Sunday, October 22, 2017

20^TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST (29^th S. Ord. Time)

Proverbs, Chapter 1, Verse 28-29

²⁸ Then they will call me, but I will not answer; they will seek me, but will not find me, ²⁹ because they hated knowledge, and the fear of the LORD they did not choose.

Wisdom is personified in this proverb; and she proclaims the moral order, threatening to leave to their own devices those who disregard her invitation. Wisdom comes to those who make their hearts ready.

The Beginning of Knowledge[1]

· The Book of Proverbs begins with a short mission statement. It says that it's here to instruct people in—wisdom.

· But it'll also take time to drop some knowledge about justice, equity, shrewdness, and stuff like that. It's targeting this wisdom at an audience including the young and the simple—people who really need it—as well as the wise, so they can kick their wisdom up to Dragon Ball Z levels of firepower.

· It states that wisdom begins by fearing (and revering) God.

Shun Evil Counsel (Media?!)

· As the actual dispensing of wisdom begins, the author speaks like a parent urging a son to obey his mother and father, since they've got good advice to give.

· If sinners try to get you to go and ambush innocent people and kill them and steal all their stuff, the author says you should walk away and avoid them.

· These evil robber-murderers are actually going to kill themselves (because their sins will come back to get them). They are like hunters setting a net while the bird they're trying to catch is watching them (kind of like Wile E. Coyote stalking the Roadrunner).

· This is what happens to people who are greedy—they lose their lives.

The Call of Wisdom

· The author imagines Wisdom as being a person—specifically, a woman—who walks through the streets calling out to the ignorant and simple people, asking them how long they'll remain without wisdom.

· She says that she'll pour out her insights to anyone who pays attention to her. But she'll mock the people who refuse to listen, and who bring disasters and panic on themselves by their willful stupidity.

· They'll try to find her once they've fallen into calamity, but they won't be able to, because they failed to fear God and heed wisdom's advice earlier. It'll be too late.

· So, Wisdom says, if you pay heed now, you'll be fine.

Decision Making[2]

Wisdom is the true goal of good leadership, rather self or leading a group. Without leadership and wisdom everything stops; kinda like congress. Wisdom eludes the selfish and Godless. True wisdom is an act of faith. John Maxwell gives us the following guidelines as outlined in this proverb.

1. The foundation of every decision is to honor and revere God (v.7).

2. We must build of our heritage and conscience: what values are we to embrace? (v. 8-9) (Life, Liberty, Legacy)

3. We must avoid the counselof the ungodly (v. 10-19) (cnn?)

4. We must pursue wisdom. What are the facts? What are the options? (v.20-13)

5. We must move toward inward peace (v. 32-33).

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time[3]

GOSPEL. Matthew 22:15-21

"'Go thy way, thy son lies.' The man believed. . .As he was. . .going down, his servants met him and brought word saying that his son lived" (Gospel). The weakened condition of the ruler's son reminds us of our own world. It is worn out by the fever of passion. It is unable to help itself until faith in God returns. A humble confession of sin is the secret of obtaining God's mercy and pardon. Be filled with the Spirit during the psalms and hymns of Mass; be subject to one another in public life (Epistle). Liturgy and Catholic Action are twins! When the official's faith was rewarded, he immediately spread the faith in his whole household, his relatives and employees. Gratitude should prompt you also to be lay apostles, ever ready to "speak religion" in and outside your house.

20th Sunday after Pentecost[4]

Under the traditional calendar the Church focuses on making our hearts ready through faith as we "redeem the times".

GOSPEL. John vi. 46-53

At that time there was a certain ruler whose son was sick at Capharnaum. He having heard that Jesus was - come from Judea into Galilee, went to Him, and prayed Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Jesus therefore said to him: Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not. The ruler saith to him: Lord, come down before that my son die. Jesus saith to him: Go thy way, thy son liveth. The man believed the word which Jesus said to him, and went his way. And as he was going down, his servants met him: and they brought word, saying that his son lived. He asked therefore of them the hour wherein he grew better. And they said to him: Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. The father therefore knew that it was at the same hour that Jesus said to him, Thy son liveth; and himself believed, and his whole house.

Consolation in Sickness

To console ourselves in sickness, let us bethink ourselves that God has sent us sickness for the good of our souls; that we may thereby attain a knowledge of our sins, and make satisfaction for them; or, if we suffer innocently, we may exercise ourselves in patience, charity, humility, and such like virtues, and so increase our merits. When ill let us employ a competent physician and use the remedies he may prescribe. But before all else, let us betake ourselves to God, give ourselves up unreservedly to His will, pray Him to enlighten the physician, and bless the means employed for our recovery, and subdue our inclinations if the prescription of the physician does violence to our former habits. For how otherwise should medicine have its proper effect?

O Lord, here burn, here wound, only spare me in eternity!

St. Augustine

ON THE CARE OF THE SICK

All who have charge of the sick should before all think of the soul, and to that end call upon Jesus to come in the Blessed Sacrament, before the sick person is past the point of receiving Him with devotion. Therefore, parents, children, relatives, and friends, if they truly love the sick, should seek to induce him to receive the Blessed Sacrament in time. At the beginning, and during the progress of the sickness, we should endeavor to encourage the patient to resignation and childlike confidence in God; should place before him the Savior, suffering and glorified, as a pattern and consolation, should pray with him, to strengthen him against desponding thoughts and the temptations of the devil; should sign him with the sign of the cross, sprinkle him with holy water, and, before all, pray for a happy death. But in caring for the soul the body is not to be neglected. We must call in time a skilful physician, give the sick person his medicines at the appointed times, keep everything clean, observe particularly the prescribed limit as to eating and drinking, and not permit the patient to have his own will, for he might often desire what would be hurtful to him. In general we should do what, in like case, we would wish to have done for ourselves, for there is no greater work of charity than to attend a sick person, and particularly to assist him to a happy death.

Today is also the feast of Saint John Paul II. He was a man afflicted, he was a man of endurance, he stress that Christ is our only hope and he showed us the love of God.

True Audacity of Hope[1]

Karol Wojtyla came of age at one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century. When he was 19 years old and just commencing his university career, the Nazis rolled through his native Poland and instigated a reign of terror over the country. Almost immediately, the conquerors decapitated Polish society, killing the intelligentsia outright or sending them to concentration camps. All distinctive forms of Polish culture were cruelly suppressed, and the church was actively persecuted. Young Wojtyla displayed heroic courage by joining the underground seminary run by the Cardinal of Krakow and by forming a small company of players who kept Polish literature and drama alive. Many of his colleagues in both of these endeavors were killed or arrested in the course of those terrible years of occupation. Sadly, the Nazi tyranny was replaced immediately by the Communist tyranny, and Fr. Wojtyla was compelled to manifest his courage again. In the face of harassment, unfair criticism, the threat of severe punishment, etc., he did his priestly work, forming young people in the great Catholic spiritual and theological tradition. Even as a bishop, Wojtyla was subject to practically constant surveillance (every phone tapped; every room bugged; his every movement tracked), and he was continually, in small ways and large, obstructed by Communist officialdom. And yet he soldiered on. Of course, as Pope, he ventured into the belly of the beast, standing athwart the Communist establishment and speaking for God, freedom, and human rights. In doing so, he proved himself one of the most courageous figures of the twentieth century. Karol Wojtyla was a man who exhibited the virtue of justice to a heroic degree. Throughout his papal years, John Paul II was the single most eloquent and persistent voice for human rights on the world stage. In the face of a postmodern relativism and indifferentism, John Paul took the best of the Enlightenment political tradition and wedded it to classical Christian anthropology. The result was a sturdy defense of the rights to life, liberty, education, free speech, and above all, the free exercise of religion. More persuasively than any other political figure, east or west, John Paul advocated for justice.

George Weigel titled his magisterial biography of John Paul II, Witness to Hope, by identifying Karol Wojtyla with a theological virtue. In October of 1978, the newly elected Pope John Paul II gave his inaugural speech to a packed St. Peter’s Square. This man, who had witnessed at first hand the very worst of the twentieth century, who had intimate experience of how twisted and wicked human beings can be, spoke over and over again this exhortation: “Be not afraid.” There was, of course, absolutely no political or cultural warrant for that exhortation, no purely natural justification for it. It could come only from a man whose heart was filled with the supernatural sense that the Holy Spirit is the Lord of history. Finally, was Karol Wojtyla in possession of love, the greatest of the theological virtues? The best evidence I can bring forward is the still breathtaking encounter that took place in a grimy Roman jail cell in December of 1983. John Paul II sat down with Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who had, only a year and a half before, fired several bullets into the Pope. John Paul spoke to him, embraced him, listened to him, and finally forgave him. Love is not a feeling or a sentiment. It is, Thomas Aquinas reminds us, an act of the will, more precisely, willing the good of the other. This is why the love of one’s enemies—those who are not disposed to wish us well—is the great test of love. Did John Paul II express love in a heroic way? He forgave the man who tried to kill him; no further argument need be made.

[1]https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/why-pope-john-paul-ii-is-a-saint/2264/