Saturday, 30th Wk: "take the lowest place"

the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

-- Lk 14:1, 7-11

To become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom. For this, we must humble ourselves and become little. Even more: to become "children of God" we must be "born from above" or "born of God". Only when Christ is formed in us will the mystery of Christmas be fulfilled in us. Christmas is the mystery of this "marvelous exchange":

O marvelous exchange! Man's Creator has become man, born of the Virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity.

-- CCC 526

Art: Lucas Cranach the Elder (German, 1472–1553), Christ Blessing the Children, 1540s. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Source: MetMuseum.Org

Friday, 30th Wk : “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?"

“Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”

-- Lk 14:1-6

The Gospel reports many incidents when Jesus was accused of violating the sabbath law. But Jesus never fails to respect the holiness of this day. He gives this law its authentic and authoritative interpretation: "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath." With compassion, Christ declares the sabbath for doing good rather than harm, for saving life rather than killing. The sabbath is the day of the Lord of mercies and a day to honor God. "The Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath."

-- CCC 2173

Art: Giovanni Battista Pittoni, The Apotheosis of Saint Jerome with Saint Peter of Alcántara and an Unidentified Franciscan, about 1725, NATIONAL GALLERY OF SCOTLAND.

Thursday, 30th Wk: “Go away"

“Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I accomplish my purpose.

-- Lk 13:31-35

Christ's death was a real death in that it put an end to his earthly human existence. But because of the union which the person of the Son retained with his body, his was not a mortal corpse like others, for "it was not possible for death to hold him" and therefore "divine power preserved Christ's body from corruption." Both of these statements can be said of Christ: "He was cut off out of the land of the living", and "My flesh will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption." Jesus' Resurrection "on the third day" was the sign of this, also because bodily decay was held to begin on the fourth day after death.

-- CCC 627

Photo: "Il Cristo Velato", the veiled Christ, Chapel of San Severino in Napoli, Italia. Source: Photo Libero

Tuesday, 30th Wk: “What is the Kingdom of God like?"

It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden. When it was fully grown, it became a large bush and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.

-- Lk 13:18-21

Everyone is called to enter the kingdom. First announced to the children of Israel, this messianic kingdom is intended to accept men of all nations. To enter it, one must first accept Jesus' word:

The word of the Lord is compared to a seed which is sown in a field; those who hear it with faith and are numbered among the little flock of Christ have truly received the kingdom. Then, by its own power, the seed sprouts and grows until the harvest.

-- CCC 543

Photo source: DG Hall. For more info about the seed and plant of the mustard tree visit here.

Monday, 30th Wk: "you are set free"

He laid his hands on her,
and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.

-- Lk 13:10-17

Freedom and grace. The grace of Christ is not in the slightest way a rival of our freedom when this freedom accords with the sense of the true and the good that God has put in the human heart. On the contrary, as Christian experience attests especially in prayer, the more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom and confidence during trials, such as those we face in the pressures and constraints of the outer world. By the working of grace the Holy Spirit educates us in spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the Church and in the world:

Almighty and merciful God,
in your goodness take away from us all that is harmful,
so that, made ready both in mind and body,
we may freely accomplish your will.

-- CCC 1742

30th Sunday: "have mercy on us"

Jeremiah 31, 7-9; Psalm 126; Hebrews 5, 1-6; St. Mark 10, 46-52

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Christ walks the streets of the ancient city of Jericho in our Gospel, already thousands of years old in his own day. With his disciples and a great crowd following him, as our Lord is departing the city, Bartimaeus the blind beggar calls out in dire need: "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!" His prayer, of abasement before the divine Goodness, teaches us to recognize our own utter neediness before almighty God.

The blind, the handicapped, all those who labor under physical suffering are blessed, for these maladies serve as outward signs of their complete dependence upon God and His divine mercy. One's physical handicaps can be transformed into a spiritual advantage through faith which leads to sincere desire for the grace of forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life.

The gift of prayer is given so that we might respond with honesty to God, with unclouded recognition that every one of us is a Bartimaeus, suffering from blindness, physical or spiritual, and that we need the mercy of God to enlighten us, give us the true vision to see ourselves as we are and to accept the mercy and life of God to fill our emptiness. Our Christian love draws us in prayer and in life to make an effective offering of self, after the Lord's example. (CCC 459)

In the living tradition of prayer, each Church proposes to its faithful, according to its historic, social, and cultural context, a language for prayer: words, melodies, gestures, iconography. The Magisterium of the Church (Cf. DV 10) has the task of discerning the fidelity of these ways of praying to the tradition of apostolic faith; it is for pastors and catechists to explain their meaning, always in relation to Jesus Christ. (CCC 2663)

There is no other way of Christian prayer than Christ. Whether our prayer is communal or personal, vocal or interior, it has access to the Father only if we pray "in the name" of Jesus. The sacred humanity of Jesus is therefore the way by which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray to God our Father. (CCC 2664)

But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in his incarnation: JESUS. The divine name may not be spoken by human lips, but by assuming our humanity The Word of God hands it over to us and we can invoke it: "Jesus," "YHWH saves." (Cf. Ex 3: 14; 33: 19-23; Mt 1: 21) The name "Jesus" contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation and salvation. To pray "Jesus" is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him. (Rom 10:13; Acts 2:21; 3:15-16; Gal 2:20) (CCC 2666)

This simple invocation of faith developed in the tradition of prayer under many forms in East and West. The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners." It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light. (Cf. Mk 10: 46-52; Lk 18:13) By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior's mercy. (CCC 2667)

I look forward to meeting you here again next week as, together, we "meet Christ in the liturgy" -Fr. Cusick

(See also CCC 548, 2616.)

(Publish with permission.) http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/

Saturday, 29th Wk: "the spirit is alive"

If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you.

-- Rom 8:1-11

The term "flesh" refers to man in his state of weakness and mortality. The "resurrection of the flesh" (the literal formulation of the Apostles' Creed) means not only that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our "mortal body" will come to life again.

-- CCC 990