DAILY READING and REFLECTIONS For Tuesday, November 04, 2014 31st Week in Ordinary Time - Psalter Week 3 (White/Green) Memorial: St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop Readings: Phi 2:5-11; Ps 22:26-32; Lk 14:15-24 Response: I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people. Rosary: Joyful Mysteries Verse: I tell you, not one of those who were invited shall have a taste of my banquet. SAINT OF THE DAY: Saint Charles Borromeo, Bishop Patron of learning and the arts. Death: 1584 Charles was the son of Count Gilbert Borromeo and Margaret Medici, sister of Pope Pius IV. He was born at the family castle of Arona on Lake Maggiore, Italy on October 2. He received the clerical tonsure when he was twelve and was sent to the Benedictine abbey of SS. Gratian and Felinus at Arona for his education. In 1559 his uncle was elected Pope Pius IV and the following year, named him his Secretary of State and created him a cardinal and administrator of the see of Milan. He served as Pius legate on numerous diplomatic missions and in 1562, was instrumental in having Pius reconvene the Council of Trent, which had been suspended in 1552. Charles played a leading role in guiding and in fashioning the decrees of the third and last group of sessions. He refused the headship of the Borromeo family on the death of Count Frederick Borromeo, was ordained a priest in 1563, and was consecrated bishop of Milan the same year. Before being allowed to take possession of his see, he oversaw the catechism, missal, and breviary called for by the Council of Trent. When he finally did arrive at Trent (which had been without a resident bishop for eighty years) in 1556, he instituted radical reforms despite great opposition, with such effectiveness that it became a model see. He put into effect, measures to improve the morals and manners of the clergy and laity, raised the effectiveness of the diocesan operation, established seminaries for the education of the clergy, founded a Confraternity of Christian Doctrine for the religious instruction of children and encouraged the Jesuits in his see. He increased the systems to the poor and the needy, was most generous in his help to the English college at Douai, and during his bishopric held eleven diocesan synods and six provincial councils. He founded a society of secular priests, Oblates of St. Ambrose (now Oblates of St. Charles) in 1578, and was active in preaching, resisting the inroads of protestantism, and bringing back lapsed Catholics to the Church. He encountered opposition from many sources in his efforts to reform people and institutions. He died at Milan on the night of November 3-4, and was canonized in 1610. He was one of the towering figures of the Catholic Reformation, a patron of learning and the arts, and though he achieved a position of great power, he used it with humility, personal sanctity, and unselfishness to reform the Church, of the evils and abuses so prevalent among the clergy and the nobles of the times. FROM THE NEW AMERICAN BIBLE: READING 1, Philippians 2:5-11 5 Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped. 7 But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, 8 he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. 9 And for this God raised him high, and gave him the name which is above all other names; 10 so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus 11 and that every tongue should acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father. RESPONSORIAL PSALM, Psalms 22:26-27, 28-30, 31-32 26 The poor will eat and be filled, those who seek Yahweh will praise him, May your heart live for ever. 27 The whole wide world will remember and return to Yahweh, all the families of nations bow down before him. 28 For to Yahweh, ruler of the nations, belongs kingly power! 29 All who prosper on earth will bow before him, all who go down to the dust will do reverence before him. And those who are dead, 30 their descendants will serve him, will proclaim his name to generations 31 still to come; and these will tell of his saving justice to a people yet unborn: he has fulfilled it. GOSPEL, Luke 14:15-24 15 On hearing this, one of those gathered round the table said to him, Blessed is anyone who will share the meal in the kingdom of God! 16 But he said to him, There was a man who gave a great banquet, and he invited a large number of people. 17 When the time for the banquet came, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, Come along: everything is ready now. 18 But all alike started to make excuses. The first said, I have bought a piece of land and must go and see it. Please accept my apologies. 19 Another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and am on my way to try them out. Please accept my apologies. 20 Yet another said, I have just got married and so am unable to come. 21 The servant returned and reported this to his master. Then the householder, in a rage, said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. 22 Sir, said the servant, your orders have been carried out and there is still room. 23 Then the master said to his servant, Go to the open roads and the hedgerows and press people to come in, to make sure my house is full; 24 because, I tell you, not one of those who were invited shall have a taste of my banquet. REFLECTIONS: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (To the Greater Glory of God) OPENING PRAYER: God of power and mercy, only with your help can we offer you fitting service and praise. May we live the faith we profess and trust your promise of eternal life. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. ON READING 1: Philippians 2:5-11 (Hymn in Praise of Christs Self-Emptying) The Apostles recommendation, Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, requires all Christians, so far as human power allows, to reproduce in themselves the sentiments that Christ had when He was offering Himself in sacrifice--sentiments of humility, of adoration, praise, and thanksgiving to the divine majesty. It requires them also to become victims, as it were; cultivating a spirit of self-denial according to the precepts of the Gospel, willingly doing works of penance, detesting and expiating their sins. It requires us all, in a word, to die mystically with Christ on the Cross, so that we may say with the same Apostle: I have been crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:19) (Pius XII, Mediator Dei, 22). In what he says about Jesus Christ, the Apostle is not simply proposing Him as a model for us to follow. Possibly transcribing an early liturgical hymn (and) adding some touches of his own, he is -- under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit -- giving a very profound exposition of the nature of Christ and using the most sublime truths of faith to show the way Christian virtues should be practiced. This is one of the earliest New Testament texts to reveal the divinity of Christ. The epistle was written around the year 62 (or perhaps before that, around 55) and if we remember that the hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 may well have been in use prior to that date, the passage clearly bears witness to the fact that Christians were proclaiming, even in those very early years, that Jesus, born in Bethlehem, crucified, died and buried, and risen from the dead, was truly both God and man. The hymn can be divided into three parts. The first (verses 6 and the beginning of 7) refers to Christs humbling Himself by becoming man. The second (the end of verse 7 and verse 8) is the center of the whole passage and proclaims the extreme to which His humility brought Him: as man He obediently accepted death on the cross. The third part (verses 9-11) describes His exaltation in glory. Throughout St. Paul is conscious of Jesus divinity: He exists from all eternity. But he centers his attention on His death on the cross as the supreme example of humility. Christs humiliation lay not in His becoming a man like us and cloaking the glory of His divinity in His sacred humanity: it also brought Him to lead a life of sacrifice and suffering which reached its climax on the cross, where He was stripped of everything He had, like a slave. However, now that He has fulfilled His mission, He is made manifest again, clothed in all the glory that befits His divine nature and which His human nature has merited. The man-God, Jesus Christ, makes the cross the climax of His earthly life; through it He enters into His glory as Lord and Messiah. The Crucifixion puts the whole universe on the way to salvation. Jesus Christ gives us a wonderful example of humility and obedience. We should learn from Jesus attitude in these trials, St. Escriva reminds us. During His life on earth He did not even want the glory that belonged to Him. Though He had the right to be treated as God, He took the form of a servant, a slave (cf. Philippians 2:6-7). And so the Christian knows that all glory is due God and that he must not use the sublimity and greatness of the Gospel to further his own interests or human ambitions. We should learn from Jesus. His attitude in rejecting all human glory is in perfect balance with the greatness of His unique mission as the beloved Son of God who becomes incarnate to save men (Christ Is Passing By, 62). Though He was in the form of God or subsisting in the form of God: form is the external aspect of something and manifests what it is. When referring to God, who is invisible, His form cannot refer to things visible to the senses; the form of God is a way of referring to Godhead. The first thing that St. Paul makes clear is that Jesus Christ is God, and was God before the Incarnation. As the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed professes it, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father before time began, light from light, true God from true God. He did not count equality with God as something to be grasped: the Greek word translated as equality does not directly refer to equality of nature but rather the equality of rights and status. Christ was God and He could not stop being God; therefore, He had a right to be treated as God and to appear in all His glory. However, He did not insist on this dignity of His as if it were a treasure which He possessed and which was legally His: it was not something He clung to and boasted about. And so He took the form of a servant. He could have become man without setting His glory aside--He could have appeared as He did, momentarily, as the Transfiguration (cf. Matthew 17:1ff); instead He chose to be like men, in all things but sin (cf. verse 7). By becoming man in the way He did, He was able, as Isaiah prophesied in the Song of the Servant of Yahweh, to bear our sorrows and to be stricken (cf. Isaiah 53:4). He emptied Himself, He despoiled Himself: this is literally what the Greek verb means. But Christ did not shed His divine nature; He simply shed its glory, its aura; if He had not done so it would have shone out through His human nature. From all eternity He exists as God and from the moment of the Incarnation He began to be man. His self-emptying lay not only in the fact that the Godhead united to Himself (that is, to the person of the Son) something which was corporeal and finite (a human nature), but also in the fact that this nature did not itself manifest the divine glory, as it ought to have done. Christ could not cease to be God, but He could temporarily renounce the exercise of rights that belonged to Him as God--which was what He did. Verses 6-8 bring the Christians mind the contrast between Jesus and Adam. The devil tempted Adam, a mere man, to be like God (Genesis 3:5). By trying to indulge this evil desire (pride is a disordered desire for self-advancement) and by committing the sin of disobeying God (cf. Genesis 3:6), Adam drew down the gravest misfortunes upon himself and on his whole line (present potentially in him): this is symbolized in the Genesis passage by his expulsion from Paradise and by the physical worlds rebellion against his lordship (cf. Genesis 3:16-24). Jesus Christ, on the contrary, who enjoyed divine glory from all eternity, emptied Himself: He chooses the way of humility, the opposite way to Adams (opposite, too, to the way previously taken by the devil). Christs obedience thereby makes up for the disobedience of the first man; it puts mankind in a position to more than recover the natural and supernatural gifts with which God endowed human nature at the Creation. And so, after focusing on the amazing mystery of Christs humiliation or self-emptying (kenosis in Greek), this hymn goes on joyously to celebrate Christs exaltation after death. Christs attitude in becoming man is, then, a wonderful example of humility. What is more humble, St. Gregory of Nyssa asks, than the King of all creation entering into communion with our poor nature? The King of kings and Lord of lords clothes Himself with the form of our enslavement; the Judge of the universe comes to pay tribute to the princes of this world; the Lord of creation is born in a cave; He who encompasses the world cannot find room in the inn...; the pure and incorrupt one puts on the filthiness of our nature and experiences all our needs, experiences even death itself (Oratio I In Beatitudinibus). This self-emptying is an example of Gods infinite goodness in taking the initiative to meet man: Fill yourselves with wonder and gratitude at such a mystery and learn from it. All the power, all the majesty, all the beauty, all the infinite harmony of God, all His great and immeasurable riches. God whole and entire was hidden for our benefit in the humanity of Christ. The Almighty appears determined to eclipse His glory for a time, so as to make it easy for His creatures to approach their Redeemer. (St. J. Escriva, Friends of God, 111). Jesus Christ became man for us men and for our salvation, we profess in the Creed. Everything He did in the course of His life had a salvific value; His death on the cross represents the climax of His redemptive work for, as St. Gregory of Nyssa says, He did not experience death due to the fact of being born; rather, He took birth upon Himself in order to die (Oratio Catechetica Magna, 32). Our Lords obedience to the Fathers saving plan, involving as it did death on the cross, gives us the best of all lessons in humility. For, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, obedience is the sign of true humility (Commentary on Phil., ad loc.). In St. Pauls time death by crucifixion was the most demeaning form of death, for it was inflicted only on criminals. By becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross, Jesus was being humble in the extreme. He was perfectly within His rights to manifest Himself in all His divine glory, but He chose instead the route leading to the most ignominious of deaths. His obedience, moreover, was not simply a matter of submitting to the Fathers will, for, as St. Paul points out, He made Himself obedient: His obedience was active; He made the Fathers salvific plans His own. He chose voluntarily to give Himself up to crucifixion in order to redeem mankind. Debasing oneself when one is forced to do so is not humility, St. John Chrysostom explains; humility is present when one debases oneself without being obliged to do so (Hom. on Phil., ad loc.). Christs self-abasement and his obedience unto death reveals His love for us, for greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). His loving initiative merits a loving response on our part: we should show that we desire to be one with Him, for love seeks union, identification with the beloved. United to Christ, we will be drawn to imitate His life of dedication, His unlimited love and His sacrifice unto death. Christ brings us face to face with the ultimate choice: either we spend our life in selfish isolation, or we devote ourselves and all our energies to the service of others (St. J. Escriva, Friends of God, 236). God highly exalted Him: the Greek compounds the notion of exaltation,to indicate the immensity of His glorification. Our Lord Himself foretold this when He said, He who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 14:11). Christs sacred humanity was glorified as a reward for His humiliation. The Churchs Magisterium teaches that Christs glorification affects his human nature only, for in the form of God the Son was equal to the Father, and between the Begetter and the Only-begotten there was no difference in essence, no difference in majesty; nor did the Word, through the mystery of incarnation, lose anything which the Father might later return to Him as a gift (St. Leo the Great, Promisisse Me Memini, Chapter 8). Exaltation is public manifestation of the glory which belongs to Christs humanity by virtue of its being joined to the divine person of the Word. This union to the form of a servant (cf. verse 7) meant an immense act of humility on the part of the Son, but it led to the exaltation of the human nature He took on. For the Jews the name that is above every name is the name of God (Yahweh), which the Mosaic Law required to be held in particular awe. Also, they regarded a name given to someone, especially if given by God, as not just a way of referring to a person but as expressing something that belonged to the very core of his personality. Therefore, the statement that God bestowed on Him the name which is above every name means that God the Father gave Christs human nature the capacity to manifest the glory of divinity which was His by virtue of the hypostatic union: therefore, it is to be worshipped by the entire universe. St. Paul describes the glorification of Jesus Christ in terms similar to those used by the prophet Daniel of the Son of Man: To Him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve His Kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed (Daniel 7:14). Christs lordship extends to all created things. Sacred Scripture usually speaks of heaven and earth when referring to the entire created universe; by mentioning here the underworld it is emphasizing that nothing escapes His dominion. Jesus Christ can here be seen as the fulfillment of Isaiahs prophecy about the universal sovereignty of Yahweh: To Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear (Isaiah 45:23). All created things come under His sway, and men are duty-bound to accept the basic truth of Christian teaching: Jesus Christ is Lord. The Greek word Kyrios used here by St. Paul is the word used by the Septuagint, the early Greek version of the Old Testament, to translate the name of God (Yahweh). Therefore, this sentence means Jesus Christ is God. The Christ proclaimed here as having been raised on high is the man-God who was born and died for our sake, attaining the glory of His exaltation after undergoing the humiliation of the cross. In this also Christ sets us an example: we cannot attain the glory of Heaven unless we understand the supernatural value of difficulties, ill-health and suffering: these are manifestations of Christs cross present in our ordinary life. We have to die to ourselves and be born again to a new life. Jesus Christ obeyed in this way, even unto death on a cross (Philippians 2:18); that is why God exalted Him. If we obey Gods will, the cross will mean our own resurrection and exaltation. Christs life will be fulfilled step by step in our own lives. It will be said of us that we have tried to be good children of God, who went about doing good in spite of our weakness and personal shortcomings, no matter how many (St. J. Escriva, Christ Is Passing By, 21). ON THE GOSPEL: Luke 14:15-24 (Parable of the Invited Guests) The Gospel today continues the reflection around themes linked to the table and the invitation. Jesus tells the parable of the banquet. Many people had been invited, but the majority did not go. The master of the feast was indignant because of the absence of those who had been invited and then sent his servants to call the poor, the crippled the blind and the lame. And even after that, there was still place. Then he ordered his servant to invite everybody, until his house was full. This parable was a light for the communities of the time of Luke. In the communities at the time of Luke there were Christians, who had come from Judaism and Christians who came from the Gentiles, called pagans. Not withstanding the difference in race, class and gender, they lived profoundly the ideal of sharing and of communion (Ac 2, 42; 4, 32; 5, 12). But there were many difficulties because some norms of legal purity prevented the Jews to eat with the pagans. And even after they had entered into the Christian community, some of them kept this old custom of not sitting at table with a pagan. This is the reason why Peter had a conflict with the community of Jerusalem because he entered into the house of Cornelius, a pagan and for having eaten with him (Ac 11, 3). Before these problems of the communities, Luke kept a series of words of Jesus regarding the banquet. (Lk 14, 1-24). The parable on which we are meditating is an image of what was happening in the communities. Luke 14, 15: Blessed are those who will eat the bread of the Kingdom of God. Jesus had finished telling two parables: one on the choice of places (Lk 14, 7-11), and the other on the choice of the guests who were invited (Lk 14, 12-14). While listening to this parable someone who was at table with Jesus must have picked up the importance of the teaching of Jesus and must have said: “Blessed are those who eat the bread of the Kingdom of God!” The Jews compared the future time of the Messiah to a banquet, characterized by gratitude and communion (Is 25, 6; 55, 1-2; Sal 22, 27). Hunger, poverty and the lack of so many things made the people hope that in the future they would obtain what they were lacking and did not have at present. The hope of the Messianic goods, usually experienced in banquets, was a perspective of the end of time. In biblical language the expression to eat bread in the Kingdom of God means sharing in eternal beatitude, of which this great banquet is a symbol (cf. Isaiah 25:6; Matthew 22:1-4). Luke 14, 16-20: The great banquet is ready. Jesus responds with a parable. There was a man who gave a great banquet and he invited a great number of people”. But the duty of each one prevents the guests from accepting the invitation. The first one says: I have bought a piece of land and must go and see it!” The second I have bought five yoke of oxen and am on my way to try them out!” The third one: “I have just got married and so am unable to come!” In the limits of the law those persons had the right not to accept the invitation (cf. Dt 20, 5-7). If God invites someone to know Him in faith, he should sacrifice any human interest which gets in the way of replying to Gods call, no matter how lawful and noble it be. The objections we tend to put forward, the duties we appeal to, are really just excuses. This is why the ungrateful invitees are blameworthy. Luke 14, 21-22: The invitation remains, it is not cancelled. The master of the banquet was indignant in seeing that his invitation had not been accepted. In last instance, the one who is indignant is precisely Jesus because the norms of the strict observance of the law, reduced the space for people to be able to live the gratuity of an invitation to the house of friends, an invitation characterized by the fraternal spirit and by sharing. Thus the master of the feast orders the servants to invite the poor, the blind, the crippled, the lame. Those who were normally excluded because they were considered unclean, are now invited to sit around the table of the banquet. Luke 14, 23-24: There is still place. The room is not full. There is still place. Then, the master of the house ordered the servants to invite those passing on the street. Those are the pagans. They are also invited to sit around the table. Thus, in the banquet of the parable of Jesus, everybody sits around the same table, Jews and pagans. At the time of Luke, there were many problems which prevented the realization of this ideal of the common banquet. By means of the parable; Luke shows that the practice of the banquet came precisely from Jesus. After the destruction of Jerusalem, in the year 70, the Pharisees took over the government in the Synagogues, demanding the rigid fulfilment of the norms which identified them as the Jewish people. The Jews who converted to Christianity were considered a threat, because they destroyed the walls which separated Israel from other people. The Pharisees tried to oblige them to abandon the faith in Jesus. And because they did not succeed, they drove them away from the Synagogues. All this brought about a slow and progressive separation between the Jews and the Christians which was a source of great suffering, especially for the converted Jews (Rm 9,1-5). In the parable, Luke indicates very clearly that these converted Jews were not unfaithful to their people. All the contrary! They are the ones who are invited and accept the invitation. They are the true continuators of Israel. Those who were unfaithful were those who did not accept the invitation and did not want to recognize Jesus the Messiah (Lk 22, 66; Ac 13, 27). Compel people to come in: it is not a matter of forcing anyones freedom -- God does not want us to love Him under duress--but of helping a person to make right decisions, to shrug off any human respect, to avoid occasions of sin, to do what he can to discover the truth. A person is compelled to come in through prayer, the example of a Christian life, friendship--in a word, apostolate. If in order to save an earthly life it is praiseworthy to use force to stop a man from committing suicide, are we not to be allowed use of the same force -- holy coercion--to save the Life (in uppercase) of many who are stupidly bent on killing their souls? (St. J. Escriva, The Way, 399). FINAL PRAYERS: Full of splendour and majesty his work, his saving justice stands firm for ever. He gives us a memorial of his great deeds; Yahweh is mercy and tenderness. (Ps 111,3-4) Jesus, I feel within me a great desire to please you, but, at the same time, I feel totally incapable of doing this without your light and help, which I can expect only from you. Accomplish your will within me, even in spite of me. -- St. Claude LaColombiere, S.J. It is by God’s mercy that we are saved. May we never tire of spreading this joyful message to the world. -- Pope Francis Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. -- St. Jerome The Father uttered one Word; that Word is His Son, and He utters Him forever in everlasting silence; and in silence the soul has to hear it. -- St. John of the Cross
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 21:09:46 +0000
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