Memorial of St John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

 Link to today’s readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091321.cfm

In today’s First Reading from the 1^st Letter of Timothy (Tm 2:1-8) we find these wonderful verses:

                        For there is one God.
                        There is also one mediator between God and men,
                        the man Christ Jesus,
                        who gave himself as ransom for all.

The all-powerful, ever-living God, offers to all the possibility of redemption in the life, death,  and resurrection of Jesus. It is this Christ then our certainty and safety rests.

Rather than me banging-on about this, please find following a YouTube link to a really lovely version of the song In Christ Alone: 

 I think a prayerful listening to this will yield more than anything I could write.

Have a great week.

Today the Church celebrates the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It celebrates, liturgically, only two other birthdays during the liturgical year: St John the Baptist, and (of course) Jesus.

What is it that we do when celebrate a birthday, when we greet them with the words: Happy Birthday! We celebrate not the achieving of another year of vintage, though for some this is an achievement, nor a step closer to some age-related milestone. What we celebrate is that this person came into being, that by God’s gracious gift, this person stands with us. We rejoice with that person simply because they are.

Today we celebrate the ‘coming into being’ of the one through whom God brings into being in the world (incarnates) Jesus – Emmanuel: God with us! Mary’s humble words of “let it be with me according to you word” (Lk 1:38) begins the unleashing of God’s decisive and full intervention and revelation in the person of Jesus; nothing would be the same.

When we hear the words of the first line of today’s First Reading  - We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28) – from the vantage point of history, and apply them to the life of Mary, we can only wonder at how they came to fruition in her life. How could the young woman who so radically said “yes” to the Angel have known what would lay before her. That she would ask why three wise travellers from afar might visit her and her new-born (Mt 1:10-11), and be amazed at the insight and understanding Jesus would show when chatting to teachers in the Temple (Lk 2:47), that she would be present at his first miracle in Cana (Jn 2:1-11), and sadly and cruelly that she would see her beloved only child beaten and then crucified. And, joyfully, she would stand among others in his presence, and with a mother’s tears exclaim: He lives!

We claim for Mary many titles: Queen of Heaven, Queen of Angels, Mother of the Church, Star of the Sea, but perhaps the one dearest to her heart might be simply be Mother of Jesus (Theotokos). It is perhaps in this title (role) we find her most approachable, either as the sons or daughters of mothers, or as mothers ourselves. And so today we celebrate the birthday of this mother, who by virtue of our baptism mothers us too. We ask that we might have courage similar to her in our own “lowly state” so that we might “rejoice” in “God our saviour” and “enjoy his favour” (Lk 1:48).

Ave Maria!

(Image downloaded from the virgin at prayer - Bing images on 06 September, 2021)

Link to today’s readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090621.cfm

Today’s Responsorial Psalm is a short section from Psalm 62. The psalm has 13 verses, and today in our readings we read vv. 6-7, & 9, with v. 8 (In God is my safety and glory) serving as the response.^[1]

Psalm 62, like Ps 61, expresses our confidence in God’s divine protection, and it is from this vantage point that we bring our prayer reflection to the psalm.

^[1] Other translations use ‘salvation’ rather than safety.

Here, as forecast earlier on the week, we have these wonderful words from St Paul to the people of Colossae concerning the cosmic and timeless Christ:

Brothers and sisters:

Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the Body, the Church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the Blood of his cross through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven.

I could write some thoughts about this reading, but I think the following song by He Is by Mark Schultz much more aptly leads us in some reflection on these stirring words from St Paul: He Is - Mark Schultz - YouTube

(image downloaded from CosmicChrist.jpg (662×900) (christthesavioroca.org) on 02 September, 2021)

Link to today’s readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090121.cfm

Today in our First Reading we start reading from Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, and we will continue to do so up to and including Thursday 09 September (Thursday of the 23 Week in Ordinary Time). Colossians is a short letter of only four chapters and was written by St Paul around 60-61c.e., when Paul was first imprisoned in Rome. Though it might be short in length, the Letter to the Colossians is rich in theology, especially that branch of theology we call Christology – the theology of / thinking about Jesus the Christ.

The city of Colossae was on the trade route between Ephesus and the East, in that part of the world we would now refer to as modern Turkey. The people of the Church of Colossae had been influenced by false teaching the challenged the divinity of Jesus, and so Paul writes to challenge this false teaching and correct their belief. In this letter then we find quite a developed Christology (Col 1:15-20) that sees Jesus the Christ as the ‘image of the unseen God’, who ‘existed before all things, and in him all things hold together’, who is ‘the first-born from the dead’, and through whom “all things…everything in heaven and everything on earth” have been reconciled to the Father”. It is in this letter that we find this wonderful promise: “You have been buried with him in baptism, by which also you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead” (Col 2:12).

This letter provides a rich foundation for us to understand ourselves as living in Christ: “As the chosen of God, then, holy and beloved. Clothe yourselves in heartfelt compassion, in generosity and humility, gentleness and patience” (Col 3:12).

Today’s First Reading, and tomorrow’s (Thursday) form part of Paul’s thanksgiving and prayer for the people of Colossae, and set the scene for Paul’s wonderful description of Christ as the head of all creation. To simply ‘sit in’ the verses of Col 1:15-20 and let our minds (and souls) conjure up images in response will help, if only fleetingly, to grasp cosmic and timeless nature of the Christ.

For today though let us rest in Paul’s words as they apply to us:

We give thank for you to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, continually on our prayers, since we heard about your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you show towards all God’s saint, because of the hope which is stored up for you in heaven.

Link to today’s Mass Readings: Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time | USCCB

As I mentioned in one of the reflections from last week, here we find an excellent example of Paul (and the Christian community) “doing theology”. That is, bringing the reality of the Christ-event into dialogue with the current experience of believers, and allowing that to inform and transform that experience in Christ.

Here we find Paul drawing attention to the difference between the Christian experience of grief, and the pagan experience of grief (as understood at the time). Paul’s opening sentence “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters”^[1] really has the impact of saying: Let me clear a few things up for you, because how we (the Christian community) understand this circumstance is quite different from those around us. For those of you (too) familiar with Friday evenings at Year 8 Debating this is similar to the 2^nd Speaker for the Affirmative saying: The Opposition has told you X, but they are idiots and they are wrong.^[2]

The great difference here for St Paul, and so for us, is that our grief is experienced in the bedrock of ‘hope’. It does not mean that our experience of loss does not bring pain and grief, or that our experience of loss is not unsettling and bewildering (at times), but that this grief and loss is not accompanied by the thought that this is all there is; that this is the end.

I remember Phillip Adams commenting that he found the thought of his daughters or wife dying unbearable to him, because as an atheist their death meant the annihilation of their being. They wouldn’t be going somewhere else where one day he would be with them, there would be no sense of “until we meet again” – they would simply cease to exist.^[3] It is in contrast to this unspeakable grief that St Paul writes of the Christian experience; the Christian experiences grief in the context of the hope of the resurrection.

Let us commend to God all those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith, particularly those who have no-one to remember them:

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through your mercy rest in peace and rise in glory.

^[1] Other translations put this a little more forcefully: “But we do not want you to be uninformed” (New Oxford Annotated Bible”, or, “Now we do not want you to be in ignorance, brothers and sisters” (Richard, E.J. (1995). Sacra Pagina: First and Second Thessalonians. (D.J. Harrington, Ed.). The Liturgical Press.

^[2] And “yes”, I have adjudicated debates where the Opposition were referred to as idiots.

^[3] This comment was made at a debate at Sydney University in the early 2000s. I cannot remember whether Phillip Adams was in discussion with Cardinal George Pell around the topic of whether atheists could be moral people, or whether Mr Adams was chairing the discussion.

Link to today’s readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/0827-memorial-monica.cfm

St Monica lived between 332-387c.e., and was the mother St Augustine. While this might sound as if the family home was a garden of saints, such was not the case. Monica’s husband (Patricius) was a pagan with a temper and ‘wandering eye’ (shall we say), and Augustine’s saintliness was only to develop in his more mature years.

As a young man Augustine dabbled with the heresy of Manichaeism, had a mistress, and fathered a child out of wedlock. In his book The Confessions he recounts a prayer he prayed in his younger days: "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet." (Confessions 8.7.17). Poor Monica must have been ready to rip her hair out!

However, a mother’s persistent prayer, petition, and example won through, and Augustine was baptized a Catholic by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan in 387 c.e., and was ordained a priest in 391. Four years later he became Bishop of Hippo. Augustine was to become one of the most prolific thinkers and writers of early Christianity, whose influence is still strongly felt today.  All of this due to the grace of God, and the prayers of a mother.

Today’s Gospel alerts us to the compassion Jesus felt for another mother, one who had lost her only son. Jesus comes to the town of Nain, and happened upon the funeral procession of young man, the only son of his widowed mother. The Gospel tells us ‘When the Lord saw her he felt sorry for her. “Do not cry” he said. Then he went up and put his hand on the bier and the bearers stood still, and he said, “Young man, I tell you to get up.” And the dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him to his mother.’

Of course, we who know the gospel story in full can imagine in this narrative another widow (Mary) grieving the loss of her only son as he (Jesus) is carried to the grave.

Today, let us be thankful for all people who have been supportive of us as we journey through life. Those people who hold us in their prayers each, and particularly our own mothers – wherever it is in God’s embrace they may presently be.

Imagine downloaded from https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.monasteryicons.com/images/popup/st-monica-icon-439.jpg on 26 August, 2021.

Link to today’s Mass Readings: Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time | USCCB

 ^[2] (https://youtu.be/vXMPNXXnCls)