Daily Reflections: September 29 - October 5
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(September 29, 2024: Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time)
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“Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, Amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.”
When we think of serving the Lord, we probably – however unconsciously – image doing something great, something wonderful and/or something awe-inspiring for God or for others. Maybe yes, maybe no.
In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales observed:
“You must be ready to suffer many great afflictions for our Lord, even martyrdom itself. Resolve to give God whatever you hold dearest if it should please Him to take it from you – father, mother, brother, husband, wife, child, your eyesight, perhaps even your very life itself. Prepare your heart for any and all such sacrifices as these. However, if divine Providence does not send you great, piercing afflictions and does not demand your eyesight of you, be willing to give god a few of your hairs. What I am suggesting is that we must bear patiently the slight injuries, the little inconveniences and the inconsequential losses that come your way on a daily basis. By means of such little things as these – borne with great love and affection – you will completely win God’s heart and make it all your own.”
“Little acts of charity, a headaches toothache or cold, the bad humor of a husband or wife, a shattered glass, this contempt or that scorn, loss of a pair of gloves, a ring or a handkerchief, the inconveniences associated with going to bed early and getting up early to pray or receive Holy Communion, the feeling of awkwardness one experiences in performing certain acts of devotion in public: – in short, all such trials as these – when accepted and embraced with love – are highly pleasing to God’s mercy. For a single cup of water, God has promised to his faithful a sea of endless bliss. Since such opportunities present themselves each and every moment, it will be a great means of storing up vast spiritual riches if you learn how to use them well.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 35)
What is the moral to the image of offering something as simple as a cup of water to somebody else because we belong to Christ? When it comes to “Living Jesus”, ordinary things add up - little things mean a lot!
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(September 30, 2024: Jerome, Priest/Doctor of the Church)
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“Do not prevent him, for whoever is not against you is for you.”
“How offensive to God are rash judgments!” says St. Francis de Sales. “The judgments of the children of men are rash because they are not the judges of one another, and when they pass judgment on others, they usurp the office of our Lord...if an action has many difference aspects, we must always think of the one which is best.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 28)
These words of de Sales would have been very good advice for the disciple John in today's Gospel when he asks Jesus to stop a man from expelling demons in His name “because he does not follow in our company”. They are in fact very similar to the advice Jesus himself gives John: “Do not try to stop him. Anyone who is not against you is with you.” John is not the only one who could profit from this advice. Many of us could too.
These words of Jesus and St. Francis de Sales remind us that all those who do the work of Jesus belong to Him, whether they are “of our company” or not. We should avoid the tendency to presume the worst of those who are not of our tribe or group. We should focus less on denominational labels and more on the actions, spirit, and attitudes of fellow followers of Christ, without in any way diminishing our faith. Most of all, these remind us that if there is any trace of prejudice or bigotry remaining in our hearts against members of other religions, we should rid ourselves of such burdens…and of such blindness.
God needs you and me - and Christians everywhere - to be His prophets. Prophets in the Biblical sense typically arise at a time when society has stopped listening to what God says. Biblical prophets speak “on behalf of God”. They do not tell others what will happen; they tell them what should happen. They don’t predict the future; they describe and diagnose the present. They tell others what God wants and what God says.
· God needs you and me to stand up and be counted on the values of the Gospel.
· God needs you and me to tell others that God wants peace, not war; life, not death; love, not hate; concern for the other, not preoccupation with self; freedom, not license; truth, not political correctness; justice for all, not discrimination.
In the words of St. Francis de Sales, God needs us to “often speak of God in familiar conversation with our...friends and neighbors.” (Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, Chapter.26) And “if the world holds us to be fools,” because we are behaving like prophets, “let us hold the world to be mad.” (Ibid, Part IV, Ch.1)
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(October 1, 2024: Therese of the Child Jesus Virgin\/Doctor of the Church)
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The disciples James and John asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?’ Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village.”
In his commentary on this passage from the Gospel of Luke, William Barclay observed:
“There is no passage in which Jesus so directly teaches the duty of tolerance as in this. In many ways, tolerance is a lost virtue and often where it does exist, it exists for the wrong reason.”
“There are many ways to God. God has his own secret stairway into every heart. God fulfills himself in many ways, and no person or church has a monopoly on God’s truth. But our tolerance must be based not upon indifference but on love. We ought to be tolerant not because we could not care less, but because we look at the other person with the eyes of love. When Abraham Lincoln was criticized for being too courteous to his enemies and reminded that it was his duty to destroy them, he gave the great answer, ‘Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?’”
Recall the aphorism of St. Francis de Sales: “We attract more flies with a teaspoon of honey that with a barrel full of vinegar.” Tolerance is not merely the practice of putting up with others. Rather, tolerance is a decision to accept – dare we say, even celebrate - others where and how they are.
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(October 2, 2024: Holy Guardian Angels)
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“Their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father…”
God not only calls us to live a holy life, but God also provides us with the means to live that life – what Francis de Sales calls “aids” – and to help us to become holy people. In a conference (“On Constancy”) given to the Sisters of the Visitation, Francis de Sales remarked:
“The aids that God gives to us are intended to help us to keep steadily on our way, to prevent our falling, or, if we fall, to help us to get back up again. Oh, with what openness, cordiality, sincerity, simplicity and faithful confidence ought we to dialogue with these aids, which are given to us by God to help us in our spiritual progress. Certainly, this is true in the case of our good angels. We ought to look upon them in the same way, since our good angels are called angel guardians because they are commissioned to help us by their inspirations, to defend us in perils, to reprove us when we err and to stimulate us in the pursuit of virtue. They are charged to carry our prayers before the throne of the majesty, goodness and mercy of Our Lord and to bring back to us the answers to our petitions. The graces, too, which God bestows on us, He gives through the intervention or intercession of our good angels. Now, other aids are our visible good angels, just as our holy angel guardians are our invisible ones. Other aids do visibly what our good angels do inwardly, for they warn us of our faults; they encourage us when we are weak and languid; they stimulate us in our endeavors to attain perfection; they prevent us from falling by their goods counsels, and they help us to rise up again when we have fallen over some precipice of imperfection or fault. If we are overwhelmed with weariness and disgust, they help us to bear our trouble patiently, and they pray to God to give us strength so to bear it so as not to be overcome by temptation. See, then, how much we ought to value their assistance and their tender care for us …” (Conference III, pp. 41-42)
In the mind of Francis de Sales, God provide us with invisible support for our journey in this life through those “aids” known as “angel guardians”. It’s safe to say that some of the most visible ‘aids’ that God uses to provide support for our journey in this life are known by another name: ‘friends’.
Today, how can we imitate the invisible example of the angel guardians by befriending one another in very visible ways?
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(October 3, 2024: Thursday, Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time)
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“He sent them ahead of him in pairs…”
Just two chapters into the Book of Genesis (2:18), we read, “It is not good for (the) man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him…”
Each and every one of us a unique expression and manifestation of the God in whose image and likeness we have been created. We are responsible for being ourselves – no one else can do it for us. We cannot ‘outsource” it to others. But even the God who created us, while One, is Three: Father, Son and Spirit. Within the Godhead there is something of both individuality and community at work at the same time.
While Francis de Sales challenges each one of us to “be who you are and to be that (perfectly) well,” we should not – we cannot – do that in a vacuum. We need community; we need one another. As John Donne so wisely observed, “No man is an island.” There are aspects and dimensions of our individuality that can only be recognized, claimed and developed within the context of being our individual selves in the context of relationships with others.
In today’s Gospel Jesus bemoans the fact that while the “harvest is abundant, the laborers are few.” From a cost-benefit analysis, Jesus could have covered a lot more ground by sending each member of his advance party out individually and alone. However, he deliberately chose to send them out in pairs. Jesus seems to be suggesting that companionship – kinship – is not a luxury associated with continuing to carry the Good News of Jesus Christ to others. It is essential.
In his Introduction to the Devout Life, (III, 8, 146-147) Francis wrote:
“We must march on as a band of brothers (and sisters), companions united in meekness, peace and love.”
What’s the bottom line? If you are serious about “Living Jesus” – if you are serious about being who you are and being that (perfectly) well – don’t even think of doing it alone.
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(October 4, 2024: Francis of Assisi)
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Today we celebrate the life and legacy of St. Francis of Assisi. In his book entitled This Saint’s for You, Thomas J. Craughwell wrote:
“It is the rare Christian who does not get all syrupy about St. Francis of Assisi’s love or animals. Blame it on all those garden statues of Francis with a bunny curled up at his feet and little birds chirping on his shoulder. In real life, Francis’ view of animals was theological rather than sentimental. Animals form part of God’s creation, and, as the Book of Genesis tells us, everything in creation is good. No doubt Francis loved bunnies and birds, but he also loved spiders and snakes – and that is the challenge. Francis saw the world as an immense God-ordered system in which everything plays the role assigned to it by the Creator, and therefore every creature, whether it’s cute and cuddly or not, has value.” (This Saint’s for You, p. 31)
“One story in particular spotlights Francis’ belief in restoring the balance between man and beast. The town of Gubbio was plagued by a ferocious wolf that had carried off lambs, calve and other livestock – it had even killed small children. Afraid that the wolf would attack them, the people refused to travel outside the city walls. Declaring he was not afraid, Francis went outside the town in search of the wolf and hadn’t gone very far when he found the creature. ‘Brother Wolf,’ said Francis, ‘you have been stealing livestock that does not belong to you and frightening your neighbors. In the name of the Lord of Heaven, I command you to stop.’ The wolf drooped its head and lay on the ground at Francis’ feet. The Saint then turned to the townspeople, saying, ‘Brother Wolf will not trouble you or your animals, but in return you must feed him every day.’ The people of Gubbio agreed, and every day the wolf came to town for a meal. He became the town’s unofficial pet, and when he died the heartbroken townspeople had a sculpture of him carved and placed over the door of one of the town’s churches, where it remains to this day.” (This Saint’s for You, pp. 31-32)
In the case of Francis of Assisi, Jesus sent him out - literally - as a lamb to confront a wolf. In all our lives there are many things in life with which we must deal - some of them “cute and cuddly,” others life-threatening. Jesus gave him the power he needed to deal with any number of challenges, both ordinary and extraordinary.
And so we pray: God, help us to follow the example of Francis of Assisi (for whom St. Francis de Sales was named). Give us the power to combat things we experience as fearsome or ferocious with confidence, patience, gentleness and love.
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(October 5, 2024: Saturday, Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time)
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“I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know.”
When you really think about it, it is somewhat presumptuous to speak to God, to ask God questions, to seek God’s favor or to suggest to God that there might be betters ways of doing things. After all, as the reading from the Book of Job reminds us, who has a greater resume than God?
This is the essence of the Salesian tradition’s understanding of humility, of littleness and of ordinariness. We stand speechless in the presence of such an awesome God. We stand in awe of how God transforms us from being nothing – in his eyes, at least – to being everything! We hear with Mary’s exclamation in the Magnificat: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed. The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
In the opinion of St. Francis de Sales, this overwhelming realization of our littleness in the face of God’s greatness should not result in helplessness or complacence; rather, it should express itself in our practice of (1) gratitude, and (2) generosity. Put another way, returning thanks to God for all that God has given us is best expressed in our willingness to share what we have received from God with others.
So, what is our takeaway from today’s selection from the Book of Job? Perhaps, many a day the essence of our prayer should be less about how to speak to God and more about listening to God, specifically, how deeply God loves us and desires that we love one another. If we should need to answer God, consider using these words: “Thank you”.
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