32nd Week, Monday, November 13th
Wisdom 1:1-7 / Luke 17:1-6
Wisdom is a kindly spirit; God's wisdom pervades everything.
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To what extent do we try to see things, like disappointment, through God's eyes? "God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise. ... Christ Jesus ... became for us wisdom from God.” 1 Corinthians 1:27, 30
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The First Reading in Year I will be taken for a whole week from the Book of Wisdom. It was written in Greek in Alexandria, the century before the Christian era. Although he hopes non-Jews to read it too, the author advises mainly his co-religionists to seek wisdom in their faith in God rather than in the surrounding philosophical culture of Alexandria.
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The examination of conscience is a spiritual exercise in which we examine ourselves before the Lord in prayer and see how we had been in union with God and what sins we have committed. One question that we have to honestly ask ourselves is this: How many lies am I living out today? Yes, lies. Not just spoken lies, but also lies in actions, e.g., hypocrisy, craftiness, being cunning, being scheming, etc.
More importantly, we need to ask ourselves: How did my life get so cluttered with so many lies? The answer, simply is that, we deceive ourselves into believing that one little lie will be alright for just this once. But the truth is that one little lie will begin to complicate our lives. And it will multiply until our whole life becomes one big lie.
Essentially, that is what the 1st reading is saying: that Wisdom will never make its way into a crafty soul, nor stay in a body that is in debt to sin. Yes, the Spirit of the Lord shuns a person of deceit and lies and deception. The plain truth is this: if we can live with one sin, then we can live with many sins.
And Jesus warns us in today's gospel that an unrepentant sinner is an obstacle to others and we have to watch ourselves of the sins we commit. So, if we really desire to be truly wise, then inevitably we must be at odds with sin.
Because true wisdom, the wisdom that comes from God is at odds with sin and deceit. It is only with divine wisdom that we can see that virtue, honesty, faithfulness and humility is truly the way of life.
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There have been many incidents of scandal in the history of the world and the Church. Jesus warns his followers against causing scandal to others, especially to the little ones. Who are these “little ones”? The little ones are those who approach us in their dire and extreme need; they are those who lack knowledge and look up to us for inspiration; they are people who are vulnerable to our promptings and suggestions; they are people who have no human support. In short, they are vulnerable people who can easily be manipulated and exploited. Scandal is caused not only by what we do (commission) but also by what we fail to do (omission). Our very presence, words and silence can either be scandal or inspiration.
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Prayer
God of mercy and compassion, your Son Jesus Christ, has brought us together as a community of sinners that knows that you have pardoned us. When our weaknesses threaten our unity, remind us of our responsibility for one another. Let your unifying Spirit give us the strength to care for one another and to do all we can to remain a living, forgiving and welcoming community. May we meet in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen
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Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917)
Feast Day November 13
Traveling Can Be Exhausting
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini’s feast day is celebrated on November 13. Mother Cabrini, as she’s commonly called, spent her whole life traveling. She hardly ever stopped, and travel was a lot harder in her day than it is in ours.
There wasn’t much in Mother Cabrini’s early life to point to such a busy grown-up life. She was born in Italy and had ten brothers and sisters. Her parents were farmers, and their farmland wasn’t too far from a river called the Po. Little Frances could look down into the valley and watch the river make its way to the sea.
When Frances was twenty years old she left the farm and started working as a teacher. During this time, Frances grew in faith and maturity. She took religious vows as a sister, worked hard to save a struggling orphanage, and decided to start her own religious order.
By the late 1880s, Mother Cabrini became interested in a new problem. Hundreds of thousands of Italians moved to America, seeking a way out of the poverty of their new land. Very few of these immigrants were successful right away. Most lived in worse poverty than they’d endured back in Italy. They lived in crowded and dirty apartments, lived on scraps, and were unable to find work. Sad stories traveled back to the home country, right to Mother Cabrini. So Mother Cabrini set out on the long trip to America.
Over the next thirty-seven years, Mother Cabrini was constantly on the move, starting schools, orphanages, and hospitals for Italian immigrants, and others in need. In the first few years she traveled between New York, Nicaragua, and New Orleans. After having a dream in which she saw Mary tending to the sick lying in hospital beds, Mother Cabrini started Columbus Hospital in New York City.
After she founded the hospital, Mother Cabrini made trips back to Italy to organize more nuns for work in America. Between these trips, she and some sisters headed south to Argentina. The sisters went by way of Panama and then Lima, Peru. They made the journey by boat, train, mule, and on foot.
Back in the United States, Mother Cabrini traveled constantly taking her sisters to Chicago, Seattle, and Denver. It was in Chicago that Mother Cabrini, at the age of sixty-seven, passed away. She’d begun her work with just a handful of sisters. By the time she died, fifty houses of sisters were teaching, caring for orphans, and running hospitals. Her order had grown to almost a thousand sisters in all.
Mother Cabrini was obviously a very holy woman, and the church recognized her holiness by canonizing her in 1946 as the first American citizen to become a saint.
