31st Week, Tuesday, Nov 4th; St Charles Borromeo
Romans 12:5-16 / Luke 14:15-24
We are one body in Christ; We have different gifts.
Ida Wallestad is a resident of a senior citizens' home. One day she was taking her usual leisurely stroll for her arthritis. Suddenly she spotted two bright nickels on the sidewalk. "A believer in lucky coins, she was wondering how she could overcome her handicap of an unbending back, when along came a blind man with a cane.
"Telling him about her discovery and difficulty, she put the top of his cane beside the coins. His better back enabled him to follow down the cane with his hand and pick up the money. They divided the treasure and the luck." Detroit News
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How do we share our talents and gifts with the other members of Christ's body? We can't really pray to God as our Father if we don't treat the needy in our midst as brothers and sisters.
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We belong together as members of the same body of Christ, each with one’s gifts and talents, with one’s own contribution to make for the well-being of the whole and for the service of others, in the solidarity of one common destiny in Christ. We are like guests at the same table, where there is room for everyone, also for those who are the last and the least in our merely human system of values. We belong together at the same table.
Today’s Gospel has partly the same theme as that of yesterday: that in the kingdom of God, we have to open our homes and hearts to the poor, the neglected, and the people without name or fame. This is why we take the messages of the first reading of years I and II.
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Path and vision can change lives
The double invitation in the gospel indicates the importance the Lord places on us and the quality of the feast that has been prepared for us. A feast is a food exchange. Everything given in this party can be obtained with money too. But only if you feel the heart of the inviter hidden in what is given, it becomes festive meal and sharing of love.
Refusing an invitation is same as insulting the inviter. The most dangerous excuses are those with which we fool ourselves. One of the unrecognized characteristics of excuses is that theyaccuse as well as excuse because they reveal our true priorities. The excuses we offer reveal the activities and commitments we hold to be of greater importance like possession, trade and pleasure. If we analyse well, these three big excuses are what usually hold our lives captive. As a result, we are living as physically disabled people who have lost their health, as poor who have lost the benefit of their work, as cripples who have lost their true relationships, and as blind people who have lost all hope in life.
In fact, none of us are kept away from God’s love due to our sinful state instead we just make excuses. Some others would have given anything to have the opportunity that we declined. However, God is not discouraged nor annoyed. He doesn’t suspend the feast but reproposes the invitation, extending it beyond any reasonable limit. Thus, the Gospel, rejected by some, finds an unexpected welcome in many other hearts at different moments.
The first reading retraces that those who accepted the gospel become members of one body in Christ. Each of us is shared by God with different gifts. Gifts do not refer to position or domination but responsibility. Greater the gifts, higher the sensitivity, consciousness and responsibility. One who considers self as much gifted with God’s grace or by race is called to embrace and extend the self in the service of others. Only those who dare to put aside their excuses can ever know the joy of confession, the peace of forgiveness, or the thrill of living by faith. Today the Lord extends His invitation to us to be partakers of the life banquet for and with others. What’s our response?
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Opening Prayer
Lord our God, you have made us like parts of a body dependent on one another. Teach us to love one another, for only when we are united can we live in hope and joy and persevere in trials. Only when we are one can we relieve the suffering that oppresses many of our neighbors far and near. Give us this unity in love that unites us beyond the boundaries of death with you and one another, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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Saint Charles Borromeo, 1538-1584
Feast Day November 4
Charles Borromeo was born in northern Italy in 1538 to an established and wealthy family. Trained in civil and canon law in Pavia, he was called to Rome as a young man by his uncle, Pope Pius IV, to be secretary of state at the Vatican. “Always clear and precise in his views, firm in his demeanor, and constant in the execution of his projects,” as one biographer has remarked, he played an important role in convincing Pius to reconvene the Council of Trent, which sought to address corruption in a sixteenth-century church beleaguered by Protestantism. Under the auspices of that council, beginning in 1563 Borromeo supervised the writing of an accurate catechism, rewrote liturgical texts and music, and began enforcing clerical reform in Rome. Pope Pius IV named Borromeo archbishop of Milan but kept him in Rome performing a multitude of official functions.
When Borromeo arrived in Milan, he faced a daunting task. Milan was the largest archdiocese in Italy at the time, with more than 3,000 clergy and 800 thousand people. Both its clergy and laity had drifted from church teaching. The selling of indulgences and ecclesiastical positions was prevalent; monasteries were “full of disorder”; many religious were “lazy, ignorant, and debauched,” and some did not even understand how to properly administer the sacraments. The city had seen no resident bishop for 80 years. Borromeo immediately called a synod of his bishops to inform them of the new decrees. Setting an example of personal frugality and order, Borromeo reduced his household staff, forbade his retainers to accept any presents, and sold some of his property to help feed the poor. He began preaching in churches and monasteries, combining “exhortation with intimidation.” He also addressed the backsliding of laypeople, curtailing Sunday entertainments and requiring that all teachers profess the faith. Always interested in religious education, Borromeo established the Confraternities of Christian Doctrine to teach religion to children, and the organization grew to include 740 schools, three thousand catechists, and forty thousand students in Sunday schools.
Borromeo’s rigor predictably made him enemies. Before Borromeo went to Milan, while he was overseeing reform in Rome, a nobleman remarked that the latter city was no longer a place to enjoy oneself or to make a fortune. “Carlo Borromeo has undertaken to remake the city from top to bottom,” he said, predicting dryly that the reformer’s enthusiasm “would lead him to correct the rest of the world once he has finished with Rome.” Once Borromeo arrived in his own diocese, he was forced to excommunicate and imprison some Milanese nobles, including some civil authorities, for defying his new policies. Some Milanese complained to the pope about Borromeo’s allegedly excessive rigor, but the archbishop was vindicated. When he ordered the reform of a wealthy and corrupt religious order, the Humiliati, foes attempted to assassinate him.
Borromeo also displayed a gentler aspect, however, and many of his people loved him. During a plague in 1576, he stayed in the city and cared for the sick, ordering that decorative church hangings be tailored into clothing for the destitute. During a famine he incurred great debts to feed more than 60,000 people. In more ordinary times, he liked to wander the city praying with the people. He established hospitals, colleges, orphanages, and other charitable institutions.
An energetic reformer who took “always the most austere and stringent interpretation” of the dictates of the Council of Trent, Charles Borromeo was instrumental in helping reinvigorate the church during the Counter-Reformation. His work, it is said, “gave new confidence to a shaken church.” He died in 1584, at age forty-six, tired from his labors. He was canonized in 1610 and is the patron saint of catechists.
