Readings & Reflections: Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time & St. Callistus 14, October 14,2019

The cemetery of Callistus is perhaps the best known repository of he remains of the early martyrs. The man Callistus was its caretaker, and, according to the only contemporary account we have of his life, a former slave. While he administered the cemetery, Callistus worked closely with Pope Zephyrinus, whom he succeeded as pope around 217 A.D. What we know of his papacy is telling, for it comes to us from the Roman priest Hippolytus, his severe critic. Hippolytus lambasted Callistus for his unwillingness to excommunicate grave sinners who sought to confess and do penance. In defiance, Hippolytus assumed papal privileges for himself, becoming the first antipope. Callistus’ compassion recalls the words of our Lord: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Mk 2:17). His faithful witness was crowned with martyrdom in the year 222 A.D. Hippolytus later repented and was martyred around the year 236 A.D.

The “evil generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it.” Why? Because Something Greater is already in their midst – Jesus Christ. The problem is their refusal to use their freedom to see how this sign corresponds with their desires. Those who live “the obedience of faith” recognize that we “are called to belong to Jesus Christ.”

AMDG+

Opening Prayer

“Lord, give me your wisdom and increase my love for your ways.  Help me to resist temptation and all willfulness that I may wholly desire to do what is pleasing to you.” In your Name, I pray Amen.

Reading 1 ROM 1:1-7

Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus,
called to be an Apostle and set apart for the Gospel of God,
which he promised previously through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, the Gospel about his Son, descended from David according to the flesh, but established as Son of God in power
according to the Spirit of holiness through resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we have received the grace of apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith,
for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles,
among whom are you also, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ;
to all the beloved of God in Rome, called to be holy.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The word of the Lord.

Responsorial Psalm PS 98:1BCDE, 2-3AB, 3CD-4

(R)The Lord has made known his salvation.
Sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done wondrous deeds;
His right hand has won victory for him,
his holy arm.
R.The Lord has made known his salvation.
The LORD has made his salvation known:
in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.
He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness
toward the house of Israel.
R. The Lord has made known his salvation.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation by our God.
Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;
break into song; sing praise.
R. The Lord has made known his salvation.

Alleluia PS 95:8

R.Alleluia, alleluia.
If today you hear his voice,
harden not your hearts.
R.Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel
Lk 11:29-32

While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them,
“This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here. At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

Reflection 1 – What sign you are looking for?

“This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it”

A lot of people during the time Jesus were not satisfied with the healing and the miracles Jesus poured on those who came to Him.  They could not believe His teachings much more have faith in Him.  His life, His ways and all that He stood for were not enough for them to follow Him and repent of their ways. Amidst the hardness of their hearts, they clamored for more signs.

A lot of us are not quite far from the people whom Jesus directly ministered to and healed. We still continue to ask for more signs.  If we are not presented with any evident signs, we could not act on His Word. If the word He speaks through other people is not close to what we have in our hearts and minds, we are so quick in discarding it. We consider it as not of God even when it is so obvious that God ‘s message has been waiting for our gracious attention and action. We say that God has not answered our prayers and our pleas because His will is totally different from ours. We insist for more and more signs that even if our dead were to rise, we will hardly have the heart to consider His will and plan because acting on them means giving up our comfort zones.

Most of us have been trained to be always on the look out for signs…signs that will direct us where to go, signs that will warn us of eminent danger or failure, signs that will indicate the necessity for a change in path…signs that reflect the status of our work for God, our relationship with Him and the people He has sent us our way, signs that speak of God’s joy and pleasure or even His displeasure. We are constantly alert for signs and depend a lot on signs, that at times we appear to have no faith in Him Who makes all things possible..

If God ‘s will means we have to take on a difficult position and stand against what the good majority have to say, we may opt to hide from the truth.  Even if it implies being suffocated which makes life unbearable, we would rather live in pretense than follow His will. We may continue to claim that He has not answered us and that the signs around us are not totally conclusive. We deny what is in front of us. We set aside His will. Instead, we find comfort on what our lustful souls may bring us, we choose what bloats our ego rather than what will build our character as Christians. When God wants us to take the road least taken by those around us, we turn against Him and rationalize our decisions.

This is how most of us have all reacted to God, not always, but a good number of times. One thing our Lord wants from us is to believe and repent of our evil deeds and follow Him.

Are we all ready to do this for Him or are we still asking for more signs?  God has made his salvation known through our Lord Jesus Christ. In the sight of the nations He has revealed His Justice. He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness toward the house of Israel.

Today, have we claimed salvation for ourselves or are we still asking God for more signs. Is Jesus on the Cross not enough for all of us to repent and move forward with His Word?

Faith is not founded on what we may see or feel but on the Living Word of God. Unbelief says: “Let me see and then I will believe.” God says: “Believe and then you will see.”

Direction

Believe God by trusting and believing in Christ Jesus.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, perfect my faith that I may always abide by your word amidst difficulties and trials. In Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Reflection 2 – This is an evil generation; it seeks a sign

Do you pay attention to warning signs? Many fatalities could be avoided if people took the warning signs seriously. When the religious leaders demanded a sign from Jesus, he gave them a warning to avert spiritual disaster. It was characteristic of the Jews that they demanded “signs” from God’s messengers to authenticate their claims. When the religious leaders pressed Jesus to give proof for his claims he says in so many words that he is God’s sign and that they need no further evidence from heaven than his own person.

The Ninevites recognized God’s warning when Jonah spoke to them, and they repented. And the Queen of Sheba recognized God’s wisdom in Solomon. Jonah was God’s sign and his message was the message of God for the people of Nineveh. Unfortunately the religious leaders were not content to accept the signs right before their eyes. They had rejected the message of John the Baptist and now they reject Jesus as God’s Anointed One (Messiah) and they fail to heed his message. Simeon had prophesied at Jesus’ birth that he was “destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that inner thoughts of many will be revealed” (Luke 2:34- 35). Jesus confirmed his message with many miracles in preparation for the greatest sign of all – his resurrection on the third day.

The Lord Jesus came to set us free from slavery to sin and hurtful desires. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit he pours his love into our hearts that we may understand his will for our lives and walk in his way of holiness. God searches our hearts, not to condemn us, but to show us where we need his saving grace and help. He calls us to seek him with true repentance, humility, and the honesty to see our sins for what they really are – a rejection of his love and will for our lives.

God will transform us if we listen to his word and allow his Holy Spirit to work in our lives. Ask the Lord to renew your mind and to increase your thirst for his wisdom. James says that the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity (James 3:17). A double-minded person cannot receive this kind of wisdom. The single of heart desire one thing alone – God’s pleasure. God wants us to delight in him and to know the freedom of his truth and love. Do you thirst for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14)?

“Lord Jesus, give me a heart that loves what is good and in accord with your will and fill me with your wisdom that I my understand your ways. Give me the grace and the courage to reject whatever is evil and contrary to your will.” – Read the source:  http://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/readings/2019/oct14.htm

Reflection 3 – This is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. —Luke 11:29

A skeptic once said to me, “I’ll believe in Jesus if He comes down and appears visibly above my house.” Not necessarily!

The Christ-rejecting religious leaders who requested a sign from Jesus had plenty of evidence for believing. They had undoubtedly heard of, if not seen, His miracles of healing, casting out demons, and even raising the dead. What more did they need?

Jesus therefore called them an “evil generation” (Luke 11:29). The only sign they would be given was the sign of Jonah the prophet, who had been thrown into a stormy sea (Jonah 1:2-3). When the Ninevites heard Jonah’s message of repentance after he had spent 3 days in the belly of a fish, they believed God had sent him and they repented.

Likewise, the religious leaders who already knew of Jesus’ words and works would soon see Him crucified and securely entombed. And in the following weeks they would hear personal testimonies from those who had seen Him alive, and had even touched Him, but they still wouldn’t believe.

Today we have in the Gospels a record of what Jesus said and did, written by people who knew Him. If we are open to the truth, we have all the evidence we need to believe. We don’t need to be sign-seekers.
— Herbert Vander Lugt

If we desire to honor God,
We take Him at His Word
And ask Him not for special signs,
But trust, “Thus saith the Lord.” —D. De Haan

The sign of genuine faith is faith that needs no sign (Source: Our Daily Bread, RBC Ministries).

Reflection 4 – The sign we can trust

What sign are you waiting for that would prove that God really, really loves you? What resolution to a problem, what new job, what reconciled relationship? In today’s Gospel passage, we find out that Jesus is THE sign. We need no other sign.

In the Gospel reading, we’re reminded that, like Jonah, Jesus emerged from the belly of death to call you and me to repentance. He is the sign we are given.

Jesus died because he loves YOU. Then God the Father raised him from death because he loves YOU. Out of this tremendous love, God calls us to repent so that we can live in his love all the time.

Then why are we reluctant to identify our sins and repent? We’re so determined to resolve our problems in the easiest possible way – without making any sacrifices – that we fail to recognize the sign of the cross. We fail to recognize the love that’s there and the love we receive when we unite our problems to the cross of Christ.

Yet, we stare at a reminder of it every time we go to Mass and look at the crucifix. We hang reminders of it in our homes and workplaces, and we even wear them around our necks! But we think, “That was for you to do, Jesus. I don’t want any part of it! I want resurrection in my life but I definitely do NOT want to go through the cross to reach it!”

When we sin, it’s usually because we don’t understand how to find God’s love in the situation we’re facing. Sin is a selfish attempt to do things our own way – in other words, to take care of ourselves as if we are greater than God. Jesus’ death and resurrection is a sign that we need to repent of this idolatry. We cannot understand God’s tremendous love unless we trust in that love when the odds are against us. And we can’t trust until we let go of our own ways of fixing problems.

Repentance means changing. Repentance means letting go of our ways when they’re not God’s ways. We need to sacrifice our resistance to the cross. Then and only then can we experience the joy of trusting God.

Joy amidst suffering comes from trusting that God cares about us all the time, no matter what. Joy comes from trusting that God is working a plan that will turn every bad situation into something much better than we can imagine. Joy comes from realizing that every problem is pregnant with God’s activity, i.e., new life is developing in the secret recesses of God’s womb.

Thus begins our resurrection (Source: Terry A. Modica, Good News Ministries).

Reflection 5 – Are you a religious fanatic?

Reflection 6 – What sign you are looking for?

“For the faith of believers to grow it had to be nourished with miracles. When we plant trees, we water them until we see they have taken root in the ground; once established we stop the watering. This is why Paul said that ‘signs are for unbelievers, not believers.’

“Let us take a closer look at these signs and wonder. Every day the Church works in the spirit what the Apostles once did in the flesh. When its priests lay their hands on believers through the gift of exorcism, forbidding evil spirits to dwell in their hearts, what else are they doing but casting out demons? And what else are we doing when we leave behind the language of the world for the words of the sacred mysteries, when we express as best we can the praise and power of our Creator, if not speaking in new tongues? When we remove malice from another’s heart by our good word are we not, so to speak, picking up serpents? And when we hear the wisdom of the world, but choose not to act on it, surely we have drunk poison and survived. As often as we catch sight of our sister or brother stumbling on life’s path, and we gather round them with all our strength, and support them by our presence, what are we doing but laying our hands upon the sick to heal them? Surely these miracles are all the greater because they are spiritual; they are all the more significant since it is the heart and not the body which is being restored” (St. Gregory the Great, +604 A.D.)

Reflection 8 – Getting Interested in Faith s. Seeking Signs

“The Kingdom of God that our Lord came to establish upon earth was not merely the elaborate or simple knowledge of the ways of God; rather it was the individual acceptance of truth simply as a means of life. God teaches me about himself so that in the end I may be led to a closer union with him; it is himself for whom I am created, not for faith, but for possession.

“The Kingdom of God, therefore, is something that the individual from the age of reason to the end of life has to be continually realizing for himself. He has to be continually hammering away at the truths of faith, endeavoring to get more meaning out of them, to find in them the help and guidance that daily life continually demands. The whole series of mysteries will certainly be no use to me in my endless advance to God unless I try to make them my own by ceaselessly pondering over them.

“Of themselves they are just the bare outlines of truths, yet it is not truths but the facts that are contained in the truth that are ultimately to influence my life. Hence my first act must be to get interested in my faith….

“Faith has now to be regarded as the revelation to us of the meaning of life, the understanding of life, the effects of life. I shall never become interested in religion until I have come to see that I must make it personal to myself – chew it, digest it, form out of it the sinews of my spiritual being” (Source: Fr. Bede Jarret, OP, +1934, Magnificat, Vol. 18, No. 8, October 2016, pp. 142-143).

Reflection 9 – St. Callistus I (d. 223? A.D.)

The most reliable information about this saint comes from his enemy St. Hippolytus, an early antipope, later a martyr for the Church. A negative principle is used: If some worse things had happened, Hippolytus would surely have mentioned them.

Callistus was a slave in the imperial Roman household. Put in charge of the bank by his master, he lost the money deposited, fled and was caught. After serving time for a while, he was released to make some attempt to recover the money. Apparently he carried his zeal too far, being arrested for brawling in a Jewish synagogue. This time he was condemned to work in the mines of Sardinia. He was released through the influence of the emperor’s mistress and lived at Anzio (site of a famous World War II beachhead).

After winning his freedom, Callistus was made superintendent of the public Christian burial ground in Rome (still called the cemetery of St. Callistus), probably the first land owned by the Church. The pope ordained him a deacon and made him his friend and adviser.

He was elected pope by a majority vote of the clergy and laity of Rome, and thereafter was bitterly attacked by the losing candidate, St. Hippolytus, who let himself be set up as the first antipope in the history of the Church. The schism lasted about 18 years.

Hippolytus is venerated as a saint. He was banished during the persecution of 235 and was reconciled to the Church. He died from his sufferings in Sardinia. He attacked Callistus on two fronts—doctrine and discipline. Hippolytus seems to have exaggerated the distinction between Father and Son (almost making two gods) possibly because theological language had not yet been refined. He also accused Callistus of being too lenient, for reasons we may find surprising: 1) Callistus admitted to Holy Communion those who had already done public penance for murder, adultery, fornication; 2) he held marriages between free women and slaves to be valid—contrary to Roman law; 3) he authorized the ordination of men who had been married two or three times; 4) he held that mortal sin was not a sufficient reason to depose a bishop; 5) he held to a policy of leniency toward those who had temporarily denied their faith during persecution.

Callistus was martyred during a local disturbance in Trastevere, Rome, and is the first pope (except for Peter) to be commemorated as a martyr in the earliest martyrology of the Church.

Comment:

The life of this man is another reminder that the course of Church history, like that of true love, never did run smooth. The Church had to (and still must) go through the agonizing struggle to state the mysteries of the faith in language that, at the very least, sets up definite barriers to error. On the disciplinary side, the Church had to preserve the mercy of Christ against rigorism while still upholding the gospel ideal of radical conversion and self-discipline. Every pope—indeed every Christian—must walk the difficult path between “reasonable” indulgence and “reasonable” rigorism.

Quote:

His contemporaries, Jesus said, were “like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’ For John [the Baptist] came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’” (Matthew 11:16b-19a).

Read the source:  http://www.americancatholic.org/features/saints/saint.aspx?id=1168

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