And Isaiah, the prophet of Advent, has us reflect today with a heartfelt prayer, directed to God in the name of the people. He recognizes the shortcomings of his people, and at a certain point he says, “No one calls upon your name, no one awakens to bind himself to you; because you have hidden your face from us, we are in tossed about by our iniquity” (Isaiah 64:6). How can we not be struck by this description? It seems to reflect certain view of the post-modern world: a world where life becomes anonymous and horizontal, where God seems absent and man the sole master, as if he were the maker and ruler of all — construction, work, economy, modes of transport, the sciences, technology — all seems to depend on man. At times, in this world that appears almost perfect disturbing things happen, either in nature or in society, by which we think that God seems to have withdrawn, we might even say, so to speak, abandoned us.

In reality, the true “master” of the world is not man, but God. The Gospel says, “Watch therefore; you do not know when the master of the house will return, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow or in the morning…… “Lord, you are our Father; we are clay and you the one who forms us; we all are the work of your hands.” (Isaiah 64:7h).

Let us all this Advent try to live by these words of the prophet Isaiah, and the teaching of the Holy Father. Let us live each day, knowing that God is the master of all, and we are mere clay in his hands, clay he molds and shapes to bring us to maturity and to do the work he has set before us.

Wonderful stories of the Jewish people’s struggles during the Greek occupation.  It leaves me with two thoughts. 

The first is in the Scriptures it is written: Zeal for your house consumes me!  Certainly, we cannot help but be struck by the zeal for the house of God, his Law and Covenant, that many of the Jews had at the time of the Maccabees.

The second comes from one small piece of yesterday’s reading in which we heard that by the Spirit of God the mother of the seven sons had a womanly heart and manly courage.

Food for thought as we approach the end of the Church’s liturgical year and as we approach all the challenges in today’s world that is increasingly growing hostile to the teachings of Jesus. Oh, would that all of us would develop a womanly heart and manly courage! A heart open, receptive, loving and reflective coupled with the courage to act boldly in engaging the culture of our time and transforming it.

The Apostles, after our Lord’s resurrection and ascension, and after receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, boldly went forth with manly courage to preach the Gospel to a hostile world. They acted first, then reflected on their experience. The Church today is in need of such manly courage to balance its inward reflection. I think that spirituality of those charged with preaching the Gospel is too often marked only by the passive, receptive and reflective, lacking the outward, active, giving and expressive boldness indicative of courage.

Zeal for the house of the Lord.

A womanly heart coupled with manly courage.

The definition of a true disciple of the Lord. For Jesus himself lived all of this perfectly.

Back  in 1973, when I was a college freshman, a required reading was the book, The Meaning of Success, written by Michael Quoist. I honestly don’t remember its contents nearly 40 years later, but the title has never escaped my memory nor the question, “What is success in the Christian context?”

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta was noted to have said so rightly, “It is fidelity not success that God desires.” Someone recently reminded me that one may lose every battle but win the war — referring to the spiritual battles of life. He went on to say that there was meaning  for Jesus’ three falls on the way to Golgotha, for one might think of his falls as symbols of human weakness which succumbs under the weight of sin, which our Lord was bearing on his shoulders as he walked to Calvary. Falling is not the ultimate problem; whether we get back up is.

So the question remains, “What is success in the context of Christian life? How does one measure it? How does on account for it?”

If you read the Gospels, the answer seems fairly clear for they tell us that when we face our particular judgment after death, Jesus will be asking us only one question, “Did you love and care for me in the poor?”

It all comes back to care for the poor in our love for Jesus.

Success is loving the needy in our midst.

There are two parables in the Gospels that speak of this. In the first, you recall, a rich young man comes to Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit everlasting life?” Jesus tells him, “Honor your father and mother. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not covet. Do not commit adultery” The man said, “I have kept all these. What else must I do?” Jesus said, “Sell all you have and come, follow me.” Here was a man who obeyed the 4th through the 10th commandments, all of which have to do with loving one’s neighbor, i.e., the poor. But he couldn’t obey the first 3 commandments which were love of God above all else.

In the second parable, the Good Samaritan, we hear of priests and Levites passing by an injured man, avoiding him because of ritual impurity. They were focused on their love of God and the first three commandments, but neglect the last seven.

St. Vincent de Paul reminded us that there is no sin to interrupt our ritual prayers if a poor person asks for our help, for it is Jesus who is asking.

Let us not get caught up in the cultural definition of success as positive outcomes, production and the bottom line. Doing less is often success.

Is not success in the Christian context approaching closer and closer to the beatific vision, to the constant recognition of Jesus in each person we meet and reaching out to them?

It is a matter of vision.

This is what heaven will be.

Here are a few excerpts (translation by Diane Montagna):

As prayer, the Psalms are manifestations of the soul and of faith, in which everyone can recognize himself and in which there is communicated that experience of special closeness to God, to which each man is called. And it is the whole complexity of human existence that converges in the complexity of the different literary forms of the various psalms: hymns, lamentations, individual and collective supplication, songs of thanksgiving, penitential psalms, and other genre that are found in these poetic compositions…..

Dear brothers and sisters, let us take this holy book in hand; let us allow ourselves to be taught by God to address ourselves to Him; let us make the Psalter a guide that helps us and accompanies us daily along the way of prayer. And let us, like Jesus’ disciples, also ask: Lord teach us to pray (Luke 11:1), opening our hearts to receive the Teacher’s prayer, in which all prayers attain their fulfillment. Thus, made sons in the Son, will we be able to speak to God calling Him Our Father.

This is a good reflection for all of us committed to praying the Liturgy of the Hours. The Psalter belongs to all people though, and the more one prays them, the more one identifies with the prayer of the psalm. The expressions of lament, petition, and praise resonate in our hearts and speak to us all.

The crowd will be small, but those present have a certain hunger for rest and for presence.

Today’s Gospel is John 3: 16-21.

“God so love the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life…. the light came into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were wicked. Everyone who practices evil hates the light…. But he who acts in truth comes into the light, to make clear that his deeds are done in God.”

Life, love, light, and truth. All are of God. How often, I wonder, do we examine our consciences based upon these? What have I done, or failed to do, to promote life? What have I done, or failed to do, to love? What have I done, or failed to do, to bring enlightenment to those in the darkness of sin and ignorance?  What have I done, or failed to do, to speak and live truth?

My friends, when John speaks of men loving darkness rather than light because their deeds were wicked, he is referring to these questions. None of us likes to think of ourselves as “wicked.”  We reserve that term to the devil or evil, don’t we?  But John is speaking to each one of us in this Gospel. We need to realize that in many small ways, usually, we live in the darkness.

The presence of our Eucharistic Lord during adoration and benediction affords us that opportunity to break into eternity, unimaginable beauty, light, truth and life. It offers us that opportunity.

Can we accept it? Do we promote it?

“There is a type of simplicity that would be better described as ignorance. It consists in not even knowing what may be virtuous. Many abandon the innocence of true simplicity so they don’t have to bring themselves to virtue and to honesty. Since they lack true prudence that comes to the good life, their simplicity is not the same as innocence. Therefore, Paul warns his disciples, ‘I wish you would be wise in the good and immune from evil…. Don’t act as infants in judgment; but may you be as infants to evil.’

“Regarding this, even Truth himself enjoins his disciples: ‘Be prudent as serpents and simple as doves.’ He necessarily united one with the other in his warning such that the cleverness of a serpent may teach the simplicity of the dove, and the simplicity of a dove moderate the cleverness of the serpent.”

We are to be both as a serpent and as a dove. We are to be wise and simple.

I am reminded of the many saints who in so many ways were very simple people in their views of life and manner of living, yet taught such a wisdom that those of great intellectual complexity, i.e., the learned theologians, were silent.

I am also reminded of the conflict between Paul and Peter in the early years of the Church. Paul might be called the more clever of the two men, certainly more learned and literate, and Peter the more simple. Paul moderated Peter, yet to Peter was given the keys and the burden of pastor of all the Churches. Peter’s simplicity was of more importance, yet Paul’s learnedness was also needed.

Serpents and doves……. Let us cultivate both aspects of our spiritual lives.

It seems that in today’s world we have the opposite problem: we expect our sins forgiven readily and we have lost in many ways our sense of sin, but we have a tremendous problem accepting that God can physically heal us, that miracles of that sort can and do occur.

I think we should be praying often for physical healing along with healing of our souls. We are body/soul creatures. To be separated from the body is to die. Perhaps we need to more fully appreciate the holiness of our physicality. Perhaps we should realize our faith encompasses health of both soul and body.

Why do you think the Church speaks so eloquently of the need to care for the physical needs of the people? Why do you suppose the Church teaches so prophetically that the physical and the mind/spirit must all be given to the one we have married, and that the unitive and procreative aspects of sexuality must be respected when a man and his wife are united in body? Why is it, in the prayer of the Church when I minister the Eucharist to the homebound that the prayer reads, “May the body of Christ, which our brother/sister has received, bring him/her lasting health of both mind and body.”?

Let us not be hesitant to pray for the intercession of all the saints to bring us healing when we are ill. Of course, there are no guarantees except that God will respond as he wills to each and every request we make.

I would ask all my readers to say a prayer this day to Papa Luciani asking him to intercede before the throne of God that we be healed of all that afflicts us. I believe his prayer in our behalf will be heard.

To hear the Gospel, and then do nothing, is like being given a precious gem and letting it drop to the ground, trampling it underfoot and saying, “O well! I will come back tomorrow and God will give me another.”

No! God expects us to do something and do it today. The roots of our faith are in deeds of love. We must hear and respond.

In another place in the Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of giving gold coins to his servants and expecting them to do something with them other than lock them up and hide them.  If you recall, he had some harsh words to the servant who took the coin but buried it without a return.

Let us this day do something with the Word of God which is so readily available to us.

Read the Scriptures – and then do something. Today.

St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed the significance of the “literal” sense of the texts. This sense is coming to understanding of what the human authors of scripture meant in a given passage according to the literary conventions of the time of the writing. This is not to be confused with a “literalist” approach which many fundamentalists take. It is not sufficient to translate a text word for word in order to get its “literal” sense. When a text uses metaphor or poetry, for example, the “literal” sense is not immediately apparent with a simple transliteration of the words. There is a certain dynamism in any given text that must be grasped if the “literal” sense is to be appreciated. 

This is the type of exegesis which I studied in American colleges and also at the Gregorian University in Rome. It is a demanding science requiring extensive knowledge of ancient languages, and a good grasp of history and culture.

Then there is the “spiritual” sense of scripture. The strict historicists will complain often that this sense is alien to the text. If one reads the Church Fathers, you will find they have utilized the “spiritual” sense extensively. The “spiritual” sense may be defined as the meaning a text may have when read under the influence of the Holy Spirit in the context of Christ redemptive actions, i.e., the Paschal Mystery. The passion, death and resurrection of Jesus,we believe, establishes a fundamentally different historical reality which sheds light upon, fulfills and changes the meaning of the ancient scriptural texts.

The “spiritual” sense cannot be likened to subjective interpretation, imagination or speculation of some sort. Authentic “spiritual” sense of scripture requires a balance among three levels of reality: the biblical text, the paschal mystery of Christ, and the contemporary circumstances of life.

Of course, what the Church strives to proclaim is the “full” sense of scripture, the deeper truths which come to light as the years pass, and the Church reflects more and more on the person of Jesus as expressed in the Bible and in the living Tradition of the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The point which seems so obvious to me is all of this must come together. All of it is important, not just one piece. Why the divisions among us Christians in our understanding of scripture? Comments?

“Do not abandon your faithfulness, for which is reserved a great reward. You have only to be constant in fidelity so that after having done the will of God you might obtain his promises.”

The Lord only asks us to be faithful to the tasks he assigns us. He alone will bring forth the fruit of our fidelity. Blessed Mother Teresa was fond of saying the God doesn’t ask for great successes, only faithfulness.

The Liturgy of the Hours is a great way of expressing our faithfulness in prayer, even if we are lacking in fervor or concentration on any particular day.