25th Sunday after Pentecost (resumed 6th Sunday after Epiphany)

1 Thessalonians 1:2-10 / Matthew 13:31-35

Jesus, the evangelist Matthew tells us, spoke in parables in fulfillment of the words spoken by the Prophet: I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world. On the face of it, this seems an odd pair of claims. After all, what distinguishes parables is, among other things, that they do not tell what they want to tell directly. By their nature, they are an oblique sort of discourse, speaking about one thing by telling a story seemingly about another. So, while Jesus' parables may utter things hidden from the foundation of the world, it would seem as though, in uttering them, they remain just as hidden as before.

Yet, this puzzle does not seem uniquely linked to the issue of Jesus' parabolic speech. After all, while Jesus does, on occasion, teach things directly and openly, for the most part we learn what the Incarnate Word of God has to say in episodic ways, through the narratives of his life, works, and sayings recorded by the evangelists and as expounded by the apostles in their letters. Jesus did not bequeath his Church as theological treatise, organized and categorized as we might hope. It is not that Jesus is never clear and direct. Rather, the fulness of the Gospel only comes to us precisely in the same oblique and slant way as the parables he tells in response to his questioners.

Of course, in our puzzlement, we presume, and presume without justification, that we are ready and able to receive the full truth of God directly. What if it were the case, rather, that our eyes, so long accustomed to the dim and the dark, would be dazzled by the clear light of God's teaching? Suppose that, even as God has decreed the sun to rise gradually upon the earth, and so allow his creatures to adjust their eyes to the dawning of the day, so also God has decreed that, from the darkness of our errors, and even from the dim light of our natural reason, the light of full truth has come to us slowly, that our eyes might adjust. It is the same sunlight that makes the rosy dawn as much as the bright sky at noon, and so likewise it is not as though we await a new and fuller revelation to supplant the coming of the Word of God in flesh. Rather, he came to us, and comes to us, so that we might learn to see and hear him, so that our eyes will one day be made ready to behold him, face to face.

Lucy of Narnia, O.P.

2 Corinthians 10:17-11:2 / Matthew 25:1-13

In the Chronicles of Narnia, while there are many characters dear to the heart of Aslan, the Great Lion and Redeemer of Narnia, Son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea, but perhaps none is dearer than Lucy Pevensie. It was she who, first among the Pevensie children, entered into Narnia through the Wardrobe; she saw, and believed. It was she who held to the truth of that experience even when not even she was able to reenter Narnia, even when tormented by her brother Edmund, who entered Narnia on Lucy's second trip there but then betrayed her and claimed to have made it all up as a game, and even when her oldest siblings, Peter and Susan, at first only indulged her claims, but then insisted that she behave and cease speaking of it. After their initial adventures into Narnia, and their living there as Kings and Queens, when the four would return again in Narnia's future, it was Lucy, and Lucy alone, who was able to see Aslan at first, and although she initially refrained from going to him because of her siblings' insistence that she did not see what she claimed to have seen, it was she who eventually would meet up with Aslan, and so restore the faith of all of the children that he had indeed returned.

Despite the marvelous coincidence of names, today's feast is not a remembrance of the fictional character invented by C.S. Lewis, but rather of a flesh and blood Dominican tertiary, Lucia Brocadelli, who was born in the town of Narnia, now called Narni, in the hills of Umbria, nearly in the geographic center of the Italian peninsula. Like Lewis' fictional character, Lucy, in her tender youth, saw our Lord when others did not, and pledged herself to him, even when those about her, wishing her the best they knew, sought instead to have her married. Although she tried for a time to yield to her uncle's wishes and did marry, her husband, at least for a time, indulged her desire to maintain her vow of chastity for the sake of Christ, as well as her many acts of asceticism and generosity to the poor. He even indulged her claims to have frequent discourse with the saints who, unseen by him, she claimed to be seen clearly by herself. When her finally could not accept that she kept the company of a beautiful man, who was none other than Jesus Christ, her husband had her locked up for an entire Lent, and when she fled at Easter and became a Dominican tertiary, her husband had the convent of the Dominican friar who had received her burned to the ground.

Both Lucy Pevensie and Lucy Brocadelli remind us of important truths of the Christian life. For both of them, the capacity to see and receive the Lord came, at least in part, from their innocence, their purity of heart, their willingness to receive gladly the world as it is, in all of its wonder and mystery. At the same time, both of them saw the Lord, and Lucia even received the stigmata, only by way of a gift. Innocent as they were, they also knew that their innocence, and the vision of the Lord which came as a result, was not an accomplishment, but a grace, not a reason for boasting in themselves, but rather for boasting in the Lord. Finally, even though both acquiesced for a time to balance the desires of their families with the visitations of the Lord, they came to see that only by placing the Lord first, only by pursuing the Lord Jesus without regard for others' misunderstanding, or even cruelty, would be able to set things right.

In the end, Lucy's siblings came to see Aslan, and even her brother Edmund came to be, through his forgiveness, wiser for the experience. Lucia, likewise, came to be highly valued, if even fought over, not for her hand in marriage, but for her presence and insight, and in time her husband Pietro would also enter into a life of religion, becoming in time a Franciscan friar. We do not, any of us, know the fate of those dear to us. Like the wise virgins with their lamps, the grace we have received from God we cannot portion out to others. It is a gift of God to us, and if it is to do our fellows any good, then it can only be by way of example, by living out our encounter with Jesus Christ so authentically that others will become imitators of us, and so, we hope, in good time seek the oil to trim their lamps, and so greet with rejoicing rather than regret, the coming of the Bridegroom.

St Albert the Great, O.P., Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Wisdom 7:7-14 / Matthew 5:13-19

Albert, known to us as "Great", gained this appellation not from a mature reflection of generations, but during his own lifetime. He was also called, not merely by posterity, but by his own contemporaries, the Doctor universalis, the "universal teacher." There was, indeed, hardly a subject known to Medieval Christendom upon which Albert did not write. As we might expect from a Medieval doctor, he was learned in philosophy and theology, upon which he wrote numerous works, as well as those on the Scriptures, the mystical life, the Blessed Virgin, the liturgy and sacraments, and much else besides. However, in addition to this, Albert was fascinated by the world which God made, and his writings also include works on what we would now call chemistry, botany, climatology, physiology, and geology. He wrote a work on the training of falcons and studied the Roman ruins in his city of Cologne. He was even interested in the practical implications of his study, providing, for example, advice on the breeding of cattle and the improvement of crops.

The Scriptures tell us that those who acquire wisdom will come to have friendship with God. Such an assurance seems fine for Albert the Great, who knew something, and often a great deal, about nearly everything. His friendship with God was, we might think, all but assured. Yet, what about the rest of us? What of those of us who have trouble mastering even one subject? What is the fate of those who cannot, like Albert, fill nearly forty giant-sized volumes with powerful studies on every topic imaginable, and instead find trouble producing even a single paper?

The answer is not to be found in expecting some overnight infusion of knowledge by the grace of God. When we are told in the Book of Wisdom, I wished, and understanding was given me: and I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me, it would be reckless, even vain presumption, to imagine that præternatural gifts of knowledge are the rightful hope of all of the faithful. Rather, our way of sharing in the infinite treasure of wisdom is not in mystical infusion, but in humility. It is in seeking from others what is lacking in ourselves that we can come to know more than our own native powers would ever achieve. Wisdom, the fulness of wisdom promised by God, begins in an honest assessment of ourselves, neither falsely boasting of what we do not possess, nor failing to acknowledge and make use of gifts that we have received.

Brothers and sisters, none of us has been left without some gift to give, without some store of wisdom uniquely entrusted to us, some understanding to contribute to the whole. However limited we may fear we are singly, together our storehouse is overflowing. It is, then, not the path of keenness of intellect, however welcome and praiseworthy a gift, that we can open wide the treasury of wisdom, but in love, humility, and Christian fellowship. Can we, knowing how much we have to gain and how little we have to lose, accept the grace of Christ Jesus to be humble, and so, with St Albert, learn wisdom, a wisdom which, as this great saint reminds us, he learned more by prayer and devotion, than by study?

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

1 Kings 17:10-16 / Hebrews 9:24-28 / Mark 12:38-44

We all know the tale of Jack and the Beanstock. Young Jack and his mother are desperately poor, with nothing to their name but a cow. Driven by need, Jack’s mother asks him to sell the cow — it would leave them with nothing else, and no hope in the future, but it’s the best she can do to let them live on for just a little longer. Jack, however, heeds the words of a stranger, and rather than getting a few coins for the cow, exchanges her for a few supposedly magic beans. His mother, not to our surprise, is not remotely happy by the exchange!

Now, we know that in the story, Jack’s deal turns out to be a good one — one which, in the end, enriches him and his mother beyond their wildest dreams with the treasure of a giant who lives beyond the clouds. Even so, we sympathize with Jack’s mother and see her frustration. To give up the last hope for a meal, for a few more days of living, on the unbelievable promises of a stranger is surely beyond foolish. What would we say, after all, about a mother who is generous with her paycheck to her needy coworkers and the homeless people she meets outside the office, only to leave her own children hungry, without heat, water, light or home? How would we judge a son who took a chance to help out his friend’s business dreams, a risky and highly unreliable investment, and gave him his parents’ entire life savings, all they could ever expect to live on the rest of their years?

However, it is just this sort of recklessness which the Scriptures seem to counsel today. They seem to say that with the widow of Zarephath and the widow in the Temple, we need to give and give even to the last bit we can call our own, even to our own detriment and of those who depend on us. What is more, what we think is reasonable — to make sure our basic needs are covered and then, only then, from what remains as surplus, to be generous to others — this perfectly reasonable-sounding policy seems precisely the attitude to fall under our Lord’s critique. Those who are generous out of their surplus Jesus at least appears to associate with those whose very way of life eats up the houses of widows while they congratulate themselves for their piety and generosity!

Our mistake in hearing the Scriptures this way is in thinking of ourselves in the place of the widow, that is as though we were living in scarcity, with only limited means that must be carefully rationed and portioned out. It is certainly easy to see why we think that about ourselves, even without looking at prospects for employment and money-raising in these present days. However, as Christians, we are not victims of scarcity but rather are unimaginably rich! Ours is a share in the inexhausable riches of Christ, our High Priest who has entered on our behalf into the heavenly Temple not made by human hands. There, by his one sacrifice of himself once offered on the Cross and brought to the Holy of Holies in his Ascension, we have no merely finite store of glory. Christ our High Priest has once and for all bestowed on his people, and continues to bestow, an unlimited bounty of mercy, of forgiveness, as a promissory note of the riches he will liberally spread about in his glorious return.

Without prejudice to the real, reasonable, even virtuous and holy limits we place materially on our generosity — there are only so many hours in a day, so many pennies in our checking account, after all — without in any we rejecting those important decisions, we who are one in Christ the High Priest can afford to be lavish in our generosity to others. Like the widow of Zarephath before the prophet Elijah — the pagan co-religionist of the wicked queen Jezebel before the exiled spokesman of the true God — we can afford to act out of trust in a bounty for which we have little evidence now but are no less certain will make good our most exuberant acts of kindness.

After all, we have a share in that promised bounty even now. We share in the bounty of our High Priest when we are objects of gossip and choose to bear with it patiently. We share in his bounty when we know embarrassing truths about those who have wronged us and yet remain silent out of respect for the good name which is theirs by right. We enjoy the bounty of our High Priest when we find ourselves tempted by images on our computer or the very palpable presence of that someone (even a stranger met but minutes before) who drives us wild, and yet we lavishly afford to forgo our own pleasure-seeking, freeing the other, anonymous or well known, from becoming the source to satisfy our lusts. Moreover, truth be told, most of us can even share in Christ’s bounty through being far more generous in dollars and cents, happily giving to charity that money so quickly spent on coffee, pizza or the latest app for our iPhone that will so quickly be forgotten.

Brothers and sisters, Christian generosity is not a stab in the dark hoping for a possible return in the distant future. It is not wishful thinking in the face of real scarcity in the present. It is no fool’s exchange of the cow of our real need for a handful of beans. Beyond the clouds, we who are made alive in the blood of Christ will find more than a hungry giant, a bag of gold, and the goose that lays the golden eggs. We have in that true heaven above the clouds nothing less than Jesus Christ who keeps faith forever, secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry and sets the captives free. The Lord loves us in our need and has richly blessed us in his mercy, so we need never fear. In the life of Christian charity, the jar of our generosity will never go empty and the jug of the oil of forgiveness in Christ Jesus will never run dry.

23rd Sunday after Pentecost

Philippians 3:17-21; 4:1-3 / Matthew 9:18-26

Lord, my daughter is even now dead; but come lay Thy hand upon her, and she shall live.

Do we dare to hope for what we have no reasonable expectation may come about? When our reason tells us that an undesired outcome is all but certain, is it right or proper to set our reasoned objections aside and pray, with real expectations, of a divine deliverance? Ought we not, when faced ourselves with an unpleasant truth, or even more when those we love must face unhappy and heartbreaking facts, rather prevent the holding out for a divine rescue, for some deus ex machina of ancient Greek theater, and instead promote the acceptance of the real state of affairs, however terrible it might be?

In our piety, we may be happy to assert that nothing is impossible for God, and that we ought always to wait in hope. Even so, we know those times in which holding on to a preferred outcome, rather than the unhappy truth of facts, is unhealthy, both psychologically and spiritually. The dying patient who insists on every possible procedure on the grounds that it might work, and when these are exhausted spends all her energy on seeking healing from God, refusing any talk or counsel to prepare her for death, is but one example. Men who have lost their jobs and have no reasonable expectation to regain any like means of restoring their families to the style of life they had known before, students whose challenges at home have prevented success at school and so whose prospects for attending prestigious universities are essentially non-existent, mothers trapped in war-torn lands where the conflict has been, and shows every reason to be, intractable, trying to provide a safe haven for their children. While despair, in the moral sense of refusing to hold out that God can give to us those difficult goods for which we most deeply long, is indeed a sin, and it would surely be sinful to counsel despair, can we really, in good conscience, allow those we love to cling to hoped for goods that right reason tells us simply will not come about?

Yet, as reasonable as all of this is, we are confronted by the witness of the Gospel, of the saving power of Jesus Christ. We come face to face with the petition of the ruler of the synagogue: Lord, my daughter is even now dead; but come lay Thy hand upon her, and she shall live. We hear the desperate hope of the woman who was troubled with an issue of blood twelve years: If I shall touch only his garment, I shall be healed. On the other hand, those who speak of reasonable limits, who would limit what we might ask of Jesus Christ, laughed Him to scorn. How do we act, then? Do we disregard what reason tells us must come to pass, and so risk a foolhardy and naive hope of deliverance from every ill? Or, do we dissuade others and ourselves from such a hope in the saving power of Jesus Christ, so much as even to mock it, so as to keep us from painful disappointment?

The truth can be found, at least in part, in Jesus' words upon coming to the house of the ruler: Give place; for the girl is not dead, but sleepeth. The first thing we need to notice here is that neither the ruler nor the minstrels and multitude who laughed at Jesus understood the situation rightly. None of them understood that, insofar as Jesus had already intended to bring her to life, she could not rightly be called dead, but only sleeping. So also we must admit that, when confronted with ills for which we can find no reason and no solution, there may well exist goods in the mind of God, in the saving will of our Lord Jesus Christ, that exceed and undo our best descriptions of what we take to be the facts.

From this deep truth comes and even deeper truth, expressed by Jesus as a command: Give place. It is certainly true that we cannot will as good what we can only see as evil. We cannot adopt as an object for our own longing the ills that we suffer if we cannot see any way that such ills might direct us to the goods for which we long. All the same, we can give place. We can yield our wills to that of God. We can, without pretending to know the good God wills to accomplish in our lives, nonetheless quiet our wills and our longing, giving place to what God will bring about.

This is the attitude upon which true hope is grounded. We must always act on the basis of what we know to be best, and so it is folly, indeed sin, to pretend as though what is unreasonable to expect we should nonetheless pretend to be just around the corner. All the same, we must be ever ready to give place to the deeper and more profound wisdom found in the mercy of God, a mercy so wide and so deep that it would swallow the most incisive and keenest insights of our reason, were it not God's will to elevate our reason to share in his own. This is why, at one and the same time, we must act on the basis of the best that we can see and, without undoing that act in any way, be open to, and indeed pray for, a deliverance and visitation beyond any reasonable expectation.

Amen I say to you, whatsoever you ask when you pray, believe that you shall receive and it shall be done to you.

The Kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ

Colossians 1:12-20 / John 18:33-37

Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from hence.

In the mines of Bolivia, one may be shocked to find devotions, gifts, and offerings made to El Tío, "Uncle," an image bearing a terrible resemblance to classic Christian images of the Devil. While an image of the Cross may be found at the entrance to the mine, within the mine's darkness, past the point where the light of the sun can be seen, there will be a terrible idol of a horned figure, his mouth filled with terrible teeth, ready to receive the offerings of cigarettes, coca leaves, and alcohol, his hands open for gifts of the same, his erect member a sign that his cravings are both universal an insatiable. Once every year, he is honored not with the intoxicants the miners use to both remain awake and to drive away the body- and soul-breaking work, but with the blood of llamas, which blood he is left to consume in private, while the miners feast on the cooked meat of the llamas above.

Derived from pre-Columbian beliefs, El Tío is said to possess the wealth that lies under the hills and mountains, but also to possess an unending and terrible appetite. Appease him, and he might just let you return to the surface, perhaps even laden with the riches of the world below. Fail to give him due honor, and he may withhold the precious metals on which the livelihood of those on the surface depends. Even worse, his cravings may turn away from coca and the blood of llamas to the lives of men.

As devout as these Catholic miners may be, in the folklore of the highlands of Bolivia, the kingdom of God extends only where the heavens can be seen. While God may reign over all that dwell upon the earth, the dark and dangerous world beneath the surface belongs to El Tío. Once within the mines, there is none other who will answer your prayers than this terrible spirit, no appeal to God and his saints that will be heard. El Tío may have no place in Church, but Jesus Christ has no place in the deep and life-consuming darkness beneath the mountains.

We may react in many ways to the Bolovians' practice of honoring a god whom, by their Christian faith, they no is due neither honor nor even belief. Whether we see this as a people's best symbolic way of negotiating the life of the mines, without which their communities would have nothing, but which consumes even the lives of their children for very little in return, or whether we worry that this shows how much more work the Church must do in catechesis and in action on behalf of the poor, we likely imagine that we are not guilty of making the same error. That is, we probably congratulate ourselves in knowing that there is nowhere, whether in heaven, on the earth, or for that matter under the earth, where Jesus Christ is not the universal and sovereign King.

Yet, if this were so, if Christians across the world really believed in the universal sovereignty of Jesus Christ and acted in light of that confession, might we not rightly imagine a world far differently ordered than it is today. Indeed, thinking even only of the miners of Bolivia, would a world that understood Christ's kingship have had such cravings for silver, tin, and lead, that those boom towns that grew up around the mines would have consumed so many lives, and continue to do so even today? Do not far too many of us who bend our worldly knees at the name of Jesus resemble far more than we might like to imagine the image of the insatiable Tío, terrible and terrifying in our unsated and unsatiable hungers and desires? Do we not demand so much to be made cheap and plentifully available to us that others throughout the world must feed our hungers if they would eat at all, yet barely manage to thrive on what little we give them?

This is the challenge we who bear the name of Christian must face. As Jesus reminded Pilate, so he reminds us: My kingdom is not from hence. In saying so, he does not mean to imply, as the Bolivian miners imagine, that there is a limit to the extent of his kingdom. Rather, he means that the demonic and unending cravings of the world, so aptly imaged in the figure of El Tío, share nothing with the abundance of life poured our in the redemption of sins we have in Christ's blood, in the reconciliation and fellowship we share in his sovereign rule. El Tío divides and consumes; Jesus Christ united and gives abundance of life. Whose image do we bear? In whose service do we pledge our lives?

Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary

Proverbs 8:22-35 / Luke 1:26-38

What could be a more obvious sign of our Catholic faith and devotion than the praying of the Rosary? What devotion in that Roman Catholic Church can compare to the Rosary that binds in one men, women and children from across the world, from every language and people, from the most powerful and learned to the humblest and simplest among us?

Yet, what is it we think we are doing when we pray the Rosary? Why do we assert with such confidence that this devotion should be so privileged above others, should be so filled with assurances of drawing us closer to the heart of divine charity, to the union with the Holy Trinity which is the goal and vocation of every human life?

On the face of it, the Rosary seems not to be about us at all. After all, our meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary, the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries, does not direct us to consider what God has done is our own lives. Instead, when we pray the Rosary, we are asked to dwell upon the mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ, or rather, to dwell upon Our Blessed Mother’s experience of these mysteries. That is, the Rosary directs our minds to the story of her vocation, her share in the life of Christ, her joys, her sorrows, and her glories and she is led from the glorious message of the angel which we heard in the Gospel to her even more glorious coronation as Queen of Heaven, where she is raised in honor over every created person, greater in honor than the cherubim and incomparably more glorious than the seraphim.

It is, of course, a good and noble thing to share in the joys, the sorrows and the glories of those whom we love. We do not truly need to excuse our devotion. The Virgin Mary is our Mother, the Mother of God and the Mother of the Church. She is loved by God more than any other person he created, and because her has loved her so much, we should surely do the same.

Nevertheless, why should the meditation on the mysteries of someone else, however glorious and however loved, be the source of such powerful blessing for all the faithful? Why should our sharing in the joys, the sorrows, and the glories of someone else bring us any closer of our vocation, to our life in Jesus Christ?

The answer is found in the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, alone among all the saints and among all of the members of the Body of Christ, whether men or angels, can be called totally relational. Mary, and Mary alone among God’s creatures, relates in the most intimate way with the Most Holy Trinity as made in the divine image, with the Incarnate Word as one whom he redeemed, with the Church striving here on earth, with the Church awaiting glory in Purgatory, and with the Church in heaven as a fellow disciple of Jesus Christ, with the whole of the human race as one of the daughters of Adam and Eve, and with the whole of the cosmos itself as our fellow creature. She can relate in so many ways and so intimately because of her unique role and because of her unique gifts in the history of salvation.

It is certainly true that everyone whom God has called has a unique role in God’s providence. The witness of Saint Paul, for example, as a teacher of the faith will forever play a role for every Christian. The four evangelists will give witness to the life, teaching, and saving work of Jesus Christ in a way no one else will ever be able to imitate. However, it belongs to Mary, and to Mary alone, to be present to Almighty God in the fullness of her person, body and soul. She alone has been called to share even now the full glory of the Resurrection which even the greatest saints must await until the end of the world. Moreover, because she is fully present to God, she is therefore fully present to each one of us, and in the fulness of her presence to us, she both shares with us the fulness of her whole life with God, which life we celebrate in the mysteries of the Rosary, and brings us to partake in the blessings which those mysteries have blessed her and continue to bless her.

And so, with this confidence we are able to pray the Rosary. We can trust in the mysteries of the Rosary because these mysteries are nothing other than the life of the Virgin Mary in Christ Jesus, a life which was set up from eternity and of old before the earth was made because it has been configured to the life of Christ, a life in which we too can find life and salvation from the Lord. Let us pray, brothers and sisters, and hearken to the mysteries of the Rosary. Blessed are those that keep the ways of the Virgin, that is, the ways of discipleship in Christ Jesus, and find in them their most profound hope, eternal life with the Most Holy Trinity.