One of my favorite paintings is The Calling of Matthew by Caravaggio which decorates St. Louis of France (San Luigi de Francesci) in Rome. I would often go by and drop a 250 lira coin to turn on the light which shown on it and stare in awe until the light went out (and even after, especially if I did not have the coin). The triad of paintings there in that chapel show the whole of the remarkable apostleship of Matthew, but it is the Calling that holds my attention. To me it is also one of the most powerful calls of Jesus. Not that all of the disciples did not sacrifice everything to follow Jesus but that the ramifications of the worldly and savvy Matthew as a disciple far exceed the problems caused by Jesus surrounding himself with unpolished and back-water fishermen (meaning one should never judge a book by its cover but should see as God sees). The Gospel for today captures that. As Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" He heard this and said, "Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners." -- Matthew 9:9-13
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To be Christian and to serve in the armed forces is not to agree with everything that the chain of command does. Accordingly…they sent to Maximian this message…‘We are your soldiers, O emperor, but God’s servants….We owe military service to you, but just living to Him….No way can we follow an emperor in this, a command for us to deny God our Father, especially since our Father is your God and Father whether you like it or not….When Maximian heard these things and realized that the men’s minds were resolute in their faith in Christ…he decreed in one sentence that they were all to be killed and ordered the surrounding military columns to effect the matter….(the other legions) drew their wicked swords against the holy men who did not refuse to die….they were indiscriminately slaughtered by the sword. They did not cry out even or fight back, but laid aside their arms and offered their necks to their persecutors…remembering this alone, that they were confessing Him who was led to His death without a cry, and like a lamb, did not open His mouth, they, the Lord’s flock of sheep, so to speak, also allowed themselves to be torn by the onrushing wolves, as it were….The earth there was covered by the bodies of the pious as they fell forward into death. ….I, Eucherius, have sent this written account of the passion of our martyrs…for I was afraid, through neglect, time should remove from the memory of men this account of so glorious a martyrdom….I have sought the truth of this very matter from suitable sources…from the holy Isaac, Bishop of Geneva, who had learned these things in turn from the most blessed Bishop Theodore, a man of an earlier time….I offer these writings of mine, if they are deemed worthy of support.
-- From Eucherius to the Lord Holy and Most Blessed Bishop in Christ, Salvius (Bishop of Octodurum) When I was young, there was talk of a priest who had the stigmata, just like Francis. At the time, for me at least, there was a big difference between seeing a painting depicting Francis' wounds and a real photograph of the bloody bindings on Pio's hands (even in black and white). For that reason, I shied away from such a man. The nuns often told us stories of suffering and torture of the saints, even modern day ones, but the suffering of one who was faithful but not suffering "for the Faith", as I understood it then, was daunting to me. Why would anyone want such wounds? Why would such wounds be inflicted on anyone? There is also a fine line between self-less service and self-serving. The miracles that seemed to surround him could be the work of someone who had God's favor or of some over dramatic trickster. Controversy raged around him, and he had his supporter and detractors. As a young man I was on the fence about him. Paul said that he carried the marks of Christ; so must we all. Pio carried the stigmata (Latin roughly meaning "brand" ) as Paul carried his stripes and mistreatment and as we must too carry our wounds for Christ. Today I realize that all of my wounds must too be visible as signs of love. Jesus is the wounded healer and I must walk in his footsteps. Most Divine Spirit, enlighten and inflame me in meditating on the Passion of Jesus, help me to penetrate this mystery of love and suffering of a God, Who, clothed with our humanity, suffers, agonizes, and dies for the love of the creature!... The Eternal, the Immortal Who debases Himself to undergo an immense martyrdom, the ignominious death of the Cross, amidst insults, contempt and abuse, to save the creature which offended Him, and which wallows in the slime of sin. Man rejoices in his sin and his God is sad because of sin, suffers, sweats blood, amidst terrible agony of spirit. No, I cannot enter this wide ocean of love and pain unless You with Your grace sustain me. Oh that I could penetrate to the innermost recesses of the Heart of Jesus to read there the essence of His bitterness, which brought Him to the point of death in the Garden; that I could comfort Him in the abandonment by His Father and His own. Oh that I could unite myself with Him in order to expiate with Him.
Mary, Mother of Sorrows, may I unite myself with You to follow Jesus and share His pains and Your sufferings. My Guardian Angel, guard my faculties and keep them recollected on Jesus suffering, so that they will not stray far from Him. --The Agony of Jesus Just re-reading some Chesterton and thought I would share it. I try to keep these short but it is hard to make a decision about what pericopes to share from his works (especially as even the short essays are so jammed packed) so I suggest you read everything he has written - that would make it easier on me! What is right with the world is the world. In fact, nearly everything else is wrong with it. This is that great truth in the tremendous tale of Creation, a truth that our people must remember or perish. It is at the beginning that things are good, and not (as the more pallid progressives say) only at the end. The primordial things — existence, energy, fruition — are good so far as they go. You cannot have evil life, though you can have notorious evil livers. Manhood and womanhood are good things, though men and women are often perfectly pestilent. You can use poppies to drug people, or birch trees to beat them, stone to make an idol, or corn to make a corner; but it remains true that, in the abstract, before you have done anything, each of these four things is in strict truth a glory, a beneficent speciality and variety. We do praise the Lord that there are birch trees growing amongst the rocks and poppies amongst the corn; we do praise the Lord, even if we do not believe in Him. We do admire and applaud the project of a world, just as if we had been called to council in the primal darkness and seen the first starry plan of the skies. We are, as a matter of fact, far more certain that this life of ours is a magnificent and amazing enterprise than we are that it will succeed. These evolutionary optimists who called themselves Meliorists (a patient and poor-spirited lot they are) always talk as if we were certain of the end, though not of the beginning. In other words, they don’t know what life is aiming at, but they are quite sure it will get there. Why anybody who has avowedly forgotten where he came from should be quite so certain of where he is going to I have never been able to make out; but Meliorists are like that. They are ready to talk of existence itself as the product of purely evil forces...I am in precisely the opposite position. I am much more sure that everything is good at the beginning than I am that everything will be good at the end. That all this frame of things, this flesh, these stones, are good things, of that I am more brutally certain than I can say. But as for what will happen to them, that is to take a step into dogma and prophecy. I speak here, of course, solely of my personal feelings, not even of my reasoned creed. But on my instincts alone I should have no notion what would ultimately happen to this material world I think so magnificent. For all I know it may be literally and not figuratively true that the tares are tied into bundles for burning, and that as the tree falleth so shall it lie. I am an agnostic, like most people with a positive theology. But I do affirm, with the full weight of sincerity, that trees and flowers are good at the beginning, whatever happens to them at the end; that human lives were good at the beginning, whatever happens to them in the end. The ordinary modern progressive position is that this is a bad universe, but will certainly get better. I say it is certainly a good universe, even if it gets worse. I say that these trees and flowers, stars and sexes, are primarily, not merely ultimately, good. In the Beginning the power beyond words created heaven and earth. In the Beginning He looked on them and saw that they were good.
-- G.K. Chesterton - What is Right with the World When we read the Scriptures we sometimes forget that the people we read about are real people, even if they are not given a name. They lived, they died. They meet others and had families and friends. They worshiped and they sinned. They prayed and they had the same daily desires and needs as each of us. But often, we just see them in that moment captured in the Scriptures. We do not wonder what happened before in their lives or after their encounter with God, as if an old snapshot that we find in a drawer were everything those in the picture ever were. But also, like an old photo, it is a glimpse into their lives at that moment. We are given the chance to learn from them, that is why they are in the story. Cleopas is one such person. He is one of the two disciples of the Way to Emmaus, the other being named - oh wait, we are not told. Was he any less important than Cleopas? Did he go on to just a simple witness and not rise to the level of Cleopas in the community such that his name is not remembered? Who knows. But I do know that without him Cleopas would have had no one to talk to. But we do know Cleopas, because Luke mentions him by name. Who was he before? We do not know. We can know that Jesus thought enough of him to appear and walk and talk with him. As to afterwards, we can only guess the influence and Faith that he had and practiced that got him remembered in such a way, immortalized in Scripture and instrumental in witnessing to the Resurrection of Christ. Now that very day two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?” And he replied to them, “What sort of things?” They said to him, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see.” And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
-- Luke 24:13-35 We expect so much for free, even when we do deserve it. We expect to be rewarded for what we do (or think we have done). That is fine when discussing the dignity of work and workers but not when discussing our vocation. The brothers, physicians and healers, are known as "unmercinary" physicians because they took no payment for their healing services as they traveled from place to place. They gave freely not out of human generosity but from the gift of healing that they had received. It is this sharing of gifts, of recognizing the nature of "gift" that drove their ministry. When we think about vocation, we should see it in light of the gifts we have received. That is to say, like Cosmas and Damien, we recognize our strengths as gifts given to bring Christ to the world and then share them freely. They are not "ours" but have been given to us, meaning that they are just gifts to us but are our gift to others. We want for free but we refuse to give for free. That is the lesson of humility we must learn, one that the brothers can teach us. We can hear that our gifts are for the glory of God reflected in the First Reading today: King Darius issued an order to the officials of West-of-Euphrates:
"Let the governor and the elders of the Jews continue the work on that house of God; they are to rebuild it on its former site. I also issue this decree concerning your dealing with these elders of the Jews in the rebuilding of that house of God: From the royal revenue, the taxes of West-of-Euphrates, let these men be repaid for their expenses, in full and without delay. I, Darius, have issued this decree; let it be carefully executed." -- Ezra 6:7-8, 12b The St. Vincent De Paul Society was not started by St. Vincent but his life and work inspires both its inception and continued activity. "The Society of St. Vincent de Paul began in Paris, France, in 1833 when a young law student at the Sorbonne, Frédéric Ozanam, was challenged during a debate to demonstrate what he and his fellow Catholic students were personally doing to help the poor in Paris. Ozanam's reaction was immediate. Within weeks, Ozanam, at 20 years of age, and six of his peers formed the first "Conference of Charity."...At the prompting of Monsieur Emmanuel Bailly and Sister Rosalie Rendu, superior of a convent of the Daughters of Charity, Ozanam soon placed the conference under the patronage of St. Vincent de Paul who had spent his life in 16th century France serving the poor." (From the Society of St. Vincent de Paul website) Vincent was born poor, and as often happens in the Church it is not only wealth that gets you ordained (especially after the reforms of Trent) and so the opportunity for education and service are open to all. Not that wealth and privilege or poverty install people less worthy of the office, neither are they an impediment to true service. He was captured by Turkish pirates and sold into slavery freed from that service only after he had converted his owner to Christianity. From there he returned to Paris to serve as chaplain to the king, yet spent much of his devotion on serving the poor and the outcast. We must serve always and so serve where we are - whether we want to be there or not! You say you are not happy in the Mission. That, in itself, is not a sign that God does not want you there. Perfect contentment is never to be found, in whatever place and condition one may be. This life is full of annoyances and troubles both of mind and of body; it is a state of continual agitation, which snatches peace of mind from those who think they possess it and eludes those who seek it. Did Our Lord lead an easy life? Did He not experience the trials and tribulations we fear? He was the Man of Sorrows, and we want to be exempt from suffering! He speaks to us of the Cross only so that we might have a share in His glory, and we would wish to follow Him without enduring anything!
-- Letter to Stanislaw Zelazewski How do we translate the tenets of our Faith into political action? Can one both support Caesar and be Christian? What is political progress? Can Christian values impede political progress? Can they aid it? Those around him, apparently even his mother, worried what a Christian ruler might do. I like the response given here in this biography "Just because you tire of serving Christ, why should you hinder the rest of us?" I am convinced, thanks to his example, that is the way to think about it, especially in today's environment where so many have wearied of what they perceive following Christ to mean. In the end, like Wenceslaus we must be true followers of Christ and that is up to us, no matter what those around us think, say, and feel. We are neither a party nor conservative or liberal, we are followers of Christ - and that is what we need to be everyday, regardless of the labels assigned to us. Finally, strengthened by the power of God that encircled him, he summoned his mother and those under her influence, and rebuked them.... "The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed" (Ecclesiastes 12:11). Thus said the blessed Wenceslaus: "Why, sons of criminals, offspring of liars and men of iniquity, have you hindered me from learning the law of the Lord Jesus Christ and obeying His commandments? Just because you tire of serving Christ, why should you hinder the rest of us? Although I have been under your power up until now, yet now I reject it, and I choose instead the omnipotent God whom I desire to serve with all my heart."
From his boyhood he did not depart in the smallest degree from the Lord's teaching: true in his speech, just in his judgment, faithful in every enterprise, his piety exceeding all human measure. When anyone was undergoing a trial in the council of judges and was awaiting his judgment as chief judge, he took every opportunity to quietly withdraw himself, remembering the threats of Christ put forward in the Gospel: "Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned" (Luke 6:37). He destroyed gallows and prisons that had been built in ancient times but were still standing. He tirelessly comforted orphans, widows, the poor, the groaning and the wounded, fed the hungry, revived the thirsty, covered the naked, visited the sick, buried the dead, welcomed neighbors, friends, and strangers, honored priests and clergy as the Lord, honored monks, and opened the way of truth to those who had gone astray. He observed truth, humility, patience, meekness, and above all things charity, seizing nothing by force or deceit. -- Life and Passion of Saints Wenceslaus and Ludmila It may seem odd that such a small passage can create such a large part of human imagination. Something similar could be said for Gabriel (Luke 1:26-38). As for Raphael, see Tobit 3:17ff. War broke out in heaven;
Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it. -- Revelation 12:7-9 Cantankerous, opinionated, and of great wit, Jerome made many friends but probably just as many enemies. For all he did, he is best known as the translator of the Vulgate for Pope Damascus I (Dec 10th). Because of his long work on the translation, Jerome is the patron saint of archaeologists, translators, Biblical scholars, and librarians. Other than that he is a saint for far more reasons. The proud sin greatly who, after studying secular literature and having turned to the Holy Scriptures, consider all that they say to be the Law of God, and do not endeavor to come to know the thoughts of the prophets and apostles, but seek out from the scriptures inappropriate texts for their own thoughts, as if this were a good work, and not the most defiled kind of study: to distort the thoughts of Scripture and submit them to their own intentions, in spite of obvious contradictions… It is proper to children and charlatans to try to teach that which they do not know.
-- Letter to St. Paulinus |
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