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Jesus’ Missionary Healers

A few years ago, as I was ushering my 3rd grade Sunday School class to our annual Advent confession day, I reminded them that Jesus was present in the Tabernacle. One of the girls repeated the word “Tabernacle” several times, as if chewing on the word, before proclaiming, “Tabernacle…that’s my favorite word!” It became the word that grounded us when lessons about the Trinity and Church teaching somehow became a weekly update about everyone’s pets. The Tabernacle was our anchor, and each class I reminded them that Jesus was present in that gold box called a Tabernacle whenever they saw that red sanctuary candle lit.

As our Church grapples with the sorrows of the past few months, I feel buoyed up by this memory. It reminds me that our Church is made of much more than the few people who have led us to disappointment and doubt, and I feel emboldened to pray the Creed. Yes, Lord I believe in One God…

I believe that there is a power in being a broken Church. Certainly the Apostles, who felt the corruption and blasphemy of the leaders of their faith at the Church’s very beginnings, must have felt similar emotions. Who can I trust? Is the Lord really present in this Church? Is it worth staying?

Years ago, when I lived in Rome, my parish was Sancta Maria in Trastevere. In the early Church, the taverns, which occupied the Church’s current location, became the very place where the Gospel was spread and hearts were converted to Christ. This bit of history reminds me that the Gospel is not meant to be experienced solely within the confines of the physical church building, and that Jesus Christ is not meant to be kept on reserve in the Tabernacle like a book in a library. Rather, we are all, priest and parishioner alike, meant to proclaim that Gospel and bring that Presence of Christ wherever we go. We are both Tabernacle and sanctuary candle, alive with Christ, present within us, and aflame with the joy of Love Incarnate.

A few years ago, the Holy Father challenged us to be “Missionary Disciples.” I think that, particularly now, we must also be Missionary Healers. Every person is wounded, even (and perhaps most especially) the wound-er. We must accept into our hearts the broken, those who feel alone and rejected. We must give them a resting place in our hearts so that they can experience the warmth of Christ’s Presence in our hearts. Often it is in this moment of mercy that I recognize He is really there.

The world is cold and dark, but His Presence is still aflame, even if it feels like the dying embers of a once roaring fire. The fact remains that light is more powerful than darkness. Even in the darkness we have the moon and stars for light, just as we have Our Lady and the saints (and each other!), giving us hope, pointing us to the sun we cannot see.

We must have faith even when those who promise to lead us go astray, and remain strong in our defense of Christ and His Church, even when our offense fails. We must pray for our leaders, our parish priests who are on the front lines, the offensive line, if you will, taking the hits even when the quarterback fumbles. We are the defense and special teams! We must support our faithful offense, the clergy, who lead us to closer to the endzone, to our Heavenly goal, to become saints in God’s kingdom.

Only God knows the trajectory of our Church. It is my hope, however, that this horrific experience will generate saints of all states of life. Our faith is stronger than sin, as it is made of the very Presence of Christ in our hearts, so long as we let Him remain there. We are living Tabernacles, charged with bringing healing to our broken world. Together we can rebuild His Church, a mission not unique to Saint Francis.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that each of us is broken, wounded by sin, others, and the fallen world in which we live. To all of you, let Christ heal you! He accepts you, as broken as you are. You are never too broken for God.

When you find yourself feeling lost remember the anchor. You are a Tabernacle, Jesus Christ is with you, and you have a mission. Our Church will never crumble because Christ is truly present in our sanctuaries, in our hearts, and in those of countless other Christians. Wherever you are, at home or in your car, at work or school, in a bar or a tavern, you are a Missionary Healer, because you are His and He is yours.

Breakfast with Jesus; Why it is so Important

By Mary Lou Rosien

Freeimages.com/CMay

“Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”” (John 21:12) During the weeks after Easter, we hear several references to Jesus eating with his disciples. This is important for two reasons, first, it reminds us that Jesus rises from the dead with his human body! The apostles were not seeing a ghost. Jesus ate with them. He is fully human and fully divine.

Equally important, Jesus feeds them! It had probably been a long night fishing and Our Lord provided for his friends’ physical needs as well as their spiritual ones. He feeds us in the Eucharist and through his word in the Gospel. He is still meeting our needs, finding us where we are… just as he found the apostles fishing.

There are two images of Christ that I find especially appealing; Our Lord cooking breakfast for his friends and when scripture describes him as “reclining at supper.” It is easy to focus solely on the divinity of Christ and forget his human friendships. I love to think of Jesus with his head tipped back in laughter, eyes sparkling and relishing the uniqueness and even quirkiness of his circle of friends. This is the Jesus who still lives, loves and has redeemed us. He is our Savior; he is also our friend.

We can help our children to understand the complicated issue of the two natures of Jesus by practicing a simpler version of Lectio Divina (read, meditate, pray and contemplate):

Read the Gospel stories of Jesus out loud.

Discuss eating breakfast with Jesus. (meditate)
What would you like Jesus to make you for breakfast?
Would you like fire-roasted fish, like the apostles did?
How does Jesus feed your soul as well as your need for physical nourishment?
Remember that Jesus calls the Eucharist “true food.” Why do you think He says that?

Pray!
Have the children ask Jesus what he wants them to see or hear in the story.

Consider acting out a breakfast with Jesus. (contemplate)
What person in the story would you be?
How would you feel about Jesus cooking for you?
Explain how Jesus is your friend.

“Be with Me”

By Maureen Smith

When I was looking over the readings for Lent the phrase that grabbed me by the heart was from the Responsorial Psalm for this Sunday, “Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.” This phrase is one I hope to carry throughout Lent.

In the First Reading for today from the Book of Joel, we see that a fast is proclaimed. However, in the announced time of penance it is not “every man for himself.” Joel clearly instructs the congregation to come together to proclaim a fast and petition God for mercy for the whole community.

This Lent, we might take the opportunity to intentionally come together as a family, as a classroom, as a prayer group, etc. to acknowledge this Lenten Season and pray together for God’s Mercy. Together, we can talk about how we can all work to turn towards God and away from sin.

Typically, conversations around Lent tend to formulated around the question, “What are you giving up?” But my experience has been that this leads to competition and quickly takes the focus off of Christ.

Because Lent can very easily become about us and what we are doing, it might be helpful to structure our Lenten journey around those opportunities when we meet as a family, prayer group, or parish. The very act of coming together connects us with the One in whose Name we are gathered and makes us aware of the Presence of God in our midst. It is in this context that we often hear God’s voice calling us to conversion and transformation.

Gathering as a community enables us to remember our dependence upon each other and upon God as we recognize our own needs and those of others. We can so easily desensitize ourselves to our longing for God. We operate on autopilot, forgetting to call upon the Lord for help. We forget that he is always upholding our existence, always ready to come to our aid. But the Liturgy this week reminds us of our desire for God to be with us, and of the reality of His continuous presence among us each day.
With our brothers and sisters in the Lord, let us invite Him into our joys and sorrows. Let us recognize the needs of others and petition the Lord for His mercy. We do this each week at Mass during the Intercessions, but is there space for this kind of prayer at home at the dinner table or before bed? Do we pray with our neighbors, co-workers, friends, and those God puts in our lives? These experiences can be very humbling and nerve-wracking, but never once have I regretted praying with others, especially with the sick and the dying. It is less about saying the right thing and more about “being with” the person as God has promised to be with us.

By strengthening ourselves in prayer, we can make this Season of Lent a time of evangelization. Because we recognize our own need of Communion with God and others, we can see the longing in the hearts of others who may have less opportunity for connection. It is not up to us to save or fix others, but God does ask us to be His witnesses, His disciples, His conduits of grace. By being with someone, by recognizing the goodness in his or her soul, we reflect back to that person God’s presence in his or her soul.

When we pray with others we exercise our baptismal roles as priest, prophet and king. We are able to call upon the name of the Lord and invoke His intercession as we have the Spirit within us who knows how to pray, even when
we do not. We are able to testify as prophets to God’s promise of salvation and His love for all people. We who are children of God and co-heirs with Christ in God are able to ask “anything” of Him. Do we have the courage to do this? Do we ask God for the eyes to see and the ears to hear those around us who need someone to accompany them?

This Lent, I encourage you to ask yourself how the Lord might be calling you to community. Where is He asking you to be with others and where is he calling you to serve? How can you help bring God’s love and mercy into that community? How can you bring that love and mercy into your own heart in order to transform it into a version much like Christ’s own Sacred Heart?

Jesus on “the exception to the rule”

By Christopher Smith, OP

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus and his disciples were “going through a field of grain on the sabbath” when the hungry disciples “began to pick the heads of grain and eat them.” The Pharisees saw this and challenged Jesus saying that what his disciples were doing was “unlawful to do on the sabbath.” The Pharisees’ charge was a sabbath violation, not a case of theft, because eating from a neighbor’s standing grain was, in general, an acceptable practice (see Deut 23:25).

In this post, I want to examine Jesus’ response, where he explained his disciples were not violating the law, looking at it from four different aspects: historical, lawful, prophetical, reasonableness.

Historical

First, Jesus appeals to the behavior of David (1 Sam 21:1-6) as an example from history. Surely the Pharisees would admit that David’s behavior and that of the high priest Ahim’elech were above reproach. In the story from 1 Samuel, David arrives at Nob and asks the priest Ahim’elech for something to eat. The only food on hand was the “bread of the Presence,” which is “holy bread,” fit only for the high priests to consume (for more on the bread see Lev 24:5-9). However, Ahim’elech shares this bread with David and in turn David shares it with those accompanying him. Jesus is making this historical connection because the Pharisees will not likely admit that David or Ahim’elech, key figures from Israel’s history, made a mistake, and to recall to the Pharisees’ mind how David shared the bread with his followers.

There is a difference between the two stories that some may believe significant when making the comparison (i.e. David and his followers / Jesus and the disciples). David actually deceives Ahim’elech into giving him the bread. He told the priest he was on a secret mission from the king when, in fact, he was fleeing from Saul who had vowed to kill him. In his hasty preparations to flee, David had not packed sufficient supplies. While the lie does not come into play in the New Testament story, most commentators don’t view the difference between the two accounts as significant as the common theme of necessity. Both David’s followers and Jesus’ disciples, in serving their masters, had grown sufficiently hungry in the course of their duties that their masters broke with the norm to feed them.

Lawful

Next Jesus weaves a lawful argument based on the requirements specified in the Book of Numbers (28:9-20). In the Old Testament book, the prescription for the sabbath offering is described. To me, it sounds a lot of like work:

…you shall offer a burnt offering to the LORD: two young bulls, one ram, seven male lambs a year old without blemish; also three tenths of an ephah of fine flour for a cereal offering, mixed with oil, for each bull; and two tenths of fine flour for a cereal offering, mixed with oil, for the one ram; and a tenth of fine flour mixed with oil as a cereal offering for every lamb; for a burnt offering of pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the LORD.

However, a few verses later in the text it says: “On the first day there shall be a holy convocation: you shall do no laborious work….” The “first day” is the sabbath. The Pharisees are chiding the disciples, not for stealing, but working (i.e. harvesting) on the sabbath. The slaughtering of animals, a “laborious work,” is forbidden on the sabbath by everyone except the high priests. Jesus calls the priests who worked on the sabbath, for the purpose of worship, “innocent.” But how is that? Isn’t there a disconnect here? The implication is temple worship takes precedence over the sabbath. Jesus makes the same connection; however, he takes it a step further when he says there is, “something greater than the temple here.” If the Pharisees believe temple worship takes precedence over the sabbath, Jesus is saying there is even something greater than the temple. It’s no wonder they believe Jesus to be a blasphemer.

Prophetical

The next way Jesus addresses the Pharisees objection is by referring to the prophet Hosea who spoke on behalf of the Lord, saying:

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6:6)

Jesus rebukes the Pharisees’ lack of understanding of the scripture by saying, “If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned these innocent men.” The implication here is that if the Pharisees truly knew the scriptures they would act accordingly (i.e. know that God desires good will towards mankind and act similarly). Jesus refers to his disciples as “innocent men,” just like the priests who work on the sabbath were “innocent,” because both are working for something that is more significant than the sabbath. The Pharisees were only concerned with outward projections of piety rather than the true spiritual significance of the words contained in scripture.

Reasonableness

The last part of Jesus’ rebuttal is based on reason. Since he is the Lord of the sabbath his disciples, who are acting in union with him, had a right to do what would normally be considered objectionable to do on the sabbath. This is an expansion, a revelation, of the idea expressed above: “something greater than the temple is here.” Yes, there is! The God-man is here! The one who originally commanded what is right, good, and holy, on the sabbath is now, once again, declaring what is right, good, and holy on the sabbath. It is not a canceling of one in lieu of the other; instead, it is a deeper dive into what is already known.

Though not part of today’s reading, the narrative in Matthew’s Gospel continues with Jesus healing a man on the sabbath and Jesus challenging the Pharisees with a predicament:

Which one of you who has a sheep that falls into a pit on the sabbath will not take hold of it and lift it out? (Mt 12:11)

Knowing that a reasonable, common sense approach to life would lead one to conclude that relieving a man’s suffering and rescuing an animal are more significant than abstaining from work on a particular day of the week, Jesus concludes with, “So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.” This strikes me as much as a statement of fact as it does a question to be posed to those who doubt otherwise.

Conclusion

Jesus shows in Matthew’s eighth chapter, through word and deed, that there are times when the rule needs to give way to the exception. Jesus’ purpose was not to provide “an out” from observance of the sabbath, not at all. In fact, in order for there to be “an exception” there must first be a “rule” (exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis (“the exception confirms the rule in cases not excepted”). Worship of the Lord on the sabbath is proper and right. By regularly going to the synagogue to teach and by expressing his intense desire to celebrate the Passover with his disciples (cf. Luke 22:15), Jesus demonstrates a commitment to the rule (i.e. law). However, these teachings in Matthew’s eighth chapter were designed by the Lord to give his disciples, and us, greater spiritual insight into the law’s meaning.