Press conference on the Year of Consecrated Life 2015

Pope calls Notre Dame to 'unambiguous' Catholic witness (CNA)

Pope calls Notre Dame to 'unambiguous' Catholic witness :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Presentation of the Christ - Sunday's reading reflection

The Christmas decorations have long since been put away and the commercial world has already peaked for Valentine’s day. Nevertheless, you may be surprised to know that, until very recently, today’s feast, the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple, was the Church’s formal closing of the Christmas season. Moreover, the story in today’s gospel – Mary and Joseph bringing their baby to the temple in accordance with the law – is itself the climax and conclusion of St. Luke’s entire Christmas story, as Simeon proclaims the baby Jesus  “a light of revelation to the gentiles and the glory” of His people, Israel,  We might today read that story whole (running from Luke 1:5 through 2:39) and allow ourselves both to marvel at its unity and inner-connectedness and to be challenged by what those verses call us to be and to do.

Every encounter with the Gospel is a challenge and a call for a decision.  This story is no exception.  It is our privilege and our duty as Christians to proclaim God’s salvation – by deed and word – being mindful of the response we will evoke, and remembering that the crib of Bethlehem lies in the shadow of the cross at Calvary.

(Adapted from Robert P. Heaney)

Bosco and tearing seeds - Tomorrow's reading reflection

The work of God is full of promise, but comes to fulfillment only after much time, like a seed patiently waiting in the darkness of the earth. St. John Bosco, whose feast we celebrate today, knew this well.  There is suffering as the seed breaks apart and loses itself for the new sprout to develop and appear on the surface of the earth. We could try linking this parable about the seed (sown within the dark earth) with the reading from 2 Samuel which reveal’s David’s murky past.

The dark, inert “earth” where the seed nestles, breaks apart and begins its new life is foreshadowed in the account of David’s adultery with Bathsheba, where the king first tried to make his dedicated soldier, Uriah, go home and sleep with his wife, to conceal the source of her pregnancy; and then, when Uriah refuses the offer of ease and pleasure, David treacherously has him killed in battle. How the word of God seems to dissolve in the dark earth of human misery.

David’s act of marital treachery is just the first of a long series of murders, sexual excesses and revolts within the Davidic family. We are at a loss for an adequate explanation why God should use such a darkly complex and tangled family to fulfill of his promises about an everlasting dynasty. The very ones through whom the promises were passed on turn out to be Bathsheba and her future son Solomon.

We cannot explain how the seed which falls into the ground becomes stalks of wheat providing grain and bread or the largest of all shrubs so that the birds build nests in its shade, any more that we understand God’s ways in the history of David. Yet just as wheat provides bread and the mustard tree shade, so also the story of David consoles us secretly and says: God does not give up on us or lose patience with us. We can be restored as David was, and God will do what he has promised to us. The seed of the future is in us right now.

Salvation is a patient interaction between God and ourselves. And we must encourage the salvation of each other, by showing patience and confidence in members of our family, community and neighborhood, through the long dark hours when the seed is in the earth, breaking apart and showing little or no sign of what it can, and eventually will, become.

(Adapted from ACP)

Video Promo - Call to Prayer Movement

Great short video promo for the "Call to Prayer" movement

Contribution - Tomorrow's reading reflection

As we hear David thanking God for the promise of kingship to his family, little did he realize that these promises would find their deepest meaning when Jesus took his place as king, at the Father’s right hand. In a way that could not have been understood by David so long before, the Gospel words were fulfilled, that “the measure you give will be the measure you get.”

Only by making our own personal contribution in full measure – knowing that we do not fully understand yet continuing to trust that God is writing straight with the crooked lines of history and of life – will we taste the promise, “you will receive, and more besides.” By uniting our destiny with the death and resurrection of Jesus, the lamp is taken from beneath the bushel basket and placed on a lampstand. If we can extend that figure of speech a little, the lamp is placed on a stand in the Holy of Holies so that we can perceive the wonderful mystery of God’s love for us.

(Adapted from ACP)

Hearing and not understanding - Tomorrow's reading reflection

God’s promises are present within us, in ways that we must struggle to comprehend. The parable of the Sower links the mysterious working of grace both to the inner life-force of the seed (the Word of God) and to the potential of the soil – whether rocky, shallow or naturally arable. But of course free choice comes into it too. Since God has breathed his own Spirit into us, we humans are no more inanimate clods of earth than we are inert clay for the potter to mold. Somehow, our free response to God’s grace makes us both arable and mold-able!

In the middle of the story come some of the most difficult words of Holy Scripture, “They will look and not see, listen and not understand, lest perhaps they repent and be forgiven” (quoting from Isaiah 6:9-10.) But the passage ends with hope — for the trunk of the oak remains even when its leaves have fallen. The gospel assures us that hope will blossom in its time; but it insists on the human factor too, the condition of the soil, dealing with the thorns, rocks and obstacles to growth. We are not to wait passively and do nothing, simply waiting for God brings all to fulfillment. While life is often beyond our control and eventually we leave all to God, still we are expected to be faithful through difficult times. Salvation is the interaction of God’s mystery and our dedication. We must achieve what is humanly possible, and then in the end we can say, like Paul, “I planted the seed and Apollos watered it, God made it grow”, (1 Cor 3:6.)

(Adpated from ACP)

The Greatest of all virtues - Tomorrow's reading reflection

Jesus stuns the crowd, and probably his family, by identifying with - as family - those who do the will of God. Upon reflection, it seems so easy to understand. For Jesus, who would be the closest to him, who would be family to him? It would be those who place themselves next to his heart. To say it another way, we can't be close to Jesus while opposing God's action in our lives. Jesus is inviting us to surrender to God's love for us. He tells us, of course, that if we want to find ourselves - and our happiness and our purpose - we have to lose ourselves, in loving others the way we have been loved..

Jesus says what he desires for us so clearly when he says, in Luke's Gospel, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." [Luke 6:36] I have spent a lot of my life trying to be in relationship with God, and in service of others, without always being merciful. It is not easy to forgive when we've been hurt - sometimes even when we've been slighted. We tend to hold on to memories of what we have against others. We can ask God to forgive us, over and over again, and we can celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation many times, and still struggle with forgiving someone close to us. Jesus is asking us to be with him and like him in letting go of all of that.

It is in this light that I was delighted to read what Pope Francis said about St. Thomas Aquinas' teaching on mercy as "the greatest of all virtues." And, I love to hear that mercy "overcomes the defects of our devotion and sacrifice." On St. Thomas' feast, it is great to recall these words.

"Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that the Church’s moral teaching has its own 'hierarchy,' in the virtues and in the acts which proceed from them.[Cf. S. Th., I-II, q. 66, a. 4-6] What counts above all else is “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). Works of love directed to one’s neighbour are the most perfect external manifestation of the interior grace of the Spirit: 'The foundation of the New Law is in the grace of the Holy Spirit, who is manifested in the faith which works through love'.[S. Th., I-II, q. 108, a. 1.] Thomas thus explains that, as far as external works are concerned, mercy is the greatest of all the virtues: 'In itself mercy is the greatest of the virtues, since all the others revolve around it and, more than this, it makes up for their deficiencies. This is particular to the superior virtue, and as such it is proper to God to have mercy, through which his omnipotence is manifested to the greatest degree'.[41]" [The Joy of the Gospel, #37] ["For him, mercy, which overcomes the defects of our devotion and sacrifice, is the sacrifice which is most pleasing, because it is mercy which above all seeks the good of one’s neighbour” S. Th., II-II, q. 30, a. 4, ad 1.]

(Adapted from Andy Alexander, SJ)