Reflections for the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time 2012**
** These homilies were written by Fr. Howard in 2009 and 2010.
They refer to the daily readings for the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time 2012
Sunday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 5, 2012, John 6: 24-35
Link to Readings for Daily Mass
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him,
"Rabbi, when did you get here?"
Jesus answered them and said,
"Amen, amen, I say to you,
you are looking for me not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal."
So they said to him,
"What can we do to accomplish the works of God?"
Jesus answered and said to them,
"This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent."
So they said to him,
"What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?
What can you do?
Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written:
He gave them bread from heaven to eat.?
So Jesus said to them,
"Amen, amen, I say to you,
it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven;
my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world."
So they said to him,
"Sir, give us this bread always."
Jesus said to them,
"I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst."
Monday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 6, The Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord
Link to Readings for Daily Mass
Transfiguration
is the very reason we follow Jesus. This is, I guess you could say, the
reward for doing so. In the 12 Step Program it is referred to as a
Spiritual Awakening and is defined as a personality change. It shows up
in the 12th Step, which reads: "Having had a spiritual
awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to
alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs". One
could easily say that the Transfiguration, that appears in all three of the
synoptic Gospels, is the 12th Step of the Gospel. And it
might well be paraphrased: "Having had a transfiguration as a result of
following Jesus in the Gospels, we carried this message to others
interested in following him, and continued ourselves to follow the
Gospel message in all aspects of our lives". It should also be noted
that this Transfiguration or Spiritual Awakening is not a one time
occurrence. Rather it grows, and grows progressively, as we continue to
follow Jesus and ends only with our death.
God has given me the grace and gift of sobriety now
for the past 36 years. He led me to the Alcoholics Anonymous Program in 1974 and I have
been slowly progressing ever since. I can say quite definitely I am not
the same person now as when I began to follow the 12 Steps. I am a new
person, a new personality, and will continue to grow, I hope and pray,
until the time of my death.
How about you? I believe we all follow this same
path to spirituality and knowledge of our God in one way or another.
Today, apply what has been said above to yourself. Where do you find
yourself in your own spiritual awakening? Can you determine when it
began?
Fr. Howard
Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 7, Matthew 14: 22-36
Link to Readings for Daily Mass
After
he fed the crowd, Jesus dismissed the people, and finally took time for
himself to go up the mountain and pray. The disciples had previously
gotten into their boat and headed for the other side of the lake. Later,
during the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went looking for them. The
fourth watch of the night was the last lap of the night watches going
from 3:00 in the morning until 6:00 in the morning, right before the
dawn.
Presumably, the disciples had been trying to cross
the lake all night long. It was just evening when they started out. A
storm had come up and they had rowed to the point of exhaustion and
still got nowhere. Why did Jesus wait so long to help them? For that
matter, why does he sometimes seem to take forever to help us when we
need him? Why does he make us struggle, why isn’t he Johnny on the spot?
Perhaps he allows us to struggle to humble us, to
show us that by ourselves we will get nowhere. Struggling bolsters our
faith, shows us the necessity of trusting our situation to the care of
God. Maybe the struggling helps us to see that Jesus really is the Son
of God. After the sea was calmed by Jesus, they exclaimed, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”
In
any event, we have all struggled and waited patiently or impatiently
for the Lord to act. What have I learned about Jesus from these
struggles?
Fr. Howard
Wednesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 8, Matthew 15: 21-28
Link to Readings for Daily MassThe Gospel appointed
to be read on this day is a Gospel that shows Jesus coming not to do
away with the Old Law but rather to fulfill it with a new
interpretation. The Pharisaic interpretation of the law was their
holier-than-thou attitude that the Messiah had come for the Jewish
people alone and not for the Gentiles. Jews referred to anyone who was
not a Jew as “dogs or swine,” as we see in the remark made by Jesus in
the Gospel, “It is not right to take the food of the children [the Jews] and throw it to the dogs [the Gentiles].”
Matthew had just finished narrating
Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees as being blind people leading blind
people with both falling into a pit (Mt. 15: 14). He follows this with
today’s Gospel of the Canaanite woman’s faith in which faith alone was
necessary for her to come to Christ. Her nationality made no difference. “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And Jesus healed this foreigner’s daughter.
There are many passages in Scripture
that show Jesus’ rejection of this holier-than-thou attitude both then
and now when it shows up in us. Take for example the parable of the
Pharisee and the Tax-Collector in Luke 18: 9-14: “The Pharisee
took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank
you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest,
adulterous – or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week, and I
pay tithes on my whole income.’ But the tax-collector …… beat his
breast and said, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ I tell you, the
latter went home justified, not the former.”
God doesn’t think the way we do. We
all have our bit of the holier-than-thou attitude. I pray more than he
does – I help my neighbor more than she does – I go to Mass every
morning and they don’t even go on Sunday…and on and on and on. And our
prejudices based on race, religion, education, color of your hair, etc.,
are innumerable. When are we going to learn that we are all God’s
children and none of the rest of this stuff we get ourselves into makes
any difference to Jesus at all?
I found a quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu which sums up this whole thing very well. I would like to quote it here:
“Many years ago…we (blacks) were thought to be human, but not quite as
human as white people, for we lacked what seemed indispensable to that
humanity – a particular skin color. We have a wonderful country with
truly magnificent people, if only we could be allowed to be human
together.”
Let’s see what we can do by allowing
each other, whoever or whatever we are, to be human together.
Jesus,
please help us in this effort.
Fr. Howard
Thursday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 9, Matthew 16: 13-23
Link to Readings for Daily Mass
Today’s Gospel tells of the turning point in the life of the early Church and the disciples. As a result of Peter’s confession, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” the disciples had finally identified Jesus. Then the Gospel, in verse 21, tells us, “From
that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to
Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the
scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” Now, at last, they knew what Jesus was all about, they knew where they were headed.
Each of us, at some time in our Christian lives,
came to realize what Jesus was all about and came to realize where we
should be going, what we are supposed to be and do. We refer to this as
our main time of conversion when we finally caught on. This happened to
me in the treatment center for rehabilitation from the disease of
alcoholism. From that time on, I caught on to what Jesus was all about
in this world.
How about you? What was your main time of conversion? What did you learn from it about Jesus and about yourself?
Fr. Howard
Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 10, Feast of St. Lawrence
Link to Readings for Daily Mass
Today the Church celebrates the Feast
of St. Lawrence, a Deacon and Saint of the very early Church, perhaps
more recognized in Rome than in our country. St. Lawrence was one of the
seven deacons of the Church of Rome who were in charge of giving help
to the poor and needy. The Prefect of Rome put two and two together and
got six in thinking that because Lawrence was in charge of the Church
treasury, he had access to a great deal of money. He demanded that
Lawrence turn the money from the treasury over to him. At a time set for
doing this, Lawrence showed up with a large group of poor and sick
people and said to the Prefect, “This is the Church’s treasure.”
The Prefect didn’t think this was too
funny and condemned Lawrence to a martyr’s death in the year 238.
Constantine the Great later built a Basilica dedicated to St. Lawrence
and it is yet today one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome. It has
been named St. Lawrence outside the Walls and is situated beside Campo
Verono, Rome’s largest cemetery.
St. Lawrence, pray for us.
Fr. Howard
Saturday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 11, Memorial of St. Clare of Assisi
Link to Readings for Daily Mass
Today, August 11, the Church
celebrates the Feast of one of the major exemplars of the Franciscan
life in the world. St. Clare of Assisi was a close friend of St. Francis
of Assisi and the two helped one another to promote the Franciscan
Charism that is so much a part of the spirituality of the Catholic
Church today. It is impossible to do justice to this great saint’s life
in this short amount of space.
St. Clare, when she was a young girl,
heard Francis of Assisi preach and her heart burned with a great desire
to imitate Francis and to live the poor and humble life of the Gospel.
One evening she ran away from home and gave herself to God. Francis cut
her hair and gave her a rough brown habit to wear. Clare went on to
become the Foundress of an Order of nuns now referred to as the “Poor
Clares.” Her sister, St. Agnes, joined her as well as other young women
from the surrounding area who wished to live the Gospel life. They lived
without money, without property, wore no shoes, ate no meat, lived in a
poor house, and observed silence most of the time. They were truly
Brides of Jesus and very happy people. Their life continues yet today in
almost the identical way it did in the thirteenth century. There are
many Poor Clare monasteries throughout the world and indeed they are
paradoxes to the life of the world today showing us all where to find
true joy, happiness and peace.
St. Clare of Assisi, pray for us.
Fr. Howard
