"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Anyone who knows me knows that I love going to the movies. Movies are powerful. They have the ability to entertain and inspire, as well as to teach. Do you like “The Breakfast Club”, “She’s All That”, “Back To The Future”, … I’ll admit, there are a couple of movies here I quite like. However, what kind of lessons do they teach us?
“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
there’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!*” – Hilaire Belloc
* Latin for “Let us bless the Lord”. This phrase is sometimes used as the dismissal at the end of Mass instead of “Ite missa est”.
In our First Reading this week Isaiah consoles Israel, promising a time will come when wrongs will be made right, when “the ears of the deaf [will] be cleared” and the dry lands be refreshed. From the very beginning of the Bible, a Saviour was promised, a Messiah who would heal the rupture between man and God. Isaiah’s words find their fulfillment in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading as Jesus restores a man’s hearing, a sign that the long awaited Messiah had finally come…
In recent years it has been a difficult time to be Catholic. In addition to the priestly abuse scandals, there have been declining Mass numbers, as well as an increasingly secular society openly hostile to traditional Catholic morality.
However, amid these problems we still have hope. After all, Christ Himself promised us in Matthew 28:20 that He would be with His Church until the end of time!
We see other signs of hope as well. The priests graduating from seminary during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been of the highest caliber and the traditional religious orders are flourishing. Oh, and it turns out that Obi-Wan Kenobi is Catholic.
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I came across the following prayer the other day…
O God, Creator of difficult people, bless me with the strength, fortitude, wisdom and equanimity of spirit to deal with the difficult people You have placed in my life. Grant me the ability to see the next disaster well enough in advance to dodge, divert, or otherwise disable it before it happens, or at least to minimize its ill effects. May my buttons be hidden from view so that Your difficult people may not so easily press them next time as they have done so very well of late. May You grant sufficient insight to Your difficult people in order that they may come to understand – speedily and in our day – how truly difficult they are, knowing they would surely turn from their difficult ways were they possessed of even the slightest bit of self-awareness. Open the hearts of these Your difficult people to feel compassion for the pain and stress which, sometimes by their actions and oftentimes by their mere demeanor, they have caused in my life, are causing in my life now, and without Your divine intervention seem inevitably ready to cause again. Open their eyes, O God, so that they may see the truth of the situation as You and I, O God, see it: that I am not fundamentally an unhappy person, and that my unhappiness therefore rests with them and with their O so difficult ways.
O God, Creator of difficult people, it has no doubt come to Your attention (through the prayers of others) in spite of all You know about my good heart, my good intentions, my good work, and my just overall basic goodness that I am myself at the moment considered a difficult person in the life of another one of Your creatures (maybe more; I didn’t get the whole story). Putting aside for the moment the irony of that one, causing pain and suffering is, of course as You know, the last thing I would ever want to do. Help me therefore, O God, to no longer be the difficult person in someone else’s life. Whether through my need to express myself, or my difficulty expressing myself; whether because of my tendency to criticize, or my need to say that everything is OK when it’s not; whether because I am perceived as expecting too much, or expecting too little; whether through my tendency toward compulsiveness, or toward inattentiveness; due to the way I express my anger, or to the way I express my love; whether because I never seem to be there, or because I always seem to be there; whether because of my need for orderliness, or my need for spontaneity; because I feel the need to be alone more these days, or because I feel a greater need to be with people; because I always want to talk, or because I never want to talk; because of the way I express my fear, or because of the way I express my desire. O God, Creator of difficult people, help me – knowing so very well how it feels – help me to not be the difficult person in someone else’s life. – Rabbi Mark Sameth
There are a number of themes found in this week’s Readings, but they all centre around remaining in right relationship with God through observance of His Word.
In our First Reading, Moses reminds the people of their obligation to observe what God has commanded. If they do this, then they shall remain in covenant with Him and be light to the other nations. In the Second Reading, St. James exhorts his listeners to “Be doers of the word and not hearers only”. Finally, in the Gospel our Lord answers the criticisms of the Pharisees when they complain about his disciples not washing their hands. He responds with a stinging rebuttal, claiming that they “disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition”. He goes on to say to the crowd that “nothing that enters one from outside can defile”. It is what we say and what we do which makes us “unclean”.
This Sunday, as we hear the Word of God proclaimed, do we “humbly welcome” it and allow it to penetrate our lives? Do we act on what we hear or are we “hearers only”? As we renew our covenant with the Lord in the Eucharist, let us commit ourselves to be “doers of His word” and to live lives which reflect the holiness of the Lord.
Over the course of our “Theology On Tap” series we heard talks from Fr. Matt Spahr, Cy Kellett and Dr. Karen Saroki. This Thursday the series was brought to a close by the ever-popular Jackie Francois.
Actually, Jackie wasn’t the only one who spoke that night, being supported by her boyfriend Bobby Angel:
Jackie Francois is a full-time, travelling worship leader and speaker from Orange County. Bobby Angel, her boyfriend, is the assistance campus minister at the Servite High School in Anaheim.
Both of them have studied at the Theology Of The Body institute. They enjoy lengthy books, long walks on the beach, quoting The Office* and preparing together for the imminent robot invasion…
Below is the recording of the talk they gave entitled “Love, dating and relationships: Calling all people wanting to love and be loved according to God’s holy desire”:
Jackie Francois & Bobby Angel – Main Talk Jackie Francois & Bobby Angel – Q&A
Jackie also recently released a follow-up to her debut album “Your Kingdom Is Glorious”. The new album is called “Divine Comedy”. It includes a cover of one my favourite Hughes songs, “Beautiful One”, as well as Jackie’s own material, “Everything You” and “New Creation” being among my favourites.
Go buy it on iTunes or Spirit & Song 🙂
* The TV show, not the Liturgy of the Hours. I got quite confused there for a while…:-/
“Bears”? 2 Kinds 2:24
“Beets”? Genesis 1:29
“Battlestar Galactica”? erm….