July/August 2024: Points to Ponder
Points to Ponder
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
7 July 2024
Today’s Gospel reading begins as Jesus and His disciples return home, to his native place. On the Sabbath, Jesus went to the synagogue and He began to teach. All who listened to Jesus were astonished.
How had Jesus become so knowledgeable and such a powerful speaker? He was the son of a carpenter, not the son of a rabbi. Many people in his hometown discounted Jesus and His message. They refused to listen to Him. After all, who did Jesus think He was to preach to the people who had known Him from birth? Jesus did not get angry. Rather, Jesus replied to their comments by saying that typically a prophet is not honored by the people who have known him from birth. Jesus realised that He simply was too familiar to them. They only saw in Him what they wanted to see. Thus Jesus was unable to perform any great deeds there as they did not have faith in Him.
It can be easy to discount the people whom we know the best. They are so very familiar to us that we simply may take them for granted. Take a moment and think about the people in your life: what are their gifts? How do they gift you with their love and care? Do you appreciate them? Do you appreciate their gifts and talents? Do you let them know how important they are to you?
Today make time to give thanks for the many people who love and care about you! In some small way, let them know how grateful you are to have them in your life!
Sister Kristine Anne Harpeneau OSB
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Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
14 July 2024
We tend to attach a lot of importance to preparing for every eventuality. We like to feel that we are in control and that if anything unexpected happens we will have the resources to deal with it. In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus sends out the twelve remarkably unprepared by today’s standards. They were to take nothing for their journey except a staff, no bread, no haversack, no coppers for their purses. They can wear sandals but they were not to bring a spare tunic. As he sent them out, they were certainly not in control; they were not self-sufficient. Rather, they were to depend on the generosity and hospitality of those who welcomed their ministry. Perhaps Jesus was trying to teach them that, in reality, they are not in control; God was ultimately in control and they would have to learn to trust in God more than in themselves. There is a message there that we all need to keep on learning. The reality is that we are not in control of our lives, not matter how well we prepare ourselves for unexpected eventualities.
A brush with serious illness can bring that home to us. Suddenly, all our plans and preparations have to be put to one side. The realization that we are not in control of our lives, that we are not Lord of our lives, frees us to surrender ourselves more fully to God, the real Lord of our lives.
Frmartinshomiliesandreflections.com
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Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
21 July 2024
The Responsorial Psalm today is the beautiful shepherd-psalm. I love the image of the restful waters. In the land of the bible, sheep pastured on the rocky mountainsides, allowing the fertile lowlands for crops and vines. In contrast to other animals, sheep need very little water. Apparently, they cannot drink from the swiftly flowing water of the mountain streams, so the shepherd has to find a still pool or create one with a dam of stones.
The flowing water is an image of our busy time. Although God is everywhere, we find it hard to drink of the divine presence if the pace is hectic. We need the pool of still time, the quiet corner, the period of solitude. It is there that our drooping spirit is revived. Unless we regularly come apart, we run the risk of being torn apart.
Little things can mean a lot, like having a meal with others instead of a snack alone. Sitting at a table instead of standing at a counter, using a teapot instead of bag-in-cup, placing a saucer under a cup.
What the world needs most of all are people of vision, contemplatives and people of true holiness to restore the big picture of life.
‘They were like sheep without a shepherd, so he set himself to teach them at some length.’
Prayer
Be still and know that I am God.
Give yourself the gift of time and space where you can listen to God.
Gaze at the face of Jesus as he looks at us with compassion.
Allow yourself to be loved by God.
Br Silvester O’Flynn OFM Cap
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Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
28 July 2024 • World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly
God has the power of creating something out of nothing, but he asks for human collaboration, even if it is minimal. Here it is no different. The apostles are utterly poor: they can bring to Our Lord only five loaves and two fish from a boy they find in the crowd. Jesus asks us to contribute because he wants to teach us to be generous, even when we think we have nothing to give. It is when we give from our want that we most please Our Lord (Cf. Luke 21:1-4). Poverty is never an excuse for lack of generosity in serving and working for Our Lord. This miracle proves to us that Our Lord can never be outdone in generosity.
Jesus slowly prepared his apostles and disciples for his teaching on the Real Presence in the Eucharist. He had to purify their hearts and prune out attachment to the things of this world for them to accept the difficult teaching about his self-giving love found in the Eucharist. Even so, when he saw that the people were about to miss the point of his miracle, Our Lord ‘withdrew again to the mountain alone’ (John 6:15). Sometimes Our Lord withdraws the comfort and consolation of his presence in our lives because we wrongly interpret their meaning and purpose. Do I correctly discern the spirit in my heart when I pray? Am I happy only for things that give me comfort, or am I genuinely coming closer to Christ because I recognise who he is and return to him the same authentic love he gives me and wants from me?
www.epriest.com
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
4 August 2024
Last Sunday’s gospel from John talked about Jesus miraculously feeding the 5,000. Today’s gospel is closely connected to that; the people in the Galilean countryside are still following Jesus; they were fed once, and, as Jesus realizes, they’ve come for more. They are still hungry. They probably don’t quite know themselves what they are hungry for, or what they truly need.
How often do we hear in the gospels this question about Jesus, ‘Who is this?’ Which reminds us a lot of the question of the Israelites, ‘Man hu’, what is this? People see Jesus as a teacher, a healer, someone who is different, someone who has authority, a leader, a prophet, someone with amazing powers. But they don’t see that Jesus is ‘it’ – ‘manna’.
They, just like those Israelites in the wilderness, don’t realise that God has set before them exactly what they need, what the world needs: Jesus himself, the bread from heaven, the bread of life. They don’t see that there, right in front of their eyes, is God who models compassion, grace, solidarity, true community – true communion -, and self-sacrifice for the sake of the world, for the sake of the larger good.
They – and not only they, but we as well – have a hard time understanding that we are called to partake in this God with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul, to make all that Christ embodies part of us – you are, what you eat, after all – and allow our lives be transformed. And that we are called to become bread ourselves, sharing ourselves with a hungry world.
www.stmatthews-sf.org
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
11 August 2024
St Ignatius Loyola in his writings tells us that authentic spiritual transformation can only begin when people are willing to relinquish their position as being at the centre of things and that the denial of self at the core is part and parcel of true discipleship. Human selfishness is so insidious he tells us that it prevents easy detection. Jesus in today’s Gospel encountered a certain self-centredness in those he had come to serve and save. They gladly ate the bread that Jesus gave them but they were unable or unwilling to appreciate Jesus as anyone other than the son of Joseph and Mary and did not allow their narrow messianic expectations to be broadened or their deeper hungers to be fed by the living bread he offered. Rather than become true followers/disciples of Jesus, they remained centred within themselves. We must look beyond the bread to what it symbolises, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, Corpus Christi. Food/bread is the conduit Jesus chose to communicate God’s love but also his abiding presence with his own. When we eat the food that is Jesus with faith in our minds and hope in our hearts, we are given a foretaste of eternal life. Today we have the good fortune to hear the word spoken to Elijah, ‘Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you. (1 Kings 19)
www.blessingtonparish.ie
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
18 August 2024
There was once a king who engaged a street artist to make a painting of the Last Supper. He wanted a picture of Jesus and his friends at their farewell meal for his banqueting room. The artist had Jesus and his friends around the supper table ,but he also included all kinds of people around the table, showing people from many races. There were sick, lame and crippled; men and women; young and old; beggars and misfits and some not very nice people . When the King saw the painting he went into a rage, ‘Of what is this a painting?’ The artist said ‘Your Highness, this is a painting of God who delights in all people ; all saints and all sorts are welcomed to the Kingdom and the earthly banquet…and that is my understanding of the Last Supper, Holy Communion and Eucharist.’
What we receive in the small piece of bread or the sip of wine at the Eucharist is the gift of life from Jesus. It is the gift of God who has become one of us. It is the gift of love with sacrifice. If we have put self out for others in big or small ways, or have cried for another’s woes or laughed for another’s joy, or held a hand in sympathy or just listened when there were no answers, we know the quality of this gift. In the Eucharist God is close in his creation, In Jesus we can recognise God near at hand. Pope Benedict writes – ‘we have to rediscover God, not just any God, but the God that has a human face, because when we see Jesus Christ we see God’.
www.sacredspace.com
Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
25 August 2024
It is not easy to follow Jesus. Sometimes, we can follow not Him, but our own desires and channel them through a thin but insubstantial veil of Christianity. The Jesus we follow is relentlessly loving, not least towards those who hate him, those who spurn him. Can we say the same of ourselves?
Believing doesn’t make everything suddenly easy. Belief is not a single-decison way of life. As Christians we must wake up every day and say: yes, today I shall believe. We must renew our belief, renew our devotion to God. Otherwise, we risk what was mentioned at the beginning of this reflection, which is to follow our own desires rather than him. Conversion isn’t a one-stop shop; it must be renewed daily, sometimes hourly.
Many walk away from belief in God because of the demands it asks of us. We are asked to believe in something that, at least on this earth, we are never going to figure out … ever. It is mystery. Yet, with the gift of faith, and a constant renewal of it, we can come to be better followers of Jesus, better emulators of his words and actions.
We pray, then, for the gift of faith, that we may use the gifts that God gives us to walk more wholesomely, more courageously, in his image, to believe where others do not, and to love where others abandon. Amen.
www.msjroscrea.ie