Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

 

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT   C   2025  1

 

 

The Gospel tells of the account of the woman caught in the act of adultery.  This Gospel is one of the most graphic Gospel accounts of the mercy of Jesus Christ that leads to new life.  The take-home message for us is that this Gospel story is not about adultery.  It is about forgiveness -- God’s forgiveness. It is a moment of mercy, redemption and transformation.

 

The Lenten season calls us to repentance.  This has been the theme of our journey of forty days.  What is repentance?  Repentance is not something we do; but it is allowing the forgiving power of God to touch our lives and to lead us along new paths.

 

In this Johannine Gospel account, we actually have two trials going on at the same time.  The first and most important trial:  the prosecutors in the persons of the Pharisees are putting Jesus to the test -- will Jesus uphold the Law of Moses -- dealing the death penalty to adulterers or not?  It is Jesus who is on trial.  He is the enemy, the heretic, the threat to the Pharisees and scribes who consider themselves the holders of God’s prophecies and promises.  The trap is set to prove that Jesus is not who he claims to be.

 

It’s a “Catch 22 dilemma.”  If the Lord upholds capital punishment, the people will see him as unmerciful and hard-hearted.  If He sides with pardon or acquittal, the Pharisees will convict him of infidelity to the Law of Moses.  That’s one trial going on.  However, as we see, this is a trap that ultimately reveals the mercy of Jesus.

 

The second is that of the woman herself who has been dragged from her bed of infidelity and brought before this public trial.  Jesus has suddenly been called upon to the acting judge of her case.  Jesus then bends down and began to write on the ground with his finger.  The silence of Jesus must have been deafening as the crowd waited for a verdict.  The scribes and Pharisees rattled on, persisting in their judgments and condemnations.  Then Jesus stands and utters those memorable words: “Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Then he stooped down and continued to write on the ground while beginning with the eldest, the wisest, the most experienced, one by one they walked away.  One by one they leave, knowing that none of them is sinless.

 

Then we hear the compassionate words of Jesus: “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  She replied, “No one, sir.”  Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.  From now on, sin no more.”

 

We do not know this woman’s name, or what happened to her.  Though some have claimed that this woman was Mary Magdalene or even Mary of Bethany, there is really no evidence to identify her.  With certainty she is a distinct person with her own history and her own life; yet she is also symbolic of every person who stands in need of compassion.  She is you, me, all of us.

 

Notice carefully the authority Jesus exercised.  He acted not as her judge.  He acted as her Savior.  Our God is not a God of condemnation.  Our God is a God of mercy and compassion.

 

Jesus did not wish that this woman be imprisoned by the mistakes of her past.  Our God is a God of second chances.  This Gospel is not too good to be true.  It is what we believe.

 

Can you imagine what your life or my life would be like if we were prisoners of the worst mistake we ever made?  Who among us can say that we have not done some dumb things in our life? 

 

Our God is not a God of condemnation.  He is a God of mercy and forgiveness and compassion.  This is what this gospel account is all about.  In contrast to the values of society, the Gospel proclaims the mercy of Jesus to save this woman and to enable her to turn her life toward a God of love.

 

Jesus did not claim that the woman did not sin, he simply does not condemn her for it --- and even more Jesus saves her from self-righteous accusers.  Please God, may we in the name of Jesus never ever be the verbal equivalent of the stone-throwing scribes and Pharisees.  Rather, may we as the disciples of Jesus witness to God’s healing love in the lives of people.

 

When Jesus forgives, He does not condemn.  He does not remember.  He makes all things new.  He gives life when all seems dead.  Jesus offers her something greater -- a new beginning.  This is the essence of His mission: not to destroy sinners but to save them.

 

Jesus calls us to change our hearts. Sometimes, we think our righteousness and the law of God give us the right to judge others.  But in the gospel, Jesus shows us another way.

Jesus teaches that the life of a sinner is more important than the law. The woman caught in adultery broke the rules, and there’s no denial of that. But Jesus believes in giving second chances, even when the law does not.

He invites us to turn to Him with open hearts and pray with the prophet Isaiah, the apostle Paul, and the anonymous woman of the Gospel: “The Lord has done great things for me.  I am filled with joy.”

 

 

Jesus ‘s response to the forgiven woman challenges us in two ways:

 

·      To be merciful – Instead on making judgements and falling into the trap of gossip, Jesus calls us to bring people closer to God with love and mercy.

 

·      To seek conversion –Jesus tells the woman to sin no more.  God’s mercy is not a free pass to continue in sin but an invitation to change.  True repentance is to take on the mind and heart of Jesus.

 

We go forward as forgiven sinners, as sons and daughters of a loving God, and as the disciples of Jesus. 

 

Have a blessed day.

 

 

We celebrate the failures that make us grow. Our mantra is to forgive the past and focus on the present.

 

Third Sunday of Lent  C   2025

The Scriptures are a tale of two trees: the tree that Moses encountered as the burning bush that is on fire but is not consumed, and in the Gospel the parable of the barren fig tree that yields no fruit.

In the Gospel parable, an orchard owner orders his gardener to chop down a sadly unproductive fig tree. The gardener advises him to leave it one more year and see if, with some tending, it will bear fruit. Give it one more chance.

Who does the heartless orchard owner represent? We always assume that it is God.  But, on the contrary, Jesus is not the orchard owner but the gardener, asking mercy for the disobedient fig tree. Each one of us is that fig tree in the parable.  We are the recipients of the mercy of Jesus.

 After three years of waiting, the owner of the vineyard was ready to give up on the tree. Things were not on schedule. It’s time to bail out and cut the tree down. The gardener begs the owner to be patient. Things will turn around. Give it one more year. I will dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.

So too, our growth doesn’t always happen on schedule. In the parable, the gardener knows an extremely important piece of wisdom about life. Everything in life doesn’t run according to schedule. Plain and Simple. No one disagrees with this truth, but it is easy to forget in given situations.

Isn’t it true we have been struggling with our same life issues over many years?  Our discipleship of the Lord Jesus is on our unique schedule and that schedule is more than a bit messy.

The Gospel parable of the fig tree is a story about not giving up on ourselves and not giving up on the Church. It is about growing from the experiences of life. It is about failures that make us grow.

Who of us can’t identify with this parable?

Who of us can possibly claim that we have not at times been that barren fig tree – the one who disappointed everyone’s else’s expectations, the slow learner in a sea of confusion, the one who took years to see through a thing and change it, the latecomer to responsibility and maturity, one who has already come up short in our Lenten resolves, the one who is still carrying a grudge that should have been let go of long ago, the one who hasn’t walked the talk of Gospel forgiveness.

 

What are the failures in your life that have helped you to grow?  You would think that by this time in life I would have figured out the right balance between personal prayer and the various activities and ministries in life; you would think that I would have the right balance with spending time with family and my commitment to ministry and the need for relaxation to reenergize myself.  You would think that by this time in life I would be more patient and forgiving.  You would think by this time I would have figured out to keep my golf ball in the middle of the fairway.

But I, like most of us, are a work in progress and will always be a work in progress.

Today’s Gospel parable challenges us to reflect on patience and forgiveness – probably a need for many of us.   First, we have to have patience and forgiveness with ourselves.  We need to allow ourselves the invitation to consider that our failures will help us grow.  We need to allow ourselves to experience God’s unending love for us even though we are not always worthy of God’s love.

Further, we need to share this love and forgiveness with others.  Among our families and friends, there may be someone we have given up on.  The divide is too wide.  They have continually failed to meet our expectations.  The grudge may be permanent, or the injury may have cut so deeply, that amputation seems to be the only resolution.

The Gospel parable calls us to be nonjudgmental.  I am to accept others for where they are at this time in their lives.  Each of us “blooms or bears fruit” in his or her own time, some early, some later on in life.  The fig tree inspires us to patience.

Listen again to the Gospel parable, although the fruitless tree had yielded nothing in three years, the gardener implores: “Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it: it may bear fruit in the future.”

The Gospel provides new hope and invites us to always try again.  Forgive the past and look to the future.

 

In spite of the whole history of humankind to the contrary, we still think life should be painless.  We still have a hard accepting that most growth, most progress, most good things in life come out of some pain.

 

May our two mantras today be:  May our failures help to grow.  Secondly, forgive the past and look   to the future.

Thankfully the God of today’s Gospel parable and the God of the burning bush doesn’t give up on us. God is a God of second and third chances. God’s burning bush of love is within us. Jesus the patient gardener calls us to bear fruit. Yes, this Lenten season is about conversion. It is about growing in our relationship with God. It is about repentance and bearing fruit that enables us to grow more fully into a Gospel way of living.

Some of us in the spiritual journey have a spiritual companion or a soul friend, a trusted person with whom we can share the secrets of our hearts. What a gift to have that kind of a friend. But in a deeper sense, life itself is our best spiritual director. In our lives, we are standing on holy ground. What makes that ground holy? God is present in the burning bush of his love that is within us, and God is present to us in the burning bushes of the circumstances of our lives. Even when we seem like the barren fig tree, when we are overwhelmed by the struggles, be assured that Jesus, the patient gardener goes with us and invites us to take the risk of being vulnerable, in trusting that his love for us is unending. May we have the grace of spiritual sightedness to recognize the holy ground of God’s love on which we are standing?

 

 

Have a blessed day.

 

 

 

   

 

                                      

May we like Jesus have total trust in our heavenly Father.

 

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT  C  2025

 

There is the story of the famous scientist Einstein who was on a train in Europe.  The conductor asked him for his ticket.  He checked his pockets and then his wallet and he wasn’t able to come with it.  Then the conductor, seeing Einstein’s frustration in not being able to find his ticket, said:  “Don’t worry Mr.  Einstein, we trust you.”  Sometime later, the conductor returned to the train car and saw Einstein now on his knees looking for the ticket under his seat.  The conductor again told Einstein not to worry about it.

Einstein responded:  “Thank you, but I need the ticket to remind me where I’m supposed to be going.”

In a similar way, we need the Lenten season to focus us spiritually on where we are going,  on the meaning and direction of our lives as well.  Lent is a time when we, like Jesus, are led by the Spirit into the desert -- into the depths of ourselves, into our inner wilderness, so to speak, away from the world of achievements.

We were marked with ashes this past Wednesday as Lent formally began. These ashes acknowledge that we all belong to the order of penitents.  We all confess that we are sinners, and we stand in need of the Lord’s healing forgiveness.  The light of Christ that is within us has been dimmed by the darkness of our sin.   We acknowledge this reality with these ashes.  We were given the mantra to:  Repent and believe in the Gospel.

God led the people of Israel into the desert, to forge them into a new people.  The Spirit led Jesus into the desert to clarify the meaning of his Messiahship.  The Spirit leads us into the desert of Lent to reflect on how we have not always resisted temptation and have failed to love.  In the desert we seek mercy and forgiveness.  Lent is God’s gift to us to become more aware that we are God’s redeemed and forgiven people.

May our mantra for the Lenten season be the words spoken to us as ashes were placed on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday:  “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”

In the Lenten season,  we are led by the Holy Spirit into the desert to experience fasting and self-denial and to be tempted and to be tested by the devil.  As disciples of the Lord Jesus, we are tested; we are tried during the Lenten season to gauge our commitment of turning away from sin and being faithful to the Gospel.  How do we deal with the Lenten call to embrace spiritual disciplines?  What fasting are we willing to embrace in the Lenten season?  What spiritual discipline of prayer can we make a commitment to?  What almsgiving, what are willing to tithe in the service of others?

The story of Jesus’ temptations reveals to us the deepest thing about him:  he had total trust in his heavenly Father.  Jesus turned to the Word of God in the face of temptation and expressed his trust, his obedience to God’s plan for him. 

This Lent, into which desert are you being led into by the desert?  May we like Jesus have total trust in our loving Father even in the midst of the crosses and struggles of life.

My hope for myself and for you is that you will encounter the Lord in prayer this Lenten season.  May this encounter fill you with joy and inner peace.  Make a decision, for example, to pray the Stations of the Cross on the Friday Evenings of Lent with other parishioners, experience the merciful love of Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation on Saturday afternoons or on the diocesan day of penance on Wednesday, April 2nd, participate in our parish retreat on March 17,18, 19^th on the theme of becoming a Listening, Missionary Church, and celebrate the Eucharist more frequently during Lent.

May our Lenten prayer further motivate ourselves to share the merciful love of Jesus with others.  Participate in one of the corporal works of mercy:  Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless.  Make a difference in the lives of people in need.

For example, the rationale behind your generosity to operation rice bowl is that our Lenten sacrifices become the source of hope and change for some of our poorest brothers and sisters around the world.  May our Lenten spiritual disciplines lead us to share what we have with those who are hungry and in need of our generosity.

Yes, we are called to make a difference as the disciples of Jesus.  What commitment will I make that will enhance the world, aid the poor, and provide resources for building up the kingdom of justice, love, and peace?

 

The Stations of the Cross describe the stages of the suffering and death of Jesus.  As we experience the stations of the cross of illness, of death, of brokenness in our own stories, may we too get the help of Simon of Cyrene and be strengthened by the love of Mary our mother.  As for Jesus, our own stations of the cross are our way of discipleship.

Yes, there are demons; there is sinfulness in our lives that we seek to turn away from.  Yes, we encounter Satan in the desert of our inner wilderness.  But that is not the end of our Lenten journey.  The real purpose of our Lenten spiritual disciplines is that we are to encounter God in the desert of Lent.  May we allow ourselves to believe in His love.

The Lenten desert is about wrestling with the demons of our life; but the Lenten season is also about conversion; it is our retreat in which we encounter God with blessed and grateful hearts.  We embrace the spiritual disciplines of lent – we embrace prayer, fasting, almsgiving – so that we are clearly place God as first in our lives.

May we encounter the God who loves us in our Lenten journey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are called to be a Church of Mercy.

 

EIGHTH SUNDAY IN OT C  2025

 

Jesus opens today’s Gospel account with a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person?  Will not both fall into a pit?  This leads us to ask what blindness Jesus is talking about?

I suggest we need to be aware of the dangers of spiritual blindness.  I suggest for our prayer today we see the blind guides that Jesus refers to are people who don’t know their own need for mercy, who have not experienced mercy, and who therefore cannot act with mercy.

We see in our Eucharistic Liturgy how we humbly ask for the mercy of our forgiving God.  The Penitential Rite is part of the beginning of our Eucharistic celebration.  For us to enter into the mystery of God’s presence among us, we first acknowledge our need for the healing forgiveness of Good.  Then before receiving Communion, we humbly pray: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the Word and my soul shall be healed.”

The genuineness of our discipleship of the Lord Jesus is dependent upon our humility and our humble recognition that we need the mercy of a forgiving God, and we are to share this mercy with others.

The cross of Jesus is His great act of love for us.  In the cross, we encounter the mercy, the forgiveness, and the love of Jesus for us.

Please God, may we always be aware that we are sinners who stand in need of a forgiving, healing God.  As we approach Ash Wednesday, the ashes to be placed on our foreheads announce that the light of Christ that is burning within us is dimmed.  It has been darkened by sin symbolized by the ashes on our foreheads.

On an international scale, the wars in the Middle East and In Ukraine show the effect show the effect of sin on an international scale.  War is the result of hearts that are not filled with the merciful, forgiving love of our God.

With the ashes that we will receive on Ash Wednesday, we are confessing and announcing we stand in need of God’s forgiveness.  Further, we commit ourselves to the penitential season so that we will be reconciled with God and so prepare ourselves for the joy of Easter.  The blessed ashes that we receive are blessed ashes, holy ashes, and they hold the promise of cleansing protection and, most importantly, the promise of resurrection.

Our upcoming Lenten journey invites us to become more aware of our inner life, our spiritual life before God.  The Lenten season invites us to accept the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and self-denial.  The purpose of these spiritual disciplines is to lead us to conversion, to place God first in our lives.  In following these spiritual disciplines, we come to know the Gospel good news.  The Good News is precisely this:  it tells us about a God who gives first, loves first, who loves unconditionally, and who loves us whether we deserve it or not.

Pope Francis in his Lenten message to us invites us to reflect on jubilee theme of making our Lenten journey as pilgrims of hope.  Yes, we are pilgrims as we journey through the forty of lent and even more than that, we are pilgrims in the journey of life.  May we journey together as pilgrims of hope.  May we always know deep in our hearts that we are the recipients of the hope that comes from our experience of the merciful love of Jesus deep in our hearts.  As pilgrims of hope, we are to be a Church of Mercy.

The conversion we seek is to be a Church of mercy.  Our world torn by the effects of war needs to experience the mercy of God in the world, and in our personal lives we need to encounter a God who loves us unconditionally and calls us to a Church of mercy, a Church of welcome.

For the 3^rd consecutive Sunday, the Gospel has been taken for Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Mount.  The last two Sundays we have been invited to reflect on what to do.  The Beatitudes call us to a way of life in which our values are turned upside down.  “Blessed are the Poor; Blessed are they who hunger; Blessed are they who mourn.” These people are most in touch with the spiritual dimension of life.  They more clearly know their need for God’s grace.

Last Sunday the Gospel called us to love even our enemies.  That doesn’t come naturally for any one of us.  It’s not in our genes.  It is only with the grace of God and the example of Jesus Himself that we are empowered to love our enemies.

This Sunday’s Gospel tells us how we can live our discipleship of Christ Jesus in which we are called to love our enemies.  Where the Gospel last week dealt with action toward others, this Sunday’s Gospel calls to reflect and to reach deeper:  to the wellspring of eternal life that is found in the human heart.  Get the heart right, Jesus seems to be saying, and all else will follow.

Plain and simple, the conversion we seek must come from the inside.  We need to be aware of our inner life, our interior life if we are to live out the Gospel demands in our outer life.  Jesus in the Gospel proclaimed that a tree cannot bear good fruit unless the core of the trunk is solid.  “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.  For every three is known by its own fruit.”  So too, a good person out of the store of the goodness in his heart produces good fruit, for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.

May our conversation come from the language of our heart – a heart that has experienced the merciful love of Jesus.    The last line of today’s Gospel is very telling:  “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” For us to be a Church of mercy, we need to know that our God calls us beyond our faults to be immersed in the mystery of His love for us.  May the conversion we experience at St. Joseph’s Church lead us to be a Church of mercy, a Church of welcome.

May God lead us to know His merciful love, and may we share this love with one and all.

Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.

 

Seventh Sunday in OT   C   2025

Last Sunday’s Gospel of the Beatitudes and this Sunday’s Gospel give us a radical profile in Kingdom Living – living by the Gospel values of the Kingdom of God.  Listen to the words of the Gospel:  “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

These Gospel injunctions go way over the top of reasonable expectations.  Jesus is saying:  Do to others as you would have them do to you and continue to do so to them no matter what they do to you.  These words challenge our human instincts and force us to ask:  Is this really possible?

This teaching may thin the crowd of Jesus’ followers.  It is a suggestion that  goes directly against common sense.  Love your enemies…Give to everyone who asks of you…Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

This shocking advice is not social naiveté.  It is theological courage of a high order.  Jesus has opted for the attitude of unconditional love rather than the attitude of reprisal and revenge.  Jesus calls us to move beyond the human logic of reciprocity to the divine logic of superabundance.  We are invited to be immersed in the grace of God.

 

This attitude of unconditional love of others only makes sense when we genuinely that we are loved unconditionally by the grace of God.

We are the disciples of Jesus who are called to Kingdom living following the values of the Gospel.  There are times for us as disciples of Jesus that following the law is just not enough.  Rather, we are to live immersed in the mystery of God’s love.

Example for us comes from with the law that makes it legal to have an abortion right to the moment of giving birth.  Quite bluntly, tragic law does not alter the sacredness of life.  This teaching of the Church is clear and unmistakable.

This tragic legislation does not change what Jesus Himself has taught:  All life is sacred.   When life is threatened in any way, whether by abortion, racism, violence, drug addiction or poverty, Catholics are called to speak   up and stand with those who are being oppressed.

What are we to do?  We the parishioners of the Church of the Holy Spirit must try to change the law but perhaps more importantly change the culture in which we live.  We do that by living lives that demonstrates our genuine respect for life through prayer, through supporting the agencies that support pregnant women with alternatives to abortion, and making our pro-life convictions known to our legislators.

No matter what laws are passed, we are to live our lives with Kingdom living, with Gospel living, with affirming that all life is sacred.  We need to begin with ourselves and with our families and with our parish family and affirm the dignity of all life as a precious gift of God. The conversion we seek must begin with ourselves.

Coming back to our Gospel, Jesus says:  Forgive and you will be forgiven.  Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing will be poured into your lap.  For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.  What does this mean?  Jesus is saying to us:  “Stop the crazy, endless slaughter of human life by stopping it in yourself.”

The conversion we seek must begin with ourselves.  As we seek to change the culture of death and abortion in society, we must root out within ourselves all that does not value the dignity of our own life, the dignity of the lives of those around us, and the dignity of all life.  May we value the precious, precious gift of pregnancy.  May we be supportive to the young families of our parish community.  May we value the life of each and every parishioner no matter how old or how young they are.

And as we seek to have zero tolerance for the horrific sin and crime of sexual abuse, may we value the sacredness and dignity of our own sexuality and the precious gift of sexuality with all people.  With God’s grace, may we seek to rid ourselves of the temptation to pornography, the temptation to exploit the sexuality of anyone.

The gospel imperative is that we are to begin with ourselves and to be witnesses of the mystery of God’s love in the way we live our lives.  The voting booth is important and a beautiful exercise of our citizenship, but as the disciples of Jesus we are called to witness to a culture of love and life by the way we live our lives from day to day, from moment to moment.

What is our response to the Gospel demand that are to love our enemies, that we are to do good to those who hate us?  It is our inner relationship to our loving God that determines our response to whatever is happening.  In other words, circumstances do not control us.  We are to embody the love of God that is within us

We ask for the grace to be freed from compulsive judgmental  reaction in the face of conflict.  We are free to embody the loved and loving identity that is our core.  “Loving enemies, blessing those who curse you, praying for those who persecute you, lending to those who cannot repay” are general imperatives for proactive, graceful living.

Now Jesus is challenging us to take God as our frame of reference and our criterion for action.  He is asking us to look at life not from our narrow human perspective but rather from God’s own perspective.  God is kind and merciful to both the righteous and the wicked.  And so in loving our enemies we can imitate the example of God.  We are to show kindness even when it is undeserved,

Our identity as the disciples of Jesus is to witness to the command of Jesus:  “By this all shall know that you are my disciples in your love for one another.”

 

Put God first; be generous; and seek justice and truth.

SIXTH SUNDAY IN OT  C  2025

It is incredible in Luke’s Gospel how Jesus consistently stood with the poor and marginalized.  Jesus is looking at us right in the eye when He says: “Blessed are you who are poor” and “Woe to you who are rich.”  Luke’s special concern for the poor, the marginal and the sinner are a central feature in Luke’s unique parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the widow and the unjust judge.  Zacchaeus the tax collector convinced Jesus of his conversion by promising to give half his possessions to the poor, and Jesus advised his wealthy contemporaries to be sure that their banquets were frequented by the poor, blind, crippled and lame.  This is a quick overview of the unique features of Luke’s Gospel.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us teaching on the Beatitudes, a teaching that turns worldly values upside down.  These words challenge us to reflect on what we seek in life – comfort and security in earthly things or deep trust in God’s promises.

The message of Jesus is radical.  He doesn’t just bless the poor, hungry, and suffering – He also pronounced woes on the rich, satisfied, and praised.

Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.  This is not just about material poverty, but a spirit of dependence on God.  Those who recognize their need for God are truly blessed.

Woe to you who are rich.  Jesus warns against placing our security in wealth, comfort, or social status.  Riches are not evil, but when they replace our trust in God, they become dangerous.

I suggest three simple ways to live this Gospel in our daily life.

·      Put God first.  Instead of relying on material success, cultivate a deeper relationship with God through prayer and trust.

·      Be generous.  Share your blessings with those in need.  Wealth is a gift meant to be used for the good of others.

·      Seek justice and truth.  Stand up for what is right, even when it’s unpopular.  The world may reject Gospel values, but Christ calls us to live life differently.

 

When we understand that ours are the only hands God can use to make a difference, our compassion will not let us rest until we go into action.  The commitment of the disciples may end up making them poor, but they will experience a blessedness that is priceless.  This is the blessedness that Jesus offers to those who live the Beatitudes in their lives from day to day.

What about ourselves as a parish community who seek to live out the Beatitudes in our lives?  How do hear those challenging words of Jesus:  Blessed are you who are poor.”  “Woe to you who are rich.”

Those of us who have been nourished well and received a decent education understand that we will never experience the poverty of our brothers and sisters who lack that foundation. Further, there is nothing virtuous about destitution and malnutrition.  This is certainly a far cry from blessedness.

The blessedness we seek, the conversion we seek is to commit ourselves to be agents of change in the way we share the blessings we enjoy.  The commitment we seek is to follow in the footsteps of Jesus who came to serve and not to be served, who washed the feet of his disciples and calls us to wash the feet of God’s poor.

The tire hits the road in our spiritual journey when we ask ourselves how much of the blessings of life that I enjoy am I willing to share with others?  What commitment will I make to building the ministries of our parish life?  Frankly, Jesus doesn’t give us much wiggle room.

From the prophet Jeremiah in the first reading and in our responsorial psalm, “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord.”  As our trust in the Lord is deepened, we experience a new freedom in sharing what was previously thought to be impossible. 

 The joy of the Lord we seek comes with a spirit of generosity.  The promise I always make is you will never regret your generosity in the service of others.  I have had the privilege of listening to many, many eulogies or Words of Remembrance in our funeral liturgies, I have never once heard a family member or a friend regret the deceased person’s generosity. 

As we think about our hopes and dreams for us as a parish community, we continue to dream about more and more becoming a listening, missionary Church.  We are a parish characterized by missionary outreach in support of St. Mary’s School in Tanzania.  We are missioned to continue to expand the ministry of Penfield Hope that started with just a few shelves of food in our office basement to now serving hundreds of families at its location at 1771 Penfield Road.  The expansiveness of Penfield Hope brings hope and food to urban food cupboard.  Our social outreach initiatives will continue to grow.

We support and empower St Joseph’s School to provide Catholic education for our youth.  Our school is a privileged opportunity to form and fashion our students after the mind and heart of Jesus. Our youth ministry is a major priority.  We are all in in providing faith formation and sacramental preparation for all our parishioners.  As a parish community, we engage in pastoral care to the hospitalized and for people in hurting moments of life.  We are planning in the Lenten season to provide adult educational opportunities that support the spiritual renewal of so many parishioners.  The list goes on and on.

The spirit of evangelization we seek is to further motivate ourselves to move beyond our comfort zone in serving the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the displaced, and all who are in need.  Pope Francis in his recent letter to the Bishops in the United States calls us to work closely with migrants and refugees, proclaiming Jesus Christ and promoting fundamental human rights.  The Pope continues: “God will richly reward all that you do for the protection and defense of those who are considered less valuable, less important or less human!

May our discipleship of the Lord Jesus Christ be characterized by a spirit of generosity that leads us to help build our parish community and leads to reach out in service to all our brothers and sisters.

Have a blessed day.

 

 

 

 

 

Today this passage is fulfilled in your hearing.

 

THIRD SUNDAY IN OT C 2025

 

We have all now heard his Inaugural Address.  He outlined for us what his priorities and emphases will be for the year.  He told us where he intends to focus his energies and efforts.   He challenged us to join him in achieving these goals.  The Inaugural address of which I speak is not that of the President of the United States.

It is the inaugural message of Jesus Christ as presented in today’s Gospel.  The message proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke is, however, every bit as much an Inaugural Address as were the words spoken by President Donald Trump.

 

Luke presents us with Jesus' first public speech at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.  Luke presents a summary - here at the very beginning of his account - of what Jesus and his ministry will be about: his vision, his priorities, his goals.

Like presidential inaugural addresses that include quotations from the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, the inaugural address of Jesus harkens back to founding principles.  He quotes two different places from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.

The Lord has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free,
And to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord."

 Jesus clearly spells out where this new ministry he was beginning would be directed:  He would proclaim good news to the poor who - in his time or ours - only seem to hear bad news.  He would be about the business of freeing captives and giving sight to the blind and helping the oppressed break free of all that held them bound.  He would show people what an acceptable time to the Lord looked like.

In his Inaugural Address, Jesus clearly announces that his Gospel
…will be social,
…it will be focused outward on others,
…it will seek to build the Lord's justice.

Jesus then sits down, and, in words that launch his great mission of liberation, he says: ‘This text is being fulfilled today in your hearing’ (Lk 4:21). The words of Isaiah serve as Jesus’ manifesto. He has come to replace the old Jewish love of law with a new law of love and inaugurate the greatest revolution in human history.

 

Jesus’ mission leads him to challenge head-on the values of society. The afflictions of the poor, then as now, were, in large measure, caused by repression, discrimination and exploitation by the rich and powerful, the upholders of the status quo. Jesus directs his mission to those who had been ignored or pushed aside: to the sick, segregated on cultic grounds; to tax-collectors, excluded on political and religious grounds; and to public sinners, despised and rejected on moral grounds. In his compassionate outreach to these outcasts, Jesus embodies God’s kingly rule. This is good news for them as it means the end of their misery and the introduction of a new order of social relationships that includes them. Indeed, for Jesus no one is excluded from the love of God ‘who causes his sun to rise on bad people as well as good and sends rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike’ (Mt 5:45).

 

Some theologians have argued that Jesus did not have a social or political agenda, that he wanted to change hearts not social structures. However, as the noted Scripture scholar, Tom Wright, points out, in the Judaism of Jesus’ day religion and politics were inseparable. As his contemporaries would have expected, Jesus sought to bring God’s kingly rule to bear on every aspect of human life. In the ‘Our Father’ he taught his disciples to pray: ‘Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt 6:10). The Kingdom proclaimed and enacted by Jesus was not merely the personal reign of God’s spirit in the souls of individuals. Jesus was launching a spiritual and social revolution that would turn Israel and the world up-side-down. He wanted to establish God’s reign of justice, peace, truth and love in Israel and (through Israel) among all peoples.

 

Jesus lived, died and rose again in order to establish God’s loving rule on earth, and the task of his disciples is to continue that work. In the words of Pope Francis, the mission of the Church is ‘to proclaim and establish among all peoples the kingdom of Christ and of God’. This mission entails the integral transformation of the world in which we live.

 

But we do not carry out this mission as isolated individuals. As our Second Reading from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians reminds us, we are the Body of Christ, and it is as the Body of Christ that we continue Jesus’ mission. The different gifts received by the members of the Church from the Holy Spirit complement one another, and, when properly used, build up the unity of the Church and serve its mission. The synodal process, launched by Pope Francis over four years ago, and which must be continued, provides us with a graced opportunity to deepen our sense of being the Body of Christ, and to collaborate more effectively with one another in the service of the Church’s mission. It is only when the Church really functions as the Body of Christ – when all its members are truly open to the divine Spirit and to one another – that it becomes a credible sign and instrument of God’s reign of love and justice.

 

This week we celebrate Catholic Schools’ week.  In particular, we celebrate St Joseph’s School whose mission is to educate our children after the mind and heart of Jesus.  We believe that education without God is an incomplete education.  At our school, we celebrate the spiritual dimension of life.  Each day our students pray with much gratitude for the blessings of their life.  They are missioned to be kind, to be loving, to be forgiving.  My favorite part of going to Wegman’s is reading the sign above their suggestion box:  We listen, we care.  So too, our students are taught to listen and to care for one another in a way that values the human dignity of each student who is a beloved son or daughter of God.

 

So, we pray: ‘Lord, make us instruments of your peace, justice and love in our deeply divided and wounded world.’

 

Have a Blessed Day.