Siege of Jerusalem from the Arch of Titus (AD 82)

Central Idea: Our period of salvation history and how we are to live in it. Doctrine: The Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgment. Practical Application: How to live in this age.

To view Lectionary 159, click here.

Central Idea: Our period of salvation history and how we are to live in it

Reading 1 Mal 3:19-20a

• Malachi is an Old Testament prophet who foresees the Day on which God will judge everyone. God’s sun-like appearance will have a different effect on people depending on whether they are proud and doers of evil or whether they do God’s will. To some God’s appearance will be a burning fire and to others healing rays.

Responsorial Psalm Ps 98:5-6, 7-8, 9

• God will renew material creation and rule it and its peoples with justice. The result will be joy, even within and through non-personal beings. By our sharing in God’s life securely forever, we will give glory to God by being who we are: fully-alive and fulfilled human beings.

Reading 2 2 Thes 3:7-12

• We live in this middle period of history between the Ascension of Christ and his Second Coming. What are we supposed to do? St. Paul insists on work and a life of virtue so as to support ourselves and not be idle busybodies.

Gospel Lk 21:5-19

• Just as the beloved Temple of Jerusalem would soon be destroyed by the wrath of the Romans, so too everything in this life, as good as it is, is falling into ruin.
• We are living in that period after the Ascension of Christ and before his Second Coming. Our time of history is filled with tumult.
• We followers of Christ should always be ready to face persecution. When you are attacked for the good you do or the truth you hold, Christ himself will “give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute . . . [and] not a hair on your head will be destroyed.”

Doctrine: The Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgment

• “Christ the Lord already reigns through the Church, but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to him” (680). The psalmist sees what it will be like when all things are subject to him: He will rule the world with justice and all creation will shout with joy.
• “The triumph of Christ’s kingdom will not come about without one last assault by the powers of evil” (680). When we face ultimate persecution, Christ will teach us what to say and nothing can ultimately hurt us.
• “On Judgment Day at the end of the world, Christ will come in glory to achieve the definitive triumph of good over evil which, like the wheat and the tares, have grown up together in the course of history” (681). This is the Second Coming of Christ.
• “When he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works and according to his acceptance or refusal of grace” (682). As Malachi foresees, Christ’s ‘revealing and rendering’ will be like a consuming fire for some and healing rays for others.

Practical Application: How to live in this age

• Here is a little examination of conscience based on today’s readings
• Do I fear God’s name? That is, do I put doing God’s will first?
• Do welcome justice? That is, are my actions such that I have no fear of them being revealed?
• Do I live an orderly life? Am I living the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance?
• Do I work and keep busy, providing for myself and my family as best I can, while mind my own business?

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Trying to imagine the unimaginable

Central Idea: The reward of eternal life. Doctrine: The Beatific Vision. Practical Application: Meditation on the Beatific Vision.

For Lectionary 156, click here.

Central Idea: The reward of eternal life

Reading 1 2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14

• The Sacred Writer of 2 Maccabees clearly teaches the hope of a bodily life after death. Those who obey God’s will, come what may, will enjoy being raised from the dead. But for sinners, “there will be no resurrection to life.”
• It might seem eating pork was a small thing to die for, but the Mosaic Law forbade it, and if the brothers and mother had given in on that, they would have given in on everything.
• God must raise the innocent from the dead to give them the justice they never got on earth.

Responsorial Psalm Ps 17:1, 5-6, 8, 15

I in justice shall behold your face; on waking I shall be content in your presence.

• In this life, it is a special joy to know you are a friend of God.
• How do God’s friends behave? They pray. They tell the truth. They persevere in doing God’s will.
• What do God’s friends expect from God? God’s justice: That he will do as he has promised. That he will hear their prayers. That he will love and protect them. That he will show himself to them. That he will raise them from the dead: “I in justice shall behold your face;
  on waking I shall be content in your presence.”

Reading 2 2 Thes 2:16-3:5

• As the martyred sons in Maccabees knew, St. Paul points out that not all men have faith, and may treat us very badly. That is as true today as ever.
• Nevertheless, with God’s real help, his grace, we are to continue “in every good deed and word.”
• God gives us encouragement, endurance, strength, protection, and love of God.

Gospel Lk 20:27-38

• The Sadducees did not believe in life after death. To make the idea of eternal life look ridiculous, so they came up with a loaded question based on one of Moses’ commands.
• Christ tells them that “even Moses” taught that the dead will rise because God is not “God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
• Moses taught eternal life; do did David in the Psalms; so did the Book of Maccabees; so does Christ, which is why Paul does also.

Doctrine: The Beatific Vision

• Heaven or eternal life is more than a state of never-ending perfect natural happiness in which we will be united with everyone who is good under the loving care of God.
• As the Catechism puts it, summing up Sacred Scripture, “Those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God for ever, for they ‘see him as he is,’ face to face” (CCC 1023). As Pope Benedict XII (d. 1342) defined it further, these souls “see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature” (CCC 1023).
• The Church calls this ultimate gift the Beatific Vision. “Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it” (CCC 1028).

Practical Application: Meditation on the Beatific Vision

• Perhaps the most important thing we can “do” about the Beatific Vision now is to meditate on it and to contemplate it. We can use the method of lectio divina with these doctrinal points as the “text” to be read.
• First read what the Church says, for example, in the section of the Catechism cited above. Then try to understand it by thinking about what it means. Then talk to God about it. Finally, simply dwell with God, experiencing whatever he wants you to think or feel.
• Don’t be surprised if your meditation becomes perplexing because you are trying, with God’s help, to go to the limit of human thought and understanding.

Central Idea: God’s loving goodness. Doctrine: God is love. Practical Application: Divine reading.

To view Lectionary 153, click here.

Central Idea: God’s loving goodness

Reading 1 Wis 11:22-12:2

• God is the omnipotent creator and sustainer of all that exists and everything he creates is good in itself and God loves it.
• God is omniscient and infinitely merciful and so only little by little shows us our true condition due to our sins and offenses, because we could not stand it if we saw who we are all at once.

Responsorial Psalm Ps 145:1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13, 14

• How would Zacchaeus pray this psalm after his encounter with Christ? Because God’s salvation has come to him today, he would pray this and mean every word, especially God’s merciful grace that held back his anger toward Zacchaeus’ sin in anticipation of his repentance.

Reading 2 2 Thes 1:11-2:2

• When will Christ return? St. Paul tells the Thessalonians, pay no attention to people who claim to know something about this. Instead our aim must be to cooperate with grace to do what God wants of us now.
• What does God want of us now? That we will cooperate with God to make us into what he wants to make us into. As St. Iranaeus put it, “The glory of God is man fully alive” (CCC 294).

Gospel Lk 19:1-10

• Our Lord changed his plans to pass through Jericho when he saw Zacchaeus, and the short fellow changed his life when he saw Christ. Christ’s appearance, his body language, his words, and his tone of voice must have reached Zacchaeus with a flood of grace. And that grace must have met something in Zacchaeus, an openness to receive that grace, just as he then received Christ into his home and gave away his wealth.
• We can love our neighbor if we receive the love of God. Zacchaeus used his wealth to make things right.
• Blatant sinners can sometimes make a more dramatic conversion to God that the supposed “righteous.” The reason is that the sinner has fully committed himself to the good he thinks can be gotten by means of that bad course of action, yet he knows by bitter experience it is not so. It can sometimes be harder for those who are trying to be good, since they have had to hide even from themselves their own disordered attachments.
• We can all take great comfort in this Gospel, that the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost, because we know we too need to be found and rescued by God.

Doctrine: God is love

• God is love; that is, his very being is love. The secret about God’s love revealed in Christ and in the sending of the Holy Spirit is that “God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange” (CCC 221).
• God’s love is everlasting. As God declared through Jeremiah, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer 31:3) (CCC 220).
• Some images of God’s love for us are a father for his son, a mother for her children, a bridegroom for his beloved (CCC 219).

Practical Application: Divine reading

• One of the best things we can do for ourselves and others is to dwell on God’s goodness in meditative prayer. We can do this with any of this Sunday’s readings.
• In our Catholic tradition, meditation is not emptying the mind but filling it with God’s Word. Lectio divina or divine reading is a four-step method for reading the Sacred Scriptures.
• First one reads the Scriptural passage slowly, focusing on what the Word of God is saying (lectio). Then, one reflects on the passage, on what it means in itself and how it applies to one’s life (meditatio). Then one talks to God about what he or she has learned or experienced in meditating about it (oratio). Finally one listens silently for God’s response (contemplatio).

For the readings for the Solemnity of All Saints click here.

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

Central Idea: God is just and merciful. Doctrine: Justification. Practical Application: A life of justice and mercy.

To view Lectionary 150, click here.

Central Idea: God is just and merciful

Reading 1 Sir 35:12-14, 16-18

• How can God be just and yet have a special concern for the lowly and those who serve him willingly? The reason is that these persons suffer from injustice the most, spurring God’s just response.

Responsorial Psalm Ps 34:2-3, 17-18, 19, 23

The Lord hears the cry of the poor.

• God saves those who ask him to: those who suffer and those who serve him. In the atonement, Our Lord has taken all human suffering to himself, including it in his sacrificial offering which redeems the world.

Reading 2 2 Tm 4:6-8, 16-18

• St. Paul has been a faithful servant of God, has suffered in this service, and is not done suffering yet. He is confident that “the Lord, the just judge” will bring him “safe to his heavenly kingdom” as a reward.

Gospel Lk 18:9-14

• St. Luke’s comment makes the meaning of Christ’s parable clear: If you are convinced you are holy but look down on everyone else as a lost sinner, you are a fool in great danger.
• Yet each one of us lives out this parable. Our true condition is a poor sinner in need of God’s mercy. Yet seeing this is abhorrent to us, so we try to convince others and ourselves that we are just. The Holy Spirit can slowly show us what we are. This is painful but it reveals us as widows, orphans, poor, brokenhearted, oppressed, and in need of justification. This breaking down process opens us up to serve God in justice so God will stand beside us and bring us safely to heaven.

Doctrine: Justification

• According to Fr. John Hardon’s Modern Catholic Dictionary, divine justice is “The constant and unchanging will of God to give everyone what is due him or her.”
• The great work of divine mercy, accomplished by Our Lord, is our justification, our being brought back into friendship with God through the forgiveness of our sins and through our being made children of God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that justification is closely linked with grace, merit, and Christian holiness (CCC 1987-2029).
• The grace the Holy Spirit, conferred on us through faith and Baptism, gives us God’s righteousness (CCC 2017). “Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, and so accepts forgiveness and righteousness from on high” (CCC 2018). This act of justification forgives our sins, makes us holy, and inwardly transforms us (CCC 2019). All this happens through the merit of Christ (CCC 2020).

Practical Application: A life of justice and mercy

• We cannot remain in a state of justice unless we live the virtue of justice, or giving every person what we owe him. God is a person, too, and we owe him adoration, thanks, reparation, and petition. Our life is full of both natural duties (like honoring parents) and of freely accepted obligations (like employment).
  • “So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift”(Mt 5:23-24).
• If we lose the state of grace, we can recover justification through the sacraments of healing, especially Confession. However, we cannot be forgiven unless we forgive those who offend us.
• In addition to giving others what we own them, we also must live lives of mercy. This means giving (in the language of stewardship) our time, talents, and treasure.

The Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge

Central Idea: Perseverance in the Faith. Doctrine: Perseverance, supernatural perseverance, and Final Perseverance. Practical Application: Living perseverance.

For Lectionary 147, click here.

Central Idea: Perseverance in the faith

• As long as we persevere in fighting our evil tendencies, we will win, but like Moses we need help: a rock to rest on and companions to hold up our tired arms. Our help is the Church and her Sacraments, our guardian angel, and our good companions on earth and in the Communion of Saints. Ex 17:8-13
• As long as we remain in the friendship of God, no real harm can come to us. Do we believe and trust in this truth? Ps 121:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
• To be faithful to the Gospel, we need light, and we find it in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church. The thing we need most of all is to persevere in working out our salvation. This includes doing apostolate. 2 Tm 3:14-4:2
• God has already won for us every good thing, securely possessed, forever. But because we cannot see the justice God has actually done for us yet, we must persevere until the end. Lk 18:1-8

Doctrine: Perseverance, supernatural perseverance, and Final Perseverance

• The natural virtue of perseverance makes us constant, reliable, and steadfast. The widow’s goal was a just ruling; Her obstacle was the judge’s injustice; Perseverance in asking was her means of overcoming that obstacle and achieving her just ruling.
• The supernatural virtue of perseverance is our life-long struggle to hold on to the Faith and advance in the transformation God wants us to undergo, made possible by the grace he gives us. Our goal is to be prepared for our meeting with Christ our King. The obstacle is the difficulty of remaining faithful. The means is keeping doing the right thing whether the way is easy or hard.
• Final Perseverance is the grace from God, and our effort in response, to remain faithful to God at the end of our lives. We should pray for Final Perseverance and never presume that we will be okay no matter what we do.

 Practical Application: Living perseverance

• The natural virtue of perseverance is easy to understand but hard to live. Set a good goal. Then, identify the obstacles that stand between you and the achievement of that goal. Find ways to get over, around, under, or through those obstacles. Then go about applying those strategies over time.
• To live the supernatural virtue of perseverance in the Faith, we need constant injections of grace through the cleansing medicine of Confession and the food of eternal life of the Eucharist. A good practical rule is Saturday Confession and Sunday Communion. We also need the light of Divine Revelation so we need to read the Gospels and good spiritual books, including the Catechism. Finally, we need to keep acting in accord with our Faith—even though our moods and circumstances keep changing.
• To achieve Final Perseverance, which is a gift from God we can refuse, we should keep asking for it, even when young. One way we do this is by praying for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Hail Mary we ask, “Pray for us sinners . . . at the hour of our death.” From time to time it is healthy to consider our own inevitable death. We can also encourage our own faithfulness by praying for those we know who have died, that they received this gift and accepted it.