Saint Wenceslaus: "the one who is least among all of you is the one who is the greatest.”

Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.

-- Lk 9:46-50

Martyrdom is the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith: it means bearing witness even unto death. The martyr bears witness to Christ who died and rose, to whom he is united by charity. He bears witness to the truth of the faith and of Christian doctrine. He endures death through an act of fortitude. "Let me become the food of the beasts, through whom it will be given me to reach God."

-- CCC 2473

Image: Saint Wenceslaus of Bohemia

TWENTY-SIXTH Sunday: "if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out"

Numbers 11, 25-29; Psalm 19: 8, 10, 12-14; James 5, 1-6; St. Mark 9, 38-43. 45. 47-48

Some think that the preaching of the Church should not include the mention of hell. The Church requires the priest or deacon to preach on the text of the Scriptures, and in our Gospel not only does the Lord mention the existence of hell, he goes on to describe this state of final and everlasting separation from the love and goodness of God.

The Church, in faithfulness to the Lord, teaches about the existence of hell and preaches about it because the Lord himself spoke of its existence. To have a distaste for the discussion of hell or the reality of evil is the choice of the individual. We are called, though, not merely to be good such that we have a distaste for evil or for speaking about it; we are made to be holy as God is holy, and therefore to be satisfied not merely with being good but, much more, to long to be saints.

The saints faced the reality of hell by taking responsibility for their moral choices and for availing themselves of Christ's mercy in Confession and the Eucharist on a frequent basis. The Lord teaches the people in our Gospel about the reality of hell in order to inform them that they must take responsibility for their actions and realize that they can choose to be eternally separated from God and all that is good. He teaches that free and wholehearted service to the poor, the hungry and the thirsty are the good works which reflect interior holiness. He teaches that scandalizing those whose faith is weak is a mortal sin, punishable by the greatest of penalties. We are to avoid sin and scandal by rejecting the near occasions of sin. And if we fail to root sin out of our lives, it is by our own choice that we "go to hell, to the unquenchable fire."

Jesus often speaks of Gehenna, of "the unquenchable fire" reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost. (Cf. Mt 5:22, 29; 10:28; 13:42, 50; Mk 9:43-48) Jesus solemnly proclaims that he "will send his angels, and they will gather...all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,"(Mt 13:41-42) and that he will pronounce the condemnation: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!" (Mt 25:41) (CCC 1034)

There is no middle way: we either go to heaven, perhaps by way of a purification from our attachment to sin, called purgatory, or we are consigned to hell "where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.

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

(See also paragraphs 1034 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.)

Art: Hieronymus Bosch, Last Judgment.

Saturday, 25th Wk: “Pay attention to what I am telling you."

... The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from them so that they should not understand it, and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

-- Lk 9:43b-45

As for the Son, he effects his own Resurrection by virtue of his divine power. Jesus announces that the Son of man will have to suffer much, die, and then rise. Elsewhere he affirms explicitly: "I lay down my life, that I may take it again. . . I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." "We believe that Jesus died and rose again."

-- CCC 649

Friday, 25th Wk: "Jesus was praying in solitude"

... and the disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” They said in reply, “John the Baptist; others, Elijah; still others, ‘One of the ancient prophets has arisen.’” Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said in reply, “The Christ of God.”

-- Lk 9:18-22

Jesus often draws apart to pray in solitude, on a mountain, preferably at night. He includes all men in his prayer, for he has taken on humanity in his incarnation, and he offers them to the Father when he offers himself. Jesus, the Word who has become flesh, shares by his human prayer in all that "his brethren" experience; he sympathizes with their weaknesses in order to free them. It was for this that the Father sent him. His words and works are the visible manifestation of his prayer in secret.
-- CCC 2602

(Christ in the Garden of Olives, after Francesco Albani, oil on canvas, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Chambery.)

Thursday, 25th Wk: "rebuild the house of the LORD.”

Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening,
and he was greatly perplexed because some were saying,
“John has been raised from the dead”;
others were saying, “Elijah has appeared”;
still others, “One of the ancient prophets has arisen.”
But Herod said, “John I beheaded.
Who then is this about whom I hear such things?”
And he kept trying to see him.

-- Lk 9:7-9

Far from having been hostile to the Temple, where he gave the essential part of his teaching, Jesus was willing to pay the Temple-tax, associating with him Peter, whom he had just made the foundation of his future Church. He even identified himself with the Temple by presenting himself as God's definitive dwelling-place among men. Therefore his being put to bodily death presaged the destruction of the Temple, which would manifest the dawning of a new age in the history of salvation: "The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father."

-- CCC 586

Christ is the true temple of God, "the place where his glory dwells"; by the grace of God, Christians also become the temples of the Holy Spirit, living stones out of which the Church is built.

-- CCC 1197

Wednesday, 25th Wk: “Take nothing for the journey"

Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.
And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.

-- Lk 9:1-6

Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father who takes care of his children's smallest needs: "Therefore do not be anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?". . . Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well."

-- CCC 305

God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.

-- CCC 2115

Tuesday 25thWk: "The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him"

... but were unable to join him because of the crowd. He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they wish to see you.” He said to them in reply, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”

-- Lk 8:19-21

The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ's birth "did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it." And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the "Ever-virgin".

-- CCC 499

Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact James and Joseph, "brothers of Jesus", are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls "the other Mary". They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression.

-- CCC 500