20th Week, Thursday, August 22
Ezekiel 36:23-28 / Matthew 22:1-14
God makes a promise; "I will give you a new heart and a new spirit."
An accident left 17-year-old Joni Eareckson a quadriplegic. Her body was completely broken and helpless. But even more broken than her body were her heart and her spirit. She wondered how she would ever be able to live out the rest of her life in her tragic condition. Yet, thanks to prayer and to her daily reading of the Bible, she began to glimpse possibilities in life that she never dreamed of before her accident. Today, Joni is an accomplished painter (holding the brush in her teeth), a best-selling author, a singer, and a popular lecturer to young people. God, indeed, breathed into her a new heart and a new spirit. *** Do we believe that God can use us in ways we never dreamed to be possible? Do we believe he can use us to work miracles? "There is nothing that God cannot do," through us, if we but let him. Luke 1:37
***
We have heard it said that love is many a splendored thing. Indeed, it truly is, and every human heart longs for that many splendored love. But the problem comes when the longing becomes a demand for love. Demand for love makes it a many horrored thing. So love moves from beauty to tragedy when the demand comes in and that is where loving turns into hating.
Yet true love is indeed a many splendored thing when it comes from God. That love is expressed in the 1st reading when God spoke to His people through the prophet Ezekiel : You shall be My people and I will be your God. It is a self-giving love and it is also a love that makes no demands, but only invites others to give and to share in it. Like the wedding banquet parable in the gospel, God does not force us to love Him.He invites us to come to Him and be loved by Him and to be His people. It is in God that we see that true love is indeed a many splendored thing.
May we learn to love as God has loved us.
***
CALLED TO THE FEAST
Introduction
Israel had profaned God’s name among the nations, making it look weak when he had to send Israel into exile. Now Ezekiel consoles them when they are in exile. He will again restore his people, giving them a new heart and a new spirit.
All are invited to the kingdom of God, even repeatedly, the good and the bad alike. Salvation is open to all. But they should be willing, they must respond to the call. And once they respond, they should be consistent. They must share in the death struggle of Christ against evil, to live with the life of Christ. The force to live the Christ life is indeed given to us in the Eucharistic meal. There the Lord prepares us for the royal marriage feast.
Opening Prayer
Merciful Father of all people, you open the doors of your kingdom to invite us all, good and bad alike, to share the life of Jesus, your Son. Give us the wisdom and the strength to respond to your generous call with the whole of our being. Help us to go the loyal way to you and to one another of Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord, who lives with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Commentary
Faith ultimately is a matter of the heart, not simply feast days and rituals. Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel speaks of a new era wherein the Lord will renew the religious spirit within us. The law will not be written on stone tablets but on the flesh of the human heart. Cleansed of our impurities, we will respond to God from inner conviction and with a true sense of personal purpose. Religion, to be authentic, must go beyond externals and emanate from the very core of our being. Many of the people in today’s parable saw the wedding invitation as simply another calendar event, not a divine calling to be taken with the utmost seriousness. While not as guilty as those who refused, the improperly clothed guest lacks a true appreciation of what God is offering. The lesson should strike us as being particularly meaningful. The fact that we are identified as Christian or Catholic says very litde in and of itself. But we all know what it means to take faith seriously. We have met it in people many times. The kind word, availability, service to others, as well as love of the Eucharist. With these values in place, we are properly dressed for the wedding. We will never be embarrassed by being improperly clothed. We have received that new Spirit within us, the first gift of the risen Christ.
Points to Ponder
Religious faith: stone tablets or a new heart Excuses:
God’s interests will come later
The wedding feast: being properly attired
Intercessions
– That the Lord may gather all peoples in one common praise of his name, we pray:
– That the lives of all Christians may radiate joy and hope and bring a feast of happiness to others, we pray:
– That the communities without priests, isolated and abandoned as they often feel, may receive the word of the Lord as their food and occasionally also the Lord’s body, we pray:
Prayer over the Gifts
Lord our God, in these signs of bread and wine you invite us now to the table of your Son Jesus Christ, as a token and pledge of your unending feast meal in heaven. Give us the strength to respond to your call, that we may become new in Christ and live his life day after day, until you let us share in his glory for ever and ever.
Prayer after Communion
Loving Father, we thank you for giving us your Son as our food and drink on the long road to you. Through this Eucharist make us resemble him more and more, that we may respect and love him in one another, that we may be his image to the world, and that you may recognize his traits in us when you welcome us to the everlasting feast of joy. Grant us this through Christ our Lord.
Blessing
All are invited to the Lord’s feast meal, but not all come. Are some absent because we do not make them feel welcome? Let us do all we can to make people feel at home with us. May God bless you all, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
***
The Queenship of Mary, August 22
Isaiah 9:1-6 / Lk 1:26-38
Introduction
“From this day on, all generations will call me blessed,” sings Mary. What does it mean, to call Mary, the humble virgin, blessed? It means nothing else than to be filled with admiration and to adore the marvel which God worked in her, to read from her that God looks to the humble one and lifts her up, that God’s coming into this world does not seek the heights but the depths, that God glory consists in making great what is small. To call Mary blessed means, together with her to ponder admiringly the ways of God, who lets his Spirit blow where he wants, to obey him and with Mary humbly to say: “As you have spoken, so be it.” (Bonhoeffer)
Being Worthy
Paul commends the Thessalonian Church for her faith, love, and endurance amidst persecutions. She has lived her faith well. However, he also prays that God may make her worthy of His calling. This is the nature of God’s calling: He calls us when we are still unworthy; in spite of our unworthiness and not because of our worthiness. God, then, keeps working in us – provided we open ourselves to His Grace – to make us worthy of the call that He had gratuitously given to us already. We are an unfinished work until our last breath and until we reach Him. Mother Mary, whose queenship we celebrate today, is our prime example of what destiny awaits us if we cooperate with God’s Grace in His work of making us worthy. And if we resist, we resist at our own peril: the woes pronounced by Jesus would then be our destiny.
We exalt and glorify Jesus Christ as the "King of kings, and the Lord of Lords". So for the Church to confer onto Mary the title of "Queen" is certainly fitting, since at the Visitation, Elizabeth called Mary "mother of my Lord", and hence she is also mother of the King. Indeed, from the earliest Church traditions, Mary has been given the title "Queen" and subsequently "Queen of Heaven", and from that title there are other expressions of her queenship. The feast is a logical follow-up to the Assumption and is now celebrated on the octave day of that feast. God assumed Mary into heaven, body and soul, and in doing so, He bestowed upon her the queenship of all creation, after Jesus Christ who is the King of all creation. As Jesus exercised his kingship on earth by serving His Father and His fellow human beings, so did Mary exercise her queenship. As the glorified Jesus remains with us as our king till the end of time, so does Mary, who was assumed into heaven and crowned queen of heaven and earth. So as the Church celebrates the queenship of Mary, let us remember what she told the servants at the wedding at Cana - "Do whatever He tells you" (Jn 2:5). But, in order to do what Jesus is telling us, we have to have the spiritual sensitivity of Mary who knows what the will of God is for her and submits herself to it. Let us consecrate ourselves to her Immaculate Heart and unite ourselves in a devotion to her, be it the praying of the Rosary of other forms of Marian devotion. And like Mary our Mother, we too will say with her: Let it be done unto me according to Your Word.
***
In the fourth century Saint Ephrem called Mary “Lady” and “Queen.” Later Church fathers and doctors continued to use the title. Hymns of the 11th to 13th centuries address Mary as queen: “Hail, Holy Queen,” “Hail, Queen of Heaven,” “Queen of Heaven.” The Dominican rosary and the Franciscan crown as well as numerous invocations in Mary’s litany celebrate her queenship.
The feast is a logical follow-up to the Assumption, and is now celebrated on the octave day of that feast. In his 1954 encyclical To the Queen of Heaven, Pius XII points out that Mary deserves the title because she is Mother of God, because she is closely associated as the New Eve with Jesus’ redemptive work, because of her preeminent perfection, and because of her intercessory power.
Reflection
As Saint Paul suggests in Romans 8:28–30, God has predestined human beings from all eternity to share the image of his Son. All the more was Mary predestined to be the mother of Jesus. As Jesus was to be king of all creation, Mary, in dependence on Jesus, was to be queen.
All other titles to queenship derive from this eternal intention of God. As Jesus exercised his kingship on earth by serving his Father and his fellow human beings, so did Mary exercise her queenship. As the glorified Jesus remains with us as our king till the end of time (Matthew 28:20), so does Mary, who was assumed into heaven and crowned queen of heaven and earth.
