The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

This is a very Dominican gospel. Listening to Jesus talk about how he wants to set the world on fire. That he, in fact, is the Lord of all. He has come to establish a kingdom. He gives his life for our sins. He leads us to eternal life. And he can't wait to get that adventure underway.

The image of a flame is an important one. St. Catherine of Siena said that if we were who we were meant to be, we would set the world on fire. St. Dominic is often pictured in an image with a dog that has a torch in its mouth. Because Dominic's mother had a dream that she had given birth to a dog. Who would, in fact, set the world on fire.

The challenge, of course, is that we live in a world that doesn't always want to hear what could lead to fulfillment. This isn't just something that occurs in a religious sense. I suspect at one time or another, if we go to the dentist or the doctor, we will be given a little bit of chiding, perhaps, that we're not doing all the things that we should do in order to be healthy. The same is true with faith. In so many ways, what Jesus is trying to help us to see is that each one of us should, in fact be ready to do our part to ignite this blaze.

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.

This is a very Dominican gospel. Listening to Jesus talk about how he wants to set the world on fire. That he, in fact, is the Lord of all. He has come to establish a kingdom. He gives his life for our sins. He leads us to eternal life. And he can't wait to get that adventure underway.

The image of a flame is an important one. St. Catherine of Siena said that if we were who we were meant to be, we would set the world on fire. St. Dominic is often pictured in an image with a dog that has a torch in its mouth. Because Dominic's mother had a dream that she had given birth to a dog. Who would, in fact, set the world on fire.

The challenge, of course, is that we live in a world that doesn't always want to hear what could lead to fulfillment. This isn't just something that occurs in a religious sense. I suspect at one time or another, if we go to the dentist or the doctor, we will be given a little bit of chiding, perhaps, that we're not doing all the things that we should do in order to be healthy. The same is true with faith. In so many ways, what Jesus is trying to help us to see is that each one of us should, in fact be ready to do our part to ignite this blaze.

I think I've mentioned this quote from St. Augustine before, that the Old Testament is hidden in the New, and the New Testament is revealed in the Old. Excuse me, I did that backwards. The Old Testament is—let me get this right now, I'm going to get it all wrong. Not a good way to start the morning.

The New Testament is hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament is revealed in the New. That's what he said. And what St. Augustine was getting at was that really we have to think of the Bible as kind of the collective whole of God's story of revelation. That it isn't just that this was kind of a warm-up, but doesn't really mean much, and we don't need to really pay attention to it, but rather the opposite. That if we really want to understand the New Testament, we have to understand the Old.

We have to see where the promises of God were first made to the Jewish people, and how ultimately Jesus becomes incarnate, becomes fully human, and that's the fullness of God's revelation. It's the fulfillment of God's revelation.

And we see an example of how important these things are in the first reading today. Paul is making the case that Jesus is the new Adam. So there was the old Adam, that was the Adam that sinned and fell short, and through him and his wife Eve, sin enters the world, not pleasant. In fact, we would have been rightly condemned if God was only a God of justice.

But because of God's mercy, from that moment he develops a plan of fulfillment. And what we see then is Paul is constantly making these comparisons between the old Adam and Jesus, the new Adam. Sin enters the world through Adam. Jesus redeems and conquers sin through his death on the cross, and so forth.

The challenge, I think, is that sometimes we don't know the Old Testament as well as we should, or we don't read the Old Testament in a way that helps us to really understand the new. But there are many other instances where we can see connections between what happens in the Old Testament and what gets fulfilled in the new.

As a matter of fact, the writers of the sacred scriptures in the New Testament were well-versed in Jewish traditions. They knew the Jewish law. Nobody more than St. Paul, who has more books in the New Testament than any other author. Let us ask the Lord today to help us to become more familiar with the Old Testament so that we might not only see how it is fulfilled in the New Testament, but that we might encounter the presence of Jesus 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.

We have a really well-formed, well-developed, and pretty much accepted theory of government where there's a separation of church and state. Remember the people that came to this country in the United States, (and) I'm speaking from the United States perspective. I know we have listeners from other parts of the world, but I'm speaking here that we had people that came to this country who were facing religious persecution.

They were being persecuted for their beliefs and their practice of a particular faith. One of the things that they didn't want to do is they didn't want to repeat of what they were leaving where the government had an official religion and they were being prejudiced because they didn't practice that religion. They set up a system where the government had to be quote benignly neutral if we look at the constitution of the United States.

It's typically referred to as the separation of church and state. Now it's not to protect the government from religion, it's to protect people who practice their faith from the government. That's an important thing to understand because a lot of people will say, well I have freedom of speech, I have free speech.

Well it doesn't mean that when a private company sets conditions for using their product that you can claim a free speech violation if you agree to those terms by using their product. For example, Facebook. I can get mad, I can get mad, but I can't say that Facebook is limiting my right to free speech because I agreed to the terms that Facebook set up when I joined the platform.

It's the government that is the focus here and that's important for us to understand because now we're going to dive into the gospel where we see that there is a question here being posed to Jesus understandably to trick him, but there's a question being proposed to Jesus about the relationship between whether or not people should pay the census tax or whether they should not.

Now the issue has to do with a complicated political reality, namely that the scribes and the Pharisees had made a deal with the Romans so they could continue to practice their faith and in exchange for that they would make sure the people were very much under control.

And the religious leaders, at least some of them, became very wealthy and had a lot of power at the expense of people that were poor and struggling and so this question is really a trick question because what it's really posing is, is it more important to be a good citizen or a faithful Jew?

And of course the answer is obvious it's more important to be a faithful Jew but if Jesus says that then the charge can be leveled against him that he is committing treason. So it's a trick question. Jesus, if he answers this directly, he is stuck. But Jesus doesn't answer it directly.

He says okay who's on the coin? It's Caesar, it's a Roman coin. Well then give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what it's God's. Now the interesting part of this answer is that well in a way everything is God's right? Because God is the Lord, the all-powerful God who does anything and everything for us and with us.

But it does pose an interesting question I think for us today because sometimes I worry that we've gotten into a political time where we think that in order to be a good Catholic one needs to belong to this party or that party.

There are people who will suggest that you really if you're going to be a good Catholic you have to be a Republican. There are other people that suggest if you're going to be a good Catholic you have to be a Democrat. The reality is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans express our faith perfectly. . .

Today's Gospel is a warning. It's a warning about the dangers of hypocrisy. Now, we're all capable of hypocrisy and quite frankly every time we sin, we can be capable of hypocrisy because we may project one thing to people but then commit sin when we're really not thinking anybody's going to notice.

So, hypocrisy is not a limited reality. But when we don't acknowledge our hypocrisy then it can be dangerous. And so Jesus reminds us in the Gospel first about something that on one hand could be seen as scary but on the other hand could be a great comfort to you and to me.

And that's kind of what we want to look at as we put these things together. So, of course it's scary because He says there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed. Okay, if we've done things we wished others wouldn't know. If we had done things that we're not proud of, made sin, done things that are not at our best where we've harmed others, we've harmed ourselves, then of course we would probably rather those things be kept a secret.

And so the fact that God is going to reveal them at some point could be a little frightening. Of course, God already knows our sins. God already knows who we are. In fact, God knows us better than we know ourselves.

But the second part is maybe, or the second way to look at this is one of great comfort because what we know from Jesus is that indeed He can heal us. He can forgive our sins. He can do these kinds of things that are going to make us better persons, better people, that are going to help us to understand and to see what it is that Jesus wants to do for us.

And that's what He means when He's talking about being afraid of those who can do more. He says don't be afraid of those who can kill the body. That's not anything else. If they can only kill the body, don't worry about that.

Be worried about the one who can really cast you into Gehenna. Be worried about the one that has ultimate value for your choice. And if that choice is to completely reject Him, then in fact it becomes quite important for us to recognize that that's tremendous power.

That's in fact something really outstanding. But here's the thing, God doesn't want us to die. We hear that over and over again in the Bible. God does not want the sinner to die. God does not want us to stay in our sins. In fact, God gave His life for you and for me so that we would not die in our sins.

And so today, take a moment maybe to ask the Lord for forgiveness. Maybe go to confession. And on another way, take a look and see how is it that you can appreciate God's overwhelming and unbelievable love for you so that you may be drawn closer to Jesus and that you may reach out to proclaim the faith to others.

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 was a not so pleasant part of our theological history as Catholics and as Christians when it came to the question about who bore responsibility for the death of Jesus. And for a long time, there was kind of this ugly tendency to say, well, of course, the Jews did. John's Gospel says it.

Again, the Jews did this, the Jews did that, and so forth. And it created a rather ugly period. As a matter of fact, in the city of Rome itself, there is rather what's called the still the Jewish Ghetto.

Now, the Jewish ghetto has become trendy today, but the Jewish ghetto was a place surrounded by gates because the Jewish people had a curfew. They had to be in by a certain time. But that is a misunderstanding of salvation.

If we want to ask the question, who was responsible for the killing of Jesus? Well, it's us, of course. Everybody, everybody who sinned has responsibility for the death of Jesus because he died for our sins. Had we still been in the Garden of Eden without sin, we would have been in paradise. We wouldn't have needed a Savior.

But because we have sinned, we need a Savior. And Paul is beginning to make this clear in the first reading we heard today. All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God. Our sin separates us from this God-given glory. But then he goes on to say, and right now, because Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, the works of the law do not save. Jesus saves. Let us ask the Lord today for us that we might once again renew our commitment to accept the grace of Jesus and to cooperate with it for our salvation.

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 Pharisees are really an interesting group. On the one hand, they are very serious about their faith. They really do believe that by their actions, they're doing what God wants. But truth be told, they're getting it backwards. Over time, they've become to see their desire to separate themselves from the unclean, have led them to focus more on externals than on internals.

In other words, the external prescriptions of the law, like purifying oneself before meals, has become more important than being concerned about asking God to purify their heart. Rather than being able to be generous to those in need, they have created exceptions so that they don't have to be generous to those in need. And they do this all the time.

While the people around them are really suffering and having difficult lives and really not being treated well, Jesus tells them you're putting more burdens too heavy for anyone to lift in the lives of people.

Now we're all tempted to do this because observing something externally is much more easy than paying attention to the internal conversion of the heart. It's not that all these external things are bad in and of themselves, but they are supposed to primarily be signs of the internal conversion that we are asking God to help us to undertake over and over and over again in our lives.

But that's hard stuff. It's interesting because all we need to do in one way is open ourselves to God and ask for His grace and then to cooperate with it. But that's a lot harder than it sounds.

It means we have to be kind to those we may not like. We have to be generous even though we might be afraid there might not be enough for us. We have to forgive those who wrong us, maybe even significantly. And most of all, it's difficult because we have to recognize that left to our own devices, we don't always make good choices. Let us ask the Lord today to help us to recognize the grace that He has given us so that our external actions may reflect our internal conversion.

I live in a state whose motto is the "show me" state, and while it is not exactly clear how that nickname or slogan arrived for the state of Missouri, it is in fact an interesting expression. Some suggest it was a speech by a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri. Others suggest it was something that was said to miners from Missouri and Colorado because the miners from Missouri didn't really follow the same methods of mining as those in Colorado.

Either way, it's come to represent a belief that you can't really accept something unless you can see it concretely. Jesus speaks against this mentality though as we apply it to the faith. He says, in fact, that this desire to see something concrete that is exceptional or tremendous is not really the desire of faith.

He says this, "This generation is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah." Now, it's interesting because I think most of us would like some concrete sign that God God is doing what He promises. When someone is sick, we'd like to see them get well. When we have a major decision, we'd like God to make clear to us exactly what the right decision is.

On the other hand, sometimes when we hear what God wants us to do, we don't do it. Sometimes when we read in the Word of God something that God challenges us to do, like loving him and loving our neighbor, we hedge a little bit. Maybe we love some of our neighbors, but not all of them.

What Jesus is really getting at is that our faith in him is the faith that comes out of a relationship. Think of other significant relationships in your life today. There's friendship, for example. There is, in fact, sometimes a spousal relationship.

We don't necessarily require absolute proof when we make these fundamental decisions to have a close friend or to commit to someone in marriage. We recognize that there is a certain faith that is required in all relationships if they are to be healthy.

What today will you do to deepen your faith in what Jesus longs to do for you? How is it you might pray that the Word of God becomes something more deeply rooted in your heart? Who is it that you will trust in your life who will lead you closer to the Lord Jesus?

Think of it in this way. Holy friendships are those friendships who lead us to a deeper relationship with our friends. lead us closer to a deeper relationship with Jesus. Marriage is a vocation. When we enter into it, it is a vocation that we believe will lead us to our salvation and our spouse to our salvation.

Whatever you do today, think about your faith. And maybe, like the apostles and disciples, ask Jesus to increase your faith, so that But rather than looking for a sign, you might seek out in your life the very person of the Lord Jesus himself.

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's readings talk really about the invitation to salvation. In the first reading, we see what salvation is going to be like, and the images that are used are things that in fact are known to us, things that would be appealing to many. The rich food, the choice wines, really the mountain that just has everything we could possibly need, the mountain that is the mountain of salvation.

And the things that are not so great, and most in particular, death, will be destroyed forever. Because God does not glory, God does not want, God does not desire the death of a person. God wants to save us, God wants us to live eternally, God wants us to have eternal life. And so those things are particularly important for us to consider as we take a look at these readings that we get today.

The gospel is a little bit different because in fact the gospel takes a look at who gets invited. So this is a gospel we have to understand as being addressed to the chief priests and the elders of the people. So the parable is really designed to teach them something about salvation. So what is it that he's trying to get at?

Well, if you look at the chief priests and the elders, a lot of times when there's this interaction between Jesus and these chief priests, these elders, Pharisees, scribes, etc., what we see is not really a change in the law, but a deeper understanding of the law.

And if we think of the Pharisees in particular, one of the things that was really important for them was that they saw themselves as being separated from society to preserve their cleanness. And so they didn't really have a desire to want to be with those people who were not clean, who made them ritually unclean.

And so Jesus is always kind of showing in these parables, I think, the importance of human dignity and the importance of everything that leads to or comes out of the dignity that God has given to us and intends for us to safeguard. But those who are invited, they don't come.

Now this is a little bit of the history of Israel here. We see these stories as we read through, particularly the Old Testament, people couldn't live up to the invitation, they couldn't live up to the requirements. They got distracted. They got distracted and they even turned away from God deliberately to do the things that they knew they should not do. And they got to the point where they were giving all kinds of excuses for not serving the Lord God. We don't know why.

I mean it could be as simple as, "This is really what I want to do." But it also could be a case where what we see is something that they just got distracted with things that didn't fulfill. And then they kept trying to get more and more and more of these things that don't fulfill. And that's really what the gospel is about.

So they refused the invitation and not only that, there are those who kill those who are inviting them on behalf of the king. Now that's a pretty bold and brazen action and we know that sometimes the life of sin can be bold and brazen. We can turn away in really big ways in our lives. I know I can. And so it really is important for us to recognize what's going on here.

Finally, the king gets so frustrated he wants everybody at this banquet. He just says go out and invite everybody. So the invitation is given to everybody. The invitation is given to anyone who wants to be saved. But there's a caution at the very end.

It may seem odd to us that he went out to the highways and byways and got anybody and everybody and then this poor man is not dressed in a wedding garment and, quite honestly, he is then kicked out. Which seems to run counter to our modern sensibilities . . .

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.

Be Attentive and Observe

Hello and welcome to Spend Five with Jesus for this Saturday, October 14th, 2023. I am the friar and I'm so happy that you could join us today.

Today's gospel is really short but there's a lot packed into it when we really kind of get underneath it and see what's going on here. So it's quite simple. Jesus is speaking. A woman in the crowd calls out and says, "Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed."

And it's interesting because you'd think, well that that's true the Blessed Mother she's amazing and she's wonderful and isn't it great that Jesus had such a tremendous and wonderful mother but Jesus gives a response that we really need to spend some time thinking about today. And, it's namely this. This is his response: "Rather blessed are those who hear the Word of God and observe it."

Now why is this such a critical distinction that's being made here by Jesus? Why didn't he just agree and say, "Yes, my mother is blessed. Yes, the Virgin Mary is tremendous and outstanding and wonderful."

Because there's a really, really important point. And even though this comes from the Gospel of Luke, I want to kind of reach over to the Gospel of John because that is also somewhat connected in terms of what we're doing here, and it's this.

If you look at the Gospel of John, very, very often you don't see people identified by their name. Mary, for example, is the mother of Jesus. There is the disciple whom Jesus loved. There are a lot of times where we don't know a name, we just know that this is a person.

And the purpose for this is that it then enables us to say, "How can I be like this person here? What is it that I can do where I have a demonstration of faith? Where is it that I can find myself doing something outstanding and tremendous because I believe in Jesus.

And that's the point that Jesus is trying to make. What makes Mary, the Virgin Mother, the Mother of Jesus, so wonderful is first and foremost her faith in Almighty God. That's the thing that really makes Mary so outstanding and so tremendous. It's that.

And then yes, there are other things. Obviously she would have had a profound impact in raising her son Jesus. And there would have been tremendous moments where she is a person impacted our Lord. But the truth of the matter is that the reason that she was chosen for all this, the reason that she is so tremendous and wonderful in terms of the plan of salvation, is because she heard the Word of God and she observed it.

And that's, that's the challenge for you and me today too. It's to hear the word of God and then to live it. And that's really where our greatness can lie. It's really where when we open ourselves to the grace of God, we can find ourselves being blessed. We can find ourselves living the life that God wants us to live. And so today, take a moment, first of all, just to thank God for being a part of your life and then hear the Word of God, spend some time with the Bible and observe it.

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.