You are Invited

Thirty-Fourth Week of Year II     Friday, November 25, 2016

You are Invited

The Responsorial looks forward with longing to the “end time”: “Here God lives among his people” (Revelation 21:3; Psalm 84).

Revelation 20:1 to 21:2 describes heaven as the marriage between God and humanity.

And I saw a new Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down out of heaven from God, beautiful as a bride prepared to meet her husband.

We wonder what heaven will be like. And we should. Heaven is our future. It is where we will be forever, once our few years on this earth are over. If heaven is where — or how — we will live for all the rest of our existence (which will never end), we might want to have some idea of what it will be like!

Jesus’ preferred image for heaven was a party, a banquet, especially a wedding  banquet¹

What kind of party does Jesus throw? He gave us a hint when he told us what kind of parties we should give:

When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind….

One of the people there, on hearing this, made the connection immediately and said, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (Luke 14:13-15). He saw that the kingdom would unite the whole human race, without any distinctions, in one happy, celebrating community of love.

We get another hint at the wedding feast of Cana. It was a small-town wedding where there could not have been even a hundred guests. When the wine ran out, Jesus changed water into 136 gallons of wine! He made party history in Cana!

Then his disciples realized what he had come for. He came to do to human life on earth what those 136 gallons of wine did to a little country wedding feast. The Gospel’s comment is: “He revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him!”

The “bread” of the wedding feast is Jesus himself. This is what the Our Father teaches us to focus our daily desire on: Jesus as both our daily and future “bread,” the “Bread of life” that feeds our joy now and forever. This with perfect peace and reconciliation between all people and with God: “Forgive… as we forgive.” This is the kingdom that, as faithful stewards we are working to establish.

In Luke 21:29-33 Jesus tells us to interpret current events, good and bad in the light of their significance for the Kingdom: “When you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.” It is happening now, but we need to be alert to it.

¹ See Matthew 9:15; 22:2-14; 25: 1,10; Mark 2:19; Luke 12:36; 14:8, 14-17; 17:8; 22:20 (the Last Supper); John 2:1; 3:29; Revelation 19:7-9; 21:9; 22:17.

Initiative: Be Christ’s steward: look to a glorious future and work for it.

“Always giving thanks”

“Always giving thanks”

NOVEMBER 24, 2016

THE FEAST OF THANKSGIVING DAY

Inventory

How often do we consciously thank God? And for what kind of things, most of the time? Do we show our gratitude in action?

Input

The Entrance Antiphon says we should thank God for “everything” and “always”: “Sing and play music in your hearts to the Lord, always giving thanks for everything to God the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephe.sians 5:19-20)

In the Opening Prayer we accept our responsibility as stewards to do what needs to be done. We say formally to God, “On Thanksgiving Day we come before you with gratitude for your kindness.” And we ask him to “open our hearts to concern for our fellow men and women, so that we may share your gifts in loving service.” Both of these are things that need to be said. And more than once a year.

We make this statement on Thanksgiving Day as a church, as members of the human race, and as citizens of a country that has recognized from its very beginnings the importance of giving thanks to God. The Great Seal of the United States, printed on every dollar bill, shows the eye of an all-seeing Providence (which for believers means God) surmounted by the words Annuit coeptis, “He has smiled on these beginnings.” These words are inspired by the prayer of Aeneas’ son in Virgil’s Aeneid, book IX, which reads, Iuppiter omnipotens, audacibus adnue cœptis: “Almighty Jupiter, favor [my] daring undertakings." The Great Seal proclaims the nation’s belief that God approved its foundation. In the Prayer over the Gifts we acknowledge, “God our Father, from your hand we have received generous gifts,” and we go on to add, “so that we might learn to share your blessings in gratitude.”

All three Mass prayers remind us that gratitude calls us to share with others. In the Prayer After Communion we say that God’s love “for every man and woman” reminds us of our own “negligence toward others.” We ask God to help us “reach out in love to all your people, so that we may share with them the goods of time and eternity.”

This is the spirit of stewardship. We are aware that all we have is gift, and that God wants us to use his gifts for the good of others. They are his free act of love to us, but they are also his investment. God gives to those who have, expecting them to use what they have to help those who have not.

“Having” and “having not” do not just refer to money, but to the “everything” we thank God for. Those who have possessions, skills, health, disposable time, or just cheerfulness and a smile to express it, are expected to use these for the good of others. Our baptismal consecration as stewards who share in the responsibilities of Christ’s kingship commits us to it.

Thanksgiving and praise

Sirach 50:22-24 alerts us that thanksgiving and praise go together. We “bless God” because he has “done wondrous things on earth.” Sirach focuses on the most basic, the source of all: God “fosters people’s growth from their mother’s womb.” Our very existence is an ongoing activity of God choosing to make us be. If he paused for even an eyeblink, we would instantly cease to exist. God’s continuing choice that we should esse et bene esse — “be and be all we can be” (St. Augustine’s definition of love) — is all that stands between us and absolute nothingness.

God’s “steadfast love” is our only ultimate guarantee that we will continue to have existence itself, not to mention anything else that gives us the “joy of heart” Sirach wishes us. If we keep ourselves aware of this fundamental truth, both as individuals and as a nation, by praising God privately and publicly for his “goodness toward us,” we will be freed from false and destructive dependence on affluence or power. Only then will “peace abide among us.” The Responsorial (Psalm 145) suggests we respond: “I will praise your name forever, Lord.”

For God and country

Paul underscores the essential connection between peace and the favor (grace) of God by beginning all thirteen of the letters attributed to him with the words “grace and peace,” as he does in 1Corinthians 1:3-9. And like Sirach, he builds peace on praise and gratitude:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind... so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift.

Paul roots our peace in confidence based on God’s steadfast love: “He will keep you firm to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful.” Our peace grows out of thanksgiving nourished by praise. Response: “I will praise your name forever, Lord.”

A sobering thought

In Luke 17:11-19 Jesus tells a story with a hook. Ten lepers are cured. Only one returns to say “Thank you.” Jesus says to this one, “Go on your way; your faith has saved you.”

It makes us wonder about the other nine. They were cured of leprosy, but how much good did it do them? And we, if we receive the gifts of God without acknowledging them in conscious praise and thanksgiving, what do we miss out on?

Getting down to particulars, how consciously — and how enthusiastically — do we praise God at Mass? Especially during the Introductory Rites which are especially designed to supply us with matter for praise.

Do we listen to the words of the Greeting, to the phrases of the Gloria? Do we say them trying to mean them and to grow into meaning them more and more?

It is a basic principle of life, celebrated on this day and affirmed in all three readings, that praise and thanksgiving foster appreciation. And appreciation fosters love. Bottom line: “I will praise your name forever, Lord.”

Insight

Do I see the connection between praise, thanksgiving, appreciation and love?

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Initiative: Make the connection in family, social life, work and church.

Remember The Party

Remember The Party

(Same Day)   Thirty-Fourth Week of Year II     Thursday   November 24 

The Responsorial Psalm echoes the words we hear at Communion: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9). 

Revelation 18:1 to 19:9 contrasts the hope of the faithful with the hopes of the faithless. The people “of this world” hope for wealth and power. The angel could be speaking of the United States (among other countries) when he says, “for your merchants were the magnates of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery.”

For “your sorcery” read, “your technology, your economic success, your military might,” whatever impresses other countries aside from what should impress them, like our respect for freedom and human rights. People imitate all the wrong things in America. To tourists in Europe our most visible export seems to be blue jeans!

The point of the reading is that God will bring low the nation that trusts in its empty power. Believers look and long for the realization of one thing: the “wedding banquet of the Lamb.” This is what we ask for in the Our Father: the words “daily bread” really mean Jesus, the Bread of the heavenly banquet. There all will be celebrating in the “peace and unity of his kingdom,” in total reconciliation with God and each other (“Forgive us… as we forgive).

The “punch line” of the Rite of Communion at Mass is the proclamation that accompanies the “third elevation,” when the presider presents the host for the third time, saying. “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (“Called to his supper” is a mistranslation). What these words really say is, “Blessed are those who are going to die!” We fear nothing. Those who kill us are simply ushering us into the party! “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

In Luke 21:20-28 Jesus says the same thing as the first reading. Using the impending destruction of Jerusalem as an example and preview, he foretells persecution by the powerful in this world and their inevitable destruction: “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” But everyone who “conquers and continues to do my works to the end” will “see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory.” The conclusion we should draw…?

Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

This is a call to faithful stewardship.

Initiative: Be Christ’s steward. Look to the end for hope and courage. 

Look To The End

Look To The End

 Thirty-Fourth Week of Year II     Wednesday, November 23, 2016

The Responsorial Psalm teaches us to focus: “Great and wonderful are your works” (Revelation 15:3 and Psalm 98).

Revelation 15: 1-4 focuses us on what we will see, feel and celebrate in heaven, when the victory of Jesus is complete. This is something we need to think about.

We get caught up in the immediate, the transitory, the secondary, much of which is ultimately trivial. Many issues we anguish over now will have no more importance to us then than a basketball game we lost in the seventh grade!

What should be important to us now? What should we be excited about?

One thing we tend to neglect is the importance of praising God. We talk more, think more, and emote more about some of the fantastic athletes we see on TV than we do about the glory of God! Teenagers can get turned on by singers. But how many — teenagers or adults — really get caught up in the words when we say or sing at Mass, “Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty! Heaven and earth are full of your glory!” Yet this is the “song of the Lamb,” the song that will make us ecstatic in heaven:

“Mighty and wonderful are your works, Lord God Almighty! Right and true are your ways, O King of the nations!”

We mumble and mutter in the Gloria the same words we will be shouting at the top of our voices in heaven when we actually see how far beyond every other value and beauty God is: “You alone are holy!” No one compares.

When we finally see how right God was in his way of handling things on earth — how kind, how loving, how merciful, even when it appeared to us he was unfeeling of even unaware of our pain — we will find ourselves prostrate before him in admiration, gratitude and praise:All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.We need to give God now, while we can give it as our gift, the free choice of undoubting faith in him, of un-wavering trust, of un-waffling love. In Luke 21: 12-19 Jesus tells us that other people will put pressure on us to deny him:

They will… persecute you… hand you over to… prisons… kings and governors because of my name.

But what about the more general and (sometimes) more subtle ways we are pressured to deny Christ by our culture, our professional circle, our peer group? Aren’t we “handed over” to ridicule — often unspoken but still perceived — when our attitudes, values and behavior reveal our faith instead of reflecting the culture? Jesus says, “Don’t fear them. It will give you an opportunity to bear witness to me.” It will give us a chance to be faithful stewards of the faith confided in us. Initiative: Be Christ’s steward. Take seriously every chance to serve him.