Listen To The Call !

As Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers,
Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew,
casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.
He said to them,
"Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men."
At once they left their nets and followed him.
He walked along from there and saw two other brothers,
James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.
He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father
and followed him.

Today is the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle. He was Peter's older brother and very close to Jesus.  He was called from his vocation as a fisherman to become a fisher of men. He went on to teach and preach in the Black Sea area including Georgia and Romania. He was martyred by being crucified on an "X" shaped cross, the exact date is not known but it is believed he died in the mid to late first century AD. 

I have always found it amazing that when the apostles were called, that they dropped everything and followed Jesus. You have to wonder as well why Jesus picked these twelve very ordinary men?  Today we advertise an open position and collect resumes, interview acceptable candidates once, twice, and maybe even three times. We meet with our supervisors and discuss the applicants and decide on the one that absolutely most closely fits the position. This is not how Jesus operated. You would think that he would have scoured the temple and picked the wisest of the teachers and rabbis that he could find there.  But no, he picked fisherman and even a tax collector and he picked one man that he knew would betray him. He started with a team that was first of all pious.  They would have been men that followed their religion.  They would have been trained by their fathers in the ways of Yahweh and the Law.  But formal training, the kind that the leaders of the temple would have had, would not be for them.  So, Jesus would have a team of men with what we might term as an eighth-grade education, they would know just enough to keep themselves out of trouble.  Jesus was starting with a blank canvas and through the next three years what beautiful works he would make of these twelve ordinary people of the earth.  One canvas, no less beautiful than the others, would become torn when he betrayed the Lord, but even this was planned for and expected. 

We too are called by Jesus and once again he could have chosen another, wiser, smarter, better-looking person than you or I but he didn't.  Just as He did with the twelve he chose us because of who we are and not because of what we know or who we knew or what levels of education we had.  Some of us would be better schooled than others, but some of the others would have gifts and talents that could not be acquired in any school and He would use them too.  Our calling to be a fisher of men has been issued just as it was to the first twelve.  We must open our ears to hear the call.  We must also train our hearing to drown out the siren call of sin which could drive us into the rocks and sink us.  We must open our hearts to the call of the Lord.  There is no purpose on earth greater than to be a disciple of Jesus and to work for the kingdom.  There is no job that pays better or has better benefits or a better retirement plan!  We can start small.  Small is okay because being kind to another sometimes is the way people are led to Christ.  Preach with your actions before you preach using words.  Be of good cheer in all of the circumstances you find yourself in, as hard as that is to do, remembering that the things of this world are passing and temporary while our place in heaven will be forever. 

To Do Today:  Pray for the poor souls in Purgatory. 

The King Comes In All of His Glory!

Today is the Feast of Christ the King and it marks the last Sunday of the Church Year.  Next week we begin anew with Advent as we begin our wait for Christmas when we celebrate the birth of a baby. But today we study the end of things. Much has been written about the end times and this blog entry is not going to prophesy when the end shall come, that I leave to God who alone knows the day and the hour.  I do, however, make use of the scriptures to show just what will happen on that day. 

Jesus, Himself, tells us exactly what will happen.  He will come in all of His glory and He will gather the nations together.  We will be separated, the sheep from the goats, and he will address each of the groups separately. 

To the sheep:

'Come, you who are blessed by my Father.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 

For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,
in prison and you visited me.'

The sheep will be amazed, they could not remember when they had done all of these things.  To them the King will say:

'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did
for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.'

To the Goats:

'Depart from me, you accursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
a stranger and you gave me no welcome,
naked and you gave me no clothing,
ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.'

The goats will be puzzled and will wrack their brains trying to remember when they had seen Jesus in need. To them the King will say:

'Amen, I say to you,
what you did not do for one of these least ones,
you did not do for me.'

The sheep will go to heaven and the goats will go to hell. 

There are those in this world that believe that just believing in Jesus and saying the sinner's prayer will forever protect them from losing their salvation. The scriptures, specifically the reading from Matthew that we have above tears down this comforting but dangerously erroneous belief.  To believe in Jesus and to make Him your personal Lord and Savior is absolutely required and is a wonderful first step.  But to believe in Jesus is just not enough.  The devil believes in Jesus as do all of the devil's demons. We have to believe in Jesus and do the work that needs to be done.  The work is described in Matthew as helping those that need help.  To believe and not do will not get us anywhere.

Each of us needs to develop a sensitivity to the state of the people around us, those that live in our cities and towns that are in need and we need to address those needs as if we were doing them for Jesus Himself.  Can you imagine what the world would be like today if all of God's people did the work of Christ?  It boggles my mind why Christianity has not had more of an impact on the problems that have plagued us over the years. As this church year ends with this sobering Gospel reading, let us begin today to look for ways to improve the lives of those who have less than us.  Let us remember that the face of Jesus is in the face of the person that is in need. 

The month of November is the month we remember those that have gone before us.  Some of those who have died recently have ended up in purgatory and they need our help.  Please, pray for the poor souls.  They will remember your efforts on their behalf for all eternity.  

A Servant's Work Is Never Done

Jesus said to the Apostles:
"Who among you would say to your servant
who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field,
'Come here immediately and take your place at table'?
Would he not rather say to him,
'Prepare something for me to eat.
Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink.
You may eat and drink when I am finished'?
Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?
So should it be with you.
When you have done all you have been commanded, say,
'We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.'"

This passage from the Gospel of Luke is not one of my favorites.  In the "make you feel good scale" where one indicates a real bummer and ten puts you on cloud nine, I would rate this as a three. Now, just because I don't like it doesn't mean I don't appreciate what it says.

It is part of human nature to place a premium value on the time we have expended and effort made to complete a task.  For example, a movie star works for six solid weeks on the next blockbuster hit that will make him or her the talk around the dinner table nationwide, at least that is what they think.  The movie comes out and it is panned by the critics and people stay away from it in droves and the movie is quickly forgotten by all but the star of the same.  He or she worked very hard and did not get the recognition that they felt that they deserved.  Oh, did I mention, they were paid six million dollars for their part?  So this person held his/her labor at one sport on the spectrum while others did not hold it in such esteem.  But they were paid the wages that they agreed to accept for their work and that should make an end of it but inside the star was looking for more. 

In our relationship with Christ, we must always be ready to do more.  Even if we follow faithfully absolutely everything He tells us to do, we are doing only the minimum.  We have to be ready to come in from the fields and serve Christ.  There was no saint that was more cognizant of this fact than St. Francis of Assisi.  Francis worked his whole life building up his order of poor men.  His time was all spoken for,  He prayed late into the night and considered his welfare secondary to the welfare of his brothers.  When his time on earth was almost over, he told his brothers, "Let us begin now, for until now we have done nothing."  

Please Read, Please Help the Poor Souls in Purgatory 

We have a very loving God.  He sent us His only Son who took upon Himself all of the sins of the world, past, present, and the sins yet to be committed.  All of these sins were forgiven when Jesus died on the Cross.  For this, we must be forever grateful.  But, if Jesus died and all sins were forgiven why would a place like Purgatory be needed?  Isn't this slapping the crucified Christ and telling Him that His saving death was not enough?  Actually, no.  Read further and hopefully, my poor attempt at an explanation will help you understand.

Once I was playing softball in a vacant lot across from my childhood home.  In Chicago, we play Clincher softball.  A Clincher is a large softball and it is played using underhand slow pitch. I was up at bat and the pitcher sent me a beautiful pitch, it was coming in low and slow, just where I liked them to be.  I swung the bat but was a bit too early and I tipped the ball to the first base side and it hit the fence of the house behind our field and went through a window making a crash that I swear was heard around the world.  Suddenly, I was the only person standing in the field.  There was no point in running away, the neighbor knew who played in the field.  He came out and surveyed the damage.  I looked at him and was very scared. He saw I was alone and said to not worry, that this could be fixed. and that I was forgiven because accidents happen.  He measured the window and said he would be back soon with the glass.  Shortly he came back and he removed the broken pieces, laid in a fresh bead of putty and the window was as good as new.  He then turned to me and gave me the receipt for the glass and asked if I would please ask my parents to give me the money for the glass.  I looked at the receipt, it was for five whole dollars - a fortune for a kid who was making twenty-five cents a week for an allowance.  I gulped and went to see my Dad. There was no sense in seeing Mom about this, she would just send me to Dad.  He said he saw what happened, looked at the receipt and pulled out his wallet and gave me the five dollars.  He did not holler, he said accidents happen and he would front the money and I could do extra chores to pay him back. 

So in our little story, we have an offense, a broken piece of glass.  We have repair of the issue and forgiveness, but we still had to deal with repaying my father for the money the glass cost.  I was forgiven, but the effect on the family budget had to be cured, I had to restore what I had broken. These extra chores can be likened in a very imperfect way to purgatory.  We all sin on earth and our sins are all forgiven but we have left on our soul the effects of our sins. The sin is gone, but the stain, caused by our attachment to sin, remains.  It is this stain that those of us in Purgatory are getting rid of.  Heaven is a place where no evil is allowed to exist because it is a place where we see God face to face.  

When we die in the grace of God, we will still have all of these stains that have to be bleached out. For example, when you died, you hated George because he stole your pencil (or whatever) and you left earth with this on your soul.  What would happen if you met George in heaven?  Discord at the very least would follow.  So you, yourself, will choose to go to purgatory because in your love for God you will know that this burden needs to be fully released.  

Purgatory is a painful place.  The pain comes from the fire of God's love and your longing to be with Him in heaven.  Purgatory is also a joyful place because all of the people there know that at one point in the future this suffering will end and they will be with God in heaven.  The souls in Purgatory pray unceasingly. The sad part is that they cannot pray themselves out of Purgatory.  The time for making up for temporal punishment for sins is while we are on earth through our prayers and sacrifices.  So the Poor Souls, some who have been there for centuries as we reckon time, need our help, our prayers, and our sacrifices to help them escape Purgatory and enter heaven earlier than they might if depending on themselves. Purgatory is a joyful place.  If you were to offer a poor soul the chance to come back to earth, he or she would reject that choice because of the great happiness they feel at being assured that they cannot offend God anymore and that soon they will be with Him face to face. That joy is greater than any joy we can experience on earth. 

How can we help them?  Well, we can offer our own prayers and sacrifices and we can offer them our mass attendance and the grace from every time we take the Holy Eucharist. The Mass and the Eucharist are the most efficient ways.  From the website "Our Catholic Prayers"  A link to their website is below. 

In purgatory, the souls of many of those who have died in God’s grace undergo purification so that they may enter heaven. The Prayer of St. Gertrude, below, is one of the most famous of the prayers for souls in purgatory. St. Gertrude the Great (pictured at left) was a Benedictine nun and mystic who lived in the 13th century. According to tradition, our Lord promised her that 1000 souls would be released from purgatory each time it is said devoutly.

 

Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen

Our Catholic Prayers WEbsite

A Prophet at Home

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

He 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.

It is always nice to come home after a long absence. You arrive and you are among friends and neighbors that you have known your whole life. There is a comfort in that. Today's reading tells about the time when Jesus went home. He must have looked around at the streets where he had played as a child.  He probably saw some of the carpentry that he and his father had worked on together.  He felt very comfortable and at ease in this place.  On the Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and read from the scroll.  They complimented him on the wisdom he displayed. But then they remembered that he was one of them, he had played in these streets and had worked as a carpenter.  Still, he was said to have performed signs and wonders elsewhere, maybe he will do so here, but he did not.  When he was called on it, his neighbors got angry at his response.  They drove him out of the town to the brow of the hill that the town was built on but he walked through their midst and got away.  A prophet is never recognized in his home town. 

So it is with us.  We are called to proclaim the good news to family and friends and strangers.  It is easier to proclaim to a stranger, they don't know you.  When you speak to family or friends, well they remember that you stole from the cookie jar when you were young.  And, wasn't that you that came out of that tavern walking a crooked path? In short, they know you and all of your faults.  They know the good things about you too but it is human nature when confronted with a Gospel that would change their lives and take them from their comfort zone, that they look at who is proclaiming it and and remember that person and his or her sins which makes it more comfortable for them to ignore calls to change their ways. 

Be that as it may, we are still called to proclaim the Gospel to one and all.  We reinforce the Gospel by showing them that we have changed our life, that we have heard, we have listened, and we believe.  Our exterior self should be a reflection of our interior. We should reflect many different aspects of the Gospel, it should shine through and illuminate every aspect of our life.  We should be persons of love, care, kindness, and service.  There should be no person we look down upon and we should treat them all as if they are our sisters and brothers.  This includes our enemies as well.  Using force against force will bring destruction to both the the antagonists.  But wear away the force with love and a little bit at a time a boulder of hate will be worn down to the size of a grain of sand. 

Jesus has anointed us to be His messenger.  Take on this task and your soul will dance with joy.  

The poor souls in purgatory need your help.  Please, pray for them.  An Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be takes but a moment but it means so much for them.  

When Doing What's Right is Just Not Enough

Thus says the LORD:
Observe what is right, do what is just;
for my salvation is about to come,
my justice, about to be revealed.
The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,
ministering to him,
loving the name of the LORD,
and becoming his servants—
all who keep the sabbath free from profanation
and hold to my covenant,
them I will bring to my holy mountain
and make joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be acceptable on my altar,
for my house shall be called
a house of prayer for all peoples.

The first reading at mass today sounds like an instruction manual for how to get to heaven!

I once worked for a family-owned company where the lady that owned it decided to turn the firm over to her son and let him the place.  He was a typical spoiled child that had everything handed to him including a beautiful house that he did not have to pay for.  Anyway, the young hopeful would sleep until noon, come in at one or two-ish, and finish up the day promptly at four-thirty on the dot.  The business he inherited was actually a start-up business and his mother assumed he would earn his way by putting in long hours, working hard, and making his mother proud of him.  Alas, as you can see, this was not to be.  The reason I mention him at all is that he once said something that showed the depth of his character in just a few words.  One afternoon, the talk in the office was about honesty.  His words, I remember to this very day.  He said, "I will be as honest as I have to be."   I could never trust him after he said that and it wasn't very long that he and I parted company.

God tells us that we should observe what is right and do what is just. In other words, to have a good relationship with God it helps a lot to be honest in all your dealings. Think about it. This is much easier said than done. Sometimes honestly answering a question can hurt peoples feelings. While we need to be honest, we need to temper our honesty with just a touch of mercy.  Brutal honesty is not necessary but coaching a friend if they are doing something outrageous is an act of kindness. 

God deals with us in this same way.  When we sin against Him, He would be within His rights to hurl a lightning bolt or two at us.  Instead of this God gently tries to point the way for us. He remains calm, cool, and collected and never stoops to making us an offer we could not refuse. If after all is said and done we want to go our way, well, our way it is.  God will wait until we figure out we are going wrong and be there to welcome us back. 

Please Explain Yourself !

Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

Always be ready to give an explanation

to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,

but do it with gentleness and reverence,

keeping your conscience clear,

so that, when you are maligned,

those who defame your good conduct in Christ

may themselves be put to shame.

For it is better to suffer for doing good,

if that be the will of God than for doing evil.

Yesterday, I wrote about the world and how if the Church is doing a good job the world will hate us. Today, we are asked to always be ready to explain why we are a Christian.  We are told to do so gently and reverently.  So, what do you say if someone asks you why you are a Catholic Christian?   How do you respond? 

First, how would someone determine if you were a Christian? Could they tell just by looking at you?  Could they tell by a close examination of your conduct that you were different than someone who does not profess to be a friend of Jesus?  If we go back to our roots in the first century we can see that Christians of that era were known because they loved each other so much. Do we exude the aura of love in what we do and say?  Or, are we just another regular Joe (or Jane) that works nine to five and collects a paycheck to pay the bills and maybe, just maybe, have a little bit of transient joy by engaging in the things of this world.  If we could not be convicted in a court of law of being a Catholic Christian than it is unlikely anyone would bother asking why we seem different because we aren't.  If we practice our religion on Sunday and that carefully pack it away for the rest of the week, then it makes no difference in our lives.  We in effect become an undercover Catholic.  We keep our pious lives safe and secure and  no one is the wiser. 

But, if you get asked, what do you respond?  Do you break out your Bible and thump it and scream that they had better accept Jesus as their savior or suffer the pains of hell forever more?  There is nothing like going for the jugular vein.  The direct approach wastes no one's time and unfortunately discourages the person because the yelling and screaming gets lost in the noise generated by the world itself.  There will be nodding and agreement and once you walk self-righteously away, everything you have said will be filed away in the same place that the person files the information attained in late night infomercials.  

It is important to have a reason for your belief that is both honest and true.  And this reason should be self-evident in the way you conduct yourself and your words should simply confirm that what you have shown them on the outside is matched by what comes from inside. What could the reason be?  Can you put it into words?  I think our hope comes from the fact that in the Church we are united by one Bread and one Body.  I think that we are united in a spirit of love and honest and responsible conduct and gentle treatment of all we meet. We are that way because we know and believe that we are special.  We are not just ordinary Joes or Janes.  We are adopted children of the Father who loves us with a love that is impossible for us to fully understand.  It is this love, that we have in our hearts that we just have to share with those around us.  This sharing of love, this kindness in a world where a smile might be met with a fist, is what we have that the world does not have and what it longs for. 

Words can be powerful things.  Writers are skilled at arranging words to make a point.  Orators are skilled at swaying emotions through the use of vocabulary, inflection, and gesture.  But what if you are a person who cannot write and you are too shy to stand before a group of people and to try to sway them with pearls of wisdom dropping from your vocal chords?  It is very simple.  You live your life giving love and patience to all, accepting the good and the bad with equal joy and people will notice that there is something different about you.  This will attract them to you and eventually they will see that you are you because of Christ within you.  Our Church is not built on great orators or writers, both of which are needed. Our Church is built by those that use their life to make a difference to each person that they meet. 

Finally, do not be too concerned if your good attitude and mode of living brings to you rejection.  It will come.  Do not be concerned if you are the victim of persecution for that goes hand in hand with being a Christian from the beginning.  Your hope and your strength are not centered in this world, they are centered in heaven.  Your victory has already been won and that is why you can hope while the world dwells in hopelessness.  Let the brightness of your soul shine forth with the radiance of a thousand billion suns and let the world come and see why you shine so brightly.

Lent = Healing and Being Healed

There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate
a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.
In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there
and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him,
"Do you want to be well?"
The sick man answered him,
"Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me."
Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk."
Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.

Once again, I am showing my age.  When I was a youth in beautiful Brighton Park on the Southwest Side of Chicago, you were hard pressed to find any stores open on Sunday. The National Tea grocery store was open so you could buy some things but the liquor was not for sale on Sunday and because the butchers, who had a very strong union back then, neither were the meats that they packaged.  Most stores were closed back in the early 1960's on Sunday. Taverns were not permitted to open until noon on Sunday.  People, by law, were kind of forced to keep the sabbath.   

Back in the time of Jesus, the Bethesda pool was a place that every so often, not on a regular schedule, an angel was said to appear and "stir up the waters" and the first one in the pool would be cured of whatever was wrong with him.  The man in our story had two strikes against him.  First, it appears he could not walk.  And secondly, he did not have a friend ready and willing to pick him and toss him into the pool when the angel stirred up the waters.  Those with more able bodies would surely get into the pool before him.  For him, however, there was the slimmest of chances that he could be first so he went every day and took up his place.  One day, Jesus appeared at the pool and took pity on the cripple.  Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be cured.  I could imagine what I, being a wiseass, and not a too bright one at that, would have said. "No I just come here every day to sit here and visit with my friends."  The man, showing more brains than I have, simply told his story.  He told Jesus, that he wanted to be cured but he had a problem because he could never be the first into the pool.  Jesus solved the problem and cured the man and told him to take up his mat and go home.   

Now, this took place on the sabbath.  The Jews were very strict about following the sabbath.  The man was accosted as he moved towards his home and was told he could not carry his mat on the sabbath.  Well, since he was at the pool already, he must have carried it there on the sabbath.  But he told the Pharisees that were on his case that the man who cured him told him to get up and walk.  They asked who told him to do this.  The man was not sure and Jesus had wandered off, out of sight.  Later the man caught sight of Jesus and went to the Pharisees and pointed Him out.  From that moment on they began to plot against Jesus. 

Once again, we see Jesus doing something charitable and curing a person.  He brought hope where there was no hope.  The man who was cured had no chance of being the first in the pool. There were others, stronger than he, who would push him out of the way in their attempt to get into the water and be cured.  Jesus took the initiative and cured the man.  He could have told the cripple to come back the next day after the sabbath was over, and he would cure him. But, Jesus knew that the sabbath was made for man and not the other way around. He technically worked on the sabbath and cured the cripple. 

A work of charity has no day or time when it is not appropriate.  Jesus saw a need and he filled it.  Why did Jesus cure this man?  There were probably dozens of people at the pool, why didn't he just wave his arm and cure everyone at one fell swoop?  It was well within his power to do.  Instead, he took care of one man who had no one else who cared.  

For us too, we need to watch for opportunities to help.  We need to take the risk that others may scorn or laugh at us for tilting at windmills.  But if we love Christ, we love all of His people and are called to serve.