Reflection for Zacchaeus -- 3 Nov 2019

The first reading from Mass this morning was from the book of Wisdom:

But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook sins for the sake of repentance.

For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for you would not fashion what you hate.

How could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you?

The Gospel reading from Mass this morning is the story of   Zacchaeus.  He was a chief tax collector in the city of Jericho.

Now Zacchaeus, like each and every one of us, was made by God, and He loathes nothing that He has made.  God does not loathe the sinner, but as St. Benedict reminds us:

God does not desire the death of the sinner, but that he should repent and live.

This great sinner was called by Jesus who said to him:

"Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." 

And the Gospel closes today with Jesus saying:

For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.

So, we who are sinners can know and understand that Jesus came into the world to save sinners, not to condemn them.  And by looking at a crucifix we can see the lengths He goes so that we might be with Him always.

Therefore, let us repent of the evil we have done, and enter through the narrow gate into the hand of God, where no torment can touch us.

Kathryn Lopez on archbishop Chaput

A few days ago Kathryn Lopez wrote an article praising Archbishop Charles Chaput, the archbishop of Philadelphia.  The occasion for this article was the 75th birthday of the archbishop and his submission of a letter of resignation as is customary now.

She writes:

Archbishop Chaput has been a good spiritual father to many people — maybe especially lay people trying to live Catholic lives in the world faithfully and even courageously. He’s a great gift, a man of humility and clarity and humor and courage.

I have read many articles, speeches, homilies, and books by the archbishop, and second her heartfelt thanks to him, and to God for this fine shepherd of the little flock of Christ.

You should read her article at National Review.

Strive To Enter Through The Narrow Gate

Today's readings from Mass include the Gospel from St Luke, where Jesus says:

Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough. 

Who of us can enter on our own power?  Sin clings to us, like oil floating on water that we wade through.  We can not clean ourselves.  As the psalm says

Too heavy for us our offenses, but you Oh Lord wipe them away.

There was song popular in the 1960s entitled knocking on heaven's door.  Here's a recording of it by Bob Dylan:

But you can't get there under your own power.  We are completely dependant on the Mercy of God who is very generous.

It is the Power of Christ working in us through the ministry of the Church by which we are made whole and made holy, that we enter through the narrow gate.

As Lumen Gentium says, Christ, by His passion, death and resurrection has opened the gate of heaven.  He is himself the gate and the path that leads to the gate.

Let us strive to enter through the narrow gate, where we will be in the hand of God where no torment can touch us.

Father Longenecker on Father James Martin SJ

I ran across a blog post from Father Longenecker about an twitter post by Fr James Martin SJ, on the NewAdvent.org home page.  He incorporates the twitter post within his blog post.

Fr Martin is championing an article published by America  the magazine of the Jesuit Order.  Fr Martin writes:

It is stupefying to me that women cannot preach at Mass.

It is apparent that Fr Martin suffers from a common post Vatican II disorder. 

Beginning around the middle of the 1970s many in the Church stopped talking about or acknowledging the Apostolic Succession.  For decades I never heard anyone, lay or clergy, who taught in the Church speak of the Apostolic Succession.  It was as though the Church had forgotten her own story, and her members and teachers had become protestants.

Have any of them ever read Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church published by the second Vatican Council? ( see link )

In the late 1990s or early 2000s my parish began having a nun give a homily once a month (they told us it was a 'reflection' not a homily).  I spoke against this practice to my pastor to no avail.

She actively undermined the Apostolic Succession, preaching that we are all Shepherds, and thus minimizing the significance of the distinction between laity and the ordained.

This is and has been a serious problem within the church.  It has been coupled to "the development of doctrine" and leads to people telling you "we're just ahead of the church. "  "What we say is what the Church will believe in 300 years."

Bad news for the Church.

Shame on Fr James Martin.

You should read Fr Longenecker's Article.

Reflection -- Feast of the Holy Family -- modified

In the readings from Mass today, the Gospel reading is "the Finding in the Temple," the fifth Joyful Mystery of the rosary.


The Gospel includes:

Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, 

and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom.  After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it.

Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.

Mary and Joseph searched for Jesus.  We can hear in this a passage from the Song of Songs:

On my bed at night I sought him* whom my soul loves — I sought him but I did not find him.
“Let me rise then and go about the city,* through the streets and squares;  Let me seek him whom my soul loves.”  I sought him but I did not find him.

It is as though you can hear of Joseph and Mary as they "go about the city," and "through the streets" seeking Jesus who is "him whom my soul loves."

We hear a similar theme again on the morning of that 1st Easter in the Gospel of St John :

But Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping.  And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb 
and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. 
And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.” 
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus.

In both New Testament passages, they are seeking the Lord, the one whom they love.

Jesus asks his mother:

Why were you looking for me?

They searched because he is the one that they love.  And suddenly they came upon him.


As we read in Song of Songs:

Hardly had I left them when I found him whom my soul loves.*  I held him and would not let him go until I had brought him to my mother’s house, to the chamber of her who conceived me.

Then in John we read:

Jesus said to her (Mary Magdalene), “Stop holding on to me,* for I have not yet ascended to the Father.  But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

And we can see Mary Magdalene just as she turns she suddenly sees Jesus, not knowing it is he, and that "she held him and would not let him go."  So, Jesus tells her "Stop holding on to me."  And it is evident that this was done to fulfill what was written in the scriptures.

Each of us must seek the one whom we love.  God has made us for himself, and our hearts are ever restless, until they rest in God, as St Augustine has said.

Yet, without the Son coming into the world, none of us could ever find that one whom we love, nor could we find rest.

But Jesus says:  Come to me all you who are weary, and I will give you rest.

Robert Barron on Stephen Hawking

Over the last  week or so, I've come across a couple of items involving Stephen Hawking and the existence of God.

One was an article at WordOnFire, the second is the video incorporated below.  Both are by Robert Barron, a bishop from the archdiocese of Los Angeles.


Bishop Barron begins by praising Hawking, and then adds a 'but:'

by all accounts, he was man of good humor with a rare gift for friendship. It is practically impossible not to admire him. But boy was he annoying when he talked about religion!

He addresses Hawking's most recent book, and in particular his first chapter writing:

Things get off to a very bad start in the opening line of the chapter: “Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.” Though certain primitive forms of religion might be construed as attempts to answer what we would consider properly scientific questions, religion, in the developed sense of the term, is not asking and answering scientific questions poorly; rather, it is asking and answering qualitatively different kinds of questions. Hawking’s glib one-liner beautifully expresses the scientistic attitude, by which I mean the arrogant tendency to reduce all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge. Following their method of empirical observation, hypothesis formation, and experimentation, the sciences can indeed tell us a great deal about a certain dimension of reality. But they cannot, for example, tell us a thing about what makes a work of art beautiful, what makes a free act good or evil, what constitutes a just political arrangement, what are the features of a being qua being—and indeed, why there is a universe of finite existence at all. These are all philosophical and/or religious matters, and when a pure scientist, employing the method proper to the sciences, enters into them, he does so awkwardly, ham-handedly. 

Many of the people I have known have had a similar perspective as Hawking.  A novel by Douglas Preston, Blasphemy, describes conversations among scientists that are similar to conversations I've had or overheard with scientists and engineers.

It seems as though not one of them has ever read or maybe even heard of the Summa, nor its' discussion about God's existence.


Aquinas' topics include:

1. Is the proposition "God exists" self-evident?
2. Is it demonstrable?
3. Does God exist?

As to 'does God exist' Aquinas writes:

Article 3. Whether God exists?

Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist. 

Objection 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence. 

On the contrary, It is said in the person of God: "I am Who am." (Exodus 3:14) 

I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways. 

It is a good idea to read and consider his five (5) proofs of God's existence.

There is a video discussion involving Bishop Barron on this same topic (Hawking and God's existence) shown below.

It is, as I have commented earlier in this blog, a good thing to have some humility in the presence of God.

Reflection 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time: Hear Oh Israel.....

On Saturday, 27 Oct 2018, a gunman entered a synagogue and opened fire killing eleven (11), and wounding several others.  As the last of those killed was buried, NBC presented the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead:  NBC Nightly News Kaddish -- Cantor Azi Schwartz of the Park Avenue Synagogue recites the Jewish Kaddish ( hat tip to Deacon's Bench).


Today's 1st Reading includes another very famous and common Jewish Prayer, the Shema:

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!

The homilist at Mass this morning pointed out that many devout Jews pray this every morning.  

In the Gospel Reading from today's Mass, a scribe approaches Jesus and asks him:

Which is the first of all the commandments?

Jesus' initial response is the shema (Dt 6:4-5).  He then quotes from a passage in Leviticus (Lv 19:18), saying:

The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

In today's second reading, from the letter to the Hebrews we read:

      It was fitting that we should have such a high priest:
      holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners,
      higher than the heavens.
      He has no need, as did the high priests,
      to offer sacrifice day after day,
      first for his own sins and then for those of the people;
      he did that once for all when he offered himself.
      For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests,
      but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law,
      appoints a son,
      who has been made perfect forever.

Jesus, the living bread come down from heaven, the way the truth and the life, the light of the world, the Word made flesh, does not offer sacrifice for his own sins, but for the sins of the world.

He who did not know sin became sin, took on the effects of sin, so that we who are sinners might have eternal life.  In his passion death and resurrection he gives himself completely for us, and in each and every Mass, he gives himself completely for us and to us so that we may have life and have it to the full.