Without the Cross, We Lose It All (27th Sunday - Cycle A)

In the Gospel Reading for this Sunday we see Jesus confronting the religious leaders of his time, who did not accept him as the Messiah. He tells them that other leaders would take their place. The dire warning was already foreshadowed in the Book of Isaiah, as we see in the First Reading.

In the Old Testament, God established a covenant with the Israelites. The Covenant anticipated the coming of the Messiah, who would liberate the Israelites from their bondage. When Christ, who is God Incarnate, came among us, he fulfilled the Old Covenant and created the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant, God established a special relationship with the people of Israel, giving them the land of Israel as their inheritance. In the New Covenant, that special relationship is extended to all of humanity and encompasses all who are baptized into Christ and who lead a life following him through the Church he established. Instead of a physical land in this world, the New Covenant focuses on our heavenly land, the New Heaven and New Earth that will be fashioned by Christ at the end of the ages. In the Old Covenant, the Israelites were to follow the Mosaic Law. But the New Covenant is founded on accepting and reciprocating the love of Christ.

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Photo Credit: Our Lady of Sorrows at Golgotha, the site of the Crucifixion of Christ (c) 2016 by Zoltan Abraham.

True Love vs False Empathy (26th Sunday - Cycle A)

The Second Reading for this Sunday includes one of the most famous description of Christ in the New Testament, stating that Christ, "though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:5-8). Christ is God Himself, who became incarnate, taking on human nature. He lived among us as one of us. He did not use his divine powers for his own glory but only to perform miracles in support of his proclamation of the Gospel message. At the culmination of his earthly ministry, he accepted death upon the Cross, in atonement for our sins.

As Christians, we are all called to be like Christ. We are called to invite Christ into our lives, into our very being, and become channels of Christ's love. We are to be humble like Christ, regarding "others as more important than" ourselves (Philippians 2:3), as St. Paul says. We are to love sacrificially, giving of ourselves to others not just from the surplus of our lives, but from the very core of our being. Sacrificial giving also means that we are to be crucified for each other, as Christ was crucified for us. For some of us, the Cross might mean literally dying in service of others. But for most of us the Cross entails daily acts of unselfish self-giving, serving those around us in small ways and great ones. Taking care of our children when we don't feel like it, being there for elderly parents even when it's hard, visiting a lonely family member in a retirement home instead of watching movies -- all these acts and more are examples of sacrificial love.

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Photo Credit: Golgotha, the site of the Crucifixion of Christ (c) 2016 by Zoltan Abraham.

Rooted in the Love of Christ (25th Sunday - Cycle A)

The parable in the Gospel reading for this Sunday may be perceived as hopeful by some and shocking by others. We see workers who start at different times of the day receive the exact same wage at the end of the day, even those who only worked one hour. Is this unjust, one might contend? Why are the workers who worked just a little getting paid as much as the ones who labored the entire day?

To understand the parable, we have to start by noting that the story is not meant to instruct us on business practices. The parable is spiritual in meaning. God will welcome into Heaven all those who repent, even those who do so at the very end of their lives.

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Image Credit: Christus Pantocrator, from Wikimedia Commons.

Forgiveness Is Freedom (24th Sunday - Cycle A)

We all know that forgiveness can be very hard. We have all experienced the struggle at one point or another in our lives. The pain we bear from being hurt might be too great to let go of the deep resentment we feel. Or we might fear that if we forgive, the person who hurt us will not get their comeuppance. Or we might think that our honor or status requires that we take vengeance. Indeed, our culture has many famous revenge stories, both classics, like the play Hamlet, or in pop culture, like the Kill Bill movies. When we read or watch such stories, we might feel a sense of satisfaction as the protagonist destroys the villain, rather than offering forgiveness. But the problem is that the lack of forgiveness is self-destructive.

Refusing to forgive has been described as taking poison and hoping that the other person will die. Or as locking ourselves into a cage and throwing away the key. For example, if someone hurt me badly ten years ago and I am still unwilling to forgive, what is happening in me? The person who hurt me still has power over me. He still has control over my thoughts, my feelings, my sense of energy, and to some extent even my actions. As long as I refuse to forgive, I am not my own person. I am still subject to the one who hurt me. He may not even remember my existence, but I am still bound by him in various ways.

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Image Credit: Amish horse and buggy warning signs in Cecilton, Cecil County, Maryland, by Bohemian Baltimore, from Wikimedia Commons.

What Is Genuine Love? (23rd Sunday - Cycle A)

In the Second Reading for this Sunday we see that the commandments pertaining to our behavior toward others can be summed up in the sentence: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Romans 13:9). At first blush, such a summary might seem to give us license. After all, didn't the Beatles sing that all we need is love, while they turned away from Christian morality?

The answer is that true love conforms to God's divine law. If we truly love, we will not steal, or cheat, or betray others, or do even more heinous things. Far from giving us license do to whatever we want, true love brings us into perfect harmony with God's divine order, which then empowers us to become channels of God's love to everyone around us. The more we love with a pure heart, the more God's infinite love radiates from our very being.

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Image Credit: Christ teaching in the Temple, from Wikimedia Commons.

What the Walking on Water Teaches Us (19th Sunday - Cycle A)

The Catholic Church teaches the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, that is to say, out of nothing. God has no beginning or end. God exists for all eternity. When God created the world, there was nothing else in existence, other than God. Unlike in the creation stories of other religions, God did not use any pre-existent material out of which he would have made the world.

Having said the above, we also need to bear in mind that the ancient Hebrews did not yet have the concept of creation ex nihilo. The divine revelation of creation out of nothing came towards the end of the Old Testament period and is first found in the Second Book of Maccabees. The ancient Hebrew understanding before then was that God created the world by subduing the forces of chaos, which were symbolized by water. Throughout the Old Testament, God demonstrates his divine power in part by showing that he has power over water. God turns the Nile into blood. He separates the Red Sea and then closes it up again. He makes water flow out of the rock. He stops the flow of the Jordan River and then starts it up again. He withholds rain from the sky when the Israelites turn to evil.

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Photo Credit: The Sea of Galilee (c) 2016 by Zoltan Abraham.

The Cosmic Significance of the Multiplication of the Loaves (18th Sunday - Cycle A)

The Book of Daniel in the Old Testament contains a somewhat cryptic prophecy foretelling the timeframe of the coming of the Messiah. When the prophecy was deciphered, the timeframe pointed to the first century AD, exactly the time when Christ came among humanity. Thus, at the time of Jesus, there was a great deal of expectation that the Messiah would soon arrive.

The Jewish expectation was that a great leader anointed by God would come forward to lead the people out from under the oppression of the Romans. He would then establish the Reign of God, forging a great kingdom, greater than that of Solomon, which would be filled with abundant blessings. The people living at the time of Jesus eagerly looked for the signs indicating the arrival of the Messiah.

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Photo Credit: The rock upon which Christ multiplied the loaves and fishes, now inside the Church of the Multiplication in Tabgha (c) 2016 by Zoltan Abraham.