February 7, 1999Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time |
The Gospel this Sunday is the sequel to the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus teaches here using metaphors which were very familiar to people of his time: the necessity of salt for preservation, the precious commodity of light (which was gone when the sun went down or the oil ran out), or the visibility of the fortified cities of Judea and Galilee. What Jesus is saying that His disciples were already in fact, salt, light and visible, and were to act that way. We, too, are the same, and need to live our Faith in that visible way, to which we are committed to by our Baptism, and the Sacraments. In preaching the Lectionary, Dr. Reginald Fuller notes that:
The Sermon on the Mount does not say that the disciples are to become the salt, that they are to become like a city on a hill or make themselves a light amid the darkness of the world. They are all those things, and that because Jesus has called them and they have responded. Rather, they are expected to manifest what they are: Let your light so shine before men. How is this done? By good works. Our text does not specify what these good works are. It is more concerned to insist that good works are not the meritorious deeds of the disciples themselves, for the world that sees them does not praise the disciples for them, but the heavenly Father. The good works of the disciples point away from themselves to the grace of God through which they were wrought.
There are many ways to do this. Having just passed the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, we are given just one example of how to be salt and light, visible, with respect to the Sacrament of Life.
For many St. Louis Catholics the memories of Pope John Paul's visit has not yet faded into background recollection, but these memories still serve to enlighten our present moments. Last Sunday I joined a group of priest friends to watch the Super Bowl, but our conversation about highlights and implications of the Pope's visit overshadowed the TV sound and pictures of the game. One of my cohorts that night asked a challenging question - Did the Pope's visit bring about any changes in our current faith vision, practice or plans for the future?
This Sunday's readings, especially the Gospel, offers an appropriate backdrop to the many messages given by Pope John Paul. In the Gospel, Jesus challenges his followers to be salt and light. He does not say you should be salt and light, but you are salt and light to the world in your midst. Because we are anointed with the Holy Spirit through Baptism, we are thus empowered to be salt and light, if we put into practice the gifts of the Holy Spirit given in Baptism, strengthened in Confirmation, and nourished at the Eucharist. In other words, the Gospel this Sunday and Pope John Paul's message calls us to make a difference in the world. When Jesus charged his disciples with being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, he was similarly challenging his own, to make a difference, not just for one day or a year, but every day. Salt and light are two common entities, universally familiar to all sharers of the human experience. However, salt and light are also remarkably distinctive in that they significantly impact their surroundings, both by their presence as well as their absence. (Celebration Worship Resource February 1999)
Soon Lent will be here, a special time of grace for repentance (change) and renewal. The following verses of a hymn by Kenneth L. Cober proclaims the message of Pope John Paul to be faithful to our calling to be a salt and light Church.
Renew your church,
its ministries restore:
both to serve and to adore.
Make us again as salt throughout the land,
and light upon a stand.
Mid somber shadows of the night,
when greed and hatred spread their blight,
O send us forth with power endued.
Help us, O God, to be renewed.
We've been asked to pray for Church vocations. I would like to suggest that we take one further step and ask a young person to consider a religious vocation. It has been a custom in the United States to devote the month of February especially to vocations. Children in our Catholic Schools pray every day this month for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. They learn about the different possibilities of a religious calling and some of them begin to consider this vocation for themselves. We in this parish without a Catholic school need to do our part and look around and ask. Parents need to pray about their own children. The rest of us in the midst of our prayers need to pay attention to our young people and be bold enough to ask.
We witness to the Incarnation of the Son of God and become "full of grace and truth" on this Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time by listening to and identifying with the Sacred Scripture.
The message we hear is this: Become the "light of the world" by absorbing Jesus the light and by reaching out in charity and service to share this light.
The Beatitudes last Sunday gave us our "charter for Christian spirituality"; the Word of God this weekend is our "charter for evangelization."
The bottom line is this: We cannot achieve the kingdom of God and we cannot get to heaven unless we also become the light of the Gospel for the world.
In other words, when we "share [our] bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and homeless, clothe the naked, and do not turn [our] back on [our] own" and when we "remove from [our] midst oppression, false accusation, and malicious speech and satisfy the afflicted," then our "light shall break forth like the dawn" and "light shall rise for you in the darkness" and "light shines through the darkness for the upright."
This is why Jesus says, "your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father." This is "a demonstration of Spirit and power."
Our outreach in charity and service as individuals and as a community makes the Word flesh to dwell among us continually so that "the people who walked in darkness [can see] a great light."
Fine and good. The fact of the matter is, however, that our evangelization record is nowhere near where it could be.
Just take a look at the neighborhood around St. Anthony's. We see so many who are poor, marginalized, deprived. Yes, we have the Food Pantry. Yes, we have St. Vincent de Paul Society. But we lack the financial and human resources to let them work at their highest potential. We have enough work for a full-time social worker. But where does the salary come from? We have many new people moving into the neighborhood. Who, though, has the desire and the time to visit them and greet them and welcome them? We have so many needy and lonely and bruised people around us. Yet, too often our snide remarks, cold shoulders, and caustic comments drive them father away instead of bringing them closer to Jesus.
Ask yourself honestly, "Where and how have I been the 'light of the world' to reveal God's power and love in the last 24 hours?"
-- Father Benet OFM
In this third year the sense of being on a "journey to the Father" should encourage everyone to undertake, by holding fast to Christ the Redeemer of man, a journey of authentic conversion. This includes both a "negative" aspect, that of liberation from sin, and a "positive" aspect, that of choosing good, accepting the ethical values expressed in the natural law, which is confirmed and deepened by the Gospel. This is the proper context for a renewed appreciation and more intense celebration of the Sacrament of Penance in its most profound meaning. The call to conversion as the indispensable condition of Christian love is particularly important in contemporary society, where the very foundations of an ethically correct vision of human existence often seems to have been lost.
It will therefore be necessary, especially during this year, to emphasize the theological virtue of charity, recalling the significant and lapidary words of the First letter of John: "God is love" (4:8,16). Charity, in its twofold reality as love of God and neighbor is the summing up of the moral life of the believer. It has in God its source and its goal.
-- Pope John Paul II
Ambo, lectern, pulpit it goes by many names, but it serves one purpose, to mount the Liturgy of the Word. In some denominations, the ambo dominates the worship space. Since the Bible alone governs their system of belief, they give its proclamation primacy of place in the arrangement of the sanctuary.
In Catholic churches the altar typically dominates the sanctuary, since our tradition has emphasized the Eucharist as the climax of our worship. However, this worthy emphasis sometimes caused us to slight the role of the Word of God,l and our ambos have suffered from sapless designs and insignificant placement. For centuries the priest used to read the Scriptures himself at the altar. Altars had an epistle side and a Gospel side. Now the Scriptures have their own place, the ambo. (In Greek the word originally referred to a platform or stage.)
The ambo's specific purpose provides a place for the Scriptures, the responsorial psalm, and the Easter proclamation (The Exsultet, proclaimed once a year, only at the Easter Vigil). It may also be used for the homily and the general intercessions (The Prayer of the Faithful). But that's it! It is not the place for announcements, for the priest's opening prayer, for the soloist at the wedding, or the folk choir Ñ unless, of course, they're singing the responsorial psalm. The priest should pray from his chair, and the songs and announcements belong at a stand in a different location. We reserve the ambo for the Word of God.
Consequently, the ambo should look special. It enjoys a fixed place in the sanctuary, not a portable status subject to removal or displacement. Too often we obscure the ambo with decorations and banners, as if it were merely a hook for hanging pictures, rather than the home for the Word of God. It demands dignity of place, room for candles, if desired, and a location where all can see and hear the reader. Microphones of good quality are essential in most churches. A church's best mikes belong with the Scriptures, not with the musicians.
The ambo is the primary place from which we hear the Word of God, and it deserves our sacred respect.
[Copyright 1995 Resource Publications, Inc. San Jose, CA.]
The Season of Lent begins this year on Ash Wednesday, February 17, 1999, and ends with the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday, April 1, 1999, when the Easter Triduum begins. Lent is the principal penitential season in the Church year.All the Christian faithful are urged to develop and maintain a voluntary program of self-denial (in addition to the Lenten regulations which follow), serious prayer, and the performing of deeds of charity and mercy, including the giving of alms.
1. ABSTINENCE - Everyone 14 years of age and over is bound to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and all the Fridays of Lent.
2. FAST - Everyone 18 years of age and under 59 is required to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. On these two days of fast and abstinence, only one full meatless meal is permitted. Two other meatless meals, sufficient to maintain strength, may be taken according to each person's needs, but together these two should not equal another full meal. Eating between meals is not permitted, but liquids (including milk and fruit juices) are allowed.
3. To disregard completely the law of fast and abstinence is seriously sinful.
Our Lord Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that: "You are the light of the world" (Mt. 5:14). That continues to be our challenge in living out what we profess. God sent His Son into the world to make it clear that only in the Lord do we find the true light.
It's not only to recognize Him as bringing and being light. We are to reflect that same light in the way we live out the Gospel message. We may, at times, consider this only as it applies to our behavior; that is not adequate.
We are to bring the message of hope to all who we encounter. If we don't bring the light, who will? There are many opportunities in daily life to be positive and constructive. As Jesus says: "...let your light shine before all so that seeing goodness in your acts they may give praise to the heavenly Father" (Mt. 5:16).
If there is any time that there needs to be more light it is now. Let us recommit ourselves to be examples of truth and goodness to all whom we meet.
Fr. Ron
Jesus speaks on vocations: "You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Your light must shine before men so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly Father."
I was sorry that I didn't get down to see the Pope. (My on-going problem with my Achilles tendon was a concern). I noted, however, his parting remarks as he left St. Louis: "And so, America, if you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace the truth - the truth revealed by God."
Let us pray that we allow ALL of God's truth to touch us; the comforting as well as the challenging! Then His light, and not ours, will shine forth.
Father Murphy
A Mother's Inexhaustable Love...We can say that the mystery of the Redemption took shape beneath the heart of the Virgin of Nazareth when she pronounced her fiat [let it be done]. From then on, under the special influence of the Holy Spirit, this heart, the heart of both a virgin and a mother, has always followed the work of her Son and has gone out to all those whom Christ has embraced and continues to embrace with inexhaustable love. For that reason her heart must also have the inexhaustibility of a mother.
The special characteristic of the motherly love that the Mother of God inserts in the mystery of the Redemption and the life of the Church finds expression in its exceptional closeness to man and all that happens to him. It is in this that the mystery of the Mother consists. The Church, which looks to her with altogether special love and hope, wishes to make this mystery her own in an ever-deeper manner...The Father's eternal love, which has been manifested in the history of mankind through the Son whom the Father gave,that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (Jn. 3:16), comes close to each of us through this Mother. [RH n. 22]
Billboard in Florida
1. Let's meet at My house Sunday before the game-God
2. We need to talk- God
3. Keep using My name in vain and I'll make rush hour longer-God
4. Loved the wedding, invite Me to the marriage- God
5. That "Love thy Neighbor" thing, I mean it-God
6. I Love You...I Love You...I Love You....-God
In Jesus' Love, Fr. John
