yet, it is the Samaritan (who himself belonged to a despised group) who helped the victim of the robbery. He went beyond the expected, and showed that the commands of Deuteronomy were really part of his life and being.
In our own lives, we always need to keep in mind that Faith has two components: Worship and Action. If we are missing one or the other, then our response to the Gospel is less than complete. The Catechism of the Catholic Church comments on the meaning of the term parables, in a way which illustrates the theme of the Good Samaritan: Jesus' invitation to enter his kingdom comes in the form of parables, a characteristic feature of his teaching. Through his parables he invites people to the feast of the kingdom, but he also asks for a radical choice: to gain the kingdom, one must give everything. WORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH; DEEDS ARE REQUIRED. (No. 536).
Mary the Mother of Jesus is called Our Lady of Perpetual Help because she prays for and helps all the children of God, especially those who ask for her assistance. Lady who kept things in your heart and pondered them. Pray for us that we may learn to pray and to wait for God's response to us.
In line with the same ancient tradition [which we read about last week], The Second Vatican Council recognized that Sacred Scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgy. For it is from it that lessons are read and explained in the homily, and psalms are sung. It is from the Scriptures that the prayers, collects and hymns draw their inspiration and their force, and that actions and signs derive their meaning ( Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium [SC] 24). Further, the Council declared that the reform of the liturgy should promote an appreciation for the Scriptures by providing the faithful with more ample, more varied and more suitable readings at every Mass (SC 35). This was to be done by opening up the treasures of the bible more lavishly so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God's Word. In this way, a more representative part of the Sacred Scripture will be read to the people in the course of a prescribed number of years (SC 51).
In response to the Council's directives, a revised Lectionary was prepared by the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy under the title Ordo Lectionum Missae, approved by Pope Paul VI in the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum (April 3, 1969) and published by a letter from Benno Cardinal Gut, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship on Pentecost Sunday (May 25, 1969).
An Introduction to the Second Edition of the Lectionary for Mass
FOR THE GREATER HONOR AND GLORY OF GOD THEME: WITHIN REACH: We natives are reminded of the uniqueness of our place when a stranger to our land points out some characteristic of personality or land or speech that we have taken for granted. They marvel, and we look again. We had just never thought of our place or ourselves in quite that way. Or, once we may have been aware of some quality of our life and place, but we just forgot what was so within reach.
Who is my neighbor? Jesus' response to that question in the gospel today is the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a story that tears open closed communities, and breaks boundaries. Parables can have a radical, shock value. The Good Samaritan story really is another expression of the Great Commandment to love. This command, the Word of God, is not far away but so near, so neighborly, that it lives on our lips and in our hearts (Deut. 30:14). The love that Jesus asks of us is certainly love of the foreigner, the beset and beaten among us, the dirty, stripped, or ragged of us, the homeless in our city and the homeless pieces of our own hearts. This command is powerful, inclusive and it calls us to participate. It is a living word of love. It is focused on how we are to live as neighbor and to love.
But let's take a fresh look at this ancient parable of love. Let us suppose that instead of an invitation to love, Jesus is offering us a new image of God. Who is the neighbor? God. Who is the Word, so near in our hearts and on our lips? God. God is so aligned with the outcast that God is like a Samaritan, a foreigner come to find us, beaten and abandoned on the way. The healing Word is God, the Samaritan traveler. We are those who have been thrown to the road in a desert, stripped by sorrows, robbed of joy and peace, perhaps even by our friends who hurry by, busy with their lives. The Word that is very near, our true neighbor sees us and suffers with us. God stoops down to us and bandages our wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. Then, lifting us, God carries us to a place of rest and healing, a place of safety and peace, and God cares for us. Like the Good Samaritan, this traveling God has been tending us and healing us, often unrecognized, all our lives.
Sometimes God seems so foreign to us that we do not recognize Him, or our wounds or ourselves. Often, however, God continues to be embodied in those very near, the ones who love us, the living and dead. In God's hands they have become the very wine and the oil, helping to heal our lives, The cleansing power of this wine was necessary to wash out infection in our lives. The oil may have soothed. God heals not only through the word and direct religious experience, but so often through the human community.
Who has been the wine for our lives and who has been the oil?
Who has been the Good Samaritan for us, providing healing in our lives, whether living or dead?
Who has proved to be Neighbor? And how will we respond?
Father James Tobin, S.M.
Pastor
1) Deuteronomy 30, 10-14
2) Colossians 1, 15-20
3) Luke 10, 25-37
"I'm not a mind reader you know! I can't tell what God has in mind for me!" Really? Moses seemed to think otherwise: "For this command which I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you. It is not up in the sky, that you should say 'Who will go up in the sky for us and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?' It is not across the seas, that you should say, 'Who will cross the sea and get it for us and tell us of it that we may carry it out?' No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out."(1) You will know in your heart of hearts when you are a good and faithful steward of God's gifts to you.
Next Sunday the reading's will be: 1)Genesis 18, 1-10; 2)Colossians 1, 24-28; 3)Luke 10, 38-42.
Many of the world's finest oriental rugs come from little villages in the Middle East. Each rug is hand produced by a crew of men and boys under the direction of a master weaver. Since ordinarily they work from the underside of the rug-to-be, it sometimes happens that a weaver absentmindedly makes a mistake and introduces a color that is not according to the pattern. When this occurs, the master weaver, instead of having the work pulled out in order to correct the color sequence, will find some way to incorporate the mistake harmoniously into the overall pattern...It is a useful object lesson, for we all can learn to take unexpected difficulties and mistakes and weave them advantageously into the greater pattern of our lives. There is an inherent good in most difficulties.
Norman Vincent Peale
In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes "God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans 5.5) It is this great gift of love that makes it possible for us to come to know God and to recognize His Son, Jesus the Christ. The gift of His Spirit leads us to believe in Him and have faith in his leadership as head of the Church. It is through the Holy Spirit that at the end of our life here on earth we trust our life into His hands. Because God has so loved us we can come love others with a love that is not self-centered but forgiving, healing, and creative of life. It is the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for us, created human beings, to make God's love visible in this world today! It is by fulfilling this responsibility that the world comes to see a better way of living!
Celebrate 2000!...Reflections on Jesus, The Holy Spirit, and the Father, by Pope John Paul II...Eucharistic Worship Leads To Charity...Eucharistic worship constitutes the soul of all Christian life. In fact, Christian life is expressed in the fulfilling of the greatest commandment, that is to say, in the love of God and neighbor, and this love finds its source in the Blessed Sacrament, which is commonly called the Sacrament of Love.
The Eucharist signifies this charity, and therefore recalls it, makes it present, and at the same time brings it about. Every time that we consciously share in it, there opens in our souls a real dimension of that unfathomable love that includes everything that God has done and continues to do for us human beings, as Christ says: "My father goes on working, and so do I" (see John 5:17).
Together with this unfathomable and free gift, which is charity revealed in its fullest degree in the saving sacrifice of the Son of God- the sacrifice of which the Eucharist is the indelible sign-there also springs up within us a lively response of love. We not only know love; we ourselves begin to love. We enter, so to speak, upon the path of love and along this path make progress.
Thanks to the Eucharist, the love that springs up within us from the Eucharist develops in us, becomes deeper and grows stronger. Eucharistic worship is therefore precisely the expression of that love which is the authentic and deepest characteristic of the Christian vocation. This worship springs from the love to which we are all called in Jesus Christ.
A living fruit of this worship is the perfecting of the image of God that we bear within us, an image that corresponds to the one that Christ has revealed in us. As we thus become adorers of the Father "in spirit and truth" (Jn 4:23), we mature in an everfuller union with Christ, we are ever more united to Him, and-if one may use the expression-we are ever more in harmony with Him. [DC n.5]
Today's reading suggests that God's primary law of love is not far from us, but very near indeed. A glance at the saints remembered this week brings home the message. To be celebrated are a holy politician, a Lily of the Mohawks, and a Seraphic Doctor. Henry and his saintly wife Cunegunda ruled their empire with integrity and great concern for the poor, awesome standards for any age. The second, Kateri Tekakwitha, suffered for her faith as a minority believer among the Mohawks and white settlers, dying at 24. Her name is associated with the national organization for Catholic Native Americans. Bona venture is the Seraphic Doctor, a Franciscan theologian and contemporary of my Dominican brother Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. What saints do you know around St. Paul's? Let's see. For starters, there is the patron of computer help, the servant of the servants in the front office, the guardian angels of the nursery, the hidden saints of maintenance. Love is very near indeed. And you? What would your title be?
The Second Vatican teaches, works of charity have become much more urgent and worldwide, now that means of communication are more rapid, distance between [people] has been more or less conquered, people in every part of the globe have become as members of a single family. Charitable actions today can and should reach all [people] and all needs. Whenever [people] are to be found who are in want of food and drink, of clothing, housing, medicine, work, education, the means necessary for leading a truly human life, wherever there are [people] racked with misfortune or illness, [those] suffering exile or imprisonment, Christian charity should go in search of them and find them out, comfort them with devoted care and give them the help that will relieve their needs. (Apostolicam Actuositatem, 18 November 1965, n.8)
Merciful Creator of us all,
in Christ Jesus, your Son, our Risen Saviour,
you have brought light to the blind,
comfort to the afflicted,
and good news to the poor.
We now remember with heartfelt thanksgiving
for generosity of spirit
manifest in the life and labors
of your devoted servant, Dorothy Day.
In times of unrelieved hardship
and economic depression
as well as in widespread prosperity
and abundance
she spent herself in dedicated partnership
with the privations and disdain
felt by the homeless and the unwanted
as a champion of their rights.
An early, often, lonely witness
in the cause of peace and conscience,
at once fearless and gentle,
she braved the disapproval of the powerful,
rejection by the many who did not understand,
and even imprisonment.
Grant that we in turn may be moved
by your Holy Spirit, Father,
to share her compassion and concern
as true disciples of the Lord Jesus,
giving ourselves as she did
to the love and care
of the neediest members of Christ's Body
and committing our lives, our means,
even our homes,
to bring the light and hope,
the justice and peace of the gospel
to all your people.
This we pray in the Holy Spirit
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
[Dorothy Day was a contemporary (1897-1980) who lived the Parable of the Good Samaritan. After her conversion she began to publish the Catholic Worker, a penny newspaper to comfort and counsel poor people like herself. She took the works of mercy seriously, opening soup kitchens and hospitality houses. Her witness was living simply so that other could simply live.]
