The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

Today we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. The image of a king is not really one we think much about in this country, unless something dramatic happens in Britain, I would say. We may not like royalty much as it pertains to our own country, but when Queen Elizabeth died and King Charles became the new monarch in Britain, it's no secret that many Americans tuned in to watch, some even as it was occurring live.

But for the people of Jesus, this image of Jesus as a king was one that they fully expected. If they had come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, then they would have seen Jesus as a king. That was the promise to David, after all, in the book of Samuel. That there would be someone set upon his throne, a dynasty, a house that lasts for all ages. And so the image would have been a familiar one.

But this doesn't really answer the question because when we think about Jesus, the first question is, well, what does it mean to call him king? Because the king they expected was not the king they got. In fact, they expected a military king, one who would like King David ride off into battle and win the victory for Israel.

To the best of our knowledge, Jesus never entered into a war. He was never on a horse, and he never led the troops into battle. And yet we call him a king. Why? Because Jesus comes to inaugurate a kingdom, a realm, a reign. Jesus is referred to as the newborn king of the Jews from the very beginnings of his human life. But the kingdom he inaugurates is unique indeed. It's not like other kingdoms in the world.

The kingdom that Jesus inaugurates is one that turns everything upside down, turns all things on its head. For it is a kingdom where every subject of the king is required to act in a particularly dramatic way. The gospel lays it out, but so too do the other passages of the gospel that highlight those who are the tremendous citizens of this new kingdom.

It's the widow that puts in everything she has by only putting a couple of cents in the treasury. It is the man who sees the person in need on the side of the road and cares for his needs. It is, as Jesus tells us in the gospel, each one of us, when we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison.

For those of a certain generation, those types of things would be familiar as the corporal works of mercy. This is in fact what Jesus asks his citizens to do. But we know that's not as easy as it sounds. See, sometimes we can convince ourselves that the hungry are hungry because, as St. Paul says, those who will not work should not eat. And we can say to ourselves, well, if they only worked a little harder, they wouldn't be in this situation. Why should I help them?

We live in a time, in a culture, where it seems that it's not enough to point out the poor, but that it seems that we also need to blame the poor for being poor. And even if personal choices result in the situation or circumstance that someone finds themselves in, Jesus makes no distinctions in his gospel.

But it's even deeper than that for us. For even without believing that Jesus is the King, we could do all these things mentioned in the gospel. What does it mean for us to profess that Jesus is the King of the universe, as we said in our opening prayer? Is it not that we develop a personal relationship with the King?

Because when we do, when we really seek to have this deep and powerful and wonderful relationship with the King, it becomes easier to recognize the King when we see Him in other persons, other places, other circumstances, other situations. And as a matter of fact, when we deeply dive into this relationship with the King, we begin to see just what it is that the King has done for us, the gifts, the talents that Jesus has given to you and to me. And moreover, the help to use these gifts and talents in a way that makes us true citizens of the Kingdom of God. . .

We can be shielded in the United States from the fact that people are different in different parts of the world. We can see everything kind of through the lens of American and forget that others don't share our view of the world, of our faith, of who knows what else.

I think of it when I find myself in need of being able to purchase some new article of clothing. Go out and try to find an article of clothing that was made in the United States. It's almost impossible. But what we don't see is that often in the places where these articles of clothing are made, people are working in very, very hard conditions for very little money.

The same can be true with our faith. We can look in the United States and say our faith is really the way it should be celebrated. We see that in a whole bunch of ways where there's an insistence that this really is the way it should be done.

On one hand, we may have people who really embrace what we would call the extraordinary form of the liturgy, something that was celebrated before the Second Vatican Council. And there are those who really kind of like it. They find it transcendent. They find it something that actually helps them to see the transcendence and the power of God.

Now, I couldn't celebrate the extraordinary form of my life dependent on it, not only because I don't know how to do it, but I've never really had any desire to learn how to do it either. It's quite complicated. There are others who would rather see a liturgy that looks quite different, one that is perhaps more participatory, one that is in fact more focused on the body of Christ that is the people of God. The liturgy in many ways that was instituted after the Second Vatican Council.

Now, why do I say all of this? I say all of this because the danger in our life is to think that we are the Holy Spirit, that the way we see the world is the only way in which the world could possibly be seen. I know I'm guilty of this. I suspect we all are in our own way.

Things seem so clear to us that we can't imagine another way to look at things. And it's uncomfortable when someone places another way of looking at things for us to see. Today, we celebrate martyrs from Vietnam. We probably don't have a strong sense of how powerful the faith is in Vietnam because we probably don't think much about it. Mentioned Vietnam to the average American, and I suspect the first thing that comes to mind is the Vietnam War, and not so much the people of Vietnam.

The Dominican presence in Vietnam is quite powerful indeed. The largest priory in the Dominican Order is in Vietnam. And while some of the predominant reason is that it's the only priory they're allowed to have in Vietnam, there are hundreds of Dominicans who live in this priory. There are hundreds of thousands of Dominican laity in Vietnam.

And today, we celebrate those Vietnamese martyrs. One was a diocesan priest, Andrew, the one we mention at the top by name. And they gave their life for their faith. It is said that there have been more martyrs in the last century, in the 20th century, than all of the previous 19 combined.

This is a dangerous time in our world to be a Christian, to be a Catholic. People are being killed for their faith all over the world. What does all this mean for us? It means, I think, more than anything that we need to treasure our faith. That there are those in our world who are suffering for the faith, and never should we take for granted our ability to celebrate freely what we believe.

We ask the Lord today to continue to fill our hearts with gratitude. That we might be most grateful for what Jesus has done through his life, death, and resurrection for us, and offering us the opportunity and invitation for eternal life.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

In the Catholic Church, every day is Thanksgiving. What do I mean? I mean that as the Second Vatican Council said in the document Lumen Gentium, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.

And we have the opportunity, and I know many of you take advantage of it, we have the opportunity so that each day can be a great act of thanksgiving, not because of what we do, but because we place ourselves in the presence of what Jesus did. He died for our sins so that we could live forever.

And one of the benefits of recognizing that the Eucharist is the source and the summit of life, made most profound in the Eucharist, is that it changes the way we see the world. I'm sure each of these 10 lepers were good people, but only one saw the world in a pathway of thanksgiving. The way in which this leper who recognized he had been healed and went back to thank Jesus, the way in which he saw the world, enabled him to see more clearly the action of God.

And such is the task of the Christian life. If I were to say, what is it that we should do every day? We should search, seek, find, and discover the ways in which the Holy Spirit is active in our lives. Now, what is interesting in this story is that Jesus is walking through a territory that isn't simply just Jewish. There are all kinds of people in the parts where Jesus is going. In fact, the word Samaria gives rise to the Samaritan.

And it is often the case when Jesus tells a story, the hero is the one who's most unlikely to see the faith. Almost always, it's Samaria. It's a Samaritan. It's the one who seems least likely to be the one for whom Jesus came. And yet, it gets our attention. At least it would have to the people who heard Jesus in the Gospels. It gets our attention.

The one who is least likely is the one who sees clearly what God wants to do in our lives. And if the Eucharist becomes the source and summit of our own lives, then there are ways in which things change in terms of how we act in our lives.

The homeless become a scandal to us because Jesus tells us in the 25th chapter of Matthew that we have a profound responsibility to every other human being because they are the Christ in terms of how we serve them. We give them food to eat. We give them drink to have. We visit them in hospital, prisons, etc.

If we see the world through the thanksgiving, the great act of thanksgiving that is the Eucharist, then indeed every decision we make ultimately is one that says, does this bring me closer to God or farther away? Does this help me become more holy or does it lead me away from holiness?

If there's a challenge for our Western culture where everything is seen as something that we do or we initiate or we see as good for us, we did this, we did that, if there's a challenge, it's that that's not where it begins. It always and everywhere begins with the grace of God.

God inspires us to serve the poor and it is because we react to that gift of grace that we're able to serve the poor, that we're able to welcome the stranger, that we're able to have a deep prayer life, that we're able to come and to recognize in every sacrifice of the mass that Jesus is truly and really present in our lives. And so on this day when we make special effort to be thankful for everything we have, all of the blessings that God has bestowed upon us, let us ask the Lord to help us to see more clearly his presence in our lives.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

What's the big deal about a little bit of pork? Why was this such an important thing for Eleazar? It doesn't seem on the surface to be terribly significant. We think about it and we say, well, you know, weighing the two, breaking the law of God in terms of eating pork and saving his life, we might be tempted to say, well, you know, under these circumstances, what was he supposed to do?

But Eleazar is in a situation where his identity, his very identity, is at stake. Does he remain faithful to the religion that he has practiced his entire life? Or does he engage in some pretense in order to save his life, but perhaps risk the faith, as he says, of the young?

One of the most helpful distinctions that I have been given in my life, or that I've heard in my life, about, let's say, the differences in the generations when it comes to religion, is this. I was born just a few months after Pope John XXIII called and announced the council. So in every way, shape, or form, I don't know any other church, but the church of the Second Vatican Council.

In my generation, and when I think of my life growing up, the value was inclusion. You wanted to make sure that anybody and everybody felt welcome. And things were good. There were so many kids, I remember, that made their first communion in the parish that I grew up in, that we couldn't even take the picture for the first communion in the sanctuary of the church. There was too many of us.

I remember that there were three masses on a Sunday morning, and the church was full for all of them, because I was an altar server. When we had a youth group, it was filled with high school kids. All of this was true, until it wasn't.

When I went home to visit my mother, who no longer lives there, but at the time she did, she still lived in the parish where I grew up, they had one child for first communion. Life was different. And so, for many young people in this generation, the value is not so much inclusion as it is identity. I am a Catholic. I believe this. These things are important.

Both values are important. Inclusion and identity. But we do need to recognize the importance of standing for something, of thinking about what those beliefs are that would be too much, and we would be like LEAs are, ready to die. The violations of our law.

Where is the line where we would say, that simply is too much, and I'm going to stand up for my faith in Jesus? Because just as Jesus said to Zacchaeus in today's Gospel, if we do so, salvation will come to our house too.

What do you want me to do for you? Have we ever imagined ourselves thinking of Jesus asking us that question? What do you want me to do for you? Where is it in our lives that we need the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ? Or where is it in our lives that we need maybe a clearer idea of what Jesus wants us to do or how Jesus wants us to live? What do you want me to do for you?

It's an interesting question because in life human beings find themselves in all sorts of different types of situations. There are those times that are good and wonderful and we should be grateful because God does wonderful things. We have blessings.

There are other times when we might be overcome with difficulty, sickness or illness of ourselves or, excuse me, maybe even more so with someone we love and care about because we can't really do much to eliminate the suffering of illness.

Maybe it is a sadness that comes because we aren't generous. We see someone in need but we worry. Maybe we worry because we're afraid or maybe we worry because we won't have enough money for ourselves or whatever it is.

In the first reading, the worry is that we are not like everyone else. We want to be like everyone else. We don't want the difference that our religion places upon us. And that's quite a temptation.

Antiochus Epiphanes was not a nice man. He was not a gentle, kind king. Quite the opposite. And ultimately he didn't want there to be multiple types of people in his kingdom but one. Quite frankly, at the time of Jesus, the Romans would have liked to have done the same thing.

But they couldn't in the time of the Romans and they couldn't in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. And the price was steep. We're going to hear about the price of this royal decree putting anyone to death for practicing their faith.

I wonder in my own life if the penalty for practicing my faith were death. Would I just say, I'm just going to be like everybody else and keep quiet? Or would I say, I'm going to be faithful to you, Lord Jesus, and I'm going to be a disciple following you wherever it is you may lead.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

There are questions that I suspect anyone who's been a teacher, particularly I think of children, don't want to hear. My all-time least favorite question is this. It's when a kid has been absent from class, even if it's just for a day, and they come back and say, did we do anything yesterday?

I always have to bite my tongue. I don't want to be sarcastic, but I kind of want to say, no, you know, you weren't here. We just didn't know what to do. We looked at each other, and we were just filled and overcome with so much sadness. We just sat here and cried.

Of course we did something yesterday. But the second least favorite question is, in a way, it's kind of like it. Will this be on the test? In a way, that's what we're experiencing as we get to the end of the church year. If you've been going to Daily Mass, you'll see the readings are beginning to take a different and kind of more austere turn, to be honest.

They either come from the book of Maccabees, where we get the encounter of the amazing mother who watches seven of her children die for standing up for the faith, or from the book of Revelation, which describes kind of the ultimate struggle at the end of time, or from the book of Daniel, which is a similar kind of book.

All of them are designed to get us thinking about our life, to get us thinking about how we live our life, to get us thinking about what it means to be a Christian, what it means maybe even more so to be a disciple of Jesus. And we have to understand that as we look at the reading that we heard from today's gospel.

This is a great story. It is really a powerful story. But we have to kind of understand some things that maybe aren't readily apparent from this story. First of all, this is a story that Jesus is telling about the kingdom of God. It's interesting that Jesus speaks in this way where he talks about wailing and grinding of teeth, or he talks about paying back the last penny, or he talks about the end of time and what will happen.

He addresses these areas more than just about anything else in the Gospels. He's not just simply a teddy bear. He's calling people to deep and lasting fulfillment. It does not mean that Jesus is trying to paint a picture of God that goes around making people feel horrible about themselves. That misses the point.

But there are some rather interesting parts in this story that might help us to understand and to prepare for the season of Advent, which quite frankly is only two weeks away. Normally, by the way, it's only one week away, but this year we have five Thursdays in November, so it's two weeks away.

Anyway, what do we have? First of all, we have a journey. A journey is a popular image for faith, and we see it all throughout the Scriptures that people are going on journeys, and Jesus uses the imagery of journey too. Of course, there's the big long 40-year journey in the Book of Exodus, which was a quest for faith.

But there are other stories that Jesus tells, the man going on a journey who falls in with robbers who's cared for by the good Samaritan. There are the two disciples who are on a journey on their way to Emmaus. Journey has long been seen as an image to describe our life, our life of faith.

Then there are these talents. When we hear the word talent in Scripture, what we really are hearing is a valuable thing. And its value wasn't set or fixed because a talent could be made of silver, it could be made of gold, and what it was made of made the difference in terms of exactly how much it was worth. But what we do know is that all three of these individuals are given priceless things.

We also shouldn't get caught up in the fact (that unlike) in Luke's Gospel they all get the same number of talents. Matthew's Gospel, it's not that way. They each get a different number of talents. We shouldn't get caught up in that. . .

We're getting close to the end of the church year. And what that means is that our readings take a decided turn. This is not about the kind, loving Jesus who wants to invite us all, or as sometimes I like to say, the teddy bear Jesus. This isn't the Jesus that's doing things or saying things to make us feel better.

This is the Jesus to remind us that as some students want to know, yes, this will be on the test. The end of the year is a time where we think of ultimate accountability. There's been a tendency in religion, I think, in some ways, to cut against the grain of what we know as human beings.

And this is what I mean. Hell has kind of fallen out of fashion. We don't like to think about it. Some claim it doesn't exist. But really, what we're talking about is whether or not in the Christian life there's any accountability.

Imagine parents who had no rules, limits, or consequences for their children when they did something wrong. We certainly know that in those instances, if there were no consequences for bad behavior, we'd have very unhealthy kids. It would be bad for them.

Think of a world where there was no accountability for paying taxes. You could just kind of decide whether you wanted to do it or not. And if you didn't, well, okay, that's your choice. Think about crime. I know in the city of St. Louis, where I came from, there's a new focus on what they're calling quality of life crimes. In other words, those things which disrupt our life, stolen vehicles, petty vandalism, things that make us feel unsafe in our own home.

We know on some level, then, that there is this notion that we will be held accountable in some way for our actions. And that's what Jesus is getting at here in the Gospel. That if we get complacent, if we don't think much about our life, if we don't really think much about the demands of the Gospel, then, in fact, we have to be worried that something may come out of the blue that we did not prepare for.

Now, this is not because we're horrible, miserable people. That would be a mistaken understanding of this notion of accountability. Hell is actually a sign of God's love. And why do I say that? Because hell is God's loving decision to allow us to get what we choose.

Think of that for a minute. It's God's loving decision to allow us to get what we choose. If we choose to reject God, God loves us so much, He will allow us to get what we choose. But it need not be that way. In fact, all we need is an open heart to God.

And quite frankly, that's part of what the Book of Wisdom is getting at. When we think about the world, what we're really seeking to find is the Lord God Himself. And we have experiences of that on a human level as well. A beautiful sunset. Even a snowstorm, I suppose, has its own sense of beauty and quiet. The beauty of plants and flowers, the beauty of other human beings.

We have all kinds of invitations to see where it is that God is present in our lives. These next few days are going to be what we would call kind of apocalyptic readings. Readings that help us to kind of envision what the end of the world is going to be like.

I haven't had any time to count, but I'm told that Jesus in the Gospels mentions hell more than anything else. I've got to go count some day and find out. Now sometimes it's Gehenna, sometimes it's got different names.

But the basic idea is that Jesus mentions over and over again, there's this notion that we're ultimately going to be accountable. And so He puts before us a choice. It's the choice of Moses. Life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life then, that you may live forever with God.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

The Second Vatican Council tells us in Lumen Gentium that the best way we stand in God's presence, or as it says, the source and the summit is in the Eucharist. Every single time we come to Mass, Jesus is present.

Now Jesus is present in a number of ways at Mass. He's present in you, the body of Christ. He's present in the ministers. He's present when we pray and sing. All those things are true. But Lumen Gentium is clear. Jesus is most present in the Eucharist. Body and blood, soul and divinity. That's the beginning of wisdom.

When we can recognize that every time we place ourselves in the presence of Jesus, every single time we come to the Mass, we are asking God whether we realize it or not to change us. The instructions of the Mass make it quite clear.

They say we should be qualitatively different when we leave mass than we were when we came. The whole purpose of Mass is not simply to show up, although that's the beginning. You can't get much out of Mass if you're not here.

But the whole beginning is to recognize that the goal is to become more and more like the person of Jesus, to become more and more the Christ. That is ultimately salvation. We will share fully and completely in Jesus by being like Him. Today, let us ask the Lord for this mobile wisdom, for this great gift, for this recognition that everything we need to know about following Jesus is made clear when we place ourselves in the presence of wisdom.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

You are not your own. At the heart of Dominican theology is this notion of grace. One of the first heresies in the church that was condemned was Pelagianism. Pelagius believed that we could outweigh our sins by performing good actions.

Or the popular image I think a lot of people have that at the judgment, that God will have this big scale and our good deeds will be on one side and our bad deeds will be on the other, and whichever ways you work determines our faith.

But that's not really true. It's not true because it suggests that by good deeds we somehow earn or deserve our salvation. That was the whole reason in many respects that Saint Dominic founded the Order of Preachers, because there are variations on this heresy all over the place.

Saint Thomas Aquinas was the one who probably most fully developed this idea of grace. In other words, that everything we do is moved by our response and acceptance of the grace of God. To put another way, it means our lives are not our own. We are always in a position where we are asking, seeking to discover, discerning, where is God in my life? What does God want me to do? Who is it that God wants me to become?

When we have this idea of grace, what we are really proposing is an idea that it matters how we view the world. With the power of God's grace and with a faith-filled view, then what it means is that we don't just see other people. We see Christ waiting to be served. We don't just see evil in the world. We see an opportunity to work for the good efforts of peace, of strength, of goodness. Such is what Jesus is getting at in the Gospel.

It is not the case that the primary credit goes to us when we do something good. It goes to God because God first poured out the grace. Now, I'm not suggesting we shouldn't be proud of the good things that we do. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't recognize the good things that others do. But we always need to remember the primacy of God's grace in everything that we do. Because in so doing, we begin to become more open to the ways in which God is calling us to be those individuals he has made us to be.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

It's no wonder when we listen to the apostles at the end of everything that Jesus has said that they're saying to him, increase our faith. This is hard stuff. This is not easy, what he's talking about here. And it's not easy on a whole bunch of levels.

It's not easy on the one hand because, I don't know about you, but I don't like confronting someone else. Let alone confronting them because they have sinned. On some levels, I suppose there are times when it's a little bit easier if your parents caring for children. Then that's kind of the role, or if you're a teacher in a classroom, I guess there's certain things that come there.

But if we're just going through our ordinary life, it's not very easy. In fact, rarely have I seen in religious life where fraternal correction is supposed to be a part of religious life. Rarely have I seen it work well. But Jesus is really getting at something here. And it's namely that our love for each other should be so great that one, and probably most importantly, we could receive such criticism. You know, he's saying here, if your brother rebukes you, your sister rebukes you, whatever, do this.

But what if somebody rebukes me and identifies my shortcoming or my sinfulness? Can I have a heart that's open, at least to reflect on whether there's any validity to something that's said? It has to be tempered with the second part, which I'm not going to lie is no easier in many instances, especially if it's significant.

If your brother sins, and we can add sister, rebuke him, rebuke her. But if he wrongs you seven times a day, in one day, and returns to you seven times and says, I'm sorry. Oh my gosh.

Now, I always feel compelled in gospels like this to make one significant caveat. We're never talking about physical safety here. You know, like if you're, there are a lot of people who are in relationships where there's violence in the home.

Okay, that's a completely different area altogether, because that's one of the challenges for someone in domestic violence, is that the person who's often the abuser says, I'm really sorry, I'll never do this again. So that's not what we're talking about here, but I always feel compelled because I never, I don't know your stories, and I don't know a lot of stories, and I just want to be sensitive to that.

But in general, there's a wisdom. Imagine if one of your closest friends did something wrong, and you said, no, I'm never going to forgive you, you're out of my life, that's too bad for you. Or if parents, when their kids did something wrong, said, well, you had your chance, we've given you life, we've given you love, that's too bad, we recognize that we're not perfect.

And I don't know about you, but I find in my own life that sometimes the things that really irritate me about others, it's not really about others, I do those things in my own life, and then it irritates me because it's like they're holding up a mirror to me and showing me things I don't like about myself.

Today we celebrate a great, great saint, especially in this country, Saint Francis Cabrini. Mother Cabrini wanted to go to China, and the pope said, no, don't want you to go east, I want you to go west. And she came to the United States, and she cared for immigrants all over this country. It does seem to me without being political that if we're going to honor the work of Mother Cabrini, we have to analyze our own feelings about immigrants and refugees when they come into our midst.

Not easy, got to be prudent, but at the same time we can't hold up someone like Mother Cabrini, while at the same time saying we don't want to be like Mother Cabrini. But she was an amazing and wonderful saint. Let us ask the Lord today to help us to welcome the stranger, for we know in so doing we are really welcoming the Christ. . .