Sixth Tuesday in Ordinary Time

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Sixth week of the Year

Mark 8:14-21; Genesis 6:5 to 7:10; Psalm 29:1-10 (Lectionary 336)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021825.cfm

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When Jesus left his phony questioners to cross the lake, he commented to his disciples, “Stay on guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.” They didn’t know what he was talking about (nothing new: see Luke 2:49-50; John 2:3-4). They guessed it was because they had forgotten to store enough bread in the boat. Jesus just rolled his eyes and asked seven questions in a row. First, “Why are you talking about bread? Do you have nothing more important to think about?”

Remember the setting. Jesus is about to reveal to his disciples (8:29) the “messianic secret” of his identity. They have just seen two “signs” greater than anything the Pharisees could have imagined (being, in fact, a preview of Eucharist: 6:41; 7:6). But all they were focused on was food! So Jesus jostled their minds: Second question: “Do you still not see or understand anything?”

Third: “Are your minds closed?” Hardened hearts were the “yeast of the Pharisees.” Their minds were completely closed: to signs, to Jesus himself, and to his message.

Fourth question: “Do you have eyes that can’t see, ears that can’t hear?” Herod had been asking about Jesus’ identity (6:14), but he and his crowd were too caught up in pleasures, prestige and power to perceive mystery. They had guessed that Jesus was everything but the Messiah — Elijah, a prophet, John come back to life. The “yeast of Herod” was spiritual myopia. They couldn’t see over the rim of this world.

Fifth: “Do you not remember? He calls them to open their eyes; think back; focus.

Sixth question: “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets of leftovers did you collect?” They said, “Uh… Twelve… seven.”

Seventh question: “Do you not yet understand?” Jesus drew no conclusion. They would have to figure it out for themselves. He left them thinking.

We may have heard the Good News all our lives. In itself it might be as plain as day. But that doesn’t mean we understand. Jesus suggests we ask ourselves whether we do or not.

Is our focus too short? Are our minds just closed? Are we blinded by what we are caught up in? Do we make a point of remembering what we have seen and heard? (For example, do we pay attention to what the Eucharist recalls and celebrates?) Do we take time to think about it. Even God cannot evangelize the inert!

Initiative: Open your mind. Listen to God’s word. Ask what you are missing.

Sixth Monday in Ordinary Time

Monday, February 16, 2025

Sixth week of the Year

The Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order

Mark 8:11-13; Genesis 4:1-25; Psalm 50:1-21 (Lectionary 335)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021725.cfm

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Mark tells us some Pharisees came and “started a discussion” with Jesus,” asking him for a “sign from heaven.”  But they were not really looking for a reason to believe in him. They just wanted “to test him.”

This is an attitude believers frequently encounter today, both from non-believers and from people who, like the Pharisees, are believers in God or even in a partial Christianity.

Is the last sentence an insult to Protestants? With no offense intended, it is just a fact that, in general, the Protestant churches can be defined as “Catholics minus” whatever Catholic doctrines or practices they do not accept. There are a few things some Protestants believe that Catholics do not, such as predestination, or being “saved” forever and irrevocably by a single act of faith. But Protestantism began as a “protest” against things in the Catholic Church that the reformers rejected (the papacy, Eucharist, priesthood, devotion to Mary or the saints, etc.), so each new group can be identified fairly accurately by how much in the old Church they reject. Naturally, if what some denomination rejects should be rejected, then they have authentic Christianity, and Catholicism is Christianity plus add-ons.

Today the more historical Protestant churches and the Catholics are trying to get together in mutual understanding. Mutual respect is already a fact. Fruitful dialogue is taking place. The problem is not with them. The problem is with those both inside and outside the Church who start discussions, not to arrive at understanding or truth, but just to “test” believers as the Pharisees “tested” Christ: not “scientifically,” to learn from the results, but only to prove him wrong. If one gives an answer they cannot refute, they do not accept the answer; they just change the question. This is just as true of the “Pharisee party” in the Catholic Church as it is of pseudo-intellectual scoffers and fundamentalists. Phariseeism is non-denominational!

Jesus “sighed deeply in his spirit and said, ‘Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.’” He knew there was no sign they would accept, just as there are no answers that a questioner will accept if the purpose of the question was only to prove the questioned wrong.

Jesus didn’t argue. He “left them, and… went across to the other side.” It is fearful when God himself shakes your dust from his feet.

Initiative: Evaluate questions. If people are sincere, explain. If not, just leave.

The Good News About Life: Seeing the Whole Picture

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Sixth Sunday of Year C

Jer 17:5-8/1 Cor 15:12, 16-20/Lk 6:17, 20-26 (Lectionary 78)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021625.cfm

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Inventory 

When you think about “happiness,” what is your time-frame? Are you boxed in to the present, unable to see beyond today? This year? Youth?  Middle age? Old age? Death? Is short-term happiness really happiness? What about long-term but delayed? Or do you ever think deeply about happiness at all? Do you have Good News about this that means so much to you that you can share it with others?

Input

The Entrance Antiphon starts with a focus on stability: “Lord, by my rock of safety, the stronghold that saves me.” Even the motive we appeal to for God’s help is unchanging: “For the honor of your name.” It doesn’t depend on what we are.

In the Opening Prayer(s) we note that God has “promised to remain forever” with those who do his will. When we say, “Help us to live in your presence,” we are asking to remain conscious of who he is and how long he will be there for us.

But we also note in the alternate prayer that in Jesus God’s eternal plan “took flesh” in time to become part of our human history and change it. The eternal is being realized in time. The Good News of salvation will reach the “ends of the earth” only if we bring it there through “our fulfillment of his command” of “perfect love.” To evangelize is to love. To love is to evangelize. Isn’t that what Jesus did?

In the Prayer over the Gifts we ask that this repeated offering will repeatedly “cleanse and renew us” in time and so “lead us to our eternal reward.” The repetition of religious acts is necessary in human time but leads to one all-fulfilling act of total absorption in love forever.

In the Prayer after Communion we ask that by tasting “food from heaven” we will keep earthly food in perspective and “always hunger for the bread of life.” The Mass focuses us on good that is lasting, happiness that is perfect and eternal.

Placed and misplaced trust

Jeremiah 17: 5-8 alerts us to a very basic choice that every one of us has made and is making right now. But we may not ever think about it. Where do we place our trust?

Don’t ask this in the abstract, as a theoretical question (we all know the “right” answers), but in practical terms. When we go down to the foundations and look at what our lives (that means our life’s choices) are actually based on, what are we relying on? From day to day. Remember, we only live from day to day; our “life” is the succession of choices we make during each waking hour. They are the ones that count.

It is true, our hourly choices — what to say, do, buy, sell or think about at this moment — are influenced, even determined, by deeper choices that we are hardly conscious of. What we have chosen to identify and pursue as “happiness.” What we have chosen to rely on for “success” in life. Or security. Or to win people’s love or good will. But the only way we can know what these deeper choices are is to see how they “take flesh” in the decisions of every day. So take a minute to ask what you are counting on when you decide to stop, go, turn left or right, or just let yourself be swept along by the current of your culture from sunrise to sunset.

The Responsorial Psalm (1: 1-6), which is always chosen to sum up the first reading, declares “Happy are they who hope in the Lord.”  No one would argue with that in the abstract. But how often have we made our daily choices based on conscious “hope in the Lord”? When we were dating as teenagers and wanted to “fit in”? When we chose a college, joined a sorority or fraternity? Picked out the clothes we wear? Made the last phone call? Most recently fired, hired or sought employment? Decided what to do on Sunday morning — or, for that matter, when we got up every morning from Monday to Saturday? Morning prayer? Daily Mass? Scripture reading? The stock market report?

A sample question: do we put more conscious trust in a physical fitness program or in reading the Scripture every day? Which trust rules?

We can trust in God and still rely on other people and things, of course. Or can we? Jeremiah says it is an “either-or” choice, and one of the most important decisions we make in life. “Cursed are those who put their trust in humans and rely on things of flesh…. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord.” The key question is, which trust determines our day-to-day decisions. Which is more evident in our lifestyle?

When Jesus sent out his first “evangelizers,” he wanted their lifestyle to make a statement: “He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts…” (Mark 6:8). What does mine say about the resources I rely on?

“Blessed are they”

Luke 6:17-26, says that when Jesus preached his “sermon on the mount” a “great crowd of people” gathered “from all Judea, Jerusalem [Jewish territory], and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon [heavily Gentile].” They had come “to hear him and to be cured of their diseases.” Two different motives.

If they were trusting in Jesus primarily as a healer, they got a shock. He did heal: “power came out from him and healed them all.” But then he went on to overturn their whole value system — and ours. He promised “happiness” to people who had no hope of it, and said it is not to be found where people look for it. “Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, hated and excluded by other people, abused and denounced as criminal on account of the Son of Man.”

As the theme of a “How To Get Happy” book, Jesus’ approach wouldn’t sell.

Jesus didn’t try to sell it to the myopic. He took the long-range view, looking both forward and backward. “When people treat you like that,” he said, “Rejoice. Leap for joy. For your reward is great in heaven. That is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”

When the chips are down, what crowd do you want to be with? The ones who have always stoned the prophets and who are still trying to silence “the voices that cry in the desert”? The oppressors of the weak, the exploiters of the poor, the armed and booted who use military might to defend both freedom and financial interests? Or do you want to be identified with those whose “citizenship is in heaven,” and whose trust is placed in the Savior who comes “from there… the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20)? What association gives you a greater sense of security?

If you are short-sighted, looking only at life in this world, then you will probably choose, whether you admit it or not, to ally yourself with the rich and powerful. Or, as Jeremiah said, to “trust in mere mortals and rely on things of flesh.” It won’t make you happy, but at least you will be able to afford some distractions from the emptiness of your life.

If you choose to “trust in the Lord,” your real hope is in a happiness that will last forever: the “eternal life” that is the “life to the full” Jesus came to give, and which consists essentially in knowing God:  “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 10:10,17:3). It begins on this earth and gives happiness on this earth, even to those who suffer. But that happiness is conditional on faith and hope in the ultimate blessing of sharing in the life and happiness of God. In the last analysis, the Good News rests on a platform of resurrection.

“But in fact…”

St. Paul makes this clear in 1Corinthians 15: 12-20: “If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Why?

First, because “if Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins.” There is no mystery in being “forgiven.” But for Jesus to “take away” our sins, he has to incorporate us, with all our sins, into his body, so that we can die in him and return to the world as his risen body on earth: a “new creation.”

Second, if Jesus did not rise, then “all who have died in Christ have perished.” Baptism was a one-way street. Leading nowhere. And life itself is a dead end.

“But in fact,” Paul concludes, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” The resurrection of Jesus was just the beginning, the preview of ours. When we proclaim in the Gloria at Mass that Jesus is “seated at the right hand of the Father,” we are rejoicing in our destiny. That is the Good News.

Insight

Do you trust more in the ground under your feet or in God’s promise of heaven?

Initiative:

Acquire “wisdom” defined as” the habit of relating everything to the last end.”