Tag: Kathryn Mulderink

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The Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes. We have heard them so often, seen them on posters, Facebook art, Instagram, even our daily planners… maybe we forget how revolutionary these words of Jesus are.

Jesus signals to the crowd that this is serious and official by sitting down. When rabbis sat down to teach, it meant that their words were official and doctrinal (we still refer to this tradition when we refer to the “Chair of Peter”, from which we receive official statements of the Church). Another signal we might miss because of the translation is the phrase “he began to teach them”; literally translated, this would say “he opened his mouth,” a phrase indicating an official declaration in the ancient world. St. Matthew tells us that Jesus went up the mountain – from whence the Law was given – and then sat down and opened his mouth; all this is to help us understand that Jesus is teaching something in a rather solemn way, from his Heart.

Each statement Jesus gives us in the Beatitudes is intended to overturn our very natural way of thinking, to proclaim that God’s ways are not our ways and that the Kingdom is established deep within every human heart and not necessarily obvious to worldly eyes. Unlike the rich and powerful of this world, who maintain their position by violence and treachery and self-will, citizens of the Kingdom of God are often oppressed and yet blessed. They are poor, mourning the present state of life, meek and insignificant to the world, yearning to live rightly according to the righteousness of God, merciful to others, pure of heart, sowing peace in the world. These words of Jesus turn worldly wisdom on its head. In our own world, we might read them as “Blessed are you if you are not driven by the desire for power, pleasure, prestige, position, possessions, good feelings, etc…Blessed are you if you are kind and merciful like the Father.”

Jesus says something else that is revolutionary: he links his teaching to himself. He does not say, “Here are some good rules, and you will be blessed even when you are persecuted for following them.” Rather, he says, “Blessed are you when they insult and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of ME. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.” The connection between what Jesus says and his very PERSON is unique in all of history; we must not simply accept his teaching, we must adhere to HIM. To the Jews, these were very strange words. They should not be strange to us! We must know Christ, adhere to Christ and be transformed in Christ so that we can be “other Christs” and bring God’s love and mercy to others.

This is what the Gospel is all about.

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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What IS the Kingdom of God like? To what can we compare it?

If you’ve spent any time thinking about the “ends of things,” the “final things,” the end point of existence, you’ve probably wondered about the Kingdom of God. What is it?

Jesus gives us comparisons that are intended to make us think and wonder even more. He tells us that it is like a mustard seed that a man planted in a garden, or like yeast that a woman mixed into some dough. Hardly images we might choose for the very Kingdom of God!

I’ve always found it interesting that Jesus used comparisons that both men and women of the time could understand really intimately. A man would know about leavening, but not in the same way that a woman who has actually made bread with her own hands would; he knows it in general, she knows the working up close, and the timing, and the need for warmth, and the mistakes that can be made. A woman would know something about planting tiny seeds, but not in the same way that a man who had actually planted it with his own hands would; she knows it in general, but he knows the ground clearing, the furrowing with the finger, the burying to the right depth, the watering, the waiting, the possibility that nothing will grow from this tiny seed.

What both of these comparisons have in common is that they begin small and hidden. They both remain inactive and, in a sense, “dead” unless they are placed in the right conditions to take on a new life, and they need these certain conditions to thrive. When they DO take on new life, they grow continually and expand to proportions much larger and life-giving than their original form would suggest: a sprinkle of leavening makes a whole batch of dough rise in grainy glory to feed the life of others; a tiny, hard, hot mustard seed grows into a bush large enough to support the life of birds in its branches.

The Church grew from the small “mustard seed” of apostles and disciples until it reached the ends of the earth. And the Kingdom of God which is planted in the heart of each one of us is likewise small and hidden, and it is for us to provide the right conditions for it to begin to grow interiorly: self-giving love of God and neighbor. When we do this, growing in virtue and deepening our transformation in Christ, the life of God’s love within us flourishes and becomes life-giving to others!

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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We have a clue to the probability that in today’s Gospel Jesus is addressing those who are against him rather than the crowd of goodwill followers by his use of the word “hypocrites,” usually reserved for the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus points out that they already know how to judge physical signs to predict what is coming, like the weather, but they do not know how to judge the subtler “signs of the times” to recognize more important things like the presence of the Messiah among them!

The context in which Luke places these words is a longer explication of how beloved we are, the shortness of our life on earth, the need for watchfulness, and the division between people that following Jesus will cause. He “shakes them up” a bit so that they will hear his reference to the importance of the present time and the need to attend to matters before it is too late, calling them to repentance while there is still time before judgment is rendered. His words are not meant to help them avoid legal difficulties with opponents before judges or to avoid earthly prisons. Rather, he is hoping to help them see that the time for peacekeeping and justice and charity is always now! He calls his hearers to act always as if this moment matters, because it does, and we cannot know how many more moments we will be on this earth.

These are valuable attitudes for right living and helping others to live uprightly as well! The Psalmist (Psalm 90:12) asks the Lord to help us know the shortness of life so that we may have WISDOM. Those who recognize this and act accordingly, making the most of each moment before God, live in gratitude and joy and wisdom.

What can we do each morning to begin the day with gratitude and the resolve to live the day in a way that will glorify God, serve others, and lead us to eternal joy?

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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“Beware… (but) do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.”

In this Gospel, Jesus goes from warning to reassuring. He first warns his close disciples to beware of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Why is this warning needed? Because Jesus plans to put them in positions of leadership of the Church He will establish, and He wants them to always remember and guard against the kind of superficial concerns and selfishness that keep the Pharisees from loving and serving truly. Authority has the tendency to stir in those who have it the desire to do what is expedient in order to keep it. Jesus says: Keep desire for truth and love and humility as the main concern, and don’t fall into the trap of self-righteous self-protection that the Pharisees have fallen into!

Then He addresses the crowd, which Luke points out has grown dramatically, to the point that they are trampling one another underfoot (the translation of the Greek is “tens of thousands”). Jesus now has so many followers that He could, if He desired, lead a rebellion to overthrow the Romans and at last take authority of the Kingdom that so many believed He had come to establish. But no; another lesson in authority is given: His Kingdom is not of this world, and will not be established by force. His Kingdom is quiet and hidden, expanding heart by heart as each person opens to Him and invites Jesus to reign within. This King expands his Kingdom by surrendering His whole self and His life for us.

But this Kingdom is also demanding! To enter into the Kingdom means we lovingly surrender all in return, and that the full Truth – of ourselves and of God – will eventually be known to all! In the interim, we need not fear anything, not even those who can take our mortal lives with violence, because this Kingdom we have longed for will be more fully ours after our death.

Our courage and faithfulness in the face of many difficulties arise from the truth of God’s great love for us and his never-failing help, his infinite loving kindness. We are not loved “en masse” but as individuals, even in the smallest details. God sees every detail of our lives, both the deep, hidden hurts and the tiny acts of loving service that go unnoticed by others. Jesus assures us that God knows the details we cannot know fully, that the very hairs of our head have all been counted. Even the sparrows, worth so little that a fifth one is thrown in when four are purchased, do not escape the providence of God.

And you, “you are worth more than many sparrows.”

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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This Gospel challenges us, as Jesus challenges the Scribes and Pharisees. It can also be easily misinterpreted to mean that the Law is not important. But a true interpretation recognizes that all things – even very good things – must be balanced by LOVE and must lead to Love.

A quick history:

The first sin was committed against God because Adam and Eve doubted His love and goodness toward them. Later, as the human race continued to move away from God, Abram was called to follow God in faith, and his descendants were also called to trust and obey, which they did with varying success. By the time of Moses, they have become a “stiff-necked people,” so this possibility of serving God in free faith is diminished considerably. But God has not given up: through Moses, He makes a new covenant carved in stone with them, a covenant under the Law. It’s helpful to note that this Law was given to set them apart and ensure freedom from sin and hopelessness in this world; if God wanted slaves, He would have left them in Egypt! This Law developed over time until it covered every aspect of life, which connected each person throughout the day with the truth that they were a Chosen People, from whom the Messiah would come, and kept them “clean” for the Temple observances, set apart for God.

The Scribes protected the Law, interpreted and explained it, and the explanations took on the sense of hundreds of additional rules. The sect of the Pharisees distinguished themselves by strict observance of these rules in the minutest details.

These Pharisees have been hounding Jesus on his lack of observance of the Law, which they consider paramount. This is the danger with Law: wherever there are rules, there is a temptation to think that strictly observing them is holiness before God. The Pharisees have slipped into the error of believing that objective adherence to the rules is the most important thing; they have missed the point that external rules are intended to lead us to deep interior conversion and conforming to God’s will, growing in love.

So Jesus calls them out, not saying that the Pharisees should not have followed the Law and paid their tithes, but that they should have ALSO paid attention to “judgment and to love for God.” He points out that they love themselves and their own ideas and reputations, loving to be honored and recognized. This is not loving God, but using the Law as a way of glorifying themselves. They also use it as a weapon, which is proven by the fact that they seek to trap him, and eventually appeal to the Law to execute him: “We have a Law, and according to that law he must die!” (John 19:6-7).

Jesus calls all of us to obey God’s laws, but to obey out of LOVE and not forget to help others so that we become the saints we are called to be!

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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Today’s brief Gospel presents a scene that most of us can relate to on some level. We know that Mary and Martha are sisters (and Lazarus is their brother) and that this family is one of those “resting places” for Jesus; he visited them intermittently throughout his preaching years. He knew them well, and they knew him well enough to complain to him and demand things from him! Martha, busy about household tasks while Mary sits at the feet of Jesus to listen to him, asks a rhetorical question: Don’t you even see, or care about, this unjust distribution of labor?! I’m doing all the work around here. “Tell her to help me.”

The Lord is always seeing things from a place above the fray of the moment, and He is artful about replying to people in ways that reframe the argument and draw them into a deeper understanding. Here, He acknowledges Martha’s busy-ness and anxiety but redirects her attention to what is most important, refusing to do what He demands of her. Rather than tell Mary to get off the floor and get to work, He praises her choice, because she has chosen the one necessary thing. What is that one necessary thing? Being in the presence of the Lord, who is all. “Come and see,” He invited his first disciples. “Follow me,” He invites us. “I am the Vine and you are the branches,” He explains, to help us really comprehend that apart from Him, we can do nothing. Our discipleship must begin with spending time in His presence, and it continues and bears fruit when we remain united to Him.

Most of us who are striving to love Jesus would want the opportunity to sit at His feet as Mary did, listening to His voice, watching His movements, asking Him questions and waiting for His response, allowing His penetrating gaze to fall on us. For love to grow, we must spend time with the Beloved.

While we cannot encounter the historical Jesus, we CAN sit at His feet and spend time before his Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. In the Eucharist, we draw near to this same Christ who loved these people so much, and who loves us so much that He found a way to remain really present to us throughout all of time and in every place that the Eucharist is offered and reserved.

When we receive the Eucharist and spend time at the feet of Jesus, we grow in our ability to CHOOSE THE BETTER PART. We must choose it over and over again so that the horizons of His Kingdom within us are continually extended, and His reign within us grows fuller. When we walk with Jesus in every moment, choosing to listen to Him instead of the world or our own fears and desires, we are conforming our lives to His and choosing the better part, which will not be taken from us.

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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I have wondered if Herod was haunted by his past, much like the murderer in the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe; the murderer seems to hear his victim (which eventually gives him away), and Herod seems to see John the Baptist in places where he is not (see Matt. 14:2).

In any case, today’s short Gospel tells us something about the attitude of the people around Jesus, and about Herod as well. Some at the time thought Jesus was a resurrected prophet, perhaps John the Baptist or Elijah or some other ancient prophet. These rumors make it to the ears of the tetrarch. He knows John the Baptist is dead because he had ordered his head on a platter in a drunken boast. Perhaps he is afraid his own act is returning to haunt him.

Herod is intrigued by people and events that seem to point to something beyond the ordinary. This is what drew him to John in the first place. He does not want to hear the truth about himself (that’s why he arrested John in the first place) or convert (he had resisted John’s repeated invitations to conversion). This was the case even though he knew John was good, and he liked to listen to him (see Mark 6:20). Now his curiosity is stirred toward Jesus, but not for the right reasons. The Gospel ends on a resonating word: “And he kept trying to see him.”

Do we keep trying to see Jesus? Why? What motivates us? We can also sometimes miss the point, as Herod did. We can be intrigued by goodness, we can even be eager to hear speakers or attend events that are intended to stoke the fire of love in us and draw us into a deeper relationship with God. But then we sometimes fall short of the invitation before us; rather than embrace the grace of the moment and resolve to work continually on conversion, we let the moment pass. The fire becomes once more a heap of ash-covered embers and we don’t know how to stir those embers into flame again.

Let’s renew our commitment to try to see Jesus in our everyday lives, and to seek to know what he wants for us. Events and speakers are good and necessary, but in order for these experiences to be fruitful, we need to focus on what God is calling us to do right where we are. What are the duties before me today? How can I do them with greater love and attention? How can I be present to the people for whom I am responsible? How can I walk with Jesus in every moment?

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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Today’s Gospel is preceded in the liturgy by the Alleluia antiphon, which is a verse from the Gospel of Matthew: “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” That antiphon is like a key to unlocking Jesus’ deeper meaning when he talks about lamps and light.

First, what IS this light? It is faith, which brings the light of Christ’s salvation and peace. It is also Truth, manifest in the laws of virtue and protected by the teaching and laws of the Church. These are the things that we must not deliberately hide from others. If we conceal the light we have been given in Christ, we deprive others of that light, which is bad for them and for us.

St. Chromatis goes so far as to say (in his treatise on the Gospel of St Matthew) that we in the Church must not fail to share the light of truth with others, or there will be dire consequences:

If we fail to live in the light, we shall, to our condemnation and that of others, be veiling over and obscuring by our infidelity the light men so desperately need…
That brilliant lamp which was lit for the sake of our salvation should always shine in us…
Therefore, we must not hide this lamp of law and faith. Rather, we must set it up in the Church, as on a lampstand, for the salvation of many, so that we may enjoy the light of truth itself and all believers may be enlightened. 

We must let our light shine so that others will glorify God.

Why WOULD we be tempted to hide the light of law and faith? Many subtle reasons can keep us from practicing our faith boldly or speaking of it plainly. We are afraid that people will judge us harshly, mock or reject us if we confront their misunderstandings or prejudices directly. Depending on the circumstances, we may hesitate to make the Sign of the Cross and pray before a meal in a restaurant, wear a crucifix around our necks, or excuse ourselves from a social event so that we can attend Mass on a Holyday of Obligation. In other circumstances, we may shy away from standing up against those who promote positions that are not compatible with our beliefs because we don’t want to offend anyone, or we may laugh at inappropriate comments because we don’t want to be seen as a dullard or a killjoy.

But Christ tells us that we must let the light in us shine out to others, for their sake and for ours! We must not be afraid to BE who we ARE: children of a loving Father, who calls us to bring light to every darkened place so that all will glorify God.

How will you let your light shine a little brighter this week?

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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Today’s Gospel presents an interesting scene:

Jesus is traveling with his disciples and “a large crowd.” As they near the city of Nain, they encounter another “large crowd” mourning the death of a young man as they bear his body to its burial. His mother is already a widow, and the death of her only son leaves her without any security, reliant on the charity of others.

Jesus is moved with pity for her. Might he see in her a foreshadowing of his own widowed mother at Calvary? In his compassion, he intervenes to relieve her grief in a wholly unexpected – and for Jews, a somewhat shocking – way: Jesus touches the coffin, which would have rendered him unclean for a week. His gesture stops the procession of mourners in their tracks. Then Jesus demonstrates his power over death by telling the young man to arise. The Gospel tells us that the dead man sat up and began to speak. What might he have said? Did he recognize the Messiah in this miraculous moment? Had he seen the fulfillment of the Promise as his body lay in death? How might this experience have changed him?

We do not know. But what we do know is just as moving: “Jesus gave him to his mother.” Jesus restores what was lost, brings life and hope where there were death and sorrow. Understandably, the witnesses – two large crowds of people – are seized with fear, but the only thing there is for them to do: glorify God and acknowledge Jesus as a great prophet.

Two things are not immediately evident as we read this Gospel, but are worth pondering:

• Luke uses the exact same words in this Gospel as are used in 2 Kings when Elisha brings life back to the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:32-37), drawing a clear parallel between the prophets Elijah and Elisha and Jesus. Jesus is indeed “a great prophet,” and more.
• St. Ambrose suggests that the widow also represents Mother Church, grieving for her children dead in sin and carried beyond the security of her gates; the members of the Church will glorify God when He restores them in grace.

Do we sometimes think that Jesus is far from us in our sufferings and needs? Do we give into loneliness and despondency rather than reach out to Jesus? In the Gospels, we see Jesus’ compassion for suffering and his great power at work over nature, sickness, and even death. Do we truly believe that he has the same power in our own lives, that he can do all things? Let’s resolve to bring all our concerns to him in complete trust so that his power is manifest in our every difficulty.

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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Jesus is preaching and healing in Gentile cities, areas that are contemptible to the Jews. He has already offered the Gospel to Israel, and now he is bringing his glorious Good News to those “outside” the Chosen People. All nations are invited into the way of salvation.

In the cure of the deaf man described in today’s Gospel, we see first that the people “begged him” to lay his hand upon the man and cure him, a kind of prayer of petition. Jesus takes the man aside, away from the multitude, and Mark is very specific about what happens when they are in private: “he put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue, and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’”

Again we see that Jesus preaches to the multitude, but he heals people one on one: he speaks to them, touches them, even puts his fingers into their ears and mouth. In another story, he mixes his own saliva with dirt and puts mud in a blind man’s eyes! These events illustrate Jesus’ “incarnational” presence to us. He – the invisible God – became flesh, and he respects the nature he has given us and uses material things to accomplish spiritual purposes as an affirmation of our bodiliness.

How does this apply today? Jesus’ healing still comes to us through words and matter in the sacraments. We sometimes inadvertently reduce the sacraments to “rites of passage” marking our maturing in the Church. They are that, but we miss the essential point when we stop short of seeing that sacraments are Christ’s way of remaining with us throughout time. Through the person of the minister, Jesus is present to us; he speaks to us, touches us, heals us, and calls us into a relationship.

And the sacraments are administered to us one on one. The deacon or priest doesn’t fling water from the baptismal font and hope it hits the right person! We assent to Baptism, and then it is administered to us BY NAME: “I baptize you, Kathryn Therese, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” When we come forward for Communion, there isn’t a basket of bread there and we grab a hunk. We come forward as individuals in need of the nourishment of the Bread of Life; we must personally assent to this Truth by our “Amen,” and then it is given, not taken – we “receive” Holy Communion. There is no rite of “Confirmation en masse”; the bishop anoints each individual by name. We confess our sins individually to the priest, and we are personally absolved of them.

When we see Jesus’ healings in the Gospel, we should not see them as distant events. Rather, let us see them as illustrations of Jesus’ presence to us, right here and right now in the sacraments of the Church, and give thanks.

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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Today’s Gospel from Luke has so much activity that it can be hard to see beyond the surface: the lake, the boats, the crowd, the nets, the catch, and finally, the fishermen leaving their fishing behind.

It was helpful to me to see this from several perspectives: the crowd, Simon Peter, and Jesus.

The crowd is eager to hear this rabbi standing on the shore, so eager that their movement toward him keeps pushing him toward the water until he decides to get into a boat in order to preach. When he is finished speaking, do some of those people remain, hoping he will begin speaking again? Do some of them go back to the duties of their lives? How many witness the miraculous catch of fish?

Simon Peter is weary from a fruitless night of fishing and catching nothing, but when the Lord gets into his boat, he obliges and rows out a little way, and waits. Then Jesus issues a strange command for him to lower his nets (which Simon had been washing because he was already done fishing) for a catch. This is absurd. Fish are not caught this late in the morning, and Simon Peter, always quick with a retort, tells him that this will be useless; then, perhaps catching himself, says, “but at your command, I will lower the nets.” And the nets are overfilled with fish, so many that the nets are tearing and they need help from others to bring them in. Their boats are so full, they are in danger of sinking! Simon Peter is not weary anymore; every fiber of his being is now engaged! Then, overwhelmed at this inexplicable and exhausting event and regretting his initial doubt, he falls on his knees to confess his utter unworthiness to be in Jesus’ presence.

Jesus, ever the teacher, is teaching as we enter this scene. When he finishes preaching, he is still teaching; he wants to teach these first disciples an essential lesson, not about fishing, but about mission and evangelization. He tells them to do something rather ridiculous – after a night of fruitless labor, Jesus tells them to labor a little more. Then he fills their nets to overflowing and responds to the openness of Peter’s confession with a prophetic word: “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”

What can we learn?

• From the crowds, we learn to keep our eyes on Jesus; everything he does is overflowing with meaning!
• From Peter, we learn to TRUST Jesus, and obediently continue working even when things seem fruitless; if Peter had refused to put out his nets again, Jesus could not have filled them!
• From Jesus, we learn that the work is all HIS, so we need not be afraid of what he calls us to do, nor of our apparent fruitlessness; our efforts will bear fruit according to his will, if we are willing to leave everything and follow him unreservedly.

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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Thanks to the fallenness that is ours due to the Original Fall, our human nature wants to continually put our own selves first, consider our own desires first, make sure we are taken care of first (St. Augustine says sin makes us incurvatus in se: curled in on ourselves). Without grace, we are almost hopelessly selfward, but Jesus calls us to something more.

The Pharisees took this selfwardness a step “up” by masking their self-love in religious trappings: broad phylacteries, long tassels, honoraria, and places of honor, under a guise of uprightness and righteousness veiled with false humility. These men were all about themselves, using religion as a way to advance themselves and pat themselves on the back. Jesus himself called them a brood of vipers.

Jesus expresses this to the crowds not to teach them to judge others and shame them, but for their spiritual benefit. He wants them to learn to separate the office from the person who holds the office; those “on the chair of Moses,” in authority over the people of God, should be obeyed but not imitated. They tell people what God wants, but they miss the point themselves.

How can this be? How can people who study the word of God, spend much time in prayer, and follow God’s law with exactitude fail to grow in holiness? It happens all the time, and Jesus’ final words in today’s Gospel tell us the precise reason:  a lack of humility.

Are all these “right” things done for the wrong intention? Are these “good” things done to build a positive image of me, for myself or for others? There can be a lot of “self” in our apparent selflessness; if so, I am the recipient of my own “gift,” and it becomes no gift at all.

The key to getting it right is loving HUMILITY. If what we give we give for the benefit of the other, if we pour ourselves out with the intention of really helping others and glorifying God (and not ourselves), then we give truly. If we pray to worship God and not to make ourselves feel like we deserve what we want, then we pray truly.

We need to examine our conscience with some objectivity to know ourselves in the light of the Holy Spirit. We might be “ok” on the surface, but what about the next level?

Am I more concerned with how I look or how I live? Is my primary concern what I like or what I truly love? Am I eager to be recognized, to receive credit for what I do? Am I able to give of myself without any attention, and sometimes even without any gratitude?

It is natural to desire affirmation and acknowledgment; but God calls us to a SUPERnatural attitude that offers our whole self in service to the Gospel and gives HIM all the glory. And He will be true to His promise that “whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

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Kathryn is married to Robert, mother of seven, grandmother to two, and a lay Carmelite. She has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE, and also as a writer and voice talent for Holy Family Radio. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and presenter, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Faith Formation, individual parishes, and Catholic ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Learn more at www.kathryntherese.com or on Facebook @summapax.

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