The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today offer an opportunity to contemplate the tension between our acceptance of Providence and our tendency to exercise our own ego in charge of events.
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| Power and Presence |
The Prophet Zechariah recalls God’s promises to exiles returned from Babylon in the 6th Century BCE.
* [8:3] Faithful city: a unique biblical epithet for Jerusalem, signaling the importance of the holy city and its leaders for establishing justice in society (see also vv. 8, 16, 19). Holy mountain: Jerusalem and its Temple, the sacred center of the holy land (2:16) and of the whole world.1
The psalmist recalls God’s promises to save the poor.
* [Psalm 102] A lament, one of the Penitential Psalms. The psalmist, experiencing psychological and bodily disintegration (Ps 102:4–12), cries out to God (Ps 102:1–3). In the Temple precincts where God has promised to be present, the psalmist recalls God’s venerable promises to save the poor (Ps 102:13–23). The final part (Ps 102:24–28) restates the original complaint and prayer, and emphasizes God’s eternity.2
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus demonstrates who has greatness and how we need to relate to those outside our group.
* [9:46–50] These two incidents focus on attitudes that are opposed to Christian discipleship: rivalry and intolerance of outsiders.3
Beth Samson shares that from what we hear in today’s readings, Love is not about importance or greatness. Love is about proximity, presence, and attentiveness.
In the Gospel, we hear Jesus noticing the intentions of the disciples in their boasting about their importance, their greatness. Jesus pulls a child close and says to these boasting disciples: “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” Juniper does not want to be received with my phone in my hand replying to emails or text. Juniper wants to be received with attentive presence. She wants to know that I am watching her every dance move or that I am listening closely to the silly story she is telling me about a friend at school. She wants me to be close, to be present, to be attentive. And in this, she knows how I love her.4
Don Schwager quotes “Jesus, the Physician of souls, amputates vainglory,” by Cyril of Alexandria (376-444 AD).
"The passion and lust of pride attacked some of the holy apostles. The mere argument about who of them was the greatest is the mark of an ambitious person, eager to stand at the head of the rest. Christ, who did not sleep, knows how to deliver. He saw this thought in the disciple’s mind, springing up, in the words of Scripture (Hebrews 12:15), like some bitter plant. He saw the weeds, the work of the wicked sower. Before it grew up tall, struck its root down deep, grew strong, and took possession of the heart, he tears up the evil by the very root…. "In what way does the Physician of souls amputate pride’s passion? How does he deliver the beloved disciple from being the prey of the enemy and from a thing hateful to God and man? “He took a child,” it says, “and set it by him.” He made the event a means of benefiting both the holy apostles themselves and us their successors. This illness, as a rule, preys upon all those who are in any respect superior to other people".(excerpt from COMMENTARY ON LUKE, HOMILY 54.2)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Luke 9:46-50 observes that in today’s Gospel, we see Jesus’ closest friends having a hard time understanding him. They had already seen him feed five thousand people and heal a boy possessed by a demon. Peter, James, and John had even seen him transfigured in glory. Surely they would know what Jesus thought was most important. But every time Jesus spoke about his upcoming death, they didn’t get it. They couldn’t grasp the sacrificial nature of his love. Ironically, they then got into an argument about which of them was the greatest disciple.
Jesus knows the intention of your heart as well. He lives in you and knows you better even than you know yourself. He sees your every thought and emotion. He knows the words you will speak before you utter them. He sees the good that lies deep within you, and he knows your most imperfect impulses. And just as he patiently helped the disciples, he will help you.
As you sit with Jesus in prayer today, allow him to search your heart. Let his light reveal the mercy and generosity that already lie there. Let him patiently uncover any fear or bitterness that binds you. And let him teach you of his sacrificial love, which has the power to change your mind and heart so that you think as he thinks and love as he loves.6
Friar Jude Winkler discusses the promise of normalcy to the returning exiles from the Prophet Zechariah. Our call is to serve those who cannot pay us back. Friar Jude reminds us to praise those who seek goodness, even if they are not in our group.
A post by Franciscan Media on the Saint of the Day for September 30 reflects on Saint Jerome who is particularly important for having made a translation of the Bible which came to be called the Vulgate... In order to be able to do such work, Jerome prepared himself well. He was a master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic.
Jerome was a strong, outspoken man. He had the virtues and the unpleasant fruits of being a fearless critic and all the usual moral problems of a man. He was, as someone has said, no admirer of moderation whether in virtue or against evil. He was swift to anger, but also swift to feel remorse, even more severe on his own shortcomings than on those of others. A pope is said to have remarked, on seeing a picture of Jerome striking his breast with a stone, “You do well to carry that stone, for without it the Church would never have canonized you” (Butler’s Lives of the Saints).7
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, hopes to show what Francis of Assisi clearly changed and did differently and what flowed from his unique wholeness. We will see that Francis was at once very traditional and entirely new in the ways of holiness—a paradox.
Yet Francis’ holiness, like all holiness, was unique and never a copy or mere imitation. In his “Testament,” he said, “No one showed me what I ought to do,” [1] and then, at the very end of his life, he said, “I have done what is mine to do; may Christ teach you what is yours!” [2] What permission, freedom, and space he thus gave to his followers! Bonaventure (1217–1274) echoed that understanding of unique and intimate vocation when he taught, “We are each loved by God in a particular and incomparable way, as in the case of a bride and bridegroom.” [3] Francis and Clare knew that the love God has for each soul is unique and made to order, which is why any “saved” person always feels beloved, chosen, and even “God’s favorite” like so many in the Bible. Divine intimacy is precisely particular and made to order—and thus “intimate.”8
Our journey will include experience of beauty, truth and goodness and we will need to navigate the tension that puts our ego ahead of the will of God.
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