For Friday of the Fourth Ordinary Week of the Church Year

Mark 6:14-29

The Gospel says Herod knew John to be just and holy, even in speaking openly against Herod’s own sins.
So Herod had an emotional traffic jam, both FEARING John and LIKING his words.

Herod FEARED John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man,
and kept him in custody.
When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed,
yet he LIKED to listen to him.

He FEARED him, but LIKED to listen to him.
John [Mt. 3:7; Lk. 3:] told ALL who came to him for the baptism of repentance: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
If those were John’s words for the REPENTANT, then what kind of hellfire must have come from his mouth for Herod who chose to stay in his sin?
However strong it may have been, Herod LIKED to hear it.
After he beheaded John, then learned of the “mighty powers at work” in the Lord Jesus, Herod reckoned: “It is John whom I beheaded. He has been raised up.”
So Herod would have thought and felt the same things for Christ as for John: that Christ was a just and holy man, whom Herod both feared and liked.
So John prepared the way even for Herod to consider Christ.
John baptized with water, but said another— whom we know to be the Lord Jesus— would come to baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, burning the chaff with unquenchable fire [Mt. 3:11,12; Lk. 3:16,17].
Christ says the Holy Spirit comes to convince the world concerning sin, justice, and judgment [Jn. 16:8].
That Spirit filled John before his birth, and filled John’s voice in manhood.
To be convinced about sin, justice, and judgment is something both to fear and to like— even as Herod feared and liked it.
It is something we may fear, because it calls for painfully hard work.
It is also something to like, because such work is the narrow gate to everlasting joy and blessing in the kingdom of heaven on earth.
The Gospel does not show Herod choosing to repent of sin and change his life— even though he knew that “mighty powers” were “at work” in Christ.
Si revera Deum quaerit [St. Benedict 58:7]— if a man truly seeks God, then he lets the Lord Jesus baptize him with the Holy Spirit and fire, convince him of sin and burn it off like chaff, so that the mighty powers at work in Christ will raise him up in the kingdom of God.
For that to happen for us, we must make the choice Herod never made.
To know of the Lord Jesus and to have feelings about him only makes us the same as Herod.
To end up different, we must take action in the choice of conversatio, ongoing conversion [St. Benedict 58:17], every moment of our lives.

For the Feast of Saint Meinrad, Benedictine Martyr

Matthew 10:28-33
James 1:2-4,12

St. Meinrad was a monk of the Benedictine monastery of Reichenau Island on Lake Constance.
Later in life, with the permission of his monastery superior, he went to live as a hermit in a valley in the mountains above Lake Zurich.
He died there at the hands of robbers in the year 863.
Exactly eight hundred years later, in 1663, St. Joseph of Cupertino passed away.
Historically documented crowds numbering hundreds of person had witnessed St. Joseph levitate and even fly about indoors and outdoors.
In 1917, just ninety-three years ago, thousands of persons, including members of the media, witnessed the sun dancing in the sky over Fátima, Portugal, where three children said the Blessed Virgin Mary was visiting them.
By contrast with the hundreds of eyewitness of St. Joseph Cupertino, and the thousands of witnesses at Fátima, when we read about the life of St. Meinrad, we may wonder who reported all the strange things that happened to him as a hermit.
In 1981, government workers digging in the area of St. Meinrad’s hermitage found the remains of wooden shacks in which other hermits lived around the time of St. Meinrad.
It may have been those other hermits who witnessed the strange things that happened when St. Meinrad was at prayer.
Reports remain that when St. Meinrad prayed visible demons attacked him, as if to break his fidelity to prayer.
Even his murder, his martyrdom, was connected with his fidelity to prayer.
While at prayer during Mass, it was shown to him that robbers were coming to kill him and take what little he had, perhaps the chalice and paten for celebrating the Eucharist.
After Mass, instead of running away, St. Meinrad remained at prayer, so that we may say he was “killed in the line of duty”— duty to God in prayer, making St. Meinrad a martyr of prayer.
When the robbers finally arrived, he received them as guests, and told them he knew their plan.
St. Meinrad had committed himself to stay with God by praying and living as a hermit.
Demons, robbers, and murderers failed to stop St. Meinrad’s simple faithfulness to his duty of prayer.
He suffered death in the line of duty.
Ordinary duties in daily life, daily work, and daily relationships are the absolute first step in loving God and surrendering to him.
It is by ordinary things that we begin the intimate and full change and renewal of our whole being— all our opinions, judgments and choices.
We let ourselves be moved and committed to undertake such work because we believe in God’s holiness and loving goodness that he showed and gave us fully in his Son.
Simple faith in God’s surpassing gift to us makes prayer one of our ordinary duties.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2725, tells us:

Prayer is both a gift of grace
and a determined response on our part.
It always presupposes effort.
. . . prayer is a battle.
Against whom?
Against ourselves
and against the wiles of the tempter
who does all he can to turn man away from prayer,
away from union with God.
We pray as we live,
because we live as we pray.
If we do not want to act habitually according to the Spirit of Christ,
neither can we pray habitually in his name.
The “spiritual battle” of the Christian’s new life is inseparable from the battle of prayer.

The “spiritual battle” and the “battle of prayer” sound like high drama.
There is enough drama in prayer that is ordinary and faithful— as simple as monks and hermits voicing the Psalms in the Divine Office, as simple as going off by ourselves to pray and reflect as we read the Bible, or, even more, as simple as a child sincerely mouthing the words of the Lord’s Prayer.
The Catechism, 2797, says, “Simple and faithful trust, humble and joyous assurance are the proper dispositions for one who prays the Our Father.”
St. Meinrad went to heaven because he was faithful to God in prayer, and his faithfulness carried over into the ordinary things of daily life.
It could be the same for any of us.

For the Second Ordinary Sunday of the Church Year

Isaiah 62:1-5
1 Corinthians 12:4-11
John 2:1-11

In less than one hundred eighty years after the resurrection of Christ, there was already a yearly festival on January 6 to commemorate his Baptism at the Jordan River.
Within her first five hundred years, the Church had developed the chain of celebrations of the birth of Christ, the visit of the magi to the newborn in Bethlehem, his Baptism in the Jordan River, and his first miracle at the Cana wedding.
All of those festivals, at one time or another were called Epiphany.
The word EPIPHANY means MANIFESTATION, REVELATION, or even APPARITION.
On Christmas Day, we celebrated his epiphany in the manger to the shepherds.
Sunday before last, we celebrated his epiphany to the Eastern magi, who were the first pagans to pay him homage.
Last Sunday, we celebrated his Baptism, which was the first epiphany of the Trinity in history: heaven opening over the Son of God on earth, the Father’s voice acclaiming the Son, and the testimony of the Spirit overshadowing him with the sign of a dove.
Today, the Gospel celebrates an epiphany to the disciples of Christ, an epiphany of his glory through the first of his miraculous signs, the changing of water into superabundant, superior wine.
The Gospel says, “Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee, and so REVEALED”— literally EPIPHANIED— “his glory, and his disciples BEGAN to believe in him.”
Throughout the rest of the Church year, we follow:
+ the epiphany of his preaching the Kingdom and calling men to repentance,
+ the epiphany of his forgiving sinners,
+ the epiphany of his Body and Blood as food and drink,
+ the epiphany of his suffering and death,
+ the epiphany of his rising from the dead and ascending into heaven,
+ and the Pentecost epiphany of the Spirit in the Church.
Finally, late in the year, the Church even celebrates the epiphany of the Second Coming (or Advent) of Christ the King.
We are at the beginning of a new year of epiphanies of Christ.
Today’s Gospel miracle takes us to the beginning of faith among his disciples.
“Jesus did this as the BEGINNING of his signs at Cana in Galilee, and so revealed his glory, and his disciples BEGAN to believe in him.”
It is a BEGINNING in so many ways.
First, this reading is from John’s Gospel that starts with the same words as the book of Genesis, “In the beginning.”
The Gospel is a new Genesis.
In the old book of Genesis, at the first known meal in history, the first groom and bride impoverished and saddened themselves by disobeying God to eat what he had forbidden.
Today in the Gospel, a new husband and wife are at their first married meal but fall into unexpected poverty: “the wine ran short.”
At that point the mother of the Lord steps forward.
She appears in this Gospel only twice: here at Cana and again at Calvary.
In both places, the Lord calls her, “Woman.”
Here at Cana, she is already the first believing disciple of Christ— before the faith of other disciples has even begun.
She does three things for the newly impoverished newlyweds.
First: she notices they are in need.
Second: she prays to her Son, telling him the plight of the poor.
Third: with faith, knowledge, and obedience, she tells those serving her Son to “Do whatever he tells you.”
In the Garden of Eden, the first woman gave the first man what God had forbidden, thereby telling the man not to serve God, but to “Do what ever the snake tells you.”
In the Gospel today, the mother of the Lord overturns the words of the first woman by telling those serving her Son to do whatever her Son says.
In Eden a banquet of sin; in Cana a banquet of obedience!
Following his mother’s concern, the Lord tells the servants what to do.
However, before his mother spoke to the servants, he said to her: “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”
Later in this Gospel, when his “hour” came at Calvary, he called his mother “Woman” for the second time, and he united her concern with his own.
In the hour of his cross, looking upon his mother and his disciple, he said, “Woman, there is your son.”
To his disciple, “There is your mother.”
From his cross, he renewed his poor mother as a mother by giving her a new son; and he renewed his poor disciple as a son by giving him a new mother.
More beginnings, more epiphanies!
At the cross, they had no wine, just like at Cana.
Rather, at the cross they had vinegar, which is wine gone bad.
At Calvary, the Lord’s mother could have said what she said at Cana: “They have no wine.”
However, she is silent.
Her Son’s concern is to drink all the ruined wine of humanity.
With an immeasurable thirst and poverty that swallowed all human poverty, the Lord Jesus drank the vinegar of Calvary.
With that, he summed everything up, saying, “It is finished.”
Calvary and Cana echo each other.
The beginnings that are in today’s Gospel of Cana tell us something about what the Lord fulfilled at Calvary.
At Cana, the stone jars altogether held roughly one hundred twenty and one hundred eighty gallons of water for religious purification rites.
The Lord turned all of it into superior wine.
Poverty into overflowing abundance!
Marital sorrow into a honeymoon with one hundred fifty gallons of excellence and joy!
And from Calvary: the bereavement of a mother and a disciple turned into their new life as mother and son; death turned into resurrection; suffering into glory.
Like his mother and the servants at Cana, we all have roles to play in the epiphanies of the Lord.
If we take notice of need as his mother did, if we intercede as his mother did, if we exhort to service as his mother did, if we do whatever he tells us as they did at Cana, and if we go to the Calvary as did his mother and one disciple, then the Lord will work joyful signs and abundant superior beginnings.
“Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee, and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.”
Everyday let us choose to begin to believe and serve.

For Wednesday of the First Ordinary Week of the Church Year

1 Samuel 3:1-19,19-20
Mark 1:29-39

In the first reading, God sought and called out to the boy Samuel in the Temple.
Then, in the Gospel, all the people and the apostles were seeking and calling out for the Lord Jesus.
Meanwhile, the Lord Jesus himself was seeking, calling, and finding God his Father in prayer.
The boy Samuel mistakenly thought Eli the priest was calling him.
Samuel did not know God was calling.
Eli worked that out, and told Samuel to answer: “Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.”
In the original writing, it is actually, “Speak, YAHWEH, for your servant is listening.”
A “dance” of words is playing.
God said, “Samuel, Samuel!”
The name “Samuel” means “God HEARS.”
“Samuel, Samuel!”— “God HEARS, God HEARS!”
Samuel answered God, “Speak, for your servant is LISTENING.”
Then Samuel began to hear the God who hears.
God had Samuel speak for him, and all the villages of Israel “came to know that Samuel was an accredited prophet of the LORD” [YAHWEH].
All the villages— it was the same with the Lord Jesus in the Gospel.
“Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.”
After listening to his Father alone in prayer, the Lord Jesus, the Word of the Father, went to all the villages “throughout the whole of Galilee.”
The Gospel today singles out the village synagogues as the places where the Lord Jesus preached the Word of his Father “throughout the whole of Galilee.”
As of old, and still today, a synagogue is where God’s chosen people worship him by singing the Psalms, where they listen to the reading of his Word, and where they receive the lessons or commentaries of religious teachers.
The Galileans did not know the Word of God was personally in their midst, the Lord Jesus.
They did not know, as the Lord Jesus knew, that a dance of God’s Word was happening in their synagogues.
They sang the Psalms, God’s Word.
They heard the readings of God’s Word.
Now, unbeknownst to them, God’s Word was made flesh, and dwelt among them, he full of grace and truth, joining them in singing God’s Word in the Psalms and listening to readings of God’s Word.
A dance, but also a war that made all Galilee a battlefield, because “he went into their synagogues, preaching AND DRIVING OUT DEMONS THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE OF GALILEE”!
The demonic invasion began in the home God made for man in the Garden of Eden.
There the serpent led man and woman to doubt and disobey the word that YAHWEH had spoken to them.
A war against the Word of God!
The boy Samuel became a prophet, a warrior for the Word of God.
“Speak, YAHWEH, for your servant is listening.”
But now the Word of God became flesh, and dwelt among us.
In the house of God, the Lord Jesus, the Word of God in person, still joins us at prayer and in hearing the Word of his Father.
The Word is among us as we listen to him in his Gospel, and so is the Spirit.
The Word and Spirit pray with us to the Father, pray for us to the Father, receive our prayer on behalf of the Father, and answer our prayer with the Father.
Yet they are also here to do battle, driving out demons from the landscape of our lives, as the Lord Jesus once did in the synagogues “throughout the whole of Galilee.”
He offers us to eat a communion in his Body, and drink a covenant in his Blood.
The covenant of God also made men his warriors.
The spiritual warfare that we are about has struck a deadly blow to our souls, but also a deadly blow against the Lord Jesus.
He suffered, died, and was buried.
He rose as victor over sin and death.
He ascended as Man Glorified, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From the Father, the Word of God breathes the Spirit of holy victory upon the remnant of the battle that goes on.
If we are to receive the victory that God has already won for us, then we must make it honestly true when we say to the Lord, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
Are we honestly listening, and do we honestly obey?

For December 31, the Seventh Day in the Christmas Octave

1 John 2:18-21
John 1:1-18

Among earthly men, we look in admiration upon a son who is a credit to his father, or a father who is devoted to his son.
It would moves us even more to learn of a father and son who are men of wisdom, justice, courage, and balance, who honor, love and boast deservedly of each other.
It may be rare to find such a father and son among earthly men.
The Gospel today calls us to gaze and dwell upon something unspeakably rare that has anointed the world of flesh and blood.

. . . God . . . the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only-begotten Son,
full of grace and truth.

The score of Gospel verses today is a litany of the glory of the Son.
He is the Word.
He is God.
He always was before the beginning of all that came to be.
He is the True Light.
He is glorious.
He is the Father’s only-begotten Son.
He is full of grace.
He is full of truth.
He is at the Father’s side, and “we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only-begotten Son.”
In the very middle of today’s admiring litany of glory for the Son of the Father, you and I find the reason for all our hope.

to those who did accept him
HE GAVE POWER TO BECOME CHILDREN OF GOD,
to those who believe in his name

He— the Word, God, the True Light, the Glorious One, the One Full of Grace, the One Full of Truth, the One at the Father’s Side— he, the Father’s Only-Begotten Son gives power for others to become sons and daughters of God.
The power is, as today’s first reading puts, “anointing that comes from the Holy One.”
The anointing Spirit becomes the voice of believing souls to cry out the Word of the Son, “Abba, Father!” from within their every deed and even within their silence and rest.
By the Spirit, the faithful soul and the Father credit and glorify each other.
If we remain true to the Spirit anointing us, and to the Son dwelling among us, both guarantee that in the resurrection we shall ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of the Father.
A new Gospel could then sing about us.

You are sons and daughters by God’s decision.
You are light.
The true light that came into the world has enlightened you.
Your flesh became the dwelling of the Word among you.
See your glory as the Father’s children!
Now you are filled with grace and truth.
You have all received grace beyond grace
from the fullness of the only-begotten Son.
With him you have revealed God your Father,
and see him face to face,
and are at his side forever.

God has given his Word that glory awaits us.
Faith believes it.
Hope desires it.
Love works for it.

For the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Luke 2:41-52

This is the last time in the Gospel that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph appear together.
It is the fulfillment of their mission as a family.
At merely twelve years of age, the boy Jesus already has questions, understanding, and answers that astound the teachers in the Temple.
He also has forthright self-knowledge to uphold God as his true Father, and his Father’s house as his own rightful place.
He even asks Mary and Joseph why they looked for him anywhere else but the Temple.
It is as if they should have already known the boy’s ways.
We can wonder if throughout his childhood in Nazareth he spent his spare minutes and hours in the synagogue.
The Gospel does not say.
However, later, when he is a grown man, the Gospel says over and again it was his custom to be in the synagogue every Sabbath— as if unfailing weekly attendance made him unique.
In the Old Law there is no obligation to go to the synagogue or Temple every Sabbath.
Nonetheless, Jesus did so.
In the Gospel today, the boy speaks to Mary and Joseph as if they should have known where to find him.
“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
As if they should have already known Jerusalem meant only one thing to him: the Temple, his house of prayer, his Father’s house!
Years later he would use manly violence to cleanse the Temple of men who did not pray in it, but used it as a religious goods mall.
The boy Jesus— the worship-filled, prayer-filled boy, manly and wise beyond his years and those of the Temple teachers— lived with Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, subjecting himself to them, submitting to them, obeying them.
Mary—“his mother kept all these things in her heart.”
The angel Gabriel had told her the Holy Spirit would overshadow her with the power of the Most High, and she would conceive the Holy Son of God while remaining a virgin.
She was to call the boy “Jesus” from the Hebrew words, “Yahweh is salvation.”
He would be king of Israel forever.
Now twelve years have passed since she bore him.
Every year, she and Joseph have gone to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover.
Most likely they have brought Jesus with them every year to the Passover in Jerusalem.
Their annual Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem is the only regular feature of their family life that the Gospel gives us.
A holy family whose identity is Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem!
Today in the Gospel it is Passover time, and the boy is twelve years old.
He is at the doorway of Israelite manhood, the age for taking on a man’s responsibility for the commandments, the age for taking on a man’s official roles in the rituals of the synagogue.
The doorway of manhood for Jesus is the Passover in Jerusalem, a sign of things to come.
The Passover!
The night when God killed all the firstborn sons of the slave-driving Egyptians, but passed over the firstborn sons of the Israelite slaves who had shut themselves in behind doorways marked with the blood of a lamb of God!
The manhood of the boy Jesus lies through a bloodstained Passover doorway.
He has stepped through it at age twelve, taking on the responsibilities and roles of manhood under the life-and-death bloodstains of Passover.
Mary “kept all these things in her heart.”
Even though Jesus goes back to Nazareth with her and Joseph, and subjects himself to them, submits to them, obeys them, things are never the same.
The rest of the Gospel shows us only the grown manhood of Jesus—culminating in the bloodstains of Jesus himself, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Jesus is both the Lamb and the bloodstained doorway for all the people of God to enter, that they might be free of sin’s slavery and be free to live forever as sons and daughters of God in the heavenly Jerusalem— heaven on earth.
In their yearly Passover pilgrimage to the earthly Jerusalem of old, Mary and Joseph have done what is humanly possible to ready Jesus for his own Passover to end all Passovers.
All Christian families, all monasteries, all the Church— we all have the mission of raising the sons and daughters of God and of being raised as sons and daughters of God.
We are his children, whom he calls through the bloodstained Passover Doorway that is Christ.
The dark night outside the door is the slavery of sin.
Through Christ, with him, in him, is the exodus to bright freedom in his Father’s house.
May the prayers of St. Joseph help us on our obedient pilgrimage!
May the prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, help us to keep all the mysteries of Jesus in our hearts as she keeps them in hers!
Obedient to Mary and Joseph, even Jesus the Lord “advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.”
Together with Jesus, with his example and power, we can choose to “man up,” and thereby become free in taking responsibility for the commandments and for offering our lives in the worship of his Father and ours.

For the Feast of Saint Stephen, First Martyr

Matthew 10:17-22
Acts 6:8-10; 7:54-59

In the space of a day, we have gone from the beginning of Christ’s newborn life on earth, through the fullness of his manhood, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension, past Pentecost, into the days of the first deacons and the first martyr.
We join St. Stephen who is “filled with the Holy Spirit” and “who looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”
The vision and its testimony, for which St. Stephen underwent martyrdom, echo in the Church’s profession of faith that the Lord Jesus “ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”
Stephen’s vision has four things in it.
First: he saw heaven opened up.
Second: he saw the glory of God in heaven.
Third: he saw the Lord Jesus as a man in heaven.
Fourth: he saw that the Son of Man is also God at the right hand of the Father in heaven.
St. Stephen had his vision in the presence of Israel’s high priest, other priests, scribes, and elders.
He dared to tell them what he was seeing.
Upon hearing it they dragged him out for death by stoning.
As he suffered the deadly hail, he dared to testify again with the words that are the first known prayer to the name of Jesus in heaven.
“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
Stephen prayed to the Lord Jesus whom he knew to be at the right hand of the Father.
Was it the first time that a Christian prayed to the ascended Lord Jesus by name?
We don’t know.
The Lord Jesus had taught us to pray to his Father and ours, “Our Father who art in heaven….”
The Lord Jesus had also spoken of the Holy Spirit and of himself in terms of their both being our intercessors, our paracletes, our advocates at the throne of the Father.
If not in St. Stephen, then by his time, Christian prayer became peculiarly or properly Christian.
That is, it was not merely prayer to God, not only prayer to the heavenly Father, but also prayer to the person of Christ.
It became Christian in another sense.
Already to say, “Our Father,” is to pray as Christ prayed.
With the dying words of Stephen we see Christian prayer begin to imitate Christ in other ways as well.
On the cross the Lord Jesus prayed aloud to the Father.

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

St. Stephen spoke his own dying prayers to the Lord Jesus.

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

With that last prayer, St. Stephen, like all other saints in heaven, is also a paraclete, an advocate, an intercessor.
He seeks the salvation of sinners by the forgiveness of their sins.
The forgiveness of St. Stephen was not about ending the suffering of Stephen.
The forgiveness of the Lord Jesus was not about ending the suffering of Jesus.
Christian forgiveness seeks the everlasting welfare of sinners in reconciliation with God.
As the vision of Stephen upholds, Christian forgiveness is about heaven being opened in hope that sinners and unbelievers might receive reconciliation with God.
Finally, St. Stephen’s Christian prayer and forgiveness are Eucharistic.
Stephen made the deadly sacrifice of his own body and blood into a prayer that handed himself over to the Lord, and a prayer for the salvation of others.
You and I are here with faith’s vision, faith’s knowledge— St. Stephen’s vision and knowledge.
We too are called to Eucharistic sacrifice and Eucharistic intercession.
We are not here for ourselves alone, but for all who sin and all who do not believe.
Through the intercession of St. Stephen, may the Holy Spirit fill us that the Lord Jesus may receive us into the heavenly glory of God.
Lord Jesus, receive our spirits!
Lord, do not hold our sins against any of us!