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“How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.”
In the closing minutes of the movie Field of Dreams, the character of Thomas Mann is invited by the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson to come ‘out’ with the team. Ray Concella is incensed. Why is the writer invited instead of Ray? Ray launches into a litany of all the things that he has done in following the promptings of the ‘voice’ and ends with the statement: “Not once have I asked what’s in it for me!” The ghost inquires: “What are you saying, Ray?” Ray responds: “I’m saying - what’s in it for me?”
How honest. How revealing. How human.
We hear echoes of this same refrain in St. Peter’s statement in today’s Gospel: “We have put aside everything to follow you.” Implied? “What’s in it for us?”
The truth is that the Good News never seems to let up. God never settles for less or for just “getting by”. Even as we grow in our love for God, ourselves and others, the Good News always calls us to give more, to go deeper, to press on. The truth is that the Good News is not about being “good enough” or simply “getting by”. No wonder we sometimes ask the questions “What more do you want?” that can turn into, “What’s in it for me?”
What’s in it for us is a twofold promise. First, we are promised that we will come to know the joy associated with being more concerned about giving than receiving. We will experience in this life the freedom that comes with allowing God to penetrate all – not just some – of who we are. In short, we experience the wealth that is only known by generous people. Second, we are promised that there will come a day when we will enjoy this God-given freedom forever in a life that never ends.
So, what’s in it for us? How about purpose, meaning and direction in this life! How about the fullness of purpose, meaning and direction – and so many other gifts – in the life to come!
Now that’s Good News!
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In her book, Heart Speaks to Heart: The Salesian Tradition, Wendy Wright quotes Fr. Brisson regarding the challenge to “Reprint the Gospel” in all aspects of life. We read:
“It is not enough to read the Gospel in order to understand it. We must live it. The Gospel is the true story of the Word of God living among men. We must produce a New Edition of this Gospel among men by prayer, work, preaching and sacrifice…”
“First, we reprint the Gospel by prayer, through which we give ourselves to God in every way without reserve.”
“Second, we reprint the Gospel by means of work. We must reprint the Gospel and reprint it page by page without omitting anything…In our lives there is always some manual labor. There is a library to keep in order, a helping hand to be given. A little gardening to be done, a little tidying up or arranging to be done…God has attached great graces to manual labor.”
“The third way for us to reprint the Gospel is by preaching. All of us should preach. Those who work with their hands as well as those who are occupied with exterior works, those who conduct classes and those who teach by example, those who direct souls as well as those assigned to the ministry of the pulpit – all of us should preach. We should preach in practical ways. We should teach our neighbors, if not by our words, at least by our actions.”
“The fourth thing in the Gospel is sacrifice. The Word made Flesh prayed in order to teach us how to pray. He worked. He preached. Finally, He suffered. These are the four conditions necessary to reprint the Gospel…” (pp. 145-146)
There are any number of ways in which God may ask us to reprint the Gospel: in prayer, work, preaching and sacrifice. Are you willing? Are you able? Are you ready?
Today, how can you reprint the Gospel?
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“There is no partiality with God.”
In his commentary on today’s selection from Paul’s letter to the Romans, William Barclay made the following observation:
“Paul insists that in God’s economy there is no most favored nation status. There may be nations which are picked out for a special task and for a special responsibility, but none which is picked out for special privilege and special consideration. It may be true, as Milton said, that ‘When God has some great work, he gives it to his Englishmen’, but it is a great work that is in question, not a great privilege. The whole of the Jewish religion was based on the conviction that the Jews held a special position of privilege and favor in the eyes of God. We may feel that that is a position which nowadays we are far past. But is it? Is there no such thing nowadays as a color bar? Is there no such thing as a conscious feeling of superiority to what Kipling called ‘lesser breeds without the law’? This is not to say that all nations are the same in talent, but it is to say that those nations who have advanced further ought not to look with contempt on the others, but are, rather, under the responsibility to help them move forward.”
Each of us has a unique role to play in building up God’s Kingdom. However obvious or obscure our unique rolls may be, let us not confuse doing God’s work with promoting our own privilege.
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“They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus.”
In his commentary concerning this verse from Chapter 1 of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (in which he used forms of the words justify/justification in lieu of righteous and/or righteousness), William Barclay wrote:
“If we justify ourselves, we produce reasons to prove that we acted in the right way. If someone else justifies us, that person produces reasons to prove that we acted in the right way. Paying attention to the forms of the word in Greek, however, they always mean to treat, or account or reckon a person as something. Therefore, if God justifies a sinner, it does not mean that God finds reasons to prove the person right – far from it. It does not even mean, at this point, that God makes the sinner a good person. It means that God treats the sinner as if the sinner had not been a sinner at all. Instead of treating the sinner as a criminal to be obliterated, God treat the sinner as a child to be loved. That is what justification (righteousness) means. It means that God reckons us not as God’s enemies, but as God’s friends, not as bad people deserve but as good people deserve, not as law-breakers to be punished but as good men and women to be loved. That is the very essence of the Gospel.” (Daily Study Bible Series, p. 22)
We are not made righteous (justified) by faith in ourselves. We are made righteous (justified) by God’s faith in – and love for – us! Just this day, how might we display our gratitude for God’s abiding faith in us through our interactions with one another?
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“A worker’s wage is credited not as a gift, but as something due…”
Today we celebrate the life and legacy of St. Teresa of Avila. In his book This Saint’s for You, Thomas Craughwell observes:
“Every day – all day long – God pours his grace upon the world. Those who accept it – who cooperate with God’s will – draw closer to the Lord, as in the case of St. Teresa of Avila, the patron of souls in need of divine grace. The easygoing life of the Carmelite convent she entered was not conducive to the contemplative life. So, she began planning a new branch of the Carmelites, one that would bring nuns (and friars) back to the order’s original commitment to a life of austerity and deep prayer…St. Teresa’s legacy is her collection of spiritual writings, She was the first Catholic woman to write systematically about prayer and the interior life. In 1970, upon naming her a Doctor of the Church, Pope Paul VI praised Teresa as ‘a teacher of remarkable depth.’”
Insofar as Teresa died in 1582, her writings were well known by the “Gentleman Saint”. In a letter to Madame de Chantal (1605), Francis de Sales wrote:
“The practice of the presence of God taught by Mother Teresa in chapters 29 and 30 of The Way of Perfection is excellent, and I think it amounts to the same as I explained to you when I wrote that God was in our spirit as though he were the heart of our spirit and in our heart as the spirit which breathes life into it, and that David called God: the God of his heart. Use this boldly and often for it is most useful. May God be the soul and spirit of our heart forever….” (Stopp, Selected Letters, pp. 160 – 161)
Teresa knew from personal experience that “reforming” oneself – to say nothing of encourage others to “reform” themselves – is hard work. Of course, as we so clearly in the life of Teresa, working to be the best version of oneself is its own reward!
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<"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” Today we celebrate the life and legacy of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. In his book This Saint’s for You, Thomas Craughwell observes:
“At the age of nine, Margaret Mary Alacoque contracted polio. She spent the next six years confined to her bed as an invalid. When she was fifteen it is said that she had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary: upon emerging from her ecstasy, she discovered that she had been healed of her infirmities. During those six years Margaret Mary had developed a rather deep prayer life. When she subsequently joined the Sisters of the Visitation at Paray le Monial, she found the form of meditation prescribed for the novices rudimentary to the point of being tedious. Notwithstanding this source of frustration, Margaret Mary persevered and professed final vows.”
“In 1675 she had a vision of Christ while praying in the monastery chapel. He told Margaret Mary that he wanted her to be his messenger, spreading throughout the world devotion to his Sacred heart that, he told Margaret Mary, was ‘burning with divine love’ for the human family. Christ asked that the Church institute a new feast day in honor of his Sacred Heart and that, for love of him, Catholics should attend Mass and receive Communion on the First Friday of each month. He promised to save all faithful Catholics who honored him by displaying an image of his sacred heart in their homes or going to Mass and Communion every First Friday of the month for nine successive months.”
“Margaret Mary Alacoque encountered a great deal of skepticism when she began to tell the other sisters in the monastery about her visions. The nuns accused her of lying and questioned her sanity, while the local clergy dismissed her visions, saying that the Sacred Heart devotion went too far in humanizing Christ and thus diminished his divinity. The Jesuits, however – and the monastery’s chaplain Father Claude de la Colombiere, SJ – argued successfully that Margaret Mary’s revelations put fresh emphasis on the perfectly orthodox principle of confidence in God’s infinite love. Today veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a mainstay in Catholic devotional life.”
How ironic that God would choose a religious woman living in a cloistered community to become the herald (with the help of Claude de la Colombiere, of course!) of Christ’s unbounded love as seen so clearly in the image of his Sacred Heart? As Jesus told us late last week, nothing – however seemingly unlikely – is “impossible with God”. God took a personal, private revelation of his love to Margaret Mary and managed to transform it into a universal expression of love!
