THE WORK THAT TAKES WORK
August 1, 2021
Deacon Dennis Walters

At some point in your life, you may have asked yourself, “Is Jesus really God?” I ask myself that question in one form or another quite often. Rather than feel embarrassed that the question even comes up, it is an opportunity to renew my faith in his divinity. Usually, my answer goes something like, “Yes, of course he is, now get back to work.”

The connection between work and faith comes up in our Gospel reading today from John, Chapter Six. It will be critical for the way Jesus’ audience responds to his teaching in what we call the “Bread of Life Discourse.” It is critical for how we respond to it as well.

As we heard in last week’s Gospel reading, John sets the stage for this discourse by describing how Jesus fed five thousand men (not counting women and children) by multiplying five loaves and two fish, with twelve wicker baskets left over. Not included in our readings is how, that very night, Jesus walked on the water to join his disciples in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, a distance over a liquid surface of about four miles. These are things that only someone with divine power can do. Unfortunately, they make little impression on those who question Jesus in Capernaum.

Today’s reading provides the lead-in to the main discourse. It begins with Jesus challenging his followers’ motive for seeking him: they’re not interested in the signs that point to his divinity but only in the free food. They want more. To which Jesus replies, “Don’t work for food that perishes but for the food that endures into eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” Notice that the idea of working applies both to the food that perishes and to the food that provides eternal life. Getting both takes work. One takes manual labor; the other takes work of another sort.

When his hearers ask what they need to do to accomplish the works of God – or, literally, “to work the works of God” – they’re asking what’s involved with working for the food that endures to eternal life? What kind of work is it?

Jesus replies that the work of God is “that you believe” in the person God has sent. Believe of course is a verb, here in the present tense; it could just as well have been translated “that you be believing” – that is, that you continuously maintain an attitude of faith. In other words, believing is work – a point I will come back to in a moment.

But first, let’s consider the crowd’s response, which here turns toward disbelief. Jesus has just made a claim for himself, the first of several in this discourse. He refers to himself here as the Son of Man whom God the Father has not only sent, but on whom he has set his seal. (In the Judaism of Jesus’ time, the only person who was set with a seal was the high priest. Carried on his forehead, it read, “Holy to the Lord.”) The crowd demands that Jesus prove his claim by performing a particular sign. Granted, they say, you performed a miracle of multiplying bread for a few thousand, but that was a one-time demonstration. You’re not Moses. Can you match what Moses did by providing manna for an entire generation for forty years? They quote Scripture: “he gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

Jesus counters by clarifying that it was not Moses who gave them bread from heaven, but “my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.” For Moses’ followers, manna was only physical food; Jesus’ audience thinks of it the same way. But, as Jesus will say later, their fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and died. The true bread that the Father gives “is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” The crowd replies, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Though they still think of that bread as an endless supply of physical food, their response opens the door for Jesus to make the next startling claim about himself: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Let’s put a couple of things together, here. If (like the manna) the true bread that the Father gives is that which comes down from heaven, and if (as he says) Jesus himself is that bread, then he has himself come down from heaven. Only God comes down personally from heaven. Many people these days don’t believe that Jesus is really God, and so they don’t believe his presence in the Eucharist is real. Jesus is claiming to be God. He is also claiming to be the Bread of Life. If we accept both claims, then we must believe that his presence in the Eucharist is real. Maintaining that belief is doing the work of God.

The point here is that faith is a work that takes work. What kind? The spiritual labor of cultivating a disposition to accept Jesus as he presents himself, namely, as food given freely as a gift. Like cultivating a relationship, that work is ongoing. The work of believing takes the form of studying the word of God, praying over it, seeking out answers to questions, quelling doubts, helping others through their unbelief, freeing oneself from sin (and even the desire to sin), and cultivating a hunger for the bread of life. Do it every day for the rest of your life. When the question arises in your mind, Is Jesus really God, really present in the Eucharist? Then answer yourself: Yes, of course he is. Now get back to work..

BEYOND WHAT WE ASK OR IMAGINE ..
July 25, 2021
 Fr. Bosco Padamattummal

Through the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, Jesus manifested in the first place that he is concerned about every human need; and secondly that he has the power to satisfy our needs; and finally that when he enters there is always abundance.

Little Johnny was in Sunday school, and his mother came to collect him.
"Boy," exclaimed Johnny as he settled himself into the car, "the story of Moses and all those people crossing the Red Sea was something!"
"Tell me all about it," said his mother.
"Well, the Israelites got out of Egypt, but Pharaoh's Army chased after them. So the Jews ran as fast as they could until they got to the Red Sea. The Egyptian army was getting closer and closer. So Moses on his walkie-talkie and told the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Egyptians. Well that was happening the Israeli name built a pontoon bridge so that people can cross over. They made it!"

The woman was shocked and asked "is that the way they taught you the story?"
"Well, no, not exactly," admitted Johnny, "but if I told you the way they told it to us you'd never believe it, mom."

Little as she was, Johnny had imbibed the secular mentality of our age that makes no room for miracles and spiritual realities. Natural faith, which is limited only to what we can observe and verify, hinders the believer from arriving at that supernatural faith without which we cannot experience the miraculous hand of God.

In today’s gospel story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand (John 6:1-15), John mentions two disciples by name: Philip and Andrew. These two disciples can be seen as representing two types of faith.

•Philip represents the naturalistic faith thatdoes not allow for miracles, while
•Andrew represents supernatural faith thatmakes room for miracles and so makesmiracles possible.

The large crowd of people following him were hungry and needed to be fed. Jesus turns to Philip and asks, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” (John 6:5). Why does Jesus turn to Philip and why does he ask him about buying bread?

Jesus probably knew that Philip in his material-mindedness could not imagine any other way of feeding the crowd except through the use of money. That is why John adds: “He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do.”

Philip’s answer only confirms how good he was in material computation: “Two hundred days’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” When Jesus asked Philip what to do about feeding the crowd, all Philip could see were the difficulties; he seemed reluctant to get involved in a problem that looked too big to solve. But Jesus knew what he would do and only addressed this question to Philip as a way of stirring up Philip’s materialistic thinking in order, later, to disabuse him of it.

Just then Andrew, one of the disciples nearby whose faith was more expectant than Philip’s, spoke up. Andrew’s attitude was a bit more optimistic, although it is hard to tell what Andrew had in mind in bringing the boy forward with the loaves and fish. But he had faith in Jesus and felt it worthwhile to take a chance. “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Andrew was realistic enough to know that five loaves and two fish were nothing before a crowd of 5,000 men in addition to women and children, yet he had enough faith to see that it was enough for a start.

Perhaps Andrew mentioned the fish and loaves to Jesus because he remembered the marriage feast at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine. He remembered that Jesus did not make wine out of nothing; he made it out of something. And it is the disciples’ duty first to provide that basic something which Jesus in his love would then transform, like water into wine, or multiply, like bread to feed the hungry crowd.

Expectant faith, therefore, does not make us fold our hands and do nothing, looking up to heaven. Rather it spurs us on to make our best contribution, our five loaves and two fish, knowing that without it there would be no miracle. A miracle is not God working for us; it is God working with us.

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or not, you are right.” The same can be said about whether you believe in miracles or not. Believers, by believing, enable miracles to happen in their lives. Non-believers, by not believing, block their chances of experiencing a miracle. As Jesus often said, “According to your faith will it be done to you” (Matthew 9:29).

We tend to focus on Jesus and his disciples and on the hungry crowd. Yet, the small boy with his five barley loaves and two fish is, in many ways, the key to what happens. This is the reaction of the generous person, of the one who is prepared to give all he or she has, even though it appears to be far less than what is needed. Such people are wonderful to have around when challenging times come our way. Jesus goes on to satisfy the hunger of the crowd with the five loaves and two fish of this small boy.

Perhaps we can never know what exactly happened on that day, but the gospel reading is suggesting that the Lord can work powerfully through very insignificant resources. Our human resources, inadequate though they may be, matter a great deal to the Lord. The disciples discovered that the impossible became possible in the power and prayer of Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters, if we believe in a Lord whose power is at work within us, it can do immeasurable things beyond what we ask or imagine. We need to remain people of hope, no matter how hopeless things may seem from a merely human perspective.

IT WAS COMPASSION THROUGH AND THROUGH…
July 18, 2021
 Fr. Bosco Padamattummal

A lot happens in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus is rejected in his hometown. He sends the twelve on mission. John the Baptist is killed. Jesus feeds the five thousand and walks on water.

If you recall, in last Sunday’s Gospel we heard that Jesus sends his apostles off two by two. This week, Mark describes the return of the Apostles. They report to Jesus all the things they have done and taught.

Also, if you remember, the Apostles had two goals: They were to go on their mission, but they were also to spend time with Jesus. They also needed time to rest and recreate, time to evaluate and plan in the presence of the Lord.

We are told in today’s Gospel that people were coming in great numbers. It seems that the mission of the Apostles was bearing fruit. People wanted to hear their teaching, feel the peace, and receive healing.

The mission of Jesus and the Apostles was apparently so successful that the people would not let them get away and rest. When they found out that Jesus and the Apostles were going on a boat, the people figured out where they were going and rushed there on foot ahead of them.
The deserted place that Jesus longed for to take his disciples to rest was no longer deserted but crowded with people. Seeing the great crowd, Jesus “had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mk 6:34). These words echo Moses’s prayer in the book of Numbers, in which he asks God to appoint his successor, someone “who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the Lord may not be like sheep without a shepherd” (Numbers 27:17).

The words of the Lord could be seen as an act of compassion – not for the crowd initially but for the disciples who certainly needed a rest. “He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat” (Mk 6:31). The former decision was motivated by compassion for the disciples, the latter by compassion for the people because they were like a sheep without a shepherd. None of it was motivated by self-interest. It was compassion through and through.

Jesus, moved in compassion for these lost sheep, “began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). The food for which the people hunger is the very word of God, and in so feeding them, Jesus shows himself to be a shepherd “after [God’s] own heart,” feeding God’s people “with knowledge and understanding” (Jeremiah 3:15). What is more, he shows himself to be the divine shepherd, the very Son of God in whom the kingdom has come.
There are many ways that today’s readings can be applied to our lives…

1) CHRISTIANS MUST BE PEOPLE OF PRAYER AND ACTION: Prayer is essentially listening to God and talking to Him. In the busy schedule of our daily life, we do not know how to “be still and to listen.” Hence, we are often in danger of refusing to allow God to recharge us with spiritual energy and strength.

In addition, we do not set aside enough time for Him to speak to us and for us to speak to God. From our reflection on today’s Gospel, let us remind ourselves that the Christian life consists of meeting with God in the secret place so that we may serve people more effectively in the marketplace.

2) THE CHURCH HAS THE DOUBLE RESPONSIBILITY OF TEACHING AND FEEDING: People today find it difficult to balance those two aspects of the Christian life. Some apparently believe that the social ministry of the Church is all that is needed to make Christ present in the world. Others seem to believe that the Church’s major concern should be preaching the Gospel, rather than feeding the hungry and healing the sick. The Church’s duty, so the argument goes, is to spread the Gospel and provide for public worship. Both views are one-sided. There can be no true Christianity without the proclamation of the Gospel. Teaching the Word of God is essential to a Christian community. But that is only half of the story. Christians must also display the same compassion for the suffering that Jesus exhibited by meeting the social and material needs of others – even those who are not members of our Church.

3) THE CHURCH NEEDS IDEAL PASTORS: The pastor must be a person of compassion. He must be able to feel deeply the suffering of others, to understand why they fear and tremble. The pastors are also called to lead and “govern wisely” (Jer 23:5), living the teaching they communicate. They are to guide people in right paths and are to be concerned about what is right and just.

Their pastoral care should be involved and peaceful care and guidance. There are very many people searching for truth today, people hungering for instruction, good people who are looking for direction. They are people who are looking for answers and for meaning. They are like sheep without a shepherd. They all need ideal pastors filled with the spirit of Christ the “Good Shepherd.”

Dear Brothers and sisters, let us remember the words of Jesus “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Let us place our whole trust in the Good Shepherd, and ask for His guidance.

CAST ALL YOUR ANXIETY ON HIM
July 11, 2021
 Fr. Bosco Padamattummal

T he first reading (Amos 7:12-15) warns us that our witnessing mission will be rejected, as happened to the Old Testament prophets like Amos. He was ordered by Amaziah, the angry chief priest serving in the Northern Kingdom of Israel at Bethel, to take his prophesying back to his own country, the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Amos defended his prophetic role with courage, clarifying that it was not his choice but his God’s choice to elevate him from a shepherd and tree-dresser to a prophet. Like Amos, we are chosen by God, through the mystery of Divine adoption in Jesus, to become missionaries and to preach the “Good News,” mainly by Christian witnessing.

Today’s Gospel (Mark 6:7-13) reports the instruction Jesus gave his disciples for their first mission: They should be walking illustrations of God’s love and providence in action. By doing so, they would also have maximum freedom and minimum burdens in their preaching and healing ministry. They should preach repentance – a change of heart and a change of action taking people from a self-centered life to a God-centered life. Statistics tell us that most people who come to join a Church do so because a friend or relative brought them. So, the best advertisement for any Church is the number of the faithful – men, women, and children – whose daily lives show forth some of the radiance of the Gospel.

There is a story of a farmer who hired a carpenter to help him restore his old farmhouse. The carpenter’s first day on the job was a rough one. He arrived late to work because he had a flat tire, halfway through the work his electric saw broke, and at the end of the workday his old pickup truck refused to start. The farmer had to drive him home.

Arriving home, the carpenter invited the farmer in to meet his family. As they walked toward the front door, the carpenter paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands. He then opened the door and was beaming with smiles as he hugged his two small children and gave his wife a kiss. Afterward he walked the farmer to the car. As they passed the tree the farmer’s curiosity got the better of him. So he decided to ask the carpenter about what he had seen him do earlier. “Oh, that’s my trouble tree,” he replied. “I know I can’t help having troubles on the job, but one thing for sure, troubles don’t belong in the house with my wife and the children. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning I pick them up again. Funny thing is when I come out in the morning to pick them up, there aren’t nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before.”
Having a trouble tree is the carpenter’s way of dealing with daily failures and problems which can sometimes seem overwhelming. Because problems and failures are a part of life, we all need a trouble tree. That is why Jesus, as he sends out the apostles to evangelize the world around them, thought it wise to provide them with a trouble tree. “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them” (Mark 6:11). In other words, if you try to teach the people in a particular village and you meet with failure, do not let the failure get you down. Shake off the dust from that village, go to a new village, and start again on a fresh page. Shaking off the dust from their feet is their own way of hanging their problems on the trouble tree.

Like the apostles and the wise carpenter, we need a trouble tree. Why? Because to start with, problems and failures are inevitable in the life of anyone who seeks to make a difference. But sometimes we dwell too long on past failures and allow them to rob our lives of enthusiasm and joy. Sometimes we allow the problems and pressures of the workplace ruin the peace of our family life. In order not to let this happen we need a trouble tree where we can hang and forget our troubles, at least for a while. We need, at the end of the day to be able to shake off the dust of worry and failure from our feet, knowing that tomorrow will bring with it a brand-new day with brand new opportunities. It’s like baseball. Even if you lost 10-0 in yesterday’s game, today it is a whole new ballgame, and the scoreboard starts at 0-0.

What happens when we do not have a trouble tree? If we have no way of shaking off the dust of yesterday’s failure from our feet, the dust clings to us and accumulates and weighs us down. The result is depression and despair. We give up. We quit instead of going to a new village, to a new project. But Jesus does not want us to be quitters. He wants us to be women and men who begin again each new day. New day, new challenges, new opportunities!

Dear brothers and sisters, as people of God, today is a good day to thank God for making provision for our failures, our weaknesses, our imperfections. Faithful men and women of God are not those who are perfect and makes no mistakes; they are those who realize their mistakes, acknowledge them, deal with them, put them behind and move on, beginning again each dawning day with a new hope.

God in his mercy has provided us with a trouble tree: Christ. He himself carried our sins in his body to the tree of the cross (1 Peter 2:24). Through the sacraments, especially the sacrament of reconciliation, we have access to this tree of life. We can also do it through daily prayer when we do as St Peter tells us: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

THORNS IN THE FLESH
July 4, 2021
Dcn. Dennis Walters

E very now and then, when reading Scripture we come across a passage that seems to make no sense. We say to ourselves, “Well, the words are English, but what do they mean?” We have a couple of examples in today’s second reading where the Lord answers St. Paul’s prayer for healing by saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness”; and a little later when Paul professes that he is content with that answer, “for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Not that Paul wanted to appear weak to his Corinthian audience. Earlier in the same letter, he warns those who say his letters are forceful but his personal presence is insignificant and his speech dismissible that “what we are in word through letters when absent, that we also are in action when present” (2 Cor 10:11). He is ready to punish every disobedience among the Corinthians (10:6). Paul often strenuously defends his authority, though he admits here that he might boast of it “a little too much” (10:8).

But it is in that context that he is concerned with a handicap that he calls a “thorn in the flesh.” What that thorn is, he doesn’t say. Perhaps it was physical. Scholars speculate it could have been problems with his eyesight; you remember that when he was healed of temporary blindness at his conversion, “something like scales” fell from his eyes. Perhaps the thorn was a particular relationship, since he refers to persons resisting correction.

Whatever it was, Paul attributes it to the devil to keep him from becoming proud of the spiritual experiences he’s had. Either way, his repeated prayer for healing is met with No for an answer. The Lord assures him, “My grace is enough for you.” Don’t worry about how weak you seem. My grace is enough. So Paul rests content: for the sake of Christ, “when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Why Paul should have contented himself with weakness is something I have been pondering for many years. Like Paul, I have never wanted to appear weak before others. Among my college friends I was a passable athlete when it came to tennis and related sports like racquetball. I wanted to appear competent in my job, so I sometimes pushed my academic credentials and the awards I won. As leader of a large prayer group, I led prayer meetings, conducted seminars, provided counseling, and associated with leaders of other prayer groups like mine. Also like Paul, I had to keep open lines of communication with brothers in Christ who didn’t like what I was doing, or who felt they could do it better.

That began to change even before my family moved from East Lansing to Ann Arbor in 1974. During a retreat one year, I met with a Benedictine monk who helped me recognize that my thorn in the flesh was a desire for fame and for the respect of those I admired. I recognized this as a major weakness in my spiritual life but didn’t know what to do about it – and for several years I did almost nothing.

Then, long after our move and right about the time I was ready to launch a full-time career, I became aware of a different thorn, a weakness in my legs. It was diagnosed as an incurable and slowly progressive atrophying – a growing weakness – of the muscles in all four limbs, and was related to a genetic tendency toward neurologic diseases that runs in my father’s family. That was nearly forty years ago and has progressed to the point that you see in me today.

A friend once asked me if I was mad at God for allowing this (he was working through some anger issues of his own at the time). I said no, that my condition was not painful. The progression was so slow that I almost didn’t notice it at first. Of course, I got impatient with myself from time to time – but that was life. I’ve never had a desire to pray for healing or to seek out medical cures. For me, there is somehow a link between what has been happening to my body and what that monk helped me realize long ago. Paul could be content with weaknesses and constraints for the sake of Christ, and I am learning to be content with it, too.

Why am I sharing all this? Because Paul’s situation applies to all of us. Every one of us has at least one major thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to beat us and keep us from getting too focused on ourselves. It may be a physical weakness like a disease, or a character weakness like a tendency toward some vice, or the emotional aftermath of some tragedy that we can’t seem to get over. Like Paul, we may have prayed numerous times for strength, for a cure for that weakness, for this thorn in the flesh to be removed, only to be told that the answer is No.

Why not? Is God being mean? No; rather, He’s trying to tell us that His grace is enough for us to get through our trouble. If we tried to remove that thorn on our own, we might succeed; but then we’d become too elated and bypass God – which would raise a worse problem. Or, if we tried to remove it ourselves and fail, we might despair and lose hope in God. His grace is enough; His power becomes the more active in us the more we accept it. When Paul says “when I am weak then I am strong,” what he means is that when we have the humility to let God’s grace work in us, we have all the strength we need to conquer everything that is coming.

IN OUR UTTER HELPLESSNESS ...
June 27, 2021
 Fr. Bosco Padamattummal

Today’s gospel reading (Mark 5:21-43) focuses on two people from the crowd: a man whose 12-year-old daughter is at the point of death, and a woman whose lifeblood was draining out of her. The woman had been under the treatment of every available physician for twelve years (the same number of years as the man’s daughter’s age). These two helpless people are touched by the Lord’s compassion.

The father of the girl is “Jairus,” and he is one of the rulers of the Synagogue. As one of the rulers of the Synagogue, he is used to being in control. But when it came to saving his daughter’s life, he was utterly helpless. And helplessness can drive a person to abandon all pride and dignity even to the point of begging: “Seeing Jesus, he fell at HIS feet” and made his desperate plea. “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” We can imagine how quickly Jairus wants to guide Jesus through the crowds pressing in on HIM to get HIM to his home where his little daughter is “at the point of death.”

But as Jairus pushes through the throng saying, “Make room, make room,” suddenly Jesus stops, and looks around at the crowd saying, “Who touched me?” This is one the most engaging scenes in Mark’s gospel. Jesus’ disciples are incredulous. HE is so deeply immersed in our humanity that they fail to recognize HIS divinity and treat HIM as though HE were “one of us.” They said, “You see the crowds pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’”
It was the woman with the unstoppable flow of blood. Anyone who is with such sickness is considered unclean; they cannot be in a crowd or touch a clergy – that would make the clergy ritually unclean. But she was “helpless.” And in her helplessness, she was desperate. And in her desperation, she thought, “If HE can’t touch me, then I’ll touch HIM.” And, “If I touch even HIS garments, I will be made well.”

Most probably she thought that with the crowd pressing in on HIM, HE would never even know. As she touched HIS garment from behind, “she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.” When she realized that she wasn’t going to get away anonymously as she had hoped, and knowing what had happened to her, she was now more afraid than she had been. We read, “In fear and trembling, she came and fell down before HIM and told HIM the whole truth.”

What she doesn’t yet understand is that it is for this, for her, that HE has come into the world. HE wants to touch and be touched by the helpless so that HIS power may go out of HIM and heal them. HE will give HIS very body in the bread and HIS very blood in the wine precisely for this reason and to this end – that the harassed and helpless of every generation to the very end of the age, might touch and be touched by HIM.

While all of this is going on, the clock is ticking for Jairus’ little daughter. What must poor Jairus have been thinking through all this when Jesus was delayed with the healing of this woman. (This sort of delay happens again, when HE is told that HIS dear friend Lazarus is ill.) HE delays in going to this little girl who is “at the point of death,” and as with Lazarus, HE delayed too long.

“While HE was still speaking” to the woman, “there came from the ruler’s house some who said, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’” While Jesus may be able to help the living, what would you do if you were Jairus? Would you be angry at Jesus for delaying and getting distracted by a “lesser” case than your little daughter? After all, it wasn’t as if the bleeding woman was “at the point of death.” Or would you have just figured that “this illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it”? (Jn 11:4)

But before Jairus can say anything, Jesus speaks to him. “Do not be afraid; only believe.” After a bit of ridicule and mocking from the professional mourners, Jesus throws them all out of the house and takes the mother and father into the room where their little daughter was lying.
Her father had asked Jesus to lay HIS hands on her, but HE “takes her hand” and speaks to her as though HE can speak all the way into death itself. HE speaks HIS Word into her dead ears. “Talitha koum.” “Little girl, arise.” And by the power that HIS Word has to create everything from nothing, “immediately the girl got up and began to walk.” And her mother and father, “overcome with amazement,” praised the Lord. Their hearts were with the Psalmist’s: “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever” (Ps. 30:11).

Dear brothers and sisters, in our utter helplessness as well, our Lord is moved with compassion. We have to pray with the Psalmist, “O Lord, be my helper!” (Ps.30:10). And HE will stretch out HIS hand and touch us with HIS body and blood and say, “Do not fear; only believe.” Wherever you are living drained of life, touch the clothes of Christ. Connect to HIM. Let them transfuse you with HIS life, HIS love, and HIS power. Touch and be healed. Touch and go in peace.

THE SECOND QUESTION
June 20, 2021
Fr. Bosco Padamattummal

Jesus and his disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee. They are moving from the Jewish side to the Gentile side, the side where they are at home to the side where they are strangers, the side where life is familiar to the side where it is new, different, and unfamiliar. Jesus said, “Let us go across to the other side.”

There were people on the “other side” of the Sea of Galilee that he needed to see: a man possessed by demons; Jairus’ 12-year-old daughter who had died; a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. Their prayers to God were heard. And God was about to give his answer.
So, this is not just a story about the weather and a boat trip. It is a story about life, about faith, about fear. In the Old Testament when David is being hunted down by King Saul’s army, he writes: “The waves of death encompassed me, the torrents of destruction terrified me” (2 Sam. 22:5).

Sometimes the sea of life is rough. The wind is strong. The waves are high. The boat is taking on water and sinking. We all know what that is like. Each of us could tell a storm story. Some of our stories will begin with a phone call, a doctor’s visit, or news we did not want to hear. Some of them will start with the choices we have made, our mistakes, and our sins. Other stories will tell about the difficulty of relationships, hopes and plans that fell apart, or the struggle to grow up and find our way. Some storms seem to arise out of nowhere and take us by surprise. Other storms build and brew as we watch.

Storms happen. Storms of loss and sorrow. Storms of suffering. Storms of confusion. Storms of failure. Storms of loneliness. Storms of disappointment and regret. Storms of depression. Storms of uncertainty and second guessing, Storms of thoughts and voices.
Regardless of when or how they arise, storms are about changing conditions. Life is overwhelming and out of control. Things don’t go our way. Circumstances seem too much for us to handle.

Order gives way to chaos. We are sinking. The water is deep, and the new shore is a distant horizon.
The disciples do what God has told his people to do in the midst of trouble. The Psalmist writes, “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” (Psalm 50:15). We could learn a lot from the disciples here. The disciples quickly turn to Jesus. “Do you not care that we are perishing?” A sleeping Jesus is not what they or we want. In another gospel passage we have read, Jesus said, “It is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” (Matthew 18:14). “Perish” means more than “to die.” It means that after you die, you remain eternally dead, totally separated from the love and mercy of God.
Does he care? Yes, he cares. And now he gives them a sign of his care. It is not the final sign or the definitive sign – his cross and empty tomb are the sign of signs in which we know that he cares. But here in this boat, he gives them an appetizer before the main course. “And he awoke,” that’s resurrection language, “and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”

That interior storm is the one that blows us off course, beats against our faith, and threatens to drown us. Fear, vulnerability, and powerlessness blow within us. The sense of abandonment, the unknown, judgment and criticism of ourselves and others are the waves that pound us. Too often anger, isolation or denial become our shelter from the storm.

“Peace! Be still!” Jesus speaks to the wind and the sea. And he is speaking to the wind and the waves within the disciples. They have been pointing to what is going on outside them. Jesus now points to what is going on inside them. “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Jesus’ words are more about us than the circumstances of our lives, the storms we meet. Faith does not change the storm. It changes us. Faith does not take us around the storm but through the storm. Faith allows us to see and know that Jesus is there with us. Faith is what allows us to be still, to be peaceful, in the midst of the storm.

The power of God is stronger than any wave that beats against us. The love of God is deeper than any water that threatens to drown us. In every storm Jesus is present, and his response is always the same: “Peace! Be still!”

Dear brothers and sisters, in every storm there are choices to be made. Will we interiorize the storm or will we interiorize Jesus’ peace? Do we put our faith in the power of the storm or in the power of God in Christ? This gospel passage is from a great storm to a great calm to a great fear.
And now they have a second question. The first was, “Do you not care if we perish?” The second question is, “Who then is this?” When you know the answer to this question, you won’t have to ask any more.

EVERYDAY EARTHLY STUFF
June 13, 2021
Fr. Bosco Padamattummal

Parables take something that is earthly and teach us something heavenly. For example, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Jesus uses a very earthly example: A father’s love for his son, and his broken heart at his son’s rebellion, and his overwhelming joy at his son’s return home. That’s something earthly that every father can understand.

Then Jesus says, “Okay, if you can understand that, if you know how that feels, then you can understand something about how your heavenly Father feels about you when you rebel against Him and repent and return.” There’s a connection between the earthly and the heavenly. What is earthly and what is heavenly is connected as the creation and the Creator are connected.
This is just what St. Paul is talking about in Romans 1:20: “For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived… in the things that have been made.” They contain the very “mysteries of God.” Something as common and mundane as a seed is not just a seed, but a window that opens the Kingdom of God to us.

I. Parable of the Growing Seed: “And [Jesus] said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come’” (Mark 4:26-29). The world of agriculture is full of these little parables that contain the mysteries of God in them.

Previous to this, Jesus told them the parable about the sower who went out to sow seed, and the seed fell on all different kinds of ground. Who would have thought that something as ordinary as dirt holds the secrets of the Kingdom of God? Now in today’s parable, the emphasis is not on the ground but on the seed itself. How does the way a seed grows shed light on how the Kingdom of God works?

Jesus even adds this little detail for emphasis when He says that the sower “scatters the seed on the ground” and then goes to bed. “He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, he knows not how.” It just does. And it is from this “earthly” example that we are to learn something about the “kingdom of God.” Just as the seed does its thing when it is planted in the dirt, so does the Word of God do its thing when it is planted in a person’s heart. We do not know how it happens that when someone hears the Word of God a transformation takes place! There is something mysterious in the Word that does it. And it’s not important for us to know how.

Martin Luther understood this. He wrote: “After I preach my sermon on Sunday, when I return home, I drink my little glass of Wittenberg beer and just let the gospel run its course.” He continued, “While I was drinking some fine Wittenberg beer, the Holy Spirit was busy at work.” The Word does what it does because it is what it is. It is the Word of God. It was the WORD OF GOD that created the whole world. And it is the same Word today as it was in the beginning.
Now consider the next sentence we heard: “But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” Even the harvest of the crop that comes from that seed tells us something about the Kingdom of God.

The seed produces a crop for the sake of the harvest. In other words, to plant seed in the dirt is not the end in itself. To speak the Word into the ears and eyes so that it may create faith in the heart is not the end in itself. There’s a purpose and a goal that it all heads towards. It is for the sake of the harvest that the seed is sown. It is for the sake of the gathering of believers into the Kingdom of Heaven that the Word is preached. The Kingdom of God has a goal, a destination.
II. Parable of the Mustard Seed: “And He said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade” (Mark 4:31-32). More of the mystery of the Kingdom of God revealed in a tiny seed. This time the main point of comparison is the contrast between the size of the seed and the size of the tree comes from that seed. It is so small. It’s almost nothing. But just look at what it becomes. But the “mysteries of the Kingdom of God” are hidden in that tiny seed.

Dear brothers and sisters, Jesus was a tiny seed planted in the womb of the virgin Mary. But look at what has come of it. From that holy seed, invisible to the naked eye, comes the Lord and Savior of the whole world. From the tiny infant born in Bethlehem comes the One who bears the sin of the world and reconciles sinful man to holy God. From that “tiniest of all” seeds comes the Holy, Christian, and Apostolic church in which people from all over the world find their life and place of rest.

The smallest of seeds produces the grandest of trees. All this everyday, earthly stuff is shouting out to us about the Kingdom of God. Pretty incredible really, that God has packed so much of His Kingdom into something as simple as seeds.

SOURCE AND SUMMIT
June 6, 2021
Dcn. Dennis Walters

As Catholics, the Eucharist is the core of our spiritual lives. We get the Eucharist only through the Mass; in fact, our worship at Mass culminates when we receive the Eucharist. The Western Church has a long tradition of veneration of the Eucharist outside of Mass. We reserve it in tabernacles primarily to enable us to take Jesus to those who can’t come to Mass. But we also reserve it for adoration. More and more parishes that sponsor perpetual adoration of the Eucharist even report conversions among those who happen to wander into their adoration chapels.

We like to show it off publicly. We carry it out of the church into the world. You may remember that, at the last diocesan-wide convocation, a Eucharistic procession marched from the cathedral in Lansing to the MSU Breslin Center, about five miles away. Around the same time, the pastor of St. Mary’s in Williamston flew with the exposed Eucharist in a chartered plane around the perimeter of the diocese in order to call down God’s blessing on everyone in it. As a pro-life activity, St. Francis parish in Ann Arbor even carried the Holy Eucharist in procession from the church to the Planned Parenthood facility, about a mile away.

The Eucharist is not only the core of our spiritual lives. Vatican II used an expression that was new in the Church’s theology, though the idea behind it is very old: the Eucharist is its “source and summit.” What does that mean? Essentially, it means that every grace we as Catholics receive originates in the Eucharist, and that by it we enter into the eternal, resurrected life it promises.

We receive grace through the sacraments. The Eucharist is the source of the Christian life because all of the other sacraments are “oriented” toward it or tied into it. Think about it. Baptism, strengthened by Confirmation, opens the way to receive the body of Christ; it’s the gateway-sacrament. The Eucharist itself is food for everlasting life; as Jesus says, without it we have no life in us. Holy Orders makes it possible for us to receive the Eucharist because priesthood is necessary to provide it. Penance restores access to the Eucharist by restoring life with God lost by sin. Anointing is often accompanied by eating the waybread that strengthens and heals the sick. Matrimony points to the Eucharist because it symbolizes the communion between Christ and the Church, his Bride.

Eucharist is the summit of the Christian life because, in the words of the Catechism, “in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.” The Eucharist is Jesus himself. He is our Passover because receiving him liberates us from bondage to evil, to the devil, to our own sin.

Eucharist, the risen body of Christ, makes it possible for us to participate in divine life. Whenever the Church uses the expression “divine life,” she means that of the Holy Trinity, the inner life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Through all eternity the Father and the Son relate to each other in a love activated and personalized as the Holy Spirit. We are brought into that life because the Divine Son has a human, resurrected body, and he has incorporated each of us into it, into the Body of Christ. Which is why the Eucharist requires that we, who are his Body, be in communion with each other. Receiving Holy Communion unites each of us with Jesus and with one another.

Another reason why the Eucharist is the summit of the Christian life is that when we participate in the liturgy here on earth we enter into union with the liturgy taking place in heaven. This Mass takes place at a moment of time; it lasts for about fifty minutes and then is gone. In the Roman Canon the celebrant prays that the angels take the sacrifice from this earthly altar to the altar in heaven to join with the worship going on eternally in heaven. Our worship points us up to the life of heaven, and forward to the end of time, in anticipation of our life in eternity when, as the Catechism says, “God will be all in all.”

Finally, the Eucharist confirms our way of seeing the goodness of both the body and the spirit. This is different from the modern Gnostic view that separates the body from the person himself. According to that view, the inner self is what is important. It has power over the body. For it, the body is just a machine, both disposable and malleable; the person who owns it can beautify it, abuse it, change its sex, or kill it. But the Eucharist demonstrates a different anthropology. It proclaims not only the redemption and the goodness of the body – after all, the Son of God became incarnate in a body – but also the body-spirit union. Thus, Christian thinking about the human person is attuned to the Eucharist, to the Eucharistic way of seeing things. Whatever we believe about the Eucharist affects how we see all of reality, not only the material world but also the spiritual world.

On this feast of Corpus Christi, the body and blood of Christ, we will carry the Eucharist in procession outside our church, weather permitting. Showing the Eucharist in the monstrance, we will proclaim to the north, east, south, and west that Jesus Christ is alive among us. We will publicly acknowledge him as Lord of the whole world.