The hope of the Gospel is meant for all peoples, for such is the breadth of God’s heart and the abundance of his harvest. Indeed, God continues to work in the world so that all his children may experience his love and be saved.
--Pope Leo XIV
Image source: https://www.humandevelopment.va/en/eventi/2023/hope-for-the-earth-hope-for-humanity.html
Quotation source
How do you have a victory banquet
when everyone is invited?
It’s a victory because everyone is invited.
No one is left out.
--Fr. Patrick Michael,
Homily, December 6, 2023
(Funeral Mass for Mary Cosgrave)
What is it we have to celebrate?
The people of Israel saw a victory over their enemies as something to celebrate. When they could see their enemies – who had threatened their way of life, threatened their peace, threatened their way of being – crushed, they were grateful to their God for having crushed them.
When Isaiah says that the web that is woven over all people, the veil that veils all people, would be removed, and then he says, He will destroy death forever, I’m not sure death is the veil. Fear of death is the veil. Fear is what keeps us from seeing the Lord’s hand at work in our everyday life, because it sends our focus somewhere else when we worry and we fret and we are disturbed by many things…
We may have lots of things to be worried about, lots of things to fret about. If you get the New York Times notifications on your phone, you will be sent all sorts of reasons to worry twenty or twenty-five times during the day. It’s not the handiest service from that standpoint, and you could focus on what the New York Times is concerned about, or you could focus here, on what you’re living, on what God is doing right now, what God is unfolding in our lives that will help remove the veil, help destroy the web that hangs over us, that blinds us.
We gather here to celebrate at a Eucharistic banquet. It foreshadows the banquet of eternity when we are one with him. Perhaps we just have to learn how to not use the veil or the web, but to see past it, and to find everything there is to celebrate in a day for what God is doing for us.
--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, December 4, 2024
Image source: Studio Tomás Saraeno (Berlin), spider web (one of the artist’s main sources of inspiration), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/07/t-magazine/tomas-saraceno-spiders-shed.html
A feast of rich food and choice wines…
God’s gifts are abundant and meant for all --
do we come with the right disposition to receive them?
Jesus’ challenge of the chief priests and elders continues in Matthew’s Gospel this week with the parable of the wedding feast. When a king gives a wedding feast for his son and some ignore the invitation while others mistreat and even kill the king’s servants, the king says to his remaining servants, Go out into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find. God’s salvation, Jesus is suggesting, is for all, no matter their origin, so long as their wedding garment – that is, the depth of their investment in relationship with the Lord – is intact.
The universality of God’s gift of salvation can also be seen in Isaiah: On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, the prophet announces. Isaiah is speaking of a victory banquet, but an unusual one: usually, a victory implies one victor, but here all will be drawn to God. Christians read this text as a prophecy of what God will do in salvation history. Jesus’ death on the cross will destroy death, the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations. Moreover, God’s banquet gives life, as both Isaiah and Psalm 23 affirm: You spread the table before me; my cup overflows. So let us be glad that he has saved us!
Paul knows the abundance of God’s gifts in his own life and therefore can reassure the Philippians that God will fully supply whatever you need. No matter the circumstances – poverty or abundance – all are invited to find glorious riches in Christ Jesus, whose kingdom is present here and now, waiting for us to enter and participate… so long as Christ remains the source of our union and our hope!
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
Jesus offers to free us from the burden of our pride.
What is it that makes our lives heavy and weighed down? Precisely the burden of our own egos, the weight of one’s own self. When I am puffing myself up with my own self-importance, I’m laboring under all that weight. Jesus is saying, “Become a child. Take that weight off your shoulders and put on the weight of my yoke, the yoke of my obedience to the Father.”
Anthony de Mello proposed the following parable to describe us prideful souls. A group of people sit on a bus that is passing through the most glorious countryside, but they have the shades pulled down on all the windows and are bickering about who gets front seat on the bus. This is the burden of pride: preferring the narrow and stuffy confines of the bus to the beauty that is effortlessly available all around. This, of course, is why Jesus can say, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” What the Lord proposes is not a freedom from suffering but, what is much more important, a freedom from the self.
--Bishop Robert Barron
Image source 1: https://www.facebook.com/WildBeyonds/posts/-the-bird-that-breathes-like-a-balloonthis-isnt-photoshopthis-is-the-english-pou/122236944704215393/
Image source 2: https://medium.com/the-observer-is-the-observed/youre-either-on-the-bus-or-off-the-bus-6054c3d457b5
Quotation source
There are beautiful wild forces within us.
Let them turn the mills inside
and fill sacks that feed even heaven.
--St. Francis of Assisi
We are all pilgrims and we are always pilgrims, walking as we seek to follow the Lord, and as we seek the path that is truly ours in life.
That’s certainly not easy, but with the help of the Lord, the intercession of the saints, and by encouraging one another, you can be certain that, as long as you remain faithful, trusting always in God’s mercy, the experience of this pilgrimage will continue to bear fruit throughout your lives.
--Pope Leo XIV
Image source: David Frampton, St. Francis of Assisi, https://www.patmora.com/october-4-feast-st-francis-assisi/
Quotation source
If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs.
By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.
--Pope Francis,
Laudato Si
Image source 1: Timothy Schmalz, St. Francis Embracing the World (2026), https://sfarch.org/sculpture-unveiled-on-cathedral-plaza-honors-special-year-of-saint-francis-of-assisi/
Image source 2: St. Francis of Assisi, Stella Niagara Education and Retreat Center, https://www.facebook.com/groups/507562226004694/posts/1974466265980942/
Quotation source
One of the first things that comes to mind when people think of St. Francis of Assisi is “The Prayer of St. Francis,” which starts “Lord make me an instrument of thy peace.” And yet the origins of this prayer have only been traced back to the early twentieth century, nearly seven hundred years after St. Francis’ death in 1226.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with the association, I think we sometimes overlook the prayers he did write. Among these prayers was “The Canticle of the Sun.” In it, St. Francis acknowledges all of nature as members of God’s extended family including, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brothers Wind and Air, Sister Water, Brother Fire, Sister Mother Earth, and even Sister Death.
St. Francis is indeed famous for his simple and peaceful ways. But perhaps his greater contribution was a profound humility that not only saw the face of God in the most marginalized people, but also in all of nature. Bruce Davis, the author of “Simple Peace: The Spiritual Life of St. Francis of Assisi,” writes “The trees, rocks, birds, animals—all of the life that was unimportant to others, was important to Francis.”
In the latter part of today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks to the very people who have fallen under the Jewish elite’s perfectionistic adherence to Mosaic law — all those who “labor and are burdened.” Jesus offers them a simple, inclusive faith that doesn’t require an education. Perhaps this is what he means when he says, “my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” Here, Jesus opens the door for anybody and everybody to follow him, even those people who lack an education, social standing, and money. He himself was born into poverty, was unable to read and write, and had little to no standing in society.
What a contrast to the birth of the man we know as St. Francis today. Born to wealthy parents in 1181 in Assisi, Italy, Francis possessed all those things, including a good education, plenty of money and a secure future as the son of a merchant. However, at a relatively young age — 25 —Francis formerly renounced his inheritance and became poor for the purpose of drawing closer to God. In Davis’ words, “While most people were fearful of having too little, Francis found in his simplicity more and more joy.”
Francis saw God in everything. One day, when riding through the countryside on his horse he came upon a leper begging for alms. Initially filled with disgust, he intended to continue riding. But he ended up dismounting and kissing the leper instead; for in that moment, Francis believed he had seen the face of God. Nor was Francis’ love confined to humans. This was a man who made no distinction between the people he ministered to and the birds in the trees; rather, he simply saw everything as a part of God’s creation.
Paul Gallico’s “The Small Miracle,” a little boy—Pepino—seeks papal permission to bring his sick donkey into the tomb of St. Francis’ in Assisi for healing. Predictably, he encounters quite a few roadblocks including, clerical outrage in his hometown of Assisi; a treacherous foot journey to Rome; and difficulty securing an audience with the pope.
But through it all, Pepino stays close to both his love of his donkey and of God. And, in the end, he perseveres: Not only does he get the permission he needs, but he also receives help from the stonemasons who remove a portion of the church walls so that the donkey can enter the crypt. The story ends with the stonemasons finding a box of St. Francis’ things, while the boy and the donkey disappear through the illuminated opening of St. Francis’ tomb.
St. Francis of Assisi calls on us to be humble, radically inclusive, and peaceful. But mostly he calls on us to love God with all our heart, abandoning ourselves to the beauty of that love, like a boy’s love for his sick donkey.
--Molly Hartle,
OLMC Communion Service,
October 4, 2022
Image source: Cover of Paul Gallico’s The Small Miracle, https://www.amazon.com/Small-Miracle-Paul-Gallico/dp/9997550994
