The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

I was very good friends with a Sister of Providence, and I think of her every time this gospel is read because she hated it. And she hated it because she thought it wasn't the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins, it was the parable of the selfish and the foolish virgins.

Why wouldn't they share? Isn't that in fact what we're told to do? It seems rather selfish not to share. But this way of thinking actually reflects a danger when it comes to the Gospels and reading the Gospels. Jesus is telling a story. He's telling a story to make a point, and we always need to ask ourselves, what is the point of the story?

What is it that Jesus is helping us to understand? And in this particular gospel, it's not to teach us to share. There's something far more important going on with this gospel than learning the simple lesson of sharing. So what is it?

We need to go right to the very beginning. Jesus tells us, the kingdom of heaven will be like. When Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven, rarely does he say, this is what the kingdom of heaven is. This is the kingdom of heaven. He generally uses what he uses today. The kingdom of heaven is like.

And that's because the kingdom of heaven is really kind of difficult to pin down. It's not always easy in our lives to figure out what the kingdom of heaven is. And so Jesus kind of continues to give us hints to understand something that is mysterious. Now in our Western culture, we typically are not big fans of mystery.

If we were to talk about mystery, let's say like reading a mystery, we wouldn't think of it as a very good mystery that we were reading if it wasn't ultimately solved. We don't like open, loose ends. We like things to be clear. We like things to be solved. When we're sick, we want to know exactly why and what needs to be done. If there is a problem, we would like the problem to be solved.

But there is another way of thinking that's far more prevalent in the Eastern culture, which suggests that mysteries are not something to be solved, they're something to be entered into. And in many ways, we don't understand our faith without both types of relationships with mystery.

If we see mystery only as something to be solved, then we don't have any room for the transcendent. We don't have any room for the God that is beyond us because He's infinite. And if we don't attempt to solve some problems using our gift of reason, then we would just kind of throw up our hands and live life however it came without trying to make anything better.

Jesus in today's gospel is inviting us into mystery. This is a metaphor. This is a story that has a deeper meaning than meets the eye. So we have these virgins who are awaiting the bridegroom. That would have been an image familiar to the people who heard the story. They would have known. And if they were outside waiting for the bridegroom, then it would have been quite important to be ready. Regardless of when the bridegroom came.

And being ready means having oil. But the Church Fathers have often interpreted this oil as the gift of wisdom. Those virgins who were ready were the ones who thought in their life about what it meant to have a relationship with Jesus. And they thought about how to live their life.

And without wisdom, there are some aspects of the gospel that are quite challenging indeed. Loving our enemies, praying for persecutors, those don't seem to be wise rational things. If you love your enemies, well, what if they turn around and harm you even more? If you pray for your persecutors, what if they persecute you all the more?

There's a wisdom that comes in recognizing the gift of faith. And often, the people that are singled out as the ones who get it are the ones who have found wisdom. And here's the thing about wisdom. If we don't cultivate wisdom and aren't trying to be receptive to wisdom and aren't trying to put ourselves into places where we can find wisdom, I can't give you wisdom. . .

Paul found himself in a rather difficult set of circumstances in terms of preaching about Jesus. It was a confusing world because there were so many entities that he had to kind of navigate his way through.

He was part of one of them, the very, very serious Jews who separated themselves from society for the sake of being faithful, totally faithful, to the covenant. That was who he was before his conversion. And then he saw the fulfillment of Jesus.

He saw that Jesus was the fulfillment of everything he had hoped for. And that opened the door to a rather complex set of relationships that St. Paul needed to negotiate. There was first and foremost the relationship that he had with people who were Jewish. He knew the Law. He was trained by one of the most serious rabbis. He was not a mediocre scholar.

And he had to navigate what it meant now that he had come to believe that Jesus was the fulfillment of the covenant first given centuries ago to the Jewish people. Then there are these Gentiles. And they start to hear the message of Paul. And they begin to experience the new life that Jesus wants to give to them.

They too begin to be recipients of the action and movement of the Holy Spirit. And of these Gentiles, there are multiple kinds. There are primarily two. There are those Gentiles who are Greek, who are living throughout the Roman Empire. And of course the Gentiles that are Roman. Paul himself is part of this kind of mix of circumstances.

Because while he is Jewish, he is also a Roman citizen. Which he makes a point of emphasizing when he is called in before Roman courts. He had to be delicate and yet forceful. And we know that even in this dance he was not always successful in keeping himself out of prison, at the hands of all of these groups.

But in the midst of it all, he keeps his focus. In the midst of it all, he recognizes that that encounter he first had with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus has changed everything. It has changed everything for him.

And so he begins to recognize that he needs to identify for others the ways in which the Spirit has been active in their lives as well. He is very flattering to the Romans, but he is also challenging. But what he wants to point out to them more than anything in today's reading are the ways in which God has been active and alive both in his life and in their lives.

This is the new challenge I would suggest that awaits us as Catholics. Can we recognize first those ways in which God is active and alive in our own lives? And can we summon the courage to help others to see that same activity of God?

Can we be people who share our faith, who evangelize, who talk about our faith in ways that are compelling as a witness to others so that they can begin to experience what we have found to be so beautiful in our own lives in terms of our faith? It's not about beating people over the head with a book. As much as it is sharing with others the many ways in which Jesus makes all the difference 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.

Today, we celebrate the dedication of a church in Rome, St. John Lateran. Now a few things right at the beginning. St. John Lateran is not a person. The church in Rome was the Lateran Palace that ultimately was really the first cathedral of Rome.

It is dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, and it has come to have been known as St. John Lateran. It is one of the four major basilicas in Rome.

We might ask ourselves, why does it matter that we celebrate the dedication of a church so far away in the city of Rome? St. John Lateran is not just any church. It is really the womb of the churches. It is the first church among the churches.

And it's a reminder to us of a few important things, not the least of which is as Catholics we are united to a much bigger reality than any single parish or community or group of religious or any organization in the church. That the church professes particularly in the creed that we are a universal church. That we are a church that is all over the world. And as such there is tension in the church because as we look at different parts of the world we see that the faith is lived out quite differently.

Not differently in doctrinal ways, not differently in how the mass is celebrated and so forth, but perhaps different in the sense of symbolism and how the church is viewed and what people are called to do. I was talking to someone over the course of this weekend who was recounting to me an art teacher who went to South America and she was struck that the poorer the city, the bloodier the crucifix.

Why? Because their lives were hard. They could really relate to the suffering Christ because their lives were filled with so much suffering. You don't see as many suffering Christs in our country. We tend to be much more attracted to the image of the resurrection.

And yet we need both. Take a look around and see that the resurrection without the suffering of Jesus really is pointless. And the suffering of Jesus without the resurrection really is pointless. Because the old song, love and marriage says you can't have one without the other.

So what is the underlying reason we celebrate the dedication of this church in Rome? It serves if we look at the readings of a profound reminder that the building does not mean as much if our lives do not reflect the way of life we have been called to live.

The first reading we might not really have understood. There is a lot in this reading and we don't have enough time to go through all of the reasons that Ezekiel is helping us to understand the directions and so forth. But there is something that's very easy that's easy to mention and that is the water.

You know, there are certain things in the scripture that when we see them we should immediately be thinking of a certain thing. And whenever we see water whether it's in the Old Testament or the New Testament our mind should be drawn to baptism.

And that's what happens when the water flows out of the temple. Everything is brought to life. When we were baptized everything was brought to life. We were made beloved sons and daughters of God. We were called to live in a particular way.

And then Paul tells us in the second reading that we must be careful to know that we are the temple of God. And quite honestly if we are not living the life of the gospel then what we do here is weakened. It's not eliminated because God does all of the things in the liturgy but our witness becomes less than it could be.

Today as we think about the celebration of this church in Rome let us think about our own church. Let us think about our own lives and let us ask the Lord that we may care for the temple of our own bodies and that we might make a witness of the temple of our own bodies to be so compelling that others too are drawn to the faith by receiving the life giving waters of God.

Jesus is always inviting. He's always drawing people, hoping that we will respond by wanting a deeper relationship with Him. Hoping that the invitation we have to get to know Jesus better will be one that can change our life.

And Jesus uses a lot of stories to help us to understand, well, what is this invitation? What does it mean? And how do we accept it? Because it's not as easy as it seems. There are real challenges with what it means to accept the invitation from Jesus.

What gets in the way? Because that's really what's at the heart of the gospel. There are certain things that just get in the way, and people are unable to say yes to this invitation. Business. A man purchases a field and wants to check on his economic investment. Fair enough. An economic investment, if the checking on the field, becomes more important than the relationship with Jesus, then our priorities are misplaced.

Similarly, the man who purchases five yoke of oxen. Very good, very wonderful thing, helpful. But if that is more important than our relationship with Jesus, our priorities are skewed. Even the marriage that he talks about, the man who has just married a woman.

We may think, well, yes, you're newly married. You should, in fact, give time and attention to your marriage. However, if marriage is not seen as something that comes from the call of God, and is primarily, then a vocation, something we as human beings are drawn to, if Jesus is not the priority in our relationship, if we don't view marriage as a pathway to salvation, then our priorities are not in order.

Paul gives us a sense of those things that are, in fact, helpful in accepting the invitation of Jesus. One is recognizing that if we have a relationship with Jesus, then at some point we should see gifts. Gifts of the Holy Spirit, gifts that come out of this relationship, the grace of God that helps us to be able to do those things that God in his wisdom wants us to do.

And so he lists a whole bunch of gifts that we could have. Prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, contribution, being diligent if one is responsible for others, doing acts of mercy with cheerfulness. Those aren't always easy things. Paul goes on to, in fact, say they're not so easy. We have to encourage people often because they might not be keeping their way.

So Paul lists the things we should do, and they're fine, but he also encourages them not to grow slack and zeal, to really be fervent in spirit, to serve the Lord. Today, as in every day, Jesus invites us to a deeper relationship with him.

There are a variety of ways we might signal to Jesus our openness for this relationship, reading the Word of God and praying with it, spending some time in prayer, in silence, thinking about the ways in which God is working and moving in our life, serving someone in need, helping the poor, the outcast, those who do not have their basic needs. Jesus invites us and longs for us to accept his invitation.

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.

I would suspect that if we were asked to describe what a Pharisee was, we would not be terribly accurate. Because more than likely, we've gotten a little bit of an notion here or a little bit of an idea there, but we really probably don't know a whole heck of a lot about the Pharisees.

Like so many things in life, Pharisees were complex people. What it meant to be a Pharisee was complex. We see the dangers of making things simple in our society. For example, just think about the challenges that many have tried to bring peace in the Middle East. I would suggest that some of the reason, most of the reason, maybe even all the reason, is that we're quite simplistic about the struggle. We tend to pick one side or the other and say we know what we need to know.

Such is the case with the Pharisees. First of all, let's be clear, some very wonderful people were Pharisees. St. Paul probably most notably, he tells us in his letters that he is a Pharisee. There are some scholars who would suggest that Jesus was a Pharisee because he is quite harsh to them, because I think he suspects that they've lost their way.

On my website, I'll have a lot more to say about Pharisees, their histories, and who they are. That's thefriar.org. It's in the bulletin. It's in my introduction over the course of this week. Normally I'll do that before the readings, but in moving I didn't get a chance to do that.

But let me say what's important here. The Pharisees arose at a time where the faith was not terribly well-practiced among the Jewish people. Moreover, there were developments in Jewish faith that moved the people away from a lack of belief in an afterlife. We see that among the Sadducees, probably the most notable proponents that there was no afterlife. And to a belief in a spiritual realm to the world as well as a spiritual world.

The idea was that by separating themselves to some degree from the society in which they viewed corruption, difficulty, and immoral living, they could much more clearly adopt the practices of the law that would bring them closer to the God who extended the covenant. All that's good. There's nothing wrong with any of that.

But what we encounter in the Gospel, and when we see the Pharisees in the Gospel, and I would say by extension when we see like let's say in the Gospel of John references to the Jews, we're really not referencing the Jews as in the entire people who followed the law of the covenant, but the Pharisees. They were the ones.

Now, why did they get themselves in trouble? Probably originally for a good reason. The Romans occupied Israel. The goal of the people was to be able to determine their own way of life by being free, by having political opportunities to be a nation. In order to be able to continue to practice their religion, the Pharisees entered into a relationship with the Romans.

And the ones who kind of oversaw the fidelity of the political relationship which they entered into, again, not all bad because no other people was allowed to practice their faith except the Jews and those who agreed to worship the emperor, which many Christians died for refusing to do.

But what happened? With this came privilege. With this came prestige. With this came a different level of life for these Pharisees, and it went to their heads. That's what Jesus is always then acting about. And what he's primarily focusing on is the motivation for what they do.

Now I would further suggest that if I were to ask you to define a phylactery, you probably wouldn't know what it is, but it's actually very common among Orthodox Jews, particularly Hasidic Jews that are probably the most Orthodox. Namely, it was the primary commandment of the law, the Shema (Deut. 6:4), Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone, him you shall serve with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Okay, greatest commandment. . .

What's in it for me? We hear that sometimes when someone may ask for a favor. Well, yeah, I'll do that, but what's in it for me? Why should I do that? What am I going to get out of it?

It's hard sometimes, even under the surface, not to think that way. I remember a woman who came to the parish asking for some assistance, and that's a rather interesting thing, because I learned early on that you had to weigh carefully what you were being told, lest you help someone who didn't really need help. I didn't realize that this was a cottage industry asking for help.

So I had to think and get to know the people that came to the door. And there was one woman who was seeking assistance. She had a little baby, and she was seeking assistance for diapers. So I called the local supermarket, and I said there's going to be a woman coming in. I forget what her name is. That doesn't matter. And she's going to want to purchase diapers, and I'd ask you, please, just to give us a receipt, and we'll take care of them.

Now, what was interesting is that she said, I'll pay you back at the end of the month, or the beginning of next month, when her support check would come in. Now, I'm here to tell you that everybody says they're going to do that, but that rarely happens.

But this woman, faithfully, shortly after the beginning of every month, gave me money for the diapers that she had purchased. I remember saying to her how much that really uplifted me, how much that really helped me to see the goodness of God because of her desire to be accountable and to pay back what she owed.

I think Jesus is getting at some of that for us in today's Gospel. I mentioned yesterday at Mass that there is a lot of scholarship to suggest that Jesus might himself have been a Pharisee, and we see him hanging out a lot with the Pharisees, which might also be indicative of what he was.

But he's at the house. It's a leading Pharisee, and you can only imagine, as we've seen in other instances, all of the movers and shakers of town have been invited. Those who are wealthy, those who can invite in their own right, those who really are influential in their own spheres of influence.

I don't think Jesus is being ungrateful for the invitation. I think he's reminding those who hear him of the importance to really recognize his presence in others. Imagine how different the dinner might have been if the people Jesus suggested would be invited were, in fact, invited.

Imagine how different perhaps our parish community could be if, in fact, we went to the nearest homeless shelter and said, come on, join us for Mass. We'd love to have you here. Imagine how different our lives could be if, rather than feeling imposed upon, we could, in fact, see that every person offers us the invitation either to act like Jesus or not.

I am working on a short entry explaining a little bit about the Pharisees. The link will be available here when the entry is completed.

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 gospel for the 31st Sunday, Jesus takes on the Pharisees. But just what is Pharisee? The Pharisees were a religious group of Jews that arose to become more devoted to the practice of the Jewish religion. Unlike the Sadducees who came from the priestly class, the Pharisees were lay people.

The Pharisees probably had their beginning during the exile when sacrificial worship was no longer possible due to the destruction of the temple. The Pharisees were more a part of what we might call a rabbinic tradition where people were taught and reflected on the Law, or the Torah.

If we could see the Pharisees arising due to the destruction of the Temple, their focus on teaching and observing the Law, we can also see the challenges for the Sadducees, a priestly class. By the time the gospels come around, we see instances where the two groups were linked, as the Temple had been rebuilt.

The Pharisees were a mix of a political and a social group. Like many organizations, there was a "scale" which described the group. At the time of Jesus, there were some who were largely unconcerned with the political state, believing they were left free to zealously practice and live out their Jewish faith. At the other extreme were those who believed that only if all of society zealously practiced the Law would their lives become truly free.

What is important to note in all instances of the Pharisees was the desire to live authentically and seriously the Jewish faith, especially that of the Law. This dedication to living out the Law comes from the societal realities at the time the Pharisees were founded. The faith was in a shambles, and there was the increasing desire of the Jews to want to be just like everyone else.

Because of this, there was the desire to fit in, and to have no practices that would cause them to stand out. This desire came both from the political leaders of the day, and at the same time from the motivation of many who simply wanted to be good citizens.

It also came at a time when the place of sacrificial worship had become impossible due to the Exile of the Jewish people to Babylon, and from the destruction of the Jewish Temple. The Pharisees arose at a time when synagogue worship was becoming more common.

Another aspect of the religion and thought of the Pharisees was the increase in a belief in a spiritual world. Pharisees accepted the existence of angels and spirits. They believed in a resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees rejected these concepts because they only held that the Torah, or the first five books of the Old Testament were divinely inspired. They rejected anything that came after.

Seen in this way, the Sadducees could be seen as the more conservative and traditional of the religious parties in the time of Jesus, due to the insistence that the Torah was the only inspired text. The Pharisees, on the other hand, accepted later writings as inspired as well. (While a little simplistic, think how Sadducees thought of the Torah in the way we today might view the gospels.)

Both groups, though, would have considered the goal to live a more serious and authentic faith. It was the case there was a need for those Jews in the time of Jesus to think about what it meant to be Jewish. Both groups also saw value in the emphasis on returning to a more serious and authentic expression of Jesus. And much of the time, both groups found themselves having difficulty with Jesus and his teachings.

The Sadducees were known for the desire to preserve Temple worship. They viewed themselves as those whose task it was to preserve tradition. The traditional beliefs and practices were essential to the understanding of the Jewish Law, and they provided an important mark of identification for those who kept the Law. . .

So, if you don't know, my first name is DePorres. That's not because my parents were overly zealous in naming me. It's not my baptismal name. It's my religious name. And it's for Saint Martin de Porres, whose feast we celebrate today.

Why Saint Martin de Porres for me? Well, in particular, it's because I find in his life a very compelling example of what it means to be Christian. Now, of course, on some level, that's true of any saint. Any saint can be a compelling example of what it means to be Christian, because they're saints.

But what is it about St. Martin de Porres, whose feast we celebrate today that was so compelling to me? Well, I have to say that, first of all, as a little kid, the stories that I heard about Martin de Porres were compelling.

So, Martin de Porres, just if you don't know much about him, was from Lima, Peru. There were actually three saints who lived contemporaneously in Lima. There was, of course, Saint Martin de Porres, who we celebrate today. There was Saint Rose of Lima, who Martin probably knew of, but not necessarily knew. And Saint Juan Macias, who we probably don't know as well, but was a very good friend and companion to Saint Martin de Porres. He also was a brother.

The story that compelled me as a little kid had to do with mice, because if you know the legend of Saint Martin de Porres, the convent was being overrun by mice. The brothers, I think understandably, wanted to kill the mice, but Martin felt a little bit of charity toward the mice and said to them, as legend has it, if you stay out of the convent, I will make sure that you are fed.

And the legend goes, I don't know that this is necessarily true, but I kind of like to believe it is, only because it makes me feel better, but I will take care of you. I will feed you. It led to the belief among many who were devoted to Martin de Porres, that if you are asking him to pray on your behalf for some intercession, and then you see a mouse, it is divine confirmation that your prayer will be granted.

I am not suggesting you don't take care of mice if they happen to show up in your house, but his life is really much more compelling, and these are true kinds of things. There is a wonderful book whose name escapes me now. I think it is like Black Saint of the Americas or something like that.

But anyway, what do we know about Martin? First of all, we know that his father was Spanish and was a government official in Lima, Peru. His mother was a freed African slave, and she was black. Much to the chagrin of his father when Martin was born, he was born black. They didn't understand genetics.

Martin has a younger sister named Joan, who when she was born was also black, and this was too much for his father to bear, and he abandoned the family. And they were very poor. But in the poverty developed a deep heart of charity, which really was not necessarily the best thing.

His mother would send Martin to the market to buy something along the way, and he would see poor people there, and with the money that he had been given by his mother to buy sustenance-type food, he'd give it to the people in need and have nothing and come back with nothing.

Needless to say, his mother was none too happy about this development. Thanks be to God, his father had a kind of a conversion and came back to the family, and Martin was educated, which would have been a great luxury in his day in Lima, Peru. And he was educated.

Today, (he would call it in that day a barber), but a barber was not simply someone who cut hair. A barber was as much a pharmacist, a surgeon in some levels. Have you ever wondered why barber poles are red and white? They were white if you cut hair. They had a red stripe if in fact you let blood, which was seen as a way of treating people. . .

So, it's interesting that we have the same reading for the gospel that we had yesterday. Now there are tons of choices in here, and I wish the church in her wisdom would just simply say, these are the readings to do for all souls, but it doesn't. I guess there's good reason for that.

But when we hear the Jesus talk about the Beatitudes, we might not really get a sense of the word that's used in Hebrew for blessed. So for example, when we look at the word blessed, if you were to look at the original Jerusalem Bible translation, blessed would be happy.

But really, the word is much more accurately translated, I think, as fortunate or lucky, in the sense that someone who is blessed is fortunate, has blessings from God. And that makes the Beatitudes something that are quite different when we think about them, if we hear them with the word lucky instead of blessed. Now they're similar, okay? I'm not making a huge thing, but think about how they would sound if in fact we heard these things.

Lucky are the poor in spirit. Lucky are they who mourn. Lucky are the meek. Lucky are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Lucky are the merciful. Lucky are the clean of heart. Lucky are the peacemakers, and lucky are you when they persecute you for the sake of righteousness.

And lucky are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you because of me. Well, put in that context, it hardly seems to me that if you're persecuted, you would be considered lucky. Or if you found yourself mourning the death of someone you loved, we would hardly say that is something that is lucky.

Why are these things lucky? Because that's at the heart of what we celebrate on the Feast of All Souls. They're lucky because when we're in these circumstances, when we do these things, we are living a life with Jesus.

There's a challenge, I think, in our current culture in the West in particular, not so much in other cultures, that we think everything depends on us. You know, if we do all these things, then God will do great things. And quite frankly, it's the other way around.

Because God does great things, we then are able to do great things. Because God pours out the grace into our hearts, we're able to do those things the gospel demands of us, feeding the hungry and giving people a place to live and working and acting for justice, giving people the things that they deserve as human beings with dignity.

But it's not because we initiate all of that. It's because God initiates that for us. And if we look around at our world, we see a world that is filled with brokenness. It's everywhere. You know, if you want an idea of sin and evil in the world, we don't need to look very far.

There's all kinds of things that are breaking people's lives, and we don't even need to look any farther than what's going on in the Middle East. Regardless of what one's political opinion is on the situation there, as Christians we can all stand in agreement that when people die, it's a bad thing.

I can't remember who it was that said that every act of war is an act of failure as human beings, as a culture, as a society. We are broken. That's what today is all about. Today was about all of those holy men and women who have ever lived that haven't been recognized for their holiness. All saints of God, of which the number is, who knows? Lots and lots. At least I hope it's lots and lots because for my sake, I don't always do saintly and holy things. And so there we are.

But we are broken. We do face difficulties in life. People face injustice in the world. People face loss. And all of this comes because we don't live as we should. We don't live as God wants us to live. And so today is a day where we recognize that we are saved and that we need a Savior because our world is broken. We are broken. Jesus asked the Lord today to help us to see and to recognize His presence in our lives so that we in turn can witness to the power of God's love to others.

One of the strangest things about human existence, it seems to me, is that human beings can love someone before they even get to know them. Most of us, if not all of us, have concrete experience of that.

Because when we were born, our parents didn't hedge their bets. They didn't say, for example, well, I will wait to get to know who this child of mine is before I make the decision about whether or not to love them.

In my experience of seeing others, because I don't have children of my own, I can say that it's immediate, absolutely immediate. There's not even a moment where there is a doubt. At this point in your life, there may be some doubts, but not when you were first born. You were loved immediately.

And so on the one hand, this gospel, well, we could say, well, it's not very hard. Loving God with everything we have and loving our neighbor, because we have the experience of loving children, parents, brothers, sisters. But the first reading really is the challenge.

The first reading really is the difficult time to love. And when we talk about the people mentioned in the first reading, it usually brings some real difficulty in our conversation. We might get angry. We might be concerned that there isn't enough. We might suggest that people shouldn't really come to us when they're in need.

Because in the book of Exodus, the people are reminded about something very powerful. That they lived in Egypt, were not free, left their country, and had been aliens, strangers, people not familiar, people who had tremendous needs, and they had to rely on God and ultimately others. But of course we know the temptation. Well, yeah, but that was different. That was us.

When other people in the same situation come in, well, they have to understand that that's not the same. And that's what Moses and the Lord are concerned about. You see, the people of God that left part of the Exodus and left Egypt, they weren't the most faithful. They were like having little kids in the back of the car on vacation. Are we there yet?

Or as one of the memes I've seen, Moses leading the Israelites and everybody following behind him saying, recalculating, recalculating, because they wandered in the desert and did not know where they were going. They trusted in God until they didn't. They were not an easy bunch.

I don't know that, well, I know probably that I would not have been able to put up with them. Because no matter what happened, no matter how many miraculous deeds God did in their presence, they did not believe. They doubted.

And so God is trying to make it clear to them, you were once in these horrible situations and I took care of you. Now it's up to you to take care of those who are in the same situations. Don't be difficult to an alien, because you know what it's like to be an alien. Don't wrong any widow or orphan who in those days had no one to care for them, because I will hear their cry. Don't act like an extortioner when you help someone. If you lend them money, don't be an extortioner.

Now in Jewish law that meant don't charge interest. You give them money to help, you get paid back the same amount. For nothing is really your own. Everything you have came to you as gift from God. If the pledge for a loan is a cloak, give it back when it gets cold at night, because that's the only thing they have to sleep in, and so forth.

See that's when it gets hard to love. When those people show up that we don't know or don't like, sometimes we allow our fear to overtake us. Sometimes we forget that we have not been always in the best spot and people have helped us. I've seen it here at CBC. Alums who had some difficulty and the community comes forward to help in this moment of difficulty. . .