August 7, 2020
Friday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

“If you want to follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me”

Today, the Gospel clearly confronts us with the world… It is absolutely radical in its approach, and it does not admit any half measures: «If you want to follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me» (Mt 16:24). In many instances, when we are facing the suffering generated by us or by others, we can hear: «We have to accept the sufferings God sends us… This is God’s will…, or words to that effect», and we keep on gathering sacrifices in very much the same way as those trading stamps we used to collect, with the hope of showing them at Heaven’s audit department when our day to present our statements of accounts arrives.

But our suffering per se would be of little value. Christ was no stoic: He was thirsty, He was hungry, He was tired, He did not like to be forsaken. He let others to help him… Where He could, He soothed pain, whether physic or moral. So, what is happening, then?

Simple. Before loading with our “cross”, the first thing we must do is to follow Christ. It is not a matter of first suffering and then following Christ… Christ must be followed from our Love, and from there we can then understand the sacrifice, the personal negation: «For whoever chooses to save his life will lose it, but the one who loses his life for my sake will find it» (Mt 16:25). Love and mercy may lead us to sacrifice. Any true love engenders, one way or other, some sort of sacrifice, but not all sacrifice engenders love. God is not sacrifice; God is love, and only from that perspective pain, fatigue and the cross in our existence, have any meaning, following the model of man the Father reveals us in Christ. St. Augustine sentenced: «When one loves, one does not suffer; but if one does suffer, the very suffering is loved».

In the ensuing events of our life, we are not to seek a divine origin to explain our sacrifices and shortcomings: «Why is God sending this to me?», but we rather have to find a “divine usage” for them: «How can I transform this into an act of faith and love?». It is from this evaluation how we are to follow Christ and how —certainly— we may deserve the Father’s merciful glance. The same glance which the Father looked at his Son in the Cross, with.

Tuesday 4th August 2020

St John Vianney (1786 – 1859).

-French Priest. Patron Saint of Priests.

What do you want from your parish priest?

1 Celebrate Mass with reverence and devotion.

2 Always be available for the Sacrament of Reconciliation and be the face of the loving mercy of Jesus Christ.

3 Assist the poor as best as they can.

St John Vianney did the above three to the highest degree.

He was the son of a peasant farmer, and a slow and unpromising candidate for the priesthood: he was eventually ordained on account of his devoutness rather than any achievement or promise.
In 1818 he was sent to be the parish priest of Ars-en-Dombes, an isolated village some distance from Lyon, and remained there for the rest of his life because his parishioners would not let him leave. He was a noted preacher, and a celebrated confessor: such was his fame, and his reputation for insight into his penitents’ souls and their futures, that he had to spend up to eighteen hours a day in the confessional, so great was the demand. The tens of thousands of people who came to visit this obscure parish priest turned Ars into a place of pilgrimage.
“The Curé refused to sit for a portrait. When the sculptor Cabuchet surreptitiously tried to capture his features in a ball of wax during the catechism, Vianney sternly bounced him out of the church.” (The Curé d’Ars Today, by G.W.Rutler, 1988).
The French State recognised his eminence by awarding him the medal of the Légion d’Honneur in 1848, and he sold it and gave the money to the poor.

Monday 3rd August 2020, 18th Week in Ordinary Time.

While we are in this world, we might encounter frightening experiences that present themselves like a mighty wind that threatens and rocks us off balance, even causing us to lose faith in God. The wind of suffering might blind our eyes to the real presence of Jesus with us or even lead us to associate God with the problem. “it is I, do not be afraid” is the consoling words of Jesus today. Let us find in these words of Jesus the reason to conquer all fears, to believe more strongly and to trust in him.

Reflect, today, upon any way that you have had great intentions of trusting Jesus, started down that path and then have fallen. Know that Jesus is full of compassion and will reach out to you in your weakness just as He did to Peter. Let Him grab your hand and strengthen your lack of faith out of His abundance of love and mercy.

August 2, 2020
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Do you ever feel as though you have little to offer? Or that you cannot make an impact in this world? At times, we may all dream of being someone “important” with great influence so as to do “great things.” But the fact of the matter is that you can do great things with the “little” you have to offer.

Today’s Gospel passage reveals that God was able to take something very small, five loaves of bread and two fish, and transform them into enough food to feed tens of thousands of people (“Five thousand men, not counting women and children.” Matthew 14:21)

This story is not only a miracle for the purpose of providing the necessary food for the crowd who came to listen to Jesus in a deserted place, it’s also a sign to us of the power of God to transform our daily offerings into exponential blessings for the world.

Our goal must not be to determine what we want God to do with our offering; rather, our goal must be to make the offering of all we are and all we have and leave the transformation to God. Sometimes our offering may seem small. It may seem like what we offer will have no benefit. For example, making an offering to God of our mundane daily chores or the like may seem unfruitful. What can God do with this? The same question could have been asked by those with the loaves and fishes. But look what Jesus did with them!

We must daily trust that everything we offer to God, whether it appears to be great or small, will be used by God in an exponential way. Though we may not see the good fruits like those in this story did, we can be certain that the good fruit will be abundant.

Reflect, today, upon every small offering you can make. Small sacrifices, small acts of love, acts of forgiveness, small acts of service, etc., have immeasurable value. Make the offering today and leave the rest to God.

Saturday 1st August 2020, 17th Week in Ordinary Time

St Alphonsus Liguori (1696 – 1787). Founder of the Redemptorists.

There are no unfaithful loves! (About marriage)

There are times in life when we second-guess ourselves: what if I had done things differently, made other choices? Often, too, we are haunted by regret or are not at peace because of something that we have said or done.

When people around us engage in unlawful behaviour, we must raise a prophetic voice in defense of truth. Jeremiah and John the Baptist are presented to us today as models of courageous witness to truth.  Praise and worship of God consist in challenging the ways of this world by standing for truth, defending those who are treated unjustly, and refraining from acting like Herod who, in order to please other people, condemned an innocent man to death. Persecution should not stop us from standing for the values of God. Our faith in God’s help and protection must be strong, as we sing with psalmist, “Rescue me from sinking in the mud; from those who hate me, deliver me.”

Jesus’ public ministry seems to have triggered off this guilt in King Herod. Powerful and wealthy as he was, he lacked nothing except a clear conscience and peace with God. Herod had respected and feared John the Baptist as God’s prophet. John, outspoken and committed to the truth, openly rebuked Herod for his adulterous relationship with his brother’s wife. The outcome was the imprisonment and beheading of John.

Today, we see the Baptist when he is beheaded for defending truth about marriage. Today also, the legislative abuses —that tag as “marriage” multifaceted affective experiences— disfigure the face of conjugal love, to the point that many cannot even recognize it. Human life is not an experiment, nor a lease contract! Only a really unadulterated fidelity is the suitable scope for the dignity of marital connivance and the education of our sons.

God instituted marriage is the place for total love between man and woman. The genuine measure of their love is “totality”. All the rest is just “trade” (where there are no “life-binding” contracts nor demands of “exclusivity”). Only giving myself over completely, neither reluctant nor aspiring to a reconsideration/ termination, can fully respond to human dignity.

—Jesus, Mary and Joseph: do enlighten mankind to preserve true love, because to get married with the “parachute” of divorce, is not getting married; it simply is to deceive yourself.

St. Alphonsus de Liguori, the saint we honour today, was the founder of the ‘Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer’ popularly known as the Redemptorists. Great his contributions to the Church in Moral Theology, Dogma, and Ascetical works . Patron Saint of the Moral Theologians.

St Ignatius Loyola (1491 – 1556)

Ignatius (or Iñigo) was born in Loyola in the Spanish Basque country. He was a soldier, but was wounded in the battle of Pamplona (against the French) at the age of 30. During a long convalescence he read a life of Christ and a collection of lives of the saints, and discovered that his true vocation was to devote his life wholly to God. He was as systematic about this as he had been about his military career: he spent a year’s retreat in a Dominican friary, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and then set about learning Latin.
Such enthusiasm in a layman caused grave suspicion in the Spanish authorities, and he was questioned and imprisoned more than once. He moved to Paris in 1528 and continued his studies; and then in 1534 Ignatius and six companions bound themselves to become missionaries to the Muslims in Palestine. By the time they were ready to set out, war made the journey impossible and so the group (now numbering ten) offered their services to the Pope in any capacity he might choose. A number of them were duly ordained and they were all assigned to various tasks.
Soon it was proposed that they should organise themselves into a regular religious order, and in 1540 the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) was formed. Ignatius was the first Superior General until his death. Soon after their foundation the Jesuits began to meet the challenge of the Reformation: a tough task, given the debilitated state into which the Church had fallen, but one which, as Ignatius said, had to be undertaken “without hard words or contempt for people’s errors”.
Ignatius had a gift for inspiring friendship, and was the recipient of deep spiritual insight. Soon after his conversion Ignatius wrote the Spiritual Exercises, a systematic step-by-step retreat that can be followed by anyone – and has been followed by many, not all of them Catholics, ever since.

Wednesday 29th July 2020, 17th Week in Ordinary Time

The feast of St Martha.

Today, in the celebration of St. Martha, the Gospel proposes us the episode of Jesus’ visit to Bethany, to the house of Martha and Mary, sisters of Lazarus. Marta was b hiusy with her many chores, while Mary was quietly sitting at the Master’s feet and listening to Him. To Martha, who was complaining because her sister did not help her, Jesus replied: “Mary has chosen the best part”.

This episode reminds us of the primacy of the spiritual life, the need to feed us with the Word of God to give flavor to our daily occupations. It is a timely invitation for this summer: rest can help us to recover the balance between activism and contemplation, between haste and our natural rhythms, between the many sounds and the silence that promotes peace.

Today, we, —no matter how busy we may be, at times, by so many things— must also listen to our Lord reminding us that «only one thing is needed» (Lk 10:42): esteem and saintliness. They should be our aim, the horizon we must never lose sight of amidst our daily chores.

Because we shall be “busy” if we follow our Creator’s plan: «’Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it’» (Gen 1:28). The earth! the world!: this is our meeting point with the Lord. «My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one» (Jn 17:15). Yes, the world is an “altar” for us and for our donation to God and to the others.

We belong in this world, but that does not mean we have to be worldly. On the contrary, we are called to become —in a beautiful expression of His Holiness John Paul II— “Priests of Creation!” “priests” of our world, of a world we passionately love.

Here is the question: world and saintliness; our daily chores and the one and only thing we truly need. They are not two opposed realities: and we have to try to make both coincide. And this coincidence must be carried out —in the first place and basically— in our own heart, where heaven and earth can be reunited. Because in the human heart is where the dialogue between Creator and creature takes place.

Therefore, prayer is necessary. «Ours is a time of continual movement which often leads to restlessness, with the risk of “doing for the sake of doing”. We must resist this temptation by trying “to be” before trying “to do”. In this regard we should recall how Jesus reproved Martha: ‘You are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful’ (Lk 10:41-42)» (John Paul II).

There is no opposition between “to be” and “to do”, but there is indeed a priority order of precedence: «Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her» (Lk 10,42).

25th July 2020

St James, Apostle

The Apostle we honour today is referred to as ‘James the Greater’, to distinguish him from the other ‘James the Less’; titles based on their differences in height and not importance!

James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother, John the Evangelist were called to discipleship while they were still in their boat. They were present at some of the most memorable events of Jesus’ public life: at the Transfiguration and in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Acts of the Apostles tells us James was beheaded at Jerusalem by order of King Herod Agrippa, making him the first apostle to be martyred.

In today’s Gospel, the mother of James and John makes a fleeting appearance to request that her sons be given prominence in Jesus’ kingdom! She is a mother like any other, wanting the best for her children. Jesus uses this opportunity to bring home to the disciples that to be true followers they must ‘drink of the cup’ and ‘be servants of all’.

This message is a reminder of what we sign up for when we profess our discipleship.

Friday 24th July 2020, 16th Week in Ordinary Time

Today, we contemplate God as a good and magnanimous farmer, who has so richly sown his field. He has not spared anything for the redemption of man; He has vested everything in his own Son Jesus Christ who, as the seed sown in the good soil (death and burial), with his saint Resurrection has become our own life and resurrection.

God is a farmer who knows how to wait. Time belongs to the Father, for He is the only one to know about the day or the hour (cf. Mk 13:32) of the harvest and threshing. And God waits. And we must also wait while synchronizing the watch of our hopes with God’s design of salvation. St. James says: «See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains» (Jas 5:7). God waits on the crop that grows thanks to his grace. And we must also stay on our toes; we must collaborate with God’s grace by giving him our cooperation and opposing no obstacles to this transforming action of God.

God’s crop, which here on earth, grows and bears fruit, is a feat visible through its effects; we can see them in actual miracles and in clamorous examples of saintliness of life. There are plenty of people that after having heard all the words and din of this world are hungry and thirsty for the authentic Word of God, wherever it is, alive and incarnated. There are thousands who live their belonging to Jesus Christ and to the Church with the same enthusiasm than in the first times of the Gospel, because the divine word «finds the soil where to germinate and bear fruit» (St. Augustine); we must therefore raise our morale and look at our future with the eyes of the faith.

The success of the crop does not depend upon our human strategies or upon our marketing techniques, but upon God’s initiative of salvation “rich in mercy” and upon the efficiency of the Holy Spirit, that can transform our lives so we can bear the delicious fruits of charity and of contagious joy.

22nd July 2020

St Mary Magdalene

The quest for the beloved starts from the First Reading, as it unfolds in beautiful poetry, “I sought him whom my soul loves…” We all experience this quest for the Lord Jesus. We search for a glimpse, a manifestation of the creator God. We look for the face of Jesus in the mix of people with whom we share our space and in the events that happen to us.

Today’s passage from John tells us that Mary Magdalene is searching for her beloved Master. Her faith and her hope are answered; she encounters the risen Jesus. And her response is very natural: she wants to cling to him. Jesus, however, has another mission for her; she is to announce to the disciples that she “has seen the Lord” – she is to be the Lord’s witness to the world that He lives!

We are challenged by the Gospel to follow Mary Magdalene’s example: we must share our faith experience of God with others and we, too, must be witnesses in the world, that God lives.