Readings & Reflections: Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time & St. Joseph of Cupertino, September 18,2020
To meet the preaching of Christ as he “journeyed from one town and village to another” was to encounter the companionship that he had with “the Twelve and some women” who accompanied him. And because “Christ has been raised from the dead” we, so many centuries later, enjoy his companionship. And we hope to do so for all eternity when “his glory appears.”
Readings & Reflections: Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time & St. Robert Bellarmine, September 17,2020
Born in 1542 A.D. in Montepulciano in Tuscany, Italy. Robert entered the Jesuits at the age of eighteen. He was assigned to the chair of apologetics at the Jesuit Roman College for many years. His erudite lectures on the defense of the faith against Reformation thinkers, published as On the Controversies, were assumed by many to be the work of a team of Jesuit scholars. In the century following its publication, over 200 Protestant authors composed responses to it. In his writings, Robert patiently laid out his opponents’ arguments; in his prayer, he begged for their conversion. Even after being made a cardinal, Robert sought an austere life according to the model of Saint Ignatius. At the end of his life, he produced a spiritual treatise each year, a body of work “entirely directed to concentrating the soul’s energies on the Lord Jesus intensely known, loved, and imitated” (Pope Benedict XVI). His final treatise was On Dying Well. He was canonized in 1930 A.D. A year later Pope Pius XI named Robert a Doctor of the Church in 1931, calling him the “Prince of Apologetics.”
Readings & Reflections: Wednesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time & Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian, September 16,2020
Cornelius and Cyprian have shared this feast since ancient times. His successor Fabian having perished in the brutal Dioclesian persecution, Cornelius was elected bishop of Rome in 251 A.D. with the almost certain knowledge that he would die a martyr’s death. In 252 A.D., the plague entered Rome, and the Romans blamed the disease and resulting pestilence on the Christians. As punishment, Cornelius was exiled to Civitavecchia. Letters of support and appreciation came to him from Cyprian who had been elected bishop of Carthage in North Africa in 248 A.D., Cyprian supported Cornelius, consistently urging the unity of the Church in his many pastoral letters. “No one can have God as his Father who does not have the Church as his Mother,” he wrote. Cornelius was martyred in 253 A.D. Cyprian was martyred in Carthage in 258 A.D. Their prayers are still invoked in the canon of the Mass.
Readings & Reflections: Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, September 15,2020
The Blessed Virgin was born to be the Mother of God. From the first moment of Mary’s immaculate presence in her mother’s womb, Our Lady has led us to her Son. From the cross, Christ commands, “Behold, your mother.” As the Savior’s dying gift to us, Jesus leads us back to Mary. For we need the maternal closeness of the Sorrowful Mother to sustain us when overcome by the terrifying trials of life. Through Mary’s compassionate presence at the cross, that event – as it recurs in our life – become more deeply human, filling us with the courage to face life’s sufferings, certain in the secure embrace of divine providence. Whenever Mary loves us, she gives us Jesus. By obeying the Lord in our devout beholding of the Mother of God, we give Mary the chance to speak her Yes to the “annunciation” uttered from the cross: “Behold, your son.”
Readings & Reflections with Cardinal Tagle’s Video: Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14,2020
The Exaltation of the Cross consists in the fact that “the event of the Cross and Resurrection abides and draws everything toward life” (CCC: 1085). We exalt Christ’s cross whenever we freely take it up, filled with the certainty that the ultimate meaning and fulfillment which we crave in life comes to us through this unending event. “With the cross we are freed from the restraint of the enemy and we clutch on to the strength of salvation” (St. Theodore the Estudite). For salvation means escape from our own inability. At the same time, “we cannot produce or give any other fruit,” writes St. Catherine of Siena, “but the fruit we have taken from the tree of life.” No wonder that “the sign of the cross makes kings of all those reborn in Christ” (St. Leo the Great).
Readings & Reflections with Cardinal Tagle’s Video: Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time A & St. John Chrysostom, September 13,2020
With a vengeance, the forgiven servant says to his debtor fellow servant, “Pay back what you owe.” I so doing, the ingrate refuses “mercy to another like himself.” However, “the vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail.” And that is the one thing we hope with all our heart that God will forget. The “math” of mercy is very simple: “Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then your own sins will be forgiven.” How else dare we “expect healing from the Lord.?” Thus, “none of us” is to “live for oneself”; rather, “we live for the Lord” and by the Lord: the “Lord of both the dead and the living” will endow us with the power to forgive others as he himself does.
Readings & Reflections: Saturday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time & Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 12,2020
Our salvation begins when an archangel speaks the name of Mary. To be Christian is to cry on that Annunciation unceasingly. Saint Louis de Montfort wrote that “the salvation of each individual is bound up with the Hail Mary.” This prayer that names the holy name of the Mother of God “brought to a dry and barren world the Fruit of Life. It will cause the Word of God to take root in the soul and bring forth Jesus.” The holy name of Mary bears such power because of the unique bond between Mother and Son. “When God sent his Son born of a woman, he instituted a once and for all order of salvation in which the union of Mother and Child stands at the center” (Romanus Cessario, O.P.). To accept the divine privilege of speaking the name of Mary is to participate in that saving union.
Readings & Reflections: Friday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time & St. Cyprian, September 11,2020
We who “were raised with Christ, seek what is above.” We “take off the old self” when we take stock of our lowliness – “You who are poor… who are now hungry… who are now weeping… when people hate you” – refusing to be measured by it. Christ calls such ones “blessed”; those who “have put on the new self, renewed in the image of the Creator.”
Prayer at Ground Zero
Readings & Reflections: Thursday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time & St. Thomas of Villanova, September 10,2020
There is “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and through whom we exist,” which means that existence itself is the fruit of God’s love. To be loving toward others, then – even those who don’t love us first – is the most reasonable and godly way to live our life. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We find the strength for this by praying: “probe me, O God, and know my heart.”
Readings & Reflections: Wednesday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time & Saint Peter Claver, September 9,2020
Peter Claver was born in 1580 A.D. of the working-class family in Catalonia, Spain. He joined the Jesuits and studied at Majorca, where Alphonsus Rodriguez, the college doorman, urged him to apply for the South American missions. After his ordination at Cartagena (present-day Colombia) in 1616 A.D., Peter declared himself Aethiopum servus, “Slave of the Africans.” He ministered to the most vulnerable: the 10,000 African slaves who were brought through the port each month. He brought Christ to them, climbing into the filthy, pestilential holds of the ships to feed them, baptize the dying, and hear confessions. His work angered those who considered the slaves to be less than humans, and for a time Peter was forbidden to perform baptisms. He preached to their owners. In his later years, Peter gave an annual retreat to the rough seamen who entered the port. At the end of his life, he fell victim to the plague and was confined to his bed under the care of a neglectful African servant. He accepted without complaint. He died in 1654 A.D. and was canonized in 1888 A.D. alongside Alphonsus Rodriguez.