THIRTY-THIRD WEEK OF THE YEAR

MONDAY OF THE THIRTY-THIRD WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 18:35-43) A few years ago a young man received the gift of faith. It was a long hard road that the Lord had picked for him to walk but he walked it and was finally Baptized. Shortly after his Baptism he shared with us a very touching part of his relationship with God. Before he believed in the loving God he looked at the evil in the world and said to himself that this is the way things are. Suffering was one of those things which went to make up life. Then he came into contact with the infinite love of God. He shared with us that it was when he started to believe that suffering became a problem.
I do not want to get into the problem of evil but what is interesting about this story is that the young man started to see things differently. He believed this was the new sight which the Lord gave him. This sight however brought a new situation into his life...he had to reconcile the two things which he now saw...the love of God and suffering.
Our lives of faith should be this bringing together of what we see in the world(the joys and hopes as well as the sadness) with seeing the All Good God.
Faith is the light which brightens the room of our hearts, it is the eyes of a heart which has been allowed to enter into the very mystery of God...faith is the eyeglasses which God gives us to see properly the world in which we live.
The young man saw something new. It was not very pleasant for him.Before faith the "no problem" situation was much more comfortable....perhaps we will be called to see things which we might just as soon not see. It is in seeing with the eyes of faith, no matter how difficult, that we are led to the truth of God.

TUESDAY OF THE THIRTY-THIRD WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 19:1-10)) Zacchaeus was a strong man. He must have taken an awful lot of abuse "you are a sinner what right do you have to be with the master".Some people probably thought he was very presumptuous, some might of even thought that he was bragging when he told of how much he gave away. Zacchaeus stood his ground. He saw Jesus and the opinions of people were not about to take him away from the Lord.
He knew the Lord liked him, he knew the Lord had called him, he knew that he was going to share the table with the Lord. These gave him the strength to continue. This is something the disciple, just as Zacchaeus did, always has to remember. Otherwise we may start listening to wrong voices.
There are people who do not want us to walk with the Lord. Most of the time they do not express it exactly that way, a lot more subtle. The meaning is the same. We climb the tree, we see the Lord and hear his call. Then all of sudden the world starts closing in on us. We find that our life of faith is at times a battle...a battle with the world and what it wants to do to us.
The thing which these forces want to take away is the conviction that the Lord has truly called us and wants us to be with Him. With all the talk about "affirmation" there are so many currents in the world which want to deny real affirmation and to affirm us in a way that is comfortable to them. Zaccheaus made people uncomfortable because he did not fit into the mold which they wanted him to climb into. Jesus made people uncomfortable because he affirmed people in strange and marvelous ways. Zaccheaus had the courage to walk with the way Jesus said He was.

WEDNESDAY OF THE THRITY-THIRD WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 19:11-28) The nobleman goes, leaves his property to others, is rejected, comes back and demands an accounting....sound familiar. It does to me. In this simple story about stewardship we also have the place of the Church in the world . We are in the "waiting " period and that means we are being asked to remember who we are waiting for. The story of today is often times left as a moral story of responsibility. This of course is good. But the stewardship has to be kept in the broad scope of not only personal but personal inside the history of the Church.
We are reminded that our acts are ecclesial acts.The stewardship we exercise over our talents is not to be looked at outside of our relationship to the Body.
In a real sense my actions determine what the Church is...not essentially but certainly the way it is in the world.
If I perform acts of justice than the Church is just, to the extent that I do not do what I am supposed to do, to that extent the Church is not what it is supposed to be.
The talents which we reminded of I think are twofold. On the one side I have the personal talents with which God has blessed me...on the other side these personal gifts have the communal sense of being inside of and for the Church. All gifts all talents are for the community.
Thinking along these lines I often recall my favorite composer, Beethoven. Can you imagine Beethoven having finished his 9thSympony and putting it in the top drawer of his desk. Of course not. How much joy is in the world because he did not do that. His talent has touched the lives of so many people.
We write our own symphonies by using what God has given us.

THURSDAY OF THE THIRTY-THIRD WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 19:41-44) I hesitate to write words about this scene. There is a fear that anything I put down on paper will take the power from the scene of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem.
Human words might destroy what Our Lord wants to say…a shared dream denied.
Jerusalem turns its back on the dream of God for it...this is what makes Jesus sad. Not rejection, but rather that they have chosen the lesser path.
The view of Jerusalem from the traditional sight of this scene is beautiful...it is panoramic. One could from this spot half way up the Mt.Olives stretch out his arms and embrace the entire city. From this spot, half way between the Garden of Gethseme and the Church of the Ascension, He must have seen the people going into the Temple, he saw other people going about the ordinary things of life. He must have seen the children playing in the streets. How sad that the dream was not heard.

FRIDAY OF THE THIRTY-THIRD WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 19:45-48)"they were hanging on his words"....an intensity comes out of these words...a silence...a sense of being fed...hope...love....all these are what the word of the Lord gives us. To "hang on" what a wonderful expression to describe the way we should receive the word of God.
We read scripture everyday. As I re-read the words "hanging on" I had to look at the way the words of scripture, which are truly His words, pass through my mind and heart. They are read and instead of being hung onto, all too often are forgotten very shortly after being read. They are the light which brighten my path. They are the food upon which I should live. They are the "rain" which is sent from heaven to moisten my heart. So often they are forgotten. The faith that Jesus is speaking to me is forgotten.
The words I read are expressions of the Lord giving himself to me. They are the life sharing words of His life coming into me. Often they pass like a summer cloud or if at first received so often my heart changes like an autumn sky.
Many conversations take place within us. So many voices...our own, the world's...inside the noise of our hearts to pick out the word which the Lord has given us.
How to do this? One point which may help is that when we read scripture to get ourselves into a frame of mind in which we are not "reading" but "listening"...the Lord is standing in front of us speaking. As we listen we must be patient because what He says on a particular day may not be part of our lives. Not every word He speaks is relevant at every time. They are always true but may not hit us. When I am happy ,for example, reading the passages about "taking up ones cross" although I accept it does not really enter my life. In this sense, I have to always be patient because the Word which He speaks will at sometime be part of my life.

SATURDAY OF THE THIRTY-THIRD WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 20:27-40) Jesus is always asking us to look beyond. Today's Gospel is another example of this....the Sadducees were on one level and Jesus said: No, there is more to the story than this.
This Gospel passage asks us to make sure we are not looking at life through the one-dimensional outlook of the Sadducees. They looked at the things of this world as though they were the complete story, the end of the book. Jesus is saying that the final chapter has not been written yet. To look at life as chapters filling out the story which God wants to and is writing. We have to wait . We have the assurance of the Lord that it will end happily. The things which go to make life up are not the "end of the story".