Ash Wednesday, Year B

Here is a little reflection from Mother Mary Elizabeth:
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Today is Ash Wednesday. It is always a very important time for us here and for the entire world. It is the beginning of an annual Lenten retreat that God takes the world on in order to try to recenter our focus and get our priorities more in line with the true reality: God and our eternal life. We get so caught up by things that won’t matter next week, let alone in a year or ten!

We also include this passage of Isaiah, is taken from the liturgy of the day:

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:

releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own,
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
Your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

The story of Jesus's healing the leper in today's Gospel (Mark 1: 40-45) is a source of great hope for us all. Paschasius Radbertus (785–865), the Benedictine abbot and theologian, encourages us to trust in God's mercy and forgiveness:

Jesus heals the leper (XII-XIII s. mosaic)
Cathedral of Monreale, Sicilia

However great our sinfulness, each one of us can be healed by God every day. We have only to worship him with humility and love, and wherever we are to say with faith: Lord, if you want to you can make me clean. It is by believing from the heart that we are justified, so we must make our petitions with the utmost confidence, and that the slightest doubt of God’s power.

If we pray with a faith springing from love, God’s will need be in no doubt. He will be ready and able to save us by an all-powerful command. He immediately answered the leper’s request, saying: I do want to. Indeed, no sooner had the leper begun to pray with faith than the Savior’s hand began to cure from his leprosy.

5th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

This Sunday's gospel (Mark 1: 29-39) recounts Jesus's healing of Peter's mother-in-law, who was sick with a fever. Christ did not enter Peter's house, says St. John Chrysologus,

to obtain sustenance for himself, but to restore vitality to another. God wants human beings, not human goods. He desires to bestow what is heavenly, not to acquire anything earthly. Christ came to seek not our possessions but us. 

As soon as Jesus crossed the threshold he saw Peter’s mother in law lying ill in bed with a fever. On entering the house he immediately saw what he had come for.... At a glance he saw her desperate plight, and at one stretched out his hands to perform their divine work of healing; nor would he sit down to satisfy his human needs before he had made it possible for the stricken woman to rise up and serve her God. So he took her by the hand, and the fever left her. Here you see how fever loosens its grip on a person whose hand is held by Christ’s; no sickness can stand its ground in the face of the very source of health. Where the Lord of life has entered, that is no room for death.

4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

Today's Gospel (Mk 1:21-28) sees Our Lord curing a man with an unclean spirit. The crowd is amazed and wonders who this man is who teaches with such authority. In his Parochial and Plain Sermons, St. John Henry Newman writes about the revelation of Jesus to humankind:

Rembrandt, Head of Christ

Those who look towards him for teaching, who worship and obey him, will by degrees see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in his face, and will be changed into the same image from glory to glory.”

And thus it happens that people of the lowest class and the humblest education may know fully the ways and works of God; fully, that is, as human beings can know them; far better and more truly than the most sagacious of this world from whom the gospel is hidden.

Religion has a store of wonderful secrets which cannot be communicated to others, but which are most pleasant and delightful to know. “Call on me,” says God by the prophet, “and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things of which you have no knowledge.” This is no mere idle boast, but a fact which all who seek God will find to be true, though they cannot perhaps clearly express their meaning.

3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

Today's Gospel tells of Jesus calling his disciples. In 2014 Pope Francis spoke to a group of priests in the Chapel of Santa Marta who were concelebrating the Mass on their 60th anniversary of Ordination. He told them:

Calling of the Apostles (1481) Domenico Ghirlandaio

God in his love prepares the way, and he prepares our lives for each of us. He does not make us Christians through spontaneous generation. He prepares our path, he prepares our lives over time.... He is the Lord of the preparation, who has always loved us and never abandons us. Perhaps the act of faith to believe this is not easy, it is true. Because our rationalism tells us: why would the Lord, with all the people he has to deal with, think of me? And yet he has prepared the way for me, by our mothers, our grandmothers, our fathers, our grandfathers, and by our great grandparents, everyone: this is what the Lord does. And this is his love: concrete, eternal and also an art.

     

2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

In today’s Gospel (Jn 1:35-42) John the Baptist points Jesus out to his disciples as “the Lamb of God.” They respond by following him. The following reflection on the passage was given by Pope Francis at his Angelus talk. Here's a link to the original talk if you'd like to read the full text.

The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew by Caravaggio

Thus it is for us: the One whom we have contemplated in the Mystery of Christmas, we are now called to  follow in daily life. Therefore, today’s Gospel passage introduces us perfectly into Ordinary Liturgical Time, a time that helps to invigorate and affirm our journey of faith in ordinary life, in a dynamic that moves between epiphany and sequela, between manifestation and vocation.

... Only a personal encounter with Jesus engenders a journey of faith and of discipleship. We will be able to experience many things, to accomplish many things, to establish relationships with many people, but only the appointment with Jesus, at that hour that God knows, can give full meaning to our life and render our plans and our initiatives fruitful.

It is not enough to build an image of God based on the words that are heard; one must go in search of the divine Master and go to where he lives. The two disciples ask Jesus, “where are you staying?” (v. 38). This question has a powerful spiritual meaning: it expresses the wish to know where the Lord lives, so as to abide with him. The life of faith consists in the wish to abide in the Lord, and thus in a continuing search for the place where he lives.

January 1, Mary Mother of God

On this Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, to whom our church is dedicated, we remember you in our prayers, and wish you a blessed and grace-filled New Year.

Jesus and Mary rest, St. Joseph blows on the fire.
Detail from the Wildung altarpiece by Konrad von Soest

In the Bleak Midwinter

by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

In the bleak mid-winter,
Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign.
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim,
Worship night and day,

A breastful of milk,
And a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air;

but His mother only,
In her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man,
I would do my part;

Yet what can I give Him -
Give him my heart.

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