“Jesus said to the crowds: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets:
They shall all be taught by God.
Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”
We come to Jesus to listen to the Father, who loves us and cherishes us. He has seen the Father; the Father sees us through His sacrifice.
We can bury ourselves in and join His holy sacrifice by receiving His Word and Sacrament (body and blood) as often as we can. Jesus welcomes us with open arms (look at the Cross, on which He says in His dying breath: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”). He chooses to live in us, broken vessels, so that we may become whole. Let us live together in communion with the Father and the Son, through the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Discern the message well. Turn to Him and say “Teach me your ways, O Lord.” When you turn you will see His arms wide open like the Father in the familiar Prodigal Son story. You will see them wide open on the Cross in Jesus, who carries our sins and sends His Spirit to wash our sins away from our souls.
I can humbly ask, “Is God my teacher?” He taught the pagans of Ninevah through His prophet Jonah. They listened and repented. What kind of society was this? Something we do not hear in today’s reading was that they had a king. Ninevah was the capital of Assyria, a people who had just plundered and conquered the northern tribes of Israel. When Johah went through town with the message the king took note. Verses 6-9 tell us:
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh: “By decree of the king and his nobles, no man or beast, no cattle or sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water. Man and beast alike must be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; they all must turn from their evil way and from the violence of their hands. Who knows? God may again repent and turn from his blazing wrath, so that we will not perish.”
The King led the people. The psalm verse says, He guides the humble to justice and teaches the humble his way. The king was humble and listened and discerned well, leading the people into repentance, and the Lord relented of the evil that He had threatened to do. I use the word relented on purpose, for when speaking of God it is a more appropriate translation.
Why? Because as we pray in the psalm, we know God’s love and compassion are from of old. Goodness and kindness are His essence; God does not repent of evil, because evil only exists in His absence. To relent is to mitigate a harsh intention. To repent is to express sincere remorse. The evil that was to come to the Ninevites was a consequence of their own actions, not an act of God. They repented. God relented of allowing the consequences of their evil actions that were going to come about through His permissive will.
St. Paul tells us in the second reading that time is running out — that the world in its present form is passing away. For people of faith this is true everyday, every moment, not just presently. We know that we pass from former ways to new ways, that through Baptism we die to sin spiritually and are born into eternal life with our Creator. Jesus conquered death by dying. We, too, as a people of faith turn to the Father every moment. We live in Christ. We continually live through His death, and His Resurrection. Unlike the Ninevites, we have the Holy Spirit present in our hearts teaching us and strengthening us for the journey to Heaven, which will pass through our own death. Nothing in this world will go with us through death except our relationship with God.
Today Jesus proclaims the Kingdom in the Gospel reading. It is interesting to note that Jonah’s proclamation was via the negative way, “you shall be destroyed.” Jesus’ way is different. Indeed, He says to repent, but He does this by saying, Come after Me. Last week He said, “Come, and you will see” (Jn 1:39). He is our King, but He is no earthly king like the Assyrian king who put on sackcloth. He is our God With Us who beckons us to follow His ways every moment. He is the God Man who heals all our infirmities, and who accompanies us in our suffering.
His arms are wide open. All I need to do is look at a crucifix to see the love that God has for me. And you. All He asks is for us to live in His love. When we do this, the world in its present form passes away.
When you were baptized, you were meant to be a saint. You were baptized priest prophet and king, and equipped to build the Kingdom of God just by living your life, clothed in Christ. His Holy Spirit was not only breathing natural life within you, but supernatural life of grace and power!
St Thérèse of Lisieux
How many of us know this? How many of us live this?
From this context, I want to talk about the Little Flower, St. Thérèse of Lisieux. I highly recommend that you read her autobiography, “The Story of a Soul”. Thérèse was born in France in 1873, the pampered daughter of a mother who had wanted to be a saint and a father who had wanted to be monk. (They are both saints now, by the way – the only married couple to be canonized together!) The two had gotten married but decided to be continent, that is, until a priest reminded them that their marriage Sacrament was meant to be fully lived! They must have followed his advice very well because they had nine children, of whom, five survived. The five children who lived were all daughters.
Thérèse’s mother died when she was young, and it was devastating for her. Her sisters and Father did their best to foster a loving family atmosphere and raise little Thérèse. They were a very devoted and faithful family. Without realizing it, by the time Thérèse was eleven years old she had developed the habit of mental prayer. She would would pray in solitude and think about God, life, and eternity.
Thérèse was admitted to the Carmelite convent after her sisters Pauline and Marie had already joined. She never expected that her convent-life fantasies of redemptive suffering would be realized so soon. Her father suffered a series of strokes, leaving him physically and mentally impaired. He, at one time, hallucinated and grabbed for a gun as if he were going into battle. He was then taken to an asylum for the insane. Thérèse was horrified at the humiliation of the father she adored and admired, as she heard of the gossip and pity of their so-called friends. As a cloistered nun she couldn’t even visit him.
This began a horrible time of suffering. She experienced dryness in prayer and decided that Jesus wasn’t doing much in response. She often fell asleep in prayer. She was consoled by the truth of Jesus’ love for little children, whose mothers love them when they lie asleep in their arms! Therefore God must love her when she falls asleep during prayer. The philosophy of the “Little Way,” or doing little things with great love, was born.
She knew she could never do fantastic things as a Carmelite nun. “Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.” She would take every chance to sacrifice, no matter how small. She smiled at the sisters she didn’t like and cared for infirm and grumpy sisters with ever so much love. When she was accused of breaking a vase she took the blame and begged forgiveness. Jesus knew of these little sacrifices done for love of Him. Never was she told how wonderful she was for these secret humiliations and good deeds. Because of her Little Way, Thérèse is a Doctor of the Church. Thérèse died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. Her last words at death were, “OH!…I LOVE HIM!…MY GOD, I…LOVE…THEE!!!” She ran to Jesus like a little child runs to her daddy.
The Little Way made her a saint, and it also can make US saints!
St. Thérèse showed us that doing little things, with love, actually makes them big things in God’s eyes! We all have this capacity in whatever life brings us. This is how we build the Kingdom and bring Jesus’ love to the world.
I would like to conclude with an analogy, which I hope will help the reader understand how, as Christians, everything we do can be done through, with, and in Christ.
Suppose you are graduating from college with a mechanical engineering degree, and you have a job lined up with one of the automakers earning $80,000 per year, along with many other benefits. You are fully equipped with your degree to act as an engineer and apply your knowledge (ie., as a Christian, you are priest and prophet — fully equipped), and in service to your company you use your skills to build not only cars but the engineering discipline through your creativity (ie., king).
All you have to do is get up in the morning, go to work, and do your job.
You show up and do the duties that are expected of you (ie., you fulfill the precepts of the Church), but is this all you bring? No! You bring who you are as a person. You build relationships as you work with others in your field of expertise. In essence, there is no “just getting my paycheck.” You offer yourself and you offer your knowledge. Your small part builds the company and the body of knowledge. Sometimes you are even asked to sacrifice. The bottom line is, you are more to your work environment than your education or your body. You bring your natural gifts to build your company, but you can also bring your supernatural gifts that you receive at baptism to everything you do and say.
Here is one major difference between this analogy and our Christian vocation. God’s gift of grace and life in Him is free and unearned, and is worth so much more than even your earned degree and your experience. This gift completes you as a person, made in the image and likeness of God. Just as God’s Holy Spirit completes the human person, allowing him to partake of the divine nature (cf. 2 Peter 1:4), you ‘complete’ the secular world! You are given the grace and are anointed, and it is now your decision how to live out your Baptism. God is a generous benefactor and a generous lover, but he waits for our decision. You are called and equipped, and you just need to go to work and do your job, serving God and serving others.
We (that’s YOU and ME) have been exhorted by the Church at Vatican II: “by [our] competence in secular training and by [our] activity, elevated from within by the grace of Christ, let [us] vigorously contribute [our] effort, so that created goods may be perfected by human labor, technical skill and civic culture for the benefit of all men according to the design of the Creator and the light of His Word.” This is how we as baptized Christians exercise our priestly ministry. The more we do this, in anything and everything, every moment of every day, we live out our baptismal call.
“Christ has communicated [His] royal power to His disciples that they might be constituted in royal freedom and that by true penance and a holy life they might conquer the reign of sin in themselves.” Every time we celebrate together the Holy Mass, offering the sacrifice of our lives with Jesus to our Heavenly Father, Jesus nourishes us and strengthens us with His Body and Blood for the mission. In our vocation to marriage or the religious life we offer ourselves in daily activities to the glory of God. As prophets God gives us “understanding of the faith (sensus fidei) and an attractiveness in speech so that the power of the Gospel might shine forth in [our] daily social and family life.” As kings we participate in spiritual combat with the flesh, overcoming the sin in ourselves and in the world. We are co-creators with the Creator, who gave us “dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth” (Gen 1:28). By our baptism we are renewed, redeemed, and equipped to order the world for the good of humanity to the glory of God.
You have been given your mission! Are you ready? It is as simple as doing that first little thing, with love.
He saves us by our pain, because He has shared it.
God is so amazing that:
That by which we fall He saves us. Remember this. It is one of those eternal truths.
Believing the lie from the serpent in the garden led to death. What was the first sin? Pride. Distrust of God.
The serpents in the desert led to death. What was the sin? Grumbling, complaining…again…distrust of God.
What brought them healing and new life? Looking upon the serpent on a pole, held up by Moses. Trusting in the Word of God, “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live” (Num 21:8).
There are Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14-15).
And later He also says in John, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day” (Jn 6:40, my emphasis).
Jesus was lifted up on the Cross. By His death, He conquered Satan, the serpent in the garden, with something he is incapable of understanding—enfleshed merciful love that gives selflessly to others.
When we look upon Him and believe, we have new life, just as those in the desert.
When we believe His Word and look upon Him, and say “Amen, (I believe), ” and receive Him in the Eucharist…we not only spiritually, but materially have God’s eternal life-giving flesh within us.
Where we are weak He is strong. He is there in our weakness, in our pain. Placing our weaknesses and our pain at the foot of the Cross joins us to Jesus. He suffers with us and heals us, bringing peace into our hearts.
That by which we fall He saves us. Turn to Him and tell Him all about it. “Do not forget the works of the Lord” (Ps 78:7b). Jesus, I trust in You.
2uolord 