Category Archives: Daily Reflection

Stranger’s No Longer

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When visiting someone’s home, we are often invited in, offered a place to sit, a refreshment, and when the purpose of the visit is complete, we are thanked and escorted to the door. There is something wonderfully different in being welcomed into someone’s home; truly welcomed. The kind of welcome where someone says, “Make yourself at home.” A place where you know everyone’s “usual seats” and you might even be comfortable totally slouching in your place.

In a way, that is St. Paul’s message to the gentiles in today’s first reading. He reminds them that there was a time when they were outsiders.  They were not part of the family of the covenant, not “at home” in the household of God. But then Christ came. And through his death and resurrection, Christ broke down the walls that had separated people from one another and brought them together into one family. “So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God.”

Perhaps we take for granted Paul’s message, especially we cradle Catholics. We’ve always been “fellow citizens.” We regularly attend Mass in the “house of God,” our local parish church. So we might not consider that we don’t simply attend God’s house. We belong to God’s household.

A visitor might be welcomed for an afternoon. A member of the household belongs there even when things are messy, life is difficult, and even when everyone isn’t getting along. That’s what Christ has made possible. But today’s Gospel tells us something even more remarkable about the household to which we belong.

The gospel story seems unremarkable: servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding celebration. Everything is ready for his arrival so that when he knocks, they can immediately open the door. Nothing surprising or out of place there. I mean, afterall, that’s their job. But this is no ordinary household.

When the master arrives and finds his servants ready, what does he do? “Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.” The master becomes the servant, invites them to sit, whereupon he serves them. Clearly, that’s not how households ordinarily worked in Jesus’ day – which is precisely the point: God’s household is unlike any other household.

We belong to a household where the Master doesn’t simply demand service. He gives himself in service. Think of the scene at the Last Supper when At the Last Supper, he kneels before his disciples and washes their feet. The question He asks of them then still echoes for us today: “Do you know what I have done for you? (John 13:7) It is a question we should remember and attempt to answer each and every day.

It is a question that should echo in our being as we come forward to receive the Eucharist, because we come as members of God’s household. We bring our prayers, our gratitude, our worries, our struggles, and our desire to serve God faithfully. We arrive at the Lord’s table, and the Master serves us his servants. He gives us his own Body and Blood. The One we have come to worship becomes the One who feeds us.

Usually we hear Jesus’ command to be vigilant, to keep our lamps burning, and be at the ready for our master’s return as a warning: don’t be unprepared. But today we are called to hear the words with an additional nuance. We are not waiting for a stranger.

We are waiting for the One who has already welcomed us into his household, already given his life for us. The one who already knows us, loves us and welcomes us to his table. This changes the character of our waiting. We don’t keep our lamps burning simply because we’re afraid of being caught unprepared. We keep them burning because we are waiting for the One we love.

And while we wait, we live as members of his household, to welcome others as Christ has welcomed us. To serve as we have been served and to overcome the divisions that keep us from being one household.

In a way, I think today’s homily should come with a “spoiler alert.” So often we are encouraged and admonished to “prepare a place for Jesus”, “be ready to serve Him when he comes,” and spend our lives preparing to welcome Christ.

Spoiler alert: when He comes, we will discover that Christ has been preparing to welcome us.

Image credit: created using Dalle-3 based on the text of this post’s use of Jesus washing the disciple’s feet. Downloaded 10-19-2026

Even More

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“Woe to you Pharisees!” Today’s gospel gets right to it! In our 21st century experience, we understand the phrase as one of condemnation, or at least as a warning of the coming condemnation. The phrase calls to mind the evangelical preacher admonishing the backsliding, church-skipping, no-good, no-count, reprobates who are sweating like sinners in church. Before pressing on, I would like to let you know that the expression “woe to you” appears in Greek as “ouai soi.” It arises from a Semitic expression used in the Old Testament and it took another route to the English language which captures the original sense.  The expression is the Yiddish “oy vey” – a Jewish way to react when you find out how much your son’s root canal will cost. It is primarily a lament or expression of disappointment. 

Is Jesus condemning the Pharisees? Possibly. He could also be expressing disappointment in how little these leaders of the faith actually understand about the God of the Covenant. Here is the cause of Jesus’ disappointment: they block the way of others to God, “locking the kingdom of God.” They are supposed to be leading people to an encounter with God.  Spiritual leaders are meant to be the one who open the doors to show to the way. A reminder that our words, actions, and attitudes can either open the way to Christ for others or discourage them. Think of gossip or harsh judgment – just two of the ways love and mercy can be lost.

The scribes and Pharisees are called hypocrites because they don’t practice what they preach. Or consider yesterday’s post: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” As the post ended: “Paul begins with freedom and ends with love because, for the Christian, love is what freedom is for. Christ did not set us free so that we would have nothing more to do. He set us free so that what we do might finally be done in love.”

The leaders obsess over the externals forgetting what truly matters: faith, mercy, justice, love. As they obsess on the minor things they are missing God’s presence, the source of all holiness that makes things holy. The Gospel invites us to examine our hearts and ask: “Am I a door-opener or a gatekeeper?” “Do I focus on appearances or on God’s presence? Do my words and actions lead others toward Christ—or away from Him? Do our lives reflect the mercy and truth of Christ, so that by our example others may not find the Kingdom closed, but wide open?”

The Pharisees and scribes had so much and they did nothing…Oy vey!

We have even more..

Image credit: FrG in Canva, CC-0

The Path to Freedom

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The first reading today begins: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” The larger context of his message to the Galatians is about reports he is receiving that some among them are advocating an adherence to the Law of Moses as the basis of salvation – hence his reference to slavishly following the precepts of the Law. To be clear, Paul holds that the Law is God-given and good, and he is certainly not arguing that Christians have been liberated from its moral obligations. However, Paul will go on to describe a new foundation for moral agency: the Christian is no longer trying to earn a relationship with God through obedience but is called to exercise freedom because that relationship has already been given in Christ. The key word being “exercise.” Christ has set the believer free, but that does not mean that nothing is now required of the believer. With freedom comes responsibility.

Our belief in Christ and the grace received does not eliminate human agency. Grace makes a new kind of agency possible and this is central to the life of all Christians. Paul is clear that Christian life is not passive and because Christ has accomplished salvation our actions are not irrelevant. The question is not whether our choices and actions matter, but rather, what makes them genuinely Christian. 

The first reading concludes: “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” (Gal 5:6) The Greek is pistis di’ agapēs energoumenē meaning faith becoming effective, active or operative through love. The believer’s choices become the place where faith takes visible form. Those choices become the basis of our moral life. It is no longer “what must I do so that God will accept me” but now the basis becomes: “Because God has already loved and accepted me in Christ, how shall I now live?” The latter understands obedience as the response of a person who has been loved.

Just beyond our reading Paul admonishes the Galatians to “use this freedom as an opportunity… [to] serve one another through love.” (Gal 5:13) In other words, Christ frees us from slavery so that we may freely become servants of one another. Or put another way, this is how we are to exercise our moral agency, which is neither autonomous self-sufficiency nor passive dependence on God. It is cooperation with the Holy Spirit which transforms our capacity to decide well. We still must choose whether to forgive, whether to tell the truth, whether to be generous, whether to respond to another person’s suffering. But now those decisions can arise from a heart being transformed by grace.

Returning to Paul’s admonitions about the Law of Moses, think of this way: the Law can tell us what love requires; grace and the Spirit makes us capable of loving. This is more demanding than a secular understanding of freedom, the ability to make one’s own choices without interference. Freedom in Christ asks that we not only choose, but choose the good, especially that which is good for the other.

Christ frees us not merely from external constraints but from the powers within us that prevent us from loving as we ought. And the Spirit gradually forms a person capable of acting from love rather than fear, resentment, compulsion or self-interest. That is moral agency in its deepest Christian sense.

In the everyday choices we make when we choose whether to forgive or hold on to resentment, to speak kind words instead of gossip, to be generous and in all the small choices we make over the course of a single day. Paul asks us to consider something deeper than the choices themselves – be clear about what is moving us to make them.  He admonishes us to work toward a position in life where our faith is working through love.

Paul begins with freedom and ends with love because, for the Christian, love is what freedom is for. Christ did not set us free so that we would have nothing more to do. He set us free so that what we do might finally be done in love.

Image Credit: generated by WordPress AI using the text of the post and the prompt path to the light of freedom.

The Heart as Dwelling

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In today’s gospel we witness an encounter between Jesus and the people after Jesus had driven a demon out of an afflicted person. At the end of the dialogue, Jesus offers a parable: “When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, ‘I shall return to my home from which I came.’ But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order.”

This sounds like a good thing, yes? The house has been cleaned up. Everything is orderly.  What’s wrong with the house? Nothing, apparently. It’s clean, swept and orderly, but it’s also empty.

In the context of the gospel story, Jesus uses the man from whom the demon has been cast out as the source for the house in the parable. We might say that the person has reformed and cast out the bad things, the unholy things. But will that be enough?

As David Henry Thoreau commented: “Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.”

Apparently have been spiritually careless, the house/the person has not filled up with good, holy and true things. There exists a spiritual vacuum and when noticed by the demon, it “…brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that man is worse than the first.” It seems that getting rid of what was there was not enough. Something needed to take its place. Nature abhors a vacuum. Apparently, according to Jesus, so does the human heart.

Moral reform is not the same as Christian conversion. Christianity cannot simply consist of removing things: I stopped doing this. I gave up that habit. I don’t hang out with those people anymore. “I’ve cleaned up life and set it in order.” All of that may be necessary. But Jesus seems to be saying that an emptied life, even a beautifully cleaned and orderly life, is still vulnerable. The Gospel isn’t simply about what leaves us when Christ enters our lives. It is about what fills us afterward.

Jesus isn’t offering generic advice about self-improvement. The context of the gospel message is the arrival of God’s Kingdom in Jesus: something stronger has arrived. The arrival of God’s Kingdom is far more than getting rid of the evil spirit. It extends to letting the Strong One in.

Yes, you’ve been baptized, confirmed, reared in the Faith, and have continued into your adult years. Those can be profound beginnings. But the house has to become a home. And that takes a lifetime to fill our lives with Christ. The Word of God is one essential means. The Eucharist another. Prayer, charity, sacramental life, Christian community: all are ways in which our lives become increasingly inhabited by Christ. Elsewhere, St. Paul gives us wonderful language for this: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” (Col 3:16) Not visit, or drop by, but dwell.

So… hopefully you have taken care of what should not be in your life, but should be there and up to now is missing? Maybe I’ve removed anger but have I cultivated mercy? I’ve stopped gossiping but have I learned to speak words that build others up? I’ve stopped spending time with those who would lead me astray but have I developed friendships with people who draw me toward God?  I have cleared out lots of things, but what have I put in their place?

Every day something is forming us, filling our minds, and shaping our desires. Something is teaching us what to love. The question isn’t whether we will be filled. The question is what we are allowing to fill us.

Jesus didn’t come merely to clean up the house. 

He came to make it His home in which He dwells.

Image credit: WordPress AI based on the text of the posts | downloaded 10-9-2026 | AI-described as: A vintage Greek folk-art illustration shows a pale stone house with an open wooden doorway, pottery, and a dark figure reaching from an arched window. A group of shadowy spirits gathers among olive trees and rocks to the right, creating an eerie contrast with the warmly lit house. The image is framed by an ornate blue, gold, and rust-colored border, with radiating lines behind the Greek title Η ΟΙΚΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΑ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΑ, meaning “The House and the Spirits.”

Receiving the Spirit

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In today’s readings both St. Paul and Jesus have something to say about receiving the Holy Spirit. I wondered what the Early Church Fathers might have to say about receiving the Spirit. Some use receiving the Spirit in context of a different point they are trying to make. But others have deep insight about  receiving the Spirit as a key divine event in the human person. They reflect on God entering, inhabiting, sanctifying, transforming, empowering and even beginning within us the life we will possess fully, not just now, but also in eternity.

In his Catechetical Lectures, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, is addressing adults preparing for Baptism. It is not a theological treatment on pneumatology but rather a preparation for people who expected sacramentally to receive the Holy Spirit at their initiation. Cyril strives to help the people realize that receiving the Spirit means receiving Someone. In Lectures 16 and 17, he notes that the Spirit isn’t merely an influence or divine power. Rather, the Spirit acts personally. The Spirit speaks, calls, sends, teaches and sanctifies. It is an interpersonal relation.

Cyril explicitly cites our Gospel: “How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.”  But what interests Cyril is what happens when this gift is received. Speaking about Christ breathing the Spirit upon the Apostles in John 20 and then Pentecost, Cyril sees degrees of capacity for receiving God’s gift: the Apostles genuinely receive the Spirit, and yet Pentecost brings a still greater outpouring. He paints a picture as the human person like a vessel being enlarged to receive more. 

So often receiving the Spirit is depicted as something that happens once, but Cyril makes the point that receiving the Spirit is something we are continually becoming capable of receiving even more deeply. We received the Spirit sacramentally in Baptism and Confirmation. But that doesn’t mean God has exhausted what the Spirit can do within us. Cyril’s image allows the prayer of Luke 11:13 to remain meaningful for baptized Christians: “Father, give me your Holy Spirit.” Not because the Spirit is absent, but because we are not yet completely open to everything the Spirit desires to do in us.

St Irenaeus, his writings, echoes Cyril to a degree when he offers that the Spirit accustoms us to God. Irenaeus describes Christians as already receiving a portion of the Spirit with a pledge of more to come. He describes this wonderfully when he writes that: “little by little [we become] accustomed to receive and bear God.” Think about what that means: the Holy Spirit is teaching us to grow and ever be more capable of bearing a greater presence of God in our lives. For Irenaeus, salvation isn’t merely God changing our legal status. It is God gradually transforming human beings so that we become capable of sharing divine life. The Spirit dwelling within us is already the beginning of that future.

In the first reading St. Paul asks: “Did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard?” (Gal 3:2) Often that is taken primarily as part of Paul’s argument about justification, and indeed it is. But Paul already knows they have received the Holy Spirit and so he appeals to their experience.

Then in v. 5: “Does, then, the one who supplies the Spirit to you and works mighty deeds among you do so from works of the law or from faith in what you heard?”  He is making the point that something has already happened to them. Their experience, their Christian existence itself was evidence of God’s action. That is what makes rumors of their return to circumcision and Torah observance so incomprehensible to Paul. God has given you his Spirit. You have already received the thing you are trying to earn. He is asking, why are they now behaving as though God’s life must be acquired through something they accomplish?

All of this together reinforces the idea that the Spirit is gift, not achievement or reward. The Spirit is something earned by sufficient religious performance.

This is the point St. Augustine makes in his homily on Luke 11.  Augustine emphasizes that Christ would not urge us so persistently to ask unless God truly desired to give: God is more willing to give than we are to receive. When you join Augustine’s thought to that from Irenaeus, it means the Spirit gradually makes us capable of receiving what God desires to give.

Consider how that might make us think differently about today’s Gospel. We hear: “And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened…” and immediately begin filling in the blank. Ask for what? And we ask about of current needs and future hopes, no doubt legitimate prayers.

But consider Jesus’ words: “How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Jesus isn’t promising that persistent prayer eventually persuades God to give us whatever particular outcome we’re requesting. He promises something much greater: God gives us God in the Holy Spirit.

Maybe that’s why the answer to prayer sometimes doesn’t look like what we asked for. We ask God to remove a difficult situation but the Spirit gives us courage to live through it. We ask God to change someone else and the Spirit begins changing us. We ask God to show us exactly what to do but the Spirit gives us patience to wait. We ask God to take away suffering and the Spirit somehow enables us to discover Christ within it.

The gift isn’t always a changed circumstance. Sometimes the gift is a changed person within the circumstance.

May the real question is how much of me have I allowed the Holy Spirit to receive so as to change me. What parts of my life do I insist on keeping control? My decisions, relationships, plans fears…? 

Maybe we over-complicate our prayer. Might it be as simple as teaching me to receive and bear God? And then “buckle up” as we let the Spirit change us.

Our Lady of the Rosary

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One of the great things about teaching in the OCIA classes is the questions which come from people who are not yet baptized or people from other Christian denominations who seek to be in full communion with the Catholic Church. Sometimes they are the “big” questions about Sacraments and papal infallibility, but sometimes they are questions which ask about things we cradle-Catholics don’t think about because,… well, they have just always been there.

This past summer one of the “new” Catholics chatted with me on the sidewalk in front of Church. The conversation centered around Marian feasts and celebrations. Basically the person noticed that there were a lot of Marian celebrations – most of which they understood – but they wondered about the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary: why is it celebrated and how is it different from other days. And besides, the gospel for the Memorial is Luke’s account of the Annunciation, which is the event in the life of Mary the Church celebrates as a Solemnity.

So why do we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary?

The historical origin of the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary lies in the naval Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. Pope St. Pius V, a Dominican pope with a strong devotion to the Rosary, called Christians throughout Europe to pray the Rosary as a coalition fleet of Christian states, called the Holy League,  confronted the Ottoman navy. After the unexpected victory of the Holy League, Pius V attributed the outcome to God’s grace obtained through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the prayers of the faithful. In thanksgiving, he established a feast called Our Lady of Victory. Two years later, Pope Gregory XIII changed the title to The Feast of the Holy Rosary. Over time the celebration was extended to the universal Church and eventually fixed on October 7, the date on which it remains today. 

While Lepanto explains why there is a feast day, the feast ultimately celebrates a devotion that had already become a central means of Christian prayer: the Rosary

Most Marian feasts commemorate one of four things: events (e.g. the Annunciation), dogmas (e.g. the Immaculate Conception), Marian apparitions (e.g. Our Lady of Guadalupe), or Marian patronages (e.g. Our Lady Help of Christians). The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary celebrates neither a dogma nor a moment in Mary’s life. Instead, it celebrates the Rosary itself as a privileged means of contemplating the mysteries of Christ.

In the Rosary, the focus is not first on Mary but on the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the entire mystery of salvation, as viewed through Mary’s eyes. St. John Paul II famously described the Rosary as a “compendium of the Gospel.” In that sense, the feast is almost as much a feast of Christ-centered meditation as it is a Marian feast.

Unlike many Marian feasts that direct attention to a singular privilege or event, Our Lady of the Rosary points believers to a lifelong practice of prayer. In that sense, it is perhaps the Church’s most explicitly devotional Marian feast. It honors Mary precisely because she teaches the Church how to gaze upon Christ. As Pope Paul VI wrote in Marialis Cultus, the Rosary is “a Gospel prayer, centered on the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation.” That may be the deepest reason why the feast occupies a distinctive place among all Marian celebrations: it celebrates Mary not only as one who receives grace, but as the one who leads the Church into the mysteries of her Son.

Image credit: “Christ at the home of Martha and Mary” | Charles de La Fosse | Private collection in a castle in Lorraine (France); Galerie Didier Chéreau, Paris | PD-US

Becoming Martha

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In today’s gospel I think poor Martha is sometimes made to be the foil of the story. We easily remember the ending. Mary has chosen “the better part” and poor Martha is left worried and anxious about many things. In our minds, Mary becomes the model disciple while Martha becomes the woman who just doesn’t quite get it. I think Martha needs to be reconsidered.

“A woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.” (Lk 10:38). Jesus arrives, and Martha opens the door inviting Him in. Before Mary can sit at the feet of Jesus, someone has to welcome Jesus into the house. And there is something wonderfully faithful about that.

Luke is very intentional about the order of things (cf. Luke 1:3). Immediately before today’s gospel Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan sees the wounded man, stops, cares for him, takes him to an inn and pays for his care. Jesus concludes the parable with the admonition: “Go and do likewise.” (Lk 10:37).  Turn the page and we find Martha “doing.” Lots of people think today’s gospel is somehow telling us that service is somehow inferior to prayer. He has just told us to serve, so something else must be going on.

The text tells us that Martha was “burdened with much serving.” The word in Greek has the sense of being pulled away, distracted. And therein likely lies the problem. She has become so busy serving Jesus that she is being pulled away from Jesus.

That’s a danger religious people understand very well. We can spend enormous amounts of time doing things for God: a ministry in the parish, teaching faith formation, festival volunteering – the list is endless. And add to that all the enormous amount of time doing things for your family. We priests are not immune from such busyness. We can spend the whole day working for Jesus but very little time with Jesus. It is easy to let all these good things distract us from the reason we are doing them.

Eventually Martha reaches the breaking point. She comes to Jesus and says: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” (Lk 10:40) You have to love Martha’s honesty. She doesn’t break out in a prayer or calculate her words. She tells Jesus exactly what she thinks: Mary is the problem. But then Jesus becomes part of the problem: “Lord, do you not care?”

That question may be more familiar to us than we would like to admit. I think everyone of us can remember a time when we felt overwhelmed and we wondered if God cares. Jesus did not admonish Jesus for asking, nor does he admonish us. He simply says: “Martha, Martha…” He sees what all that doing has done to her: “You are anxious and worried about many things.”

Martha wanted Jesus to change Mary, but Jesus’ response is akin to saying: “Before we talk about her, let’s talk about what is happening inside you.” And notice that Jesus doesn’t tell Martha to stop serving. He calls her back to the center: “There is need of only one thing.” What is that “one thing”? Is it to imitate Mary, in a way become Mary? 

Let us pause for a moment and consider the next time we encounter Mary – when her brother Lazarus dies. “When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home.” (Jn 11:20) Martha gets up and goes to Jesus. She’s still Martha: active and direct and still unafraid to tell Jesus exactly what she thinks: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But something is different. During their conversation, Martha says: “I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” (Jn 11:27) That is one of the great professions of faith in John’s Gospel.

The woman we remember for being distracted by many things has come to recognize the one thing necessary. Or better, the one Person necessary. Martha didn’t need to become Mary. Martha needed to become a deeper Martha.

And perhaps that is what Jesus wants for us. He isn’t necessarily asking us to abandon our responsibilities. Meals still need to be prepared, children cared for, work to be completed, people who need our help, and a parish that still needs volunteers. The Good Samaritan still has to stop beside the road and Jesus forever says, “Go and do likewise.”

Let us do what is ours to do, the good things God has given us to do. But don’t become so busy doing things for Jesus that we lose sight of Jesus.

Martha opened the door and welcomed him into her house. Somewhere along the way, she became distracted by everything that needed to be done. And Jesus gently called her back. Perhaps today he is doing the same for us. Amid all the things that seem so urgent, all the things demanding our attention, all the things we think absolutely must get done, we need to hear the echo: there is need of only one thing.”

Don’t lose sight of the One you welcomed into the house in the first place.

Image credit: “Christ at the home of Martha and Mary” | Charles de La Fosse | Private collection in a castle in Lorraine (France); Galerie Didier Chéreau, Paris | PD-US

Heavenly Warning

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Given that last week we celebrated the Feast of the Archangels and of Guardian Angels, it is with curiosity that I notice in today’s first reading to the Galatians St. Paul writes: “But even we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let that one be accursed!” It made me wonder what he had in mind.

In reading different commentaries, it seems that most scholars don’t think Paul has a specific angelic appearance or rival claim in mind. In Jewish tradition, angels were regarded as messengers of God. Paul himself elsewhere refers to the Law as having been mediated through angels (Gal 3:19). Given people understand angels as messengers from God, Paul is likely employing a rhetorical argument: even the highest conceivable authority cannot overturn the gospel once it has been received. And so, Paul is amazed that the Galatians are “so quickly deserting” the gospel (Gal 1:6). 

We know from Galatians that other teachers had come among Paul’s Gentile converts insisting on circumcision and observance of the Mosaic Law in order to belong fully to God’s people.  This is not a matter of church discipline; it strikes at the heart of the gospel itself. Paul is clear: Gentiles do not become Christians by first becoming Jews. Justification comes through faith in Christ and salvation is God’s gift of grace. 

Paul is saying, in effect, “You have heard the real McCoy.” In fact, he immediately corrects even the suggestion that there might be competing gospels: there is no “other gospel” at all. There is the Gospel and there are distortions of it. Paul’s point is that the truth of the gospel is not validated by the status of the messenger; the messenger is judged by fidelity to the gospel. Even a heavenly messenger must be rejected if the message contradicts the apostolic gospel. Not another missionary, not an angel and remarkably, not even Paul himself has authority to change the Gospel. Think about his claim: even his own visionary credentials are subordinate to the gospel already proclaimed.

Paul’s principle also resonates with the Church’s later discernment of claims to private revelation. An authentic private revelation cannot contradict, correct, or add something essential to the apostolic faith already handed down. Even an approved apparition adds nothing to the Deposit of Faith; at most, it helps the Church live more fully what has already been revealed in Christ.

As people of faith, then, we stand humbly before the Gospel and the apostolic faith handed down to us. Paul reminds us that no messenger stands above that Gospel: not another preacher, not an apostle, not even an angel from heaven. The Gospel is not judged by the authority of the messenger; the messenger is judged by fidelity to the Gospel.

Image credit: ChatGPT – Dalle3 AI generated using the text of the post.

Not how, but Who

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The first reading today continues our journey into the Book of Job arriving at chapter 19. Here is a concise summary of what has transpired up to this point in the narrative: In the first two chapters, we meet Job, a wealthy, blameless, and God-fearing man about whom “the Satan” asserts that Job only serves God because he is blessed. Satan argues Job will curse God if he loses everything and so God allows Satan to test Job. Within moments, Job loses all his wealth, his livestock, and his ten children. But he does not curse God. In Chapter 3 Job laments his existence. He wishes he had died at birth or never existed at all, wondering why God allows light and life to continue for people who are in absolute misery. This is the central theme that this Wisdom literature explores throughout the remainder of the text.

From this point forward, Job is visited by friends. Eliphaz relied on personal experience and a spiritual vision, arguing that no human is innocent before God. Bildad appealed to ancient tradition, asserting that ungodly people always face swift ruin. Zophar spoke most bluntly, claiming that Job probably deserved an even harsher punishment than what he received. All are coming from the idea of retributive justice, the idea that God always rewards good behavior and punishes evil in this life.  (Note: other canonical books of Wisdom will take issue with this premise, but that is for another day…)

Job feels it is all helpless because no human can argue or go to court with God. Job laments that there is no arbiter or mediator to lay a hand on both parties and bridge the gap between a holy God and suffering humanity. This brings us to our first reading:

“Oh, would that my words were written down! Would that they were inscribed in a record: That with an iron chisel and with lead they were cut in the rock forever! But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust; Whom I myself shall see: my own eyes, not another’s, shall behold him, And from my flesh I shall see God; my inmost being is consumed with longing.” (Job 19:23-27)

Clearly, Job is indicating what he is about to say is of great importance and needs to be recorded for generations to come. And yet, the meaning of this passage is obscure because the original text has been poorly preserved and the ancient versions do not agree among themselves. Job asserts three times that he shall see a future vindicator, but he leaves the time and manner of this vindication undefined. 

What does Job mean by “Vindicator”? The Hebrew is goʾali, “my goʾel.” The word has much richer connotations than simply “redeemer.” A goʾel is a kinsman-redeemer, someone who acts on behalf of a family member whose rights, property, freedom, or justice need defending. The same linguistic root is used to describe God as Israel’s redeemer, especially in Isaiah. Some commentators offer that this points to an early belief in resurrection based on the Vulgate translation, but Job is not necessarily saying, in the original historical sense, “I know that Jesus Christ will someday raise me bodily from the dead.” He is saying something more immediate and, given his circumstances, quite remarkable: someone will ultimately take my side. Someone will vindicate me. Someone will establish that what is being said about me is not the final truth.

Job’s friends have effectively constructed a theological case against him: God is just; you are suffering terribly; therefore you must have done something to deserve this. Job knows that isn’t true. But he cannot prove it. So he appeals beyond his friends and in some respects beyond his own present experience of God to a future Vindicator.

Why carved in stone? Because everything around him presently argues against what he is about to say. His children are dead, his property is gone, his body is afflicted and friends believe he is guilty. His experience is beyond his understanding and there is nothing in sight that things will be put right. And that is precisely the moment when he says: “But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives.” This is not a case in which it is all resolved and Job then has the assurance that God is faithful. He says it before anything has worked out. It is a lesson for us.

We usually find it fairly easy to recognize God’s faithfulness looking backward. After the illness has passed, the crisis over, prayers answered, and we made it through. Then we are assured and can say, “God was with me.” Job is doing something much harder. He declares his confidence while he is still sitting in the ashes without a clue how his story ends. He has no idea what vindication will look like or when it will arrive. But he knows one thing: my Vindicator lives.

Image credit: WordPress AI generated using the text of the post.

After Hearing the Word

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Every Mass is quite remarkable: God speaks to us. We listen to readings from Scripture. At the end, the lector says, “The word of the Lord,” and we respond, “Thanks be to God.” Then the priest will begin a homily.  I am often tempted to then simply ask: “Now what? We’ve heard God’s word…. And now what?” 

The Gospel is clear: the family of Jesus “are those who hear the word of God and act on it.” (Lk 8:21). Given the context, some think it sounds as Jesus is distancing himself from Mary and his family. But especially in Luke’s Gospel, that can’t be the point. Mary is the exemplar of one who hears God’s word and acts on it. At the Annunciation she completely disrupts whatever plans she had imagined for her life and responds: “May it be done to me according to your word.” (Lk 1:38). Mary lets the Word change her life.

Today’s Gospel comes at the end of a whole series of teachings about hearing. Jesus has just told the Parable of the Sower. The seed is the Word of God. Some seed falls on the path, some among rocks, some among thorns. But the seed that falls on good soil represents those who hear the Word, hold onto it and bear fruit. Then Jesus tells his disciples: “Take care, then, how you hear.” (Lk 8:18) And finally today Jesus is clear that the family of Jesus, that is, disciples “are those who hear the word of God and act on it.” Jesus seems to be saying that hearing is incomplete until something happens afterward.

And Proverbs makes essentially the same point in our first reading: “To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.” (Prv 21:3) Notice the word: “do”. Not merely know what is right or admire it, or talk about it, but “do.”

Think about all the Scriptures we have heard: the Beatitudes, the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and more. We know Jesus tells us to forgive, care for the poor, love our enemies, not to judge and to take up our cross and follow him.  We’ve heard the Word. We understand what Jesus said….and now what? What happened after I heard Him say it? When was the last time something I heard in Scripture actually changed something I did?

When Jesus spoke about forgiveness, did we finally make the telephone call we’d been avoiding? When Jesus spoke about the poor, did I become more generous? When Jesus spoke about loving our enemies did we begin praying for someone we dislike? When Jesus spoke about so many things, did we stop judging, stop gossiping, say “please forgive me?” That’s the difference between simply hearing Scripture and allowing the Word of God to become fruitful within us.

There is an interesting line in in the first reading from Proverbs: “Those who shut their ears to the cry of the poor will themselves call out and not be answered.” (Prv 21:13) Again, notice the ears. Perhaps hearing God’s Word also teaches us who else we need to hear: the lonely, those needing help or compassion. Maybe even the person who is trying to tell us something about ourselves that we would rather not hear.

We can hear the Word of God proclaimed beautifully in church and still walk outside and close our ears to the people the Word asks us to love. Jesus doesn’t simply say: “Blessed are those who hear.” He says: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”

In a few moments, we will come to this altar and receive Christ in the Eucharist. And then, at the end of Mass, we will be sent out. We will have heard the Word of God. We will have received the Body of Christ. Then we will walk through those doors and return to our families, our work, our neighborhoods, our ordinary lives. And perhaps that is when today’s Gospel really begins. Because the question isn’t simply: “Did I hear the Word of God today?” The question is: “What will I do differently because I heard it?”

Image credit: Sermon on the Mount | Carl Block, 1887 | Museum of Natural History at Frederlksborg Castle – Hillerod, Denmark | PD-US