Matthew Williams – Meditation on Daily Mass Readings

August 3, 2021August 2, 2021

Transformative Love

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Jesus once said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Lk. 17:5). The transformative impact of a deep faith, of intimacy with God, is monumental, and it is our destiny.

We see it in today’s readings. From the towering cloud, the Lord testifies to His intimacy with Moses:

“Should there be a prophet among you,
in visions will I reveal myself to him,
in dreams will I speak to him;
not so with my servant Moses!
Throughout my house he bears my trust:
face to face I speak to him;
plainly and not in riddles.
The presence of the LORD he beholds.”

It is as if the Lord is proud of this relationship. He considers intimacy with His creatures, it seems, His greatest achievement, one not to be taken for granted.

Today’s gospel puts an exclamation point on this reality. The apostles had seen Jesus work many miracles of nature, perhaps none more powerful than the healing of human flesh. But it may be said that they had never witnessed any miracle as impactful to the senses as the calming of an entire sea. Certainly, His Divinity–and His intimacy with the Father–is the source of this power, bringing His human reality to a whole new level. Still, maybe we would “expect” this level of power from God-made-man.

Something perhaps less to be expected is the impact on Peter–rough, vacillating, impetuous, not-yet-saintly Peter. In faith, grounded in his relationship with His Master, he asks to be bid to come out onto the water. Jesus so bids him. And regular old Peter takes some steps out onto the water–and it holds him, as surely as cured concrete.

Sometimes we think that our Christian life and its impact and power is seated on our moral advancement and perfection. It is not. It is seated upon the trusting and intimate relationship that we have with the Lord, which is the entire end game of our creation and redemption. Our moral life is merely an essential element of our “yes” to that relationship.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you become a giant of trust in Him, and to be fully infused with His divine life, not for your own sake only, but so that you may have the powerful impact in spreading His grace to others that He desires for your life.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

August 2, 2021July 30, 2021

Exasperation

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

If we understood the full scope of our mission as Christians, we may well gripe and moan just as Moses did in the first reading.

Moses had witnessed God’s great forbearance with the Israelites, and His kindness to them in the midst of their ingratitude. He had witnessed how God had sent down not only miraculous bread from heaven, but meat as well in the form of quail. This, after rescuing the Israelites from slavery to their great joy–something that, in this passage at least, they seem to have forgotten about entirely.

Moses is simply done with them. He’s over it. He’s asking God for relief–even if it means the relief of death. He just can’t stand being responsible for them anymore.

We observe the same ingratitude toward God throughout society in our time. What perhaps we don’t always realize, though, is that we have a responsibility analogous to that of Moses–we have a responsibility to bring this unruly lot to salvation, by enabling the application of Jesus’ infinitely powerful act of salvation to them, through our prayer/sacrifice and through our outward action and evangelization.

It may be discouraging. It may be something that we’d like to shirk, like Moses. It may be exasperating. But the Heart of Christ won’t let go of this; He loves them too much.

We see it in today’s gospel. He takes pity on the hungry crowd. He feels pangs of pain at the idea of sending them away when there is more of His message to impart to them. So He feeds them, miraculously, Himself.

How He wants to feed today’s masses the Bread of Life! And He has no means to draw them to Himself. Except you and me.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus for patience and courage to put your shoulder to the plow and keep soldiering on in the work of salvation, never becoming discouraged at the unresponsiveness of the people Jesus loves.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

August 1, 2021July 29, 2021

Sustenance

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The miraculous provision of quail and manna to the Israelites in the first reading is so real, so tangible.

When Jesus talks about Himself as the Bread of Life in the gospel, it may seem all very metaphorical, mystical, even ephemeral and unsubstantial by comparison.

But the people who heard Him were getting an inkling of his meaning as they said: “Sir, give us this bread always.”

To illustrate the critical nature of the Bread that Jesus gives, imagine that you could receive guaranteed physical sustenance for the rest of your life, without having to pay a dime. The only condition is that you remain bound to a bed in restraints, and receive the nourishment through a feeding tube. Would you do it?

Perhaps this image helps us understand what is meant by today’s Alleluia verse: “One does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”

Living in a bed with restraints would be a very limited human life. We are meant to get out in the world and interact, achieve, experience, make a difference. The notion that the nutrition from the feeding tube alone could make us happy is laughable.

But what is it that makes a complete life more fulfilling than a life in restraints? Is it the experience of the senses? Greater experience with the senses hardly justifies the sum of human striving.

Only meaning, a greater good, a wider context, makes a life, with all its experiences and strivings, truly complete and truly human.

And it is precisely this breadth, depth, and length of life horizon that Jesus, the Bread of Life, provides for us. How much more valuable this is than the nutritive concoction that flows through a feeding tube. The sustenance Jesus provides is literally the stuff of human life.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you transcend the mindset that material processes constitute the bulk of reality. Ask Him to help you live with the same consciousness of the richness of the human spirit that He had, and to seek the bread that He gives always.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

July 31, 2021July 28, 2021

Order and Chaos

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

There is a striking contrast between the first reading and the gospel today; in one, we see obedience to God bring order, and in the other, chaos.

In the first reading, God Himself is bringing order to the lives of the Israelites who follow Him, by parceling out time for them and ordering it according to key festivals and jubilees that serve as milestones. It provides a comforting framework within which they can peacefully live once settled in the Promised Land.

In the gospel, faithfulness to God and his mission brings chaos to the life of John the Baptist. Not only had he lived a hard life, subsisting on locusts and wild honey in the desert (cf. Mt. 3:4); he was now to suffer a violent and cruel death in the prime of his life, based on the silly whim of the reigning monarch.

In reality, our world is full of both order and chaos. The order comes from God, and the chaos, from original and personal sin. What is different about the life of the faithful Christian is not necessarily that it contains a higher dose of either than the life of anyone else. Rather, what is different is that, for the person who trusts in God, He superimposes a deeper and more powerful order upon the whole mix, such that both the elements of order and those of chaos in our lives make sense against a deeper backdrop of order. By trusting Him and giving our lives to Him, we enable Him to weave both the logical and the random elements of our lives into a beautiful pattern of love.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that the only order you need is the same one that He lived by: The Father’s loving Providence for you, whether it is manifested in beautiful, harmonious, orderly, enriching gifts, or chaotic suffering and deprivation that enables you to grow closer to Him and contribute to salvation. Ask Jesus to help you always keep the focus of your priority on His will and trust in His Providence.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

July 30, 2021July 28, 2021

Apparently Powerless

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In today’s gospel, we see Jesus frustrated at the inability of those from his own town to recognize and accept His mission, and unable to perform many miracles there because of their lack of faith.

We may wonder why it is that, as Jesus says, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house.” (Interestingly Moses, through whom God is working in the first reading, was largely exempted from this phenomenon in the divine plan; though a Hebrew, he had been exiled from his own people as a baby.)

The gospel provides ample clues as to the reasoning for this hometown rejection of prophets, as it cites the people’s familiarity with Jesus’ background and kin. Bottom line: They knew Jesus’ human normalcy and ordinariness; in their minds, prophets were supposed to be something utterly different, in some ways superhuman. All flaming chariots, glowing faces, spontaneously combusting sacrifices, and tablets shattering portentously on the ground.

But Jesus, who was to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s suffering servant prophecy, was not exempt from the human condition and its limitations in any sense. While He never sinned, the limitations deriving from the penalty for original sin affected Him as much as any other, by His own eternal design and will.

Jesus’ subjection to these limitations in His own regard led to a lack of faith among the people of His town. And later, to further discourage faith in Him, it is these limitations that the Pharisees throw at Him at His crucifixion: “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, if you are the Son of God, and come down from the cross!”

It is the experience of these same limitations and penalties that threaten to erode our faith in Jesus, also. As we suffer in life, and behold the chaos that seems constantly to befall humankind, we can unconsciously or consciously consider that Jesus is powerless against these. With His coming, none of these sufferings and limitations on earth were eliminated. Did He really do anything at all? Where is His power?

The truth is that confident power often manifests itself in restraint. Jesus, the Omnipotent, did not come to impose a reversal of original sin or personal sin, with all their earthly consequences and effects, upon us. He came to open a door, to allow us individually to choose the obedience that Adam and Eve had rejected on our behalf. And on those who do choose Him and that door, He confers immense, even supernatural dignity, and power–power to become children of God (cf. Jn. 1:12).

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus for staunch and unyielding protection from the negative influences of the base and the banal on your faith and trust in Him. Ask Him to increase that faith and trust every day, by whatever means He chooses, whether those involve beautiful gifts or difficult suffering.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

July 29, 2021July 27, 2021

Lovely Dwelling

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s readings are a combination of the reading for the weekday in ordinary time (first reading and psalm) and the reading for the memorial of Sts. Martha, Mary, and Lazarus (gospel). Providentially, they complete each other as if they were hand-picked by the wisest of pastors.

The dwelling place of God in the first reading is so utterly filled with glory that Moses is unable to enter it. The people cast their eyes upon it in great wonder, seeing a cloud by day and fire by night. The psalm reflects their wonder: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord, mighty God!”

In the gospel, Jesus’ dwelling place for the moment is in Bethany, and it is there, at his feet, that St. Mary wishes to dwell. The psalm reflects her joy as well. How beautiful to her, as she contemplates Him, her Lord and God, is the place where He is, His dwelling place.

As St. Martha is portrayed to do in today’s gospel, we often think of our responsibility as Christians as service, as responsibilities, as doing things for God, and of course fulfilling our responsibilities is an important aspect of His will.

But the essence of His will for us is this: That we dwell with Him; that we contemplate His dwelling place; that we share in His glory. And here on earth, like St. Mary, we do that by sitting at His feet in prayer.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you establish your dwelling place where He is, that your heart may steadily contemplate Him, and place the source of all its security and hope in Him.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

July 28, 2021July 27, 2021

Transmogrified

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

They say that it is uncanny how often a dog bears striking physical resemblance to its master.

You are what you eat, they say.

The simple reality is that our relationship with the world around us shapes us and becomes part of what we are. It doesn’t fundamentally adulterate our human essence, of course; but it does mold that essence.

And as such, what we dedicate our hearts, minds, priorities to can ennoble us, or conversely can cheapen us. We’ve all seen the negative manifestation of this. A man gives himself over to obsessive gambling, or drink, or promiscuity. Every aspect of his manner of seeing, processing, reacting to the world becomes insipid, cheap, unworthy. Or, a young lady falls in with the wrong crowd of friends. Her outlook becomes cynical; her behavior reflects quiet despair.

Moses shows us the upside of this phenomenon in today’s first reading, however, as do all the saints throughout the history of the Church. When Moses emerges from the presence of God, his face is radiant–so radiant, that he ultimately puts a veil over it to keep it from becoming an ongoing distraction. Moses is ennobled by that to which he chooses to give his heart: by God Himself.

Giving the focus of our hearts to God through prayer, the sacraments, and the way we live our lives takes discipline, and it can prove difficult and even discouraging, as it did for Moses. But it also raises us above ourselves, and ultimately fills us with a joy that is greater than what anything merely natural can produce.

In today’s gospel, Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God as the treasure for which it is worthwhile to sell everything. Our relationship with the Lord, which makes our soul blindingly radiant and raises and ennobles all that we are, is that treasure.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to fill your whole being with the radiance enjoyed by Moses: The glory of being close to Him. Tell Him that He is your pearl of great price, for which you happily give all other treasures in your life.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

July 27, 2021July 26, 2021

Weeds and Wheat

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

We may unconsciously categorize the depiction of the Lord in the first reading as imperfect, proper to an Old Testament view of God:

“The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God,
slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity,
continuing his kindness for a thousand generations,
and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin;
yet not declaring the guilty guiltless,
but punishing children and grandchildren
to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ wickedness!”

But in reality, this depiction perfectly describes the reality we live in as Christians, a reality brought to fulfillment with the coming of Jesus.

Jesus does not declare the guilty guiltless, and He has not chosen to remove the devastating effects of original sin from humanity with His coming–punishing effects that continue to pass from generation to generation.

But He is, above all, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, generation after generation; He forgives everyone who comes to Him.

And today’s gospel bears all this out. At the end of time, God does not declare the guilty guiltless; rather, evildoers are gathered like weeds and thrown into the fiery furnace.

Here we see the chasm that exists for eternity between those who have been weak and sinful, but have returned often to the well of God’s mercy, and those who choose willfully to persist in their sin, resisting all God’s invitations to conversion. The first may be confident, full of hope; the second are heading for a terrible destiny. It is confusing these two groups that often leads to a false depiction of mercy in our times. Our job as Christians, through our prayer, sacrifice, and counsel, is to help move others from the second group to the first.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to incorporate you, according to His own plan, into His beautiful drama of salvation, and offer Him your life for the salvation and sanctification of others.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

July 26, 2021July 26, 2021

Shiny Object

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The contrast between today’s first reading and gospel is striking. In the first reading, we feel the full force of human folly, as the people upon whom God has lavished His friendship and His saving power literally throw that friendship away for a shiny object.

Then, in the Gospel, Jesus describes how the Kingdom of God can flourish, nourish, protect as it grows great and strong among people.

What, then, is the destiny of the human race? Is it to be the epitome of bitter, ironic folly, or is it to be shade, protection, fullness, joy amid the branches of the tree of the Kingdom of God?

The answer to this portentous question lies in a small, weak place: It lies within each human heart, beset by the winds of irrational passions fueled by the taint of original sin, but also capable by God’s grace of firmly and consistently choosing His Kingdom.

The key to strengthening and even guaranteeing this commitment within our own free will, the caprice of which may at times terrify us, is daily nourishment through the sacraments and contemplative prayer.

But then, we are also called to make an impact on the choices of our brothers and sisters, of all humanity. We achieve this simply by making a gift, a sacrifice of our lives, as Jesus did to the Father, bringing a life dedicated to service of others daily to the altar and offering it to the Father with the sacrifice of Jesus, that His infinitely powerful merits may spread in their effect. And that gift will not be fruitless, but bear abundant fruit for the Kingdom of God.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus for the inestimable gift of perseverance in His friendship until the end of your life, that you may continue in the joy of that friendship through all eternity. In this moment of prayer, offer your life to Jesus as a gift in union with Jesus Supreme Sacrifice, that the infinite power of that Sacrifice may be applied in souls who do not yet know His grace.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

June 30, 2021June 29, 2021

Pigs In Deep Water

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

“No son of that slave is going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac!” “And when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.”

We may naively think that, if we follow Jesus and imitate His love and generosity, we will be profoundly appreciated by those around us, especially His other followers.

Those who are righteous in the Christian sense, however, that is, full of self-sacrificing love and generosity, encounter trouble specifically because they are so. This relates to what Jesus talks about in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.” (Mt. 5:10)

In the first reading, Abraham wanted to be generous with his son Ishmael. Sarah, the mother of Isaac, was jealous and would not have it. In the gospel, Jesus generously rescued the demoniacs from possession and even, in a sense, even had mercy on the demons by sending them into the swine. The townspeople weren’t having it–they only perceived the disruption caused by the loss of the swine.

Some people, when they perceive love and generosity, see only that which is given to others and not them and become jealous, and/or resent the disruption in the selfish order of things caused by the generous person.

The rejection of Jesus after His exorcism of the demoniacs foreshadowed the entire world’s rejection of Him on Calvary. And still today. By and large, people do not shy away from Christ today because He is equally or less attractive to other life paths. They shy away from Him because His love and generosity inevitably involve a lifestyle of personal sacrifice. Faithful Christians remind them of their choice and cause resentment.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to free you from the sort of self-pity that naturally arises when our acts of love and generosity do not meet with gratitude. Ask Him for a double helping of His fortitude to persevere in His love in the midst of persecution in all its forms.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams