To trust in the love that unites us (Pope. Francis / Fr. Patrick Michaels)

In the great commandment,
Christ binds God and neighbor.
There is no authentic religious experience
that is deaf to the cry of the world.
There is no love of God
without care and concern for our neighbor.

 --Pope Francis, November 10, 2023 

    If you feel that you love God with all that is in you but you do not love your neighbor, you might be kidding yourself. Because if we can’t see those we have so much in common with, if we can’t love them, then how can we love God whom we can’t see? How can we stretch out the boundaries of our hearts? 

    If we loved God with everything that is in us and we loved our neighbor, we would be concerned for every life. We would love every life. We would have a concern for the poor, whom we must love and greet and value and show compassion. For that is what we are about; that’s all we have. 

    Love isn’t a warm, fuzzy feeling; love is an action, something we do, something we live, something we are. We can restore our collective integrity as a Church. We can learn to face any problem. But we are going to have to trust in the love that brings us together and unites us. We are going to have to try and participate in it at every opportunity. Then, we will be one. Love does that like nothing else can. Then, the Lord will be a force to be reckoned with in the world, because he will be revealed… in us. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, October 29, 2023 

Image source: Augustus Edwin Mulready, Uncared For (1871), one of many of Mulready’s paintings meant to draw people’'s attention to the plight of the unhoused street children of his age. Notice the torn street poster above the little girl’s head. For this and other work by Mulready, go to https://victorianpeeper.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-news-from-art-world.html

So many neighbors to love (St. Maximilian Kolbe / Rev. Benjamin Cramer)

The cross is the school of love.

--St. Maximilian Kolbe 

   Beware of any Christian movement that insists it has so many enemies to conquer rather than so many neighbors to love. 

--Rev. Benjamin Cremer 

Image source 1: https://www.wearemakingdisciples.com/blog.aspx?action=view&id=68
Image source 2: https://www.dioceseofcleveland.org/news/2022/05/15/fifth-sunday-of-easter-may-15-2022
Quotation source

You need both to be a Christian (Jen Arnold)

   There is no doubt that the cross is the most recognized symbol of Christianity. It symbolizes what our Lord endured for us, what we carry, and our hope for salvation. There is so much meaning wrapped up in this one symbol of our faith. Not by coincidence, the cross is made up of two beams of wood – one vertical and one horizontal. The vertical beam symbolizes your relationship with God while the horizontal beam represents your relationship with others. You need both to form a cross. You need both to be Christian. 

   We use the vertical beam to represent our relationship with God because we are inferior and He is all-supreme. We look up at Him while He lovingly looks down upon us. We reach for heaven while He extends His mercy and grace down to us. This vertical relationship illustrated in the cross is a beautiful thing to imagine. We need to put effort strengthening that vertical relationship. We do this by praying to God every day and listening to how He speaks back to us, just as we would in any other relationship. We need to frequent the Sacraments and receive His grace in all the ways He has offered to us. We need to go to Mass to hear His Word in Scripture and receive His Body in the Eucharist. This vertical relationship is not passive... 

   The horizontal beam represents our relationship with others. We know that we make up the Body of Christ and that we are all connected to one another on this horizontal plane. Everything we do affects the rest of the parcels on that beam. When we sin, it affects our neighbor. When we are charitable and loving, it also affects our neighbor. Again, this relationship between persons is not passive. Christians are called to action. Remember the corporal acts of mercy in Mahew 25:35-40 where Jesus tells us to do things like feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the imprisoned. He reminds us that, in doing these things for the least of our brothers, we are doing them for Him. We honor Jesus Christ by being in the right relationship with our neighbor and thereby strengthening our horizontal beam. 

--Jen Arnold
 

Image source 1: https://www.equip.org/hank-unplugged-podcast-and-shorts/the-sign-of-the-cross-the-symbol-the-history-the-mystery-with-andreas-andreopoulos/
Image source 2: Mezuzah, Dove with Olive Branch with Adorned Hoshen, https://www.holyshroudfragrance.com/p-4959-mezuzah-dove-with-olive-branch-with-adorned-hoshen-blue.aspx. A mezuzah is a small scroll of parchment contained withing a decorative box. The Shema Yisrael is one of the texts inscribed on the scroll. Traditionally, the mezuzah is affixed to the doorpost at the entrance of a Jewish home to remind them of their love for the Lord God.
Quotation source & complete article

What it means to love (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

   Why did Jesus provide two commandments when one was asked for? What would have happened if Jesus had just given the greatest commandment – the first? Then the focus of our lives would be upon ourselves: it’s all about what I need to do in my relationship with God. The second expands it, so that we truly understand what that relationship is about. 

    Love of neighbor is absolutely necessary in the pursuit of a relationship with God. Look at your neighbor and realize that God made them, too. They are just as extraordinary in God’s act of creation as you are. And they are on the same journey. The two commandments fill out what it means to love; they complete what would otherwise be an incomplete concept. That’s why Jesus gives two when one is asked for. But then he summarizes all the law in those two, because if your love for God is expressed in your love for neighbor, the rest of the law would be superfluous, unnecessary. 

   God offers us the fullness of life… in the neighbors around us, those who are in need and who are right here. He gives us life all the time; we have but to choose it. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, August 23, 2024

Image source: https://cmmb.org/to-love-god-to-love-your-neighbor/

Even death cannot end it (Thomas Campbell / Fr. James Martin)

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. 

--Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) 

    On All Souls Day we remember all the "faithful departed," who enjoy new life with God. 

    Sometimes it's hard for even devout Christians to believe in the afterlife. But Jesus promises his disciples eternal life many times, as in today's Gospel (Jn 6); he shows them that death has no power with the raising of the dead in his public ministry (not only Lazarus, but also the Widow of Nain's Son and Jairus's Daughter); and then he reveals it definitively at his own Resurrection, on Easter Sunday. 

   But you can also think of it this way: God loved us into being and loves us every day of our life. God enters into a loving relationship with us at our conception. So why would God end that relationship? It makes no sense. God would never end the loving relationship God has with you. Even death cannot end it. 

   Trust in Jesus's promises about what God has in store for believers: eternal life. 

--Fr. James Martin,

Facebook, November 2, 2021

Today is the Commemoration
of the Faithful Departed!
In November we remember All Souls… 

Image source: Marko Ivan Rupnik, Resurrection of Christ, detail (2006), mosaic, St. Stanislaus College Chapel, Ljubljana, Slovenia, https://www.imb.org/2017/04/12/journey-cross-artists-visualize-christs-passion-part-2/
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

Recalling the stories of saints (St. John of Kronstadt / Tish Harrison Warren)

Ask the angels and the saints to intercede for you,
just as you’d ask people who are alive.
Stand face to face with them,
in the belief that they’re also
standing face to face with you.

 --St. John of Kronstadt 

   Saints are imperfect people. And this is what draws me to this day. Christians don’t remember these men and women because they were perfect. We remember them because, like us, they were broken, selfish and fearful, yet God wrought beauty and light through their lives. 

   All Saints’ Day reminds me that God meets us, saints and sinners, despite our contradictions, and makes good out of haphazard lives. It tells me that all of us, even the best of us, are in need of unimaginable mercy and forgiveness. The church is “first and foremost, a community of forgiven sinners,” writes the theologian Gilbert Meilaender. It is not “a community that embodies the practices of perfection” but instead “a body of believers who still live ‘in the flesh,’ who are still part of the world, suffering the transformations effected by God’s grace on its pilgrim way.” Recalling the stories of saints is, in the end, a celebration not of perfection but of grace. 

--Tish Harrison Warren

Today is the Solemnity of All Saints!

Celebrate by reading about 

the life of your favorite saint! 

Image source: https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Saints-Tales-Adventure-Courage/dp/0761193278
Quotation 1 source
Quotation 2 source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 3, 2024: I love you, Lord, my strength...

I love you, Lord, my strength… 

How do we demonstrate our love for God? 

    The Jewish practice of the mezuzah – a small prayer scroll contained within a protective case and affixed to the main doorpost of a home – probably dates back to about 1300 BC, when the people settled in the land of Canaan after their sojourn in the desert. (While they may have had the words of the prayer inscribed upon a tiny scroll to carry with them through the desert, they didn’t have doorposts to affix them to!) 

    For the people of Moses’ time, this prayer, found in the Book of Deuteronomy and known as Shema Yisrael – The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength – was to be inscribed on their hearts, so that they would remember God at every moment of every day. If they wished to be a prosperous nation when they entered the promised land, they had to remember that the Lord was the source of all they had: lives, property, every blessing! And they were to bless God in turn: I love you, Lord, my strength, the psalmist prays in Psalm 18. It is a song of thanksgiving for God’s steadfast presence as rock of refuge, fortress, deliverer, and so much more! 

    In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus, challenged by a scribe, likewise cites the Shema Yisrael as the first of all the commandments. But then Jesus adds a second: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Why? Because to love your neighbor is how you live out your love for God, how you give proof of that love for God. The scribe is so impressed that he riffs off Jesus’ statement, adding that love of neighbor is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. Thanks to the scribe’s immediate grasp of Jesus’ statement, Jesus can tell him, You are not far from the kingdom of God! This scribe knows how important God’s constant presence is in his life, and is willing to love his neighbor to demonstrate his own love for God. 

    Jesus loved with his life, dying once for all when he offered himself on the cross, the ultimate demonstration of love for humanity. There is no long any need, the Letter to the Hebrews says, to offer sacrifice day after day; Jesus lives forever to make intercession for all who approach God through him, so that all might know the forgiveness of his eternal Father, and respond with love to the Lord who loves all by filling the world with love of neighbor, as Jesus did. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com