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Contents: Volume 2
27th & 28th Sundays
in Ordinary Time
- October 6, 2024
1. --
Lanie LeBlanc
OP - 27th Sunday
2. --
Dennis Keller
- 28th Sunday
3. -- Paul O'Reilly SJ
4. --
John Boll
OP
- 27th Sunday
5. --
(Your reflection
can be here!)
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1.
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Sun. 28 B 2024
The readings this Sunday contain simple messages. Sometimes these kinds of
messages are particularly hard for us to implement easily or at all. We always
seem to have excuses, reasons, or think of some loopholes.
The first reading clearly places the value of wisdom and prudence above all
other desirable things. Even gold or silver or health or beauty pale in
comparison. What is it that each of us value more than what God values?
The second reading puts the primacy of God's Word in its proper place. God's
word penetrates all of life. Where is it that we miss it or skirt around it?
The Gospel message is contained in a familiar story. Following the commandments
are mandates, not suggestions. Having God as the center of our lives enables us
to live as God desires and not be attached to anything else of this world. It is
the attachment to, not proper use of the gifts we have been given, that drags us
down. It is grace that lifts us up when we are willing to cooperate with it.
Blessings,
Dr. Lanie LeBlanc OP
Southern Dominican Laity
lanie@leblanc.one
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2.
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Twenty
Eighth Sunday
of Ordered Time
October 13, 2024
Wisdom 7:7-11;
Responsorial Psalm 90; Hebrews 4:12-13;
Gospel Acclamation Matthew 5:3; Mark 10:17-30
The first reading this Sunday takes us into the mysterious, but ever so
important and necessary virtue of wisdom. Wisdom is defined in Webster as:
an
ability to discern inner qualities and relationships: insight: good sense:
judgment: a wise attitude, belief, or course of action: the teachings of ancient
wise men.
The Catholic Encyclopedia identifies wisdom as “the effort toward knowledge:
wisdom is the truth beyond the effort of thought. It can still be attained
without thought; truth is wisdom attained, typically through experience. Wisdom
runs parallel with faith. What transcends all knowledge is the mystery of God’s
love.”
The wisdom Solomon – son of King David and Bathsheba – seeks is knowledge
applied to understand real life situations. Our cognitive knowledge comes
through experience. Passage of time is how we age. Aging allows people to
experience through a succession of experiences. We assume a person with a long
life has lots of experience that led to wisdom. Wisdom results from knowledge
applied to present and future events and relationships. Wisdom is threatened by
falsehood in cultures and from devious propaganda arising from untruths and
fabrications contrary to what is real.
Solomon, in his youthful idealism, prayed he would possess wisdom. The stories
of his wisdom are interesting and give credence to his gift of wisdom. However,
his youthful commitment to the common good diminished as he became increasingly
interested in wealth, in amassing power, and building stunning buildings –
including the temple. After he died his taxation of citizens led to the break-up
of the Kingdom. His successor, in imitation of his father, imposed even more
taxes on the people for more grand projects. As a result, there was a division
of the nation into a Northern Kingdom named Israel and a smaller Kingdom, Judah.
The first reading turns our focus to what is the core of wisdom in the Christian
era. That is where the Gospel narrative leads us. Keeping in mind the
theological application of wisdom applied to every day experience of life, we
discover in this Gospel three parts applicable to practical Christian living.
In the first part, a young man, like young Solomon, comes to Jesus seeking
advice about how to enter eternal life. He had been applying the law of Moses to
his life choices. His claim is without pretense. Certainly, in our initial
stages of spiritual growth we understand his commitment to moral behavior. When
we commit to living a moral life, our practice is based on a binary choice: good
versus evil. Our judgment of goodness versus sin is based on adherence to
commandments and precepts. This is the first phase of spiritual growth.
Commandments and precepts are standards for clearing our pathways through life.
As in the aftermath of a terrible, catastrophic hurricane, until our chosen path
is cleared of rubble, accumulated mud, and rushing waters, there is not a lot of
progress spiritually. That clearing is essential to growth in our relationship
with others and with God on our pilgrim journey. If we are content with obeying
laws as the sole meaning and purpose of living, we often fail to move beyond the
goals and allegiances to the way of the world. The young man in this first of
three pathways to following Jesus is attracted to eternal life. But he was held
back because he had great possessions. His heart was attached, and his path had
yet to be cleared for a stronger way forward. Did his heart’s attachment to
possessions a practice of idolatry?
The second part of the Gospel is Jesus’ preference for the poor and
marginalized. Families and individuals locked in poverty have little to claim
their hearts. Only if they succumb to an attitude of victimhood are they stuck.
The energy and source of vitality in this life is the care and concern they have
for one another. Not all the poor and marginalized discover strength in a
community. Often poverty robs people of strength and creates bitterness and a
self-evaluation of victimhood. That often leads to violence and hatred.
Evangelization and a hand-up are tools to relieve a burden of poverty. This
preference for the poor and marginalized is a responsibility for the way of
Christians to help with a hand-up to conquering poverty.
The third part of this Gospel is about voluntary poverty. This is for those who
join the mission and ministry of Jesus. Their reward is not a physical one. The
solidarity with and presence of the Lord in that work brings fulfillment and
joy. With that commitment comes an awareness of God in creation, in the
Scriptures, and in relationships with others. As we heard last Sunday, those who
follow Jesus in his ministry are servants. In their service God’s is present to
them. But then – as if to contradict this – there is the experience of many
saints (check out Teresa of Calcutta). There is a felt absence of God’s
presence. Spiritual writers name that “the dark night of the soul.”
What has this to do with wealth? Are we expected to sell all we own? What about
our responsibilities to provide nourishment, health care, shelter,
transportation, clothing, and education for our children? Can we divorce
ourselves from these obligations to follow Christ? Voluntary poverty of the
third part of the Gospel this week applies to a ministry serving others. Jesus
models this ministry. All are not called to such a level of service. But at the
least, all are called to recognize and support the dignity and worth of every
human.
The second part of the message tells us we are to be conscious of persons on the
margins of society, the poor, the forgotten, those ill, those challenged in
their existence. Ignoring or looking away from the poor denies their dignity and
worth as creation of God. There is much wisdom in this Sunday’s liturgy of the
Word.
Dennis@PreacherExchange.com
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3.
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Year B: 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time
“How hard it is for those who have riches to
enter into the Kingdom of God!”
“Chris” (not his real name) is the richest man I know. He was born the only son
of a wealthy family which owned a huge company which is still to this day a
household name in this country and immensely profitable. He grew up with all the
advantages in life that money can buy – the best food, the best clothes, the
best schools, the best university. And of course, the fast track to the board
room of the family company.
It was a Catholic family but they were still shocked and horrified when Chris
decided to give it all up to try his vocation in the priesthood. He spent two
years in the diocesan seminary, where he excelled. He was a good student and a
great human being. His teachers thought he would make a great priest. But he
found himself restless; it did not seem truly to fulfil his vocation.
Then he came in touch with some Jesuits. And after some prayer and reflection,
he decided to try his vocation with us. I met him when I was a novice and he was
studying philosophy. He stayed with us for five years, tried his vocation to the
full. Again, he was successful and popular. Great things were predicted for him,
but again he found that, in honesty, it was still not right.
Eventually, he began to wonder if he had been wrong to leave his family. His
parents were now beginning to fail in health; they could no longer run the
business; they seemed to need him back. Without him, not only would his parents
not be well looked after, but the Company on which many thousands of people
depended for their living, many of them his old friends, might fail. And he
wondered if that was actually his true God-given duty.
So he left us and returned to the family, to his place of wealth and power.
Everyone who cared about him was delighted for him: he had come back into his
own. His parents were overjoyed. The future of the Company and the many
thousands of people it employed was secure.
But after two years, both his parents had died and the Company was running well
in the hands of senior professional managers and capable board members. He began
to feel that he was no longer needed. If he had chosen, he could have lived a
life of complete leisure and pleasure. But that was not his calling.
He resigned from the company and took some time out to volunteer with a refugee
project that one of his former friends in our order had started up working with
refugees in a certain country in East Asia that I will not name.
We met up before he left and I noticed that, as always, there was a divine
discontent that he did not feel that he was fully living out this command of
Christ to give of his best in the world. And I feared for him that there would
be no rest for him in this world, that he would never find his place in the
Kingdom and drift constantly from one disappointment to another, always driven
on by that restless spirit.
But as part of his work with that refugee service, he came across a project
which needed his business skills and in which he could believe - a refugee
project for some of the poorest people in the world in that country.
There he went and worked steadily, faithfully and consistently for 35 years, ten
of those as its chief executive, until finally he retired just last year.
He returned to this country to retire, finally to be with his family and his own
hometown. They were delighted to welcome him home because for so many of them he
was a hero – a man who had gone out and been the best he could be.
As it happened, he passed by our house on his way. And we spoke again for the
first time in more than 30 years.
When he arrived, all he possessed in the world was one middling -sized rucksack
and a carrier bag.
What surprised me the most was not the size of the rucksack but the contents of
the carrier bag. On his way, he had passed a Thai supermarket and so he had
thought it might be nice for him to buy the ingredients that he could cook us a
Thai supper this evening. (Anyone who wants to cook in a Jesuit community is
always a welcome guest!)
And as he cooked, we chatted. And I told him that, having feared for him when he
left us and more so when he left the family business for the second time,
believing that he would become a lost soul and never find his place in the
World, I told him how it delighted me to see that he was obviously happy to have
given the best of himself to the people in this world who needed him most. I
told him that he lived out the dream of every faithful Jesuit, truly to pick up
his own unique individual cross and carry it into the Kingdom.
He smiled at me, looked me very straight in the eyes and said, ‘yes, I know.”
Like I said, he is the richest man I know.
Let us pray that each of us may find our place in the world, however long it
takes. And let us pray also to be patient with our discernments: it is only
through searching with a divine discontent through all that does not ultimately
satisfy our longing for God’s way in the world that we come finally to know what
is truly our vocation.
Let us stand and profess our Faith in God,
who gives us the only True and ultimate wealth there is.
Paul O'Reilly SJ <poreillysj@jesuit.org.uk>
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4.
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2024-10-13 Homily
Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B
Isaiah 53:10-11/ Psalm 33/ Hebrews 4:14-16/ Mark 10:35-45
“ ‘Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Jesus answered him, ‘Why do you call me good?
No one is good but God alone.’ ”
A bit of a “testy” answer it seems.
And a bit of a quandary in it too!
We know Jesus is Good, We know he is God.
The commentary suggested
that Jesus may have been responding to a bit of flattery.
If flattery, then what is this person seeking?
When Jesus listed the commandments
concerning how we treat one another
the person before him responds
"Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth."
Does it sound like the person is seeking to be perfect? ... Maybe ...
But the gospel goes on:
“Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,
‘You are lacking in one thing.
Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven;
then come, follow me.’"
What is Jesus doing here?
Jesus,
Looked ...
loved ...
And said,
"You are lacking in one thing.”
go, ... give ... , Then come, follow me."
Out of love,
Jesus is inviting this person into the family of the Gospel,
Inviting this person into a relationship of love
beyond trying to be “Good” by just the following commands.
Commandments are a good start,
and are basic for community life,
but Jesus invites the person
into the fullness of a relationship with him in God!
It is more than knowing what God says, it is knowing God,
It is more than knowing about Jesus, it is knowing Jesus!
It says he goes away sad ... Maybe, Just like most of us,
this person needed time to wrestle with the invitation,
and then later return ... to became a disciple!
This person could have been one of the later disciples,
like Paul, Barnabas, Philip, Mary or Martha!
We, often enough, slide into a pattern of seeking perfection,
in our faith.
The rules seem a tempting way to achieve this,
but cannot in themselves lead us
to where our heart desires to be.
Because, our holiness is not in our seeking perfection,
but rather in being loved, forgiven, and blessed in Jesus.
One might inherit eternal life
by living the commandments as best they can,
but God wants so much more for us!
We are created to love and to be loved.
Jesus is God’s personal invitation to enter life fully,
As Jesus said elsewhere,
“I have come that you might have life and have it to the full”
Jesus’ “testy” response and challenging invitation
points us to the deeper and complete answer to the question
That the one who approached Jesus asked.
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
In Jesus, we become more than disciples,
more than apostles,
more than members of a church.
We become family with, in, and through Jesus
in the very living God, Who is love! Eternal life, is knowing Jesus, who is
truly Good,
and truly God, who invites us to become family in him,
As he assures us:
"Amen, I say to you,
there is no one who has given up house
or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the gospel
who will not receive
a hundred times more NOW in this present age:
houses and brothers and sisters
and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions,
AND eternal life in the age to come."
John Boll OP
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5.
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Volume 2 is for you. Your thoughts, reflections, and insights on the next
Sundays readings can influence the preaching you hear. Send them to
preacherexchange@att.net. Deadline is Wednesday Noon. Include your Name, and
Email Address.
-- Fr. John
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