Matthew Williams – Page 11 – Meditation on Daily Mass Readings

March 19, 2021March 2, 2021

Mute and Manly

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

St. John Chrysostom’s last name–which is really more like a nickname–means “golden mouth” in Greek. He was legendary for his eloquence in proclaiming God’s word and thus bringing many to their salvation and sanctification.

Likewise, St. Thomas Aquinas is the “Angelic Doctor,” so named because his theological teaching was so beautiful and exalted that it appeared to be coming from the angels themselves.

We can enumerate saint after saint whose gift is to favor the world with grace-filled words about Jesus.

Today’s saint is one of the most exalted of all–Pope Pius IX declared him to be patron and protector of the entire Church.

And yet, in the Gospel, he is mute. Not a single word of his survives. Not one.

Why is he so revered? Today’s first and second readings give us a clue. In St. Joseph the promise of ages comes true: That the Messiah would be a descendant of David, and would cause the reign of David to last forever. Not because Jesus came biologically from Joseph, but because, like Abraham brought forth the People of God in faith, Joseph lent to Jesus his human lineage in faith and in obedience. Thus, albeit not in a biological way, St. Joseph played a pivotal role in passing on to Jesus His humanity.

While this role in salvation history is exalted, however, it is not what captivates us about Joseph. Rather, what enthralls us about this great saint is his silent role in the Gospel: A role of absolute trust in God in obedience, and a role as the archetype of a definitively masculine protector and provider. How does he do this, while remaining silent (at least in what is recorded about him)? It almost gives the impression of winning while playing with a handicap.

Those of us who are fathers look up to him–a man who took the most extraordinary challenges and trials in gloriously graceful, manly stride–we look up to him with great veneration. He is a paragon of what it means to be the strength of man, surrendered in humble service to the most remarkable of women.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Compare the loud, sometimes futile nature of your life, to the silent effectiveness of Joseph–not to get down on yourself, but in order to steep your heart in admiration for this man among men, a very close approximation of what God designed man as man to be. Whether you are man or woman, ask St. Joseph to intercede for you, so that you too may become a paragon of silent, obedient surrender and service. Invite St. Joseph to be patron of your own family, and to protect you as manfully and as effectively as he protected the Holy Family itself.

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March 18, 2021March 1, 2021

Be Moses

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

In the gospel, to counter the unbelief of His enemies, Jesus cites Moses as His witness–for, He says, “Moses wrote about me.”

Jesus is the Son of the Living God, Himself divine. John the Baptist witnessed to Him, His own miraculous works witnessed to Him. And, reaching forward through the centuries, Moses witnessed to Him.

It is interesting that this Gospel passage falls together with today’s first reading, where we see Moses interceding before a God who is ready to punish His grossly ungrateful and idolatrous people.

Moses intercedes for the great body of the descendants of Abraham, reduced to base adorers of a metal calf, and wins God’s mercy for them.

And thus it is that he points to Jesus Christ. That same Jesus who cites Moses as His witness is the very embodiment of the mercy of God for which Moses interceded.

Consider, for a moment: What if we become nothing other than new Moses, interceding before God’s fallen people, and winning the grace of the Incarnate Word for them? What if we in this way become nothing other than extenders of the impact of His infinitely powerful saving act? We could do worse.

If we look to the great saints, like St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. John Vianney, we can ultimately distill their lives down to this: They won extra doses of Jesus’ saving grace for souls, through their self-offering and intercession. In this way, they were like new Moses.

If we use our entire lives merely to intercede for sinners through prayer and self-offering with Christ in the Eucharist, we are not wasting them.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to send you His Spirit and craft you into the intercessory powerhouse He wants you to be–one that, through prayer and sacrifice, will bring soul after soul, person after person to the grace of Jesus Christ.

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March 17, 2021March 17, 2021

Remember Death

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

In many respects, Christianity is an earthy religion, staring the less savory aspects of human existence straight in the face.

One of these realities is death. “Memento mori” is a Christian expression dating back into the mists of time: “Remember [your] death.” It is a fitting expression for meditation during Lent. At our death, all the pleasures we have heaped upon ourselves will be for nothing; all the praises of men, mere vanity. “You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter,” says St. James in the fifth chapter of his letter. This is quite an image: To the extent that we focus our lives on passing pleasures and vanities, we fatten ourselves for the slaughter of eternal condemnation.

We should remember our death, not in fear, but in hope. Christianity is able to face death because death does not destroy the source of the Christian’s joy.

In today’s gospel, Jesus faces death head on. He associates the essence of His work with and for His Father with the calling of the dead to life.

Consider in passing how His enemies were so deaf to His message, that they did not pick up on this key lesson for their lives, but rather only on the claim that inflamed their envy: The claim that God was Jesus’ Father.

Just as occurred with the envious Pharisees, in our smug modern time, when the travails of life have been beaten back a bit by medical advancement and technology, there can be a vain, academic tendency to reduce all Jesus’ words to allegory and metaphor, to read into them too much out of mere academic curiosity.

But when speaking about the resurrection, Jesus was not sitting in some ivory tower classroom in the halls of academia, pontificating vainly about overcoming our little challenges in life and assuaging our psychological boo boos.

He was talking about real death–the kind that comes to us all, putting our bodies six feet underground as food for maggots. And He was talking about resurrection, real resurrection, from that death.

And in similarly plain language, He makes it clear that some rise to life, and some to condemnation–the latter, those who have “fattened their hearts for the day of slaughter.”

Memento mori. Remember death. It comes soon; live with an eye to ensuring resurrection to life, for yourself and as many others as possible.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Imagine the stage of your own death. Maybe quietly in your bed at home, maybe in a hospital bed, maybe in an accident–one way or another, one moment you are here, and the next, you are standing before the Lord, rising either to life or to condemnation. As you look at yourself there, beg Jesus to protect you in His mercy and Providence from sin, and ask Him to make your life fruitful according to His wishes for the salvation of others.

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March 16, 2021February 26, 2021

Cleansing Water

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

Imagine being ill for thirty-eight years, like the man in today’s gospel.

He was at the pool called Bethesda, trying to get in when the water was stirred up, in a vague hope of receiving healing. But this was ordinary water, without healing powers.

Little did he know that Jesus had come by for him–Jesus, the source of living water (cf. Jn. 4:10).

The water that Jesus brings, which in a single moment fully cured the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years, is that which is represented by the pure, fresh river in today’s first reading. This living water, which purifies and cleanses the brackish water with which it comes into contact, is the grace of God.

And what is that grace? It is the Holy Spirit Himself, but seen specifically through the prism of the impact that He has on our bodies and especially our spirits.

He stands back and respects us when we resist Him. But when we open our hearts to Him fully and welcome Him, bid Him come in, He works miracles of joyful cleansing within our hearts.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: In this Lent, as you struggle to work on your conversion like the man struggling to enter the Bethesda pool, ask Jesus to send His cleansing Spirit into your heart to perform in a moment what all your struggles cannot bring to completion: The purification of your heart, and therefrom, its return to full life in Him.

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March 15, 2021February 26, 2021

Dancing

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

When He finds it in a human heart, true, pure love is a fulcrum that God uses to shower His grace. In this sense, there is an insight in so many merely human allegories, such as the Disney movie Frozen, that emphasize pure, self-sacrificing love. This insight can be found even in some secular idealism of our time that stresses authentic concern for the welfare, even the temporal welfare, of others.

The first reading talks about God turning weeping into dancing, creating a new Jerusalem where there will be no more suffering. The reading foreshadows the eternal life that Christ wins for us on the Cross.

In the gospel, Jesus brings the message of the first reading to life, as He turns the royal official’s mourning into dancing. The official asks Jesus to come and heal his son, who is near death. Jesus accuses the man of looking for a sign, but rather than defending himself, the man ignores the accusation entirely and insists that his son be saved.

The man is focused entirely on the welfare of the object of his love, his son. He will not be distracted by questions to his motives.

Jesus does not go with the man, but assures him that his child will live. Instead of growing angry with Jesus, the man is inspired to faith in His words–and He returns home, in the spirit of that faith.

The official’s faith is rewarded with the life and health of his son. His mourning is turned into dancing.

We have every opportunity to gain a foretaste of the dancing to come in heaven here on earth, if we wish; all we need do is beg God’s Providence, full of faith, to look after our welfare in every way, and then trust Him to do so, even when the means we foresee are not those He chooses.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to take over your life and do things His way. Tell Him you trust His plan to be the right one, and beg Him in His Providence to take over the direction of your life and the lives of your loved ones.

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March 14, 2021February 25, 2021

Escape Hatch

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

Many events in the Old Testament foreshadow the saving action of Jesus; Jesus Himself refers to some of these foreshadowings explicitly in the Gospel.

The exile to Babylon described in today’s first reading, however, provides an image of the whole of human history. Man rebels against God. God strives mightily to correct him. Man ignores God. God allows man’s sin to result in the profound suffering of exile. Eventually, man feels nostalgia for the better life with God, and reaches out to God for mercy. God restores man.

This cycle has repeated itself many times in history. At the same time, there is a macro version of the cycle. Man is in permanent exile on earth since the sin of Adam. His ultimate restoration takes place only in eternity, through the salvation won by Christ. In the meantime, we find ourselves in one long Babylonian exile.

There is a way to gain a foretaste, however, of this definitive restoration. Conveniently, we find the key in today’s gospel:

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.

When the people of Israel were bitten by venomous seraph serpents in the desert, God instructed Moses to build a model of a seraph servant and lift it high. Any Israelite who looked upon the servant was miraculously cured of the venom.

When we look upon Jesus lifted up on the Cross, when we look to Him and beg of Him His mercy and grace, when we center our lives on a relationship with Him cultivated in prayer and in the sacraments, when we embrace His love and saving act at the very center of our lives, we are saved from the venom of sin. But more still: We are rescued, in a sense, from the destructive state of our exile here on earth. Because of the joy in our hearts that the experience of Christ brings us, and the complete restoration and peace effected through His saving act, we live in exile as if we didn’t. As if we were already home.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Thank Jesus for being lifted up, not for our condemnation, but for our salvation. Ask Him for the gift of the total cure, which makes this earthly exile just a place, not a state of being. Ask Him to fill your heart and take it over, so that He truly becomes your All in All.

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March 13, 2021February 25, 2021

Turnaround

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

Today’s first reading speaks of the hope a soul in the midst of conversion, hope for merciful, reviving, refreshing treatment from the Lord.

Then, in that reading, we come upon curious lines:

He will revive us after two days;
on the third day he will raise us up,
to live in his presence.

What a coincidence! This sounds a little like the Resurrection of Jesus. Then we look again at the reading, and it speaks of God striking down, God rending–but then of God reviving. So, is this a reading about conversion, or is it a foreshadowing of the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus?

The answer: Both. Both are intertwined in the eyes of God. Sometimes we forget the totality with which Jesus took upon Himself our sins–all the sins of humanity, from all time. As He takes those sins upon Himself in Gethsemane, then takes them to Calvary to be killed with them, and then ultimately rises, He goes through a “conversion”–He defeats them and raises mankind to a new purity aimed at profound and exalted union with God.

By contrast, in the gospel, the Pharisee sees no need for conversion. He lives a stellar life, unsullied by the typical sins of mankind. He even gives a significant portion of his income to God. But he makes the mistake that St. Paul warns about throughout the epistles: He thinks to find his salvation and righteousness in compliance with the law, in his own virtue.

Jesus is looking for us to do as the tax collector does in today’s gospel: He recognizes his sin, and he seeks conversion; he begs for God’s mercy. Jesus wants us to enter into His great dynamic of conversion, the one He Himself underwent through His Passion, death, and Resurrection.

So, is Lent about foreseeing and meditating on the mysteries of Holy Week, or is it about personal conversion to the Lord? The answer: It is about both. For God, these two concepts are inextricably united. Jesus’ saving mystery is nothing other than the act of the conversion of mankind to God. And we find our righteousness and salvation, and the strength for our personal conversion, only in the power of His conversion act–in the power of the Cross.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Thank the Lord for going through the humiliation and pain of conversion for you, even though He was sinless. Tell Him that you embrace wholeheartedly His Cross and His offer of conversion even though for you, too, it is a painful process. Ask Him to make your heart a purified, total offering to the Father, like His own.

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March 12, 2021February 24, 2021

Laser Focus

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

“I will love them freely,” says God through the prophet Hosea in the first reading. His all-powerful, tender, effective, fruitful, refreshing love will be poured out on His people without measure.

Rarely do we find more enthusiastic imagery in the words Jesus, than those He uses when He describes this outpouring of divine love: “A good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.” (cf. Lk. 6:38)

Lent is a time for purification from attachments to created things, our own ideas, our own feelings, that hold our will, even at the expense of our faithfulness to God. It is a time for purification from attachments, so that we may access this divine outpouring.

But if it is a time for detachment, it is even more a time for increased attachment–attachment to God, as the humble and wise scribe in today’s gospel articulates:

He is One and there is no other than he.
And to love him with all your heart,
   with all your understanding,
   with all your strength,
   and to love your neighbor as yourself
is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.

It would appear that this scribe had tasted God somewhere along the way, both because of his clear understanding of the primacy of loving God and neighbor, and because in speaking of the “worth” of the love of God, he seems to be speaking from personal experience.

And that is just it. Detachment alone does not lead us to God. If we do not experience God and attach ourselves to Him, we become like the heart Jesus compares to a house, saying that when it is all cleaned out, it merely becomes a more welcoming place for worse demons to come and reside (cf. Mt. 12:43-45).

Attachment to God, based on experience of God. Experience of God requires something so simple that it is almost silly: Dedication of time each day, say, a half hour, for dialogue with Him in prayer. If we open our hearts to Him with consistency, He will not fail to fill our hearts with love for Him–attachment to Him.

So it is that, in addition to fasting and self-denial, the Church urges us to increase our prayer during Lent.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you to understand the attraction of loving God, and to help you with His Spirit to attain an authentic attachment to God above all things. Tell Him that you cannot attain this on your own through edifying readings, attendance at church, or any other means. Ask Him to generously infuse this love into your heart.

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March 11, 2021February 24, 2021

Hardness of Heart

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

The hardening of the heart, as depicted in today’s readings, can be a mysterious thing. Yet, we have all experienced it.

We have all had moments when we know that a person, someone calmer than we are, is speaking the truth, but we are momentarily attached to an exaggerated view of reality that corresponds to the stirring up of our passions. We cling to that exaggerated view, even while knowing deep down it is just that–until our passions slowly dissipate, and we are able to acknowledge the more rational, balanced assessment.

This tendency starts to appear mysterious as we contemplate figures like the Pharisees in today’s gospel, stubbornly clinging to an irrational interpretation of Jesus’ actions. They want to see His miracles as coming from the devil, rather than accepting the obvious interpretation that these good works come from Him who is Good. It is mysterious, because this irrationality is not the fruit of a moment’s passion, but seems to follow the Pharisees throughout the narrative of Jesus’ public life, Passion, and death–and even through the event of the Resurrection, and thereafter.

Similarly irrational is the stubbornness of the people of Israel in the first reading, who persist in turning their back on God, despite all He has done for them in their history, and despite the fact that He is the obvious choice for their welfare.

And so, today’s psalm reaches forward in time to challenge us as well: “If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”

As irrational and mysterious as are these behaviors that we observe in today’s readings, we can gain insight into them from our own experience. In our passionate moments, we cling to an irrational view, not just because of our emotions, but because we want that view to be right. We are attached to it, not with our understanding, but with our desire, with our will.

It is attachment to and stubborn desire for things that are not God that leads us to a warped view of reality.

Wisdom and perspective come, then, not from careful analysis, but from detachment from all that is not God. And in turn, this detachment comes from self-denial for the sake of God’s commands and of others–but especially, from increased attachment to God and love for Him, cultivated in daily prayer.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Beg Jesus to send His Spirit to give you the gifts of Wisdom, Understanding, and Counsel. But also, ask for Piety and Fear of the Lord–that is, those gifts that lead you to cling to God as your only good. Consider what your attachments may be–those things that you would give up for God only with difficulty. Ask Jesus to fill you with such a dose of His Spirit, that love for God crowds out all those worldly attachments.

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March 10, 2021February 24, 2021

Law and Order

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

Today’s readings fit beautifully into Lent. Lent is not just a time for sacrifice. It is a time for conversion: Conversion back to the path of the Lord. And we all need it, every year–each of us who has sins in his or her life, and also imbalances and poor habits that easily lead to sin. We all need a moment to get back on track.

Today’s readings underscore heavily how this “getting back on track” involves a return to God’s Commandments. Too often, like the Pharisees, our mind gets over-complicated with all sorts of minor goals and worries, rather than simple focus on what is pleasing to God: The Ten Commandments, and their Christian summary of loving God above all things and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Jesus tells us in today’s gospel that He did not come to abolish these precepts, but rather to fulfill them. The need for focus on the straightforward commands of God is more pressing than ever.

But what about St. Paul’s assertions that it is not the Law that saves, but rather the Spirit? And that we are no longer under the Law (cf. Gal. 5)? Does Paul contradict today’s readings?

Paul correctly emphasizes that the Law does not save. No matter how perfectly we followed God’s commands, without the grace that comes from Jesus’ Passion, death, and Resurrection, we could not attain to salvation, because we were born into sin.

Paul also tells us that we are not under the burden of the Law. This too is important. With the coming of Christ, the Law is no longer a burden. Compliance with God’s will, which we cannot achieve on our own, becomes a joy with Christ, because the grace He won by the act of salvation provides us with more than enough resources to stay on the path of God.

Thus, the grace of Christ gives us salvation. It also gives us the strength in the Holy Spirit (through the gifts of fortitude and understanding) to shoulder what was once an onerous burden and reach what was once an unreachable ideal, that is, faithfulness to God’s Law, which outlines the path to the salvation He won for us.

It is in this very Pauline sense that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law. Salvation in Christ, and the grace and strength to attain it through the gift of the Holy Spirit, is now within the reach of those who wish to align themselves with the path of God’s will and His commands.

So, let us shoulder the yoke of Lenten conversion joyfully. For Jesus’ yoke is easy, and His burden light. (cf. Mt. 11:30).

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Contemplate joyfully how Jesus returned to us the ability to follow the path of God through the Holy Spirit’s gifts of fortitude and understanding, and how He made the ideal of that path, that is, eternal life, attainable. Tell Him how grateful you are, how much you love Him, and ask Him to help you succeed in converting more thoroughly to the path of God this Lent.

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