24th Week, Saturday, Sept 23: Saint Padre Pio

  24th Week, Saturday, Sept 23

1 Tim 6:13-16 / Luke 8:4-15

Paul gives parting advice; Keep God's commands till Christ returns.

 The ancient Greek poet and author Homer wrote a story called Odyssey. In one episode the story’s hero, Ulysses, meets a sea goddess named Calypso. She is immortal and will never die. During the course of the meeting, Calypso, who has never met a mortal before, becomes envious of Ulysses. The reason for her envy is interesting. Calypso realizes that Ulysses’ life is richer than hers. His decisions and actions are more important because his days on earth are numbered. Whatever he says or does is significant. Whatever he says or does is important. Paul makes a similar point with his Christian readers in today’s reading.

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To what extent do we share Calypso’s view of the life of a mortal? “T shall tell you a secret, my friend. Do Not wait for the last judgment; it takes place every day.” Albert Camus

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At the end of his letter, Paul gives as a program of life to Timothy to remain faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Paul ends the letter to Timothy by telling him to keep all that he has been told. When Christ left this world, he gave his Apostles a deposit of Faith, the Moral teaching and the Sacraments. He had not told his church to write the New Testament. He gave his church a tradition, which they had to hand on from generation to generation. This was trust property. The church is the trustee. The church has to keep this deposit till he comes again. That means for the lifetime of the church. He comes back to judge the church and to see what the church has done with the deposit. The church must keep the whole deposit pure and undefiled as given by Christ. It is true the church is the trustee, yet this deposit is also entrusted to us. We too are committed to this truth. We too have to keep this Faith fully, pure and undefiled. We too are guardians of the morality preached by the tradition of the church. We too are to keep the sacraments alive. Alive here means by living sacramental lives, by using them as the visible signs of the grace of God.

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The imagery of a seed being sown in the ground and then germinating into a plant is really amazing and astounding. And to realize that the plant bears almost no resemblance to the seed that it came from is also very intriguing. Maybe perhaps the only visible connection is in the seeds that it bears. Hence, we can say that nature bears an indication to the mystery of life, here as well as hereafter. 

In the gospel, Jesus also used the imagery of seeds, with the sower sowing seeds in various types of soil. Yet, Jesus also said: Listen, anyone who has ears to hear!

What we hear at Mass, i.e. the prayers, the homily, the hymns, all these are like seeds of the mystery of God that are sown into our hearts. Whatever the state of our hearts may be, the seeds will remain there and will not go back to God without achieving what they were sent to do. 

Yet let us also do what is necessary for the seeds to bear fruit. Just like the seed must die in order to bear a harvest, we too must die to ourselves in order for the Word of God to become alive in us. But we must first listen to the Word of God, and then our hearts will begin to bear fruit that will last.

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We hear today Luke’s version of the parable of the seed. In Jesus’ original intent, it pictured the difficult growth of the kingdom towards its final accomplishment, of which also Paul speaks in the first reading. Luke applies it in the explanation of the parable to the reception of the Word of God and the life of faith in people’s hearts. God sows the seed, but people receive it differently and react to it in various ways, for it is hard to let it grow and remain loyal to it in the humble and sometimes difficult realities of daily life. How does God’s Word grow and bear fruit in us?

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Prayer

Lord our God, we thank you for speaking to us the Word of your Son, Jesus Christ, and sowing in our hearts and minds the seeds of faith. Open our ears to his Word, day after day, that it may grow in us in pain and effort and joy, that it be rooted ever more deeply and bear fruits of justice and love, until the final coming of Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord forever. Amen

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Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, 1887-1968

Feast Day September 23

Critics of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina regarded him as an anomaly, a throwback to earlier times when Christians expected saints to do weird things. “I thought we left such legends back in the Middle Ages,” said one incredulous observer. I suspect he had in mind saints like Joseph of Cupertino, who flew through the air at the sight of a statue of Mary. However, Padre Pio’s many disciples regarded him as a saint as much for his charity, generosity, and tenderness as for the extraordinary mystical phenomena attributed to him.

Miracles happened every day of Padre Pio’s life. Like other wonder-workers such as Francis of Paola, Pio freely contradicted inviolable laws of nature. He appeared in two places at the same time to help people in trouble. He summoned friends by mental telepathy or by causing them to smell the scent of violets, which was associated with his presence. He read people’s thoughts and used that special knowledge to tease them. He dumbfounded people in the confessional by describing all their sins in detail. He accurately predicted future events, including his own death. He healed people of deafness, blindness, and incurable diseases. And for fifty years he bore Christ’s wounds on his body and suffered enormously because of them.

How do we understand the appearance of such a “medieval” figure in our contemporary world? Perhaps we should not be surprised that God acts dramatically to get our attention when we lose sight of spiritual realities. God sent Padre Pio to us as a light to challenge the darkness of the mid-twentieth century and to offer hope to a world racked by depression and war.