St. Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions, Martyrs: "You will be hated by all because of my name"

... you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans.

-- Mt 10:16-23

Jesus does not reveal the Holy Spirit fully, until he himself has been glorified through his Death and Resurrection. Nevertheless, little by little he alludes to him even in his teaching of the multitudes, as when he reveals that his own flesh will be food for the life of the world. He also alludes to the Spirit in speaking to Nicodemus, to the Samaritan woman, and to those who take part in the feast of Tabernacles. To his disciples he speaks openly of the Spirit in connection with prayer and with the witness they will have to bear.

-- CCC 728

We can therefore hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will. In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere "to the end" and to obtain the joy of heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ. In hope, the Church prays for "all men to be saved." She longs to be united with Christ, her Bridegroom, in the glory of heaven:

Hope, O my soul, hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end. (St. Teresa of Avila)

-- CCC 1821

Sunday 14: Christ's power as prophet is always present in His Church with the weakness of his human nature

Believers cannot pick their favorite "part" of Jesus Christ. We cannot love Him as God but reject Him as man, and we cannot prefer and focus on his human nature while neglecting His divinity. We must love and worship the whole Christ or we do not love Him at all.

Throughout history men and women have struggled to love God. Jesus Christ was not accepted in his home town: "Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary?" said the people who knew Him from His youth. It was not easy for them to put together both parts: the part of Jesus they could see and hear and the aspect of Jesus that He presented to them with His words of prophecy: "The Father and I are one". And as a result many rejected Him.

In the history of the Church we find the same experience recurs over and over. The Christological controversies that gave rise to the Councils and the teachings on the human and divine natures of Christ are another expression of this same struggle to believe all that God reveals.

What can these facts from history teach us about our own story of faith? Our own flesh sometimes serves as a scandal: just as some doubted that God could be present in the flesh of Jesus Christ, so today we struggle to believe that Jesus Christ can be incarnated again sacramentally through the flesh of men and women in the Church.

But the flesh is the "hinge of salvation".

"The flesh is the hinge of salvation" (Tertullian, De res. 8, 2: PL 2, 852). We believe in God who is creator of the flesh; we believe in the Word made flesh in order to redeem the flesh; we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, the fulfillment of both the creation and the redemption of the flesh. (CCC 1015)

The flesh is weak. In the early centuries of the Church there were many Christians who fell away from the Faith when tested. They were told all that they were required to do was put some incense on a brazier to worship the false gods of the Romans and they would be spared a martyr's death and all too many took the Romans up on this offer, committing the sin of apostasy. We forget about this part of the story, or imagine it did not happen because, rightly enough, we hear much about the deeds of the Roman martyrs but we will never hear the stories of those who betrayed Jesus Christ and in our human weakness we presume it didn't happen. But it did. And it happens still today.

You see, Jesus Christ says He is present in the least among us. This group includes the unborn child. Sometimes all that we have to do is go into a voting booth, in complete privacy, and throw the switch to vote for someone who uses even the power of the highest of elected offices to promote through personal and vocal support, advance through appointed co-workers, support financially and fund through mandated taxes the killing of unborn children when we had a morally acceptable alternative and no one ever knows that we cooperated in a moral evil. Except God. And ourselves.

The real tragedy here is that the privacy given to voters should be seen as a protection for doing the good, the right thing, but the recent history of our weak human nature demonstrates that all too often even Catholic Christians have acted in such a way as to worship the false gods of the economy or of the dream of having a president who looks different than all the other presidents we have had or of saying that human sacrifice is ever necessary for some lesser moral good, even for a bit of food on the table.

But we are responsible, even in our weakness, for knowing and doing what is right. Saint Paul tells us of the promise of God that we may do what is right at all times: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

And, if the time should come that we are ridiculed or rejected for doing what is holy and right in solidarity with Jesus Christ and with Saint Paul we too say,

"I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses,
in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.
Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults,
hardships, persecutions, and constraints,
for the sake of Christ;
for when I am weak, then I am strong."

At this Mass today Jesus Christ will become present again for you and for me as he was for the villagers of the town where He was born and we will be free to accept or to reject Him as they did. And we will come forward in procession to see Him present under the sign of bread but knowing through the power of Faith that He gives Himself thus as God. Our act of receiving Him in this way will be a sign that we accept all His teachings and commandments as our own way of life.

And we will remember that His power is given to us in the Eucharist that our weakness may be the strength of Faith by which we say "Amen", "I believe", and that we may then go forth to act as believers in all that we do for His sake.

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.

((((,,))))

S Maria Goretti: "you will not die”

... the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him, upon those who hope for his kindness, to deliver them from death

-- Psalm 33:2-3, 10-11, 18-19

The Church encourages us to prepare ourselves for the hour of our death. In the ancient litany of the saints, for instance, she has us pray: "From a sudden and unforeseen death, deliver us, O Lord"; to ask the Mother of God to intercede for us "at the hour of our death" in the Hail Mary; and to entrust ourselves to St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death.

Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience. . . . Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow. . . .

Praised are you, my Lord, for our sister bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape.
Woe on those who will die in mortal sin!
Blessed are they who will be found
in your most holy will,
for the second death will not harm them.

-- CCC 1014

Photo: Body of Saint Maria Goretti in the crypt church of the shrine dedicated to her at Nettuno, Italia.

S Anthony Mary Zaccaria: "ask"

... the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest

-- Mt 9:32-38

Christian petition is centered on the desire and search for the Kingdom to come, in keeping with the teaching of Christ. There is a hierarchy in these petitions: we pray first for the Kingdom, then for what is necessary to welcome it and cooperate with its coming. This collaboration with the mission of Christ and the Holy Spirit, which is now that of the Church, is the object of the prayer of the apostolic community. It is the prayer of Paul, the apostle par excellence, which reveals to us how the divine solicitude for all the churches ought to inspire Christian prayer. By prayer every baptized person works for the coming of the Kingdom.

-- CCC 2632

"Christ, sent by the Father, is the source of the Church's whole apostolate"; thus the fruitfulness of apostolate for ordained ministers as well as for lay people clearly depends on their vital union with Christ. In keeping with their vocations, the demands of the times and the various gifts of the Holy Spirit, the apostolate assumes the most varied forms. But charity, drawn from the Eucharist above all, is always "as it were, the soul of the whole apostolate."

-- CCC 864

Independence Day: "In you and your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing."

"I, the LORD, am the God of your forefather Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you are lying I will give to you and your descendants."

-- Gn 28:10-22a

God has not willed to reserve to himself all exercise of power. He entrusts to every creature the functions it is capable of performing, according to the capacities of its own nature. This mode of governance ought to be followed in social life. The way God acts in governing the world, which bears witness to such great regard for human freedom, should inspire the wisdom of those who govern human communities. They should behave as ministers of divine providence.

-- CCC 1884

Feast of Saint Thomas, Apostle: "Unless I see ... I will not believe"

Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.

-- Jn 20:24-29

Even when faced with the reality of the risen Jesus the disciples are still doubtful, so impossible did the thing seem: they thought they were seeing a ghost. "In their joy they were still disbelieving and still wondering." Thomas will also experience the test of doubt and St. Matthew relates that during the risen Lord's last appearance in Galilee "some doubted." Therefore the hypothesis that the Resurrection was produced by the apostles' faith (or credulity) will not hold up. On the contrary their faith in the Resurrection was born, under the action of divine grace, from their direct experience of the reality of the risen Jesus.

-- CCC 644

Monday, Week Thirteen: "I will not revoke my word"

"Follow me"

-- Mt 8:18-22

Christ invites his disciples to follow him by taking up their cross in their turn. By following him they acquire a new outlook on illness and the sick. Jesus associates them with his own life of poverty and service. He makes them share in his ministry of compassion and healing: "So they went out and preached that men should repent. And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them."

-- CCC 1506