"I know everything sucks, yeah!
I know everything sucks, whoa-o-o!
I know everything sucks, yeah!
And this is gonna be the last time you hear me complain…"
"And if there's only one way out,
Then we're running out of time,
And if there's only one way out,
Strap in and lose your mind!
We burned as bright as we can shout:
Our voice! Our choice! Our minds!
All the way, here we go again!…
"It's showtime, everyone 'Go' time!
Here we go! Let's go! It's showtime!…"
Friends, in today’s Gospel passage Jesus speaks of the time when the plan of God will be fulfilled. Some philosophies defend a circular or cyclic understanding of time. They hold that time just continually circles back on itself, repeating like the cycles of the seasons. The modern philosopher Nietzsche spoke of the “eternal return of the same.” That’s a mythic consciousness, and it can be found all over the world.Video reflection by Monsignor James Vlaun: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
But the Jews had a very different sense of time, what we might call “linear.” They felt that time was moving somewhere, that it had, under God’s direction, a purpose. The past was not simply there to be repeated endlessly; rather, the past was a preparation for a definitive future. It was an anticipation of what God would do, what God was going to accomplish.
The Lord assures us that the kingdom of God is near and that we must prepare for its coming.
"We are taught by the Divine Word… to prevent the hearts of the simple being perverted, & the innocent secretly wounded by their arrows, & to block that broad road which could be opened to the uncorrected commission of sin."Saint Quote o' the Day
—Pope Clement XII, on Freemasonry (1652-1740)
"O God, grant that whatever good things I have, I may share generously with those who have not, & whatever good things I do not have, I may request humbly from those who do."Chesterton Quote o' the Day
—St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church (1225-1274, feast day: 28 January)
"The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; & there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them."
—G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Friends, today’s Gospel recounts the Lord’s healing of ten lepers, only one of whom comes back to give thanks. Leprosy frightened people in ancient times, just as contagious and mysterious diseases frighten people today. But more than this, leprosy rendered someone unclean and therefore incapable of engaging in the act of worship. It is not accidental that the person responsible for examining the patient in ancient Israel was the priest. The priest’s job was to monitor the whole process of Israelite worship, very much including who could and couldn’t participate in the temple.
What is so important about worship? To worship is to order the whole of one’s life toward the living God, and in doing so, one becomes interiorly and exteriorly rightly ordered. To worship is to signal to oneself what one’s life is finally about. Worship is not something that God needs, but it is very much something that we need.
It began as a day of giving thanks & sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest & of the preceding year.Video reflection by Marc DelMonico, Ph.D.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"Remember the past with gratitude. Live the present with enthusiasm. Look forward to the future with confidence."Saint Quote o' the Day
—Pope St. John Paul II the Great (1920-2005, feast day: 22 October)
"In all created things discern the providence & wisdom of God, & in all things give Him thanks."Chesterton Quote o' the Day
—St. Teresa of Ávila, Doctor of the Church (1515-1582, feast day: 15 October)
"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; & that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."
—G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
"There's no pineapples left in Detroit."
"I'd like to open up by making a suggestion,
One that I suggest you're open to,
And then I'll open up the floor and take a question,
After that it's time to tilt a few (you and you and you).
"A reason to toast,
A reason to cheer,
A reason to celebrate:
It's nice being here!
"You might be wondering just why I called this meeting
And let another moment pass,
Before we move on, please, let's rearrange the seating,
After that it's time to raise a glass.
"I'll raise my glass up high to all the friendly faces,
Here and wherever they may be,
I don't know why I never thought 'til now to say this,
But you mean the world to me.
"A reason to toast,
A reason to cheer,
A reason to celebrate:
It's nice being here!
"Let's raise a glass up high because we're here together,
What better reason could exist?
Hey, lads, let's raise a glass, what could be better than this?
If you're without a glass, then let's see your fist!
(Get 'em up there, boys!)
"A reason to toast,
A reason to cheer,
A reason to celebrate:
It's nice being here!…"
Friends, today’s Gospel passage describes the persecution Christians face before the end of the world. When will the Church stop being persecuted? When the Lord returns, but not before.Video reflection by Jem Sullivan, Ph.D.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
From the earliest days until the present, the community of Jesus Christ has been the focus of the world’s violence. The old principle of "killing the messenger" applies here. The Church will announce, until the end of time, that the old world is passing away, that a new world of love, nonviolence, and life is emerging. This announcement always infuriates the world of sin, which explains why the twentieth century was the bloodiest on record—and the one with the most martyrs.
What do we do in the meantime? We maintain a detachment from the world that is passing away, our eyes fixed on the world that will never end. And we speak confidently, boldly, provocatively the message of the Gospel, the dying and rising of the Lord.
"Be firm in rejecting injustice! Be strong in conceiving & accomplishing gestures of equity, humanity, & peace, gestures that will unravel the tangled skin of violence. Humanity expects this service from you: it is your honor & your duty."Saint Quote o' the Day
—Pope St. Paul VI (1897-1978, feast day: 29 May)
"I once asked a missionary on a Pacific island what was the greatest virtue of the people. He said 'I can tell you the greatest virtue in terms of the greatest vice. It is the sin of kaipo, the sin of eating alone.' They would go without food for several days until they could find someone with whom they could share their food."Commentary: Venerable Fulton Sheen is scheduled to be beatified on 21 December, after which he will be Blessed Fulton Sheen. It is not yet known on what date his feast will be observed. Glory to God!
—Ven. Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)
"When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."Bonus! Song o' the Book of Daniel
—G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
I liked her looks when I carried her booksBooks are an information-recording medium composed of pages bound together between a cover. Books are used to transmit information from the author to the readers, for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. "Carried her books" is a reference to the song's protagonist & the eponymous gal having attended college together, most likely either Western Michigan University or Kalamazoo College. Yes, my astonished Buckeye friend, some persons attend university in order to acquire knowledge, not just to engage in masochistic self-hatred & envy of "that school up north."
In Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo…"
Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus responds to questions about the end of the world. When will it come? What will happen?Video reflection by Father Greg Friedman, O.F.M.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Why were the first Christians interested in these questions? The simplest and deepest answer is that they had experienced the end of the world—precisely in the dying and rising of Jesus.
Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, and the nations conspired against him. The old world seemed to conquer this new world that Jesus embodied. But then, in the Resurrection, they saw that the old world—the world predicated upon death and the world that had done Jesus in—was now defeated.
So awed were they by the Resurrection—and you can sense it in every book and letter of the New Testament—that they awaited the imminent arrival of the new state of affairs, the return of Jesus and the establishment of God’s kingdom. Though Jesus did not immediately return, the old world was over, broken, compromised, its destruction now just a matter of time.
"A vocation is a call that comes from God's sovereign power & free gift. However, such a call must find an open path in the heart. It must enter into the depths of the subject's thoughts, feelings, & will, in order to influence one's moral behavior."Saint Quote o' the Day
—Pope St. John Paul II the Great (1920-2005, feast day: 22 October)
"A Christian mystic from India, Sadhu Sundar Singh, several years ago wanted to go into Tibet to evangelize. He hired a Tibetan guide to take him over the Himalayas. They had gone but a short distance when they became tired & sat on the snow & ice. Then Singh said, 'I think I hear someone groaning in the abyss.' The Tibetan said: 'Well, what difference does it make? We're almost dead ourselves.' Singh went down, found a man, & dragged him to the base of the Himalayas to a little village. Refreshed by his act of charity, he came back to find the Tibetan guide frozen to death on the ice."Chesterton Quote o' the Day
—Ven. Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)
"Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult."
—G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
It is said that she visited her contemporary, the Roman emperor Maxentius, & tried to persuade him to stop persecuting Christians. She succeeded in converting his wife, the Empress. The Emperor send fifty pagan wise men to dispute with her, but she overcame all their arguments & all were subsequently burnt alive for their failure to convince her. She refused to deny her faith & marry the Emperor. He had her beaten for two hours & imprisoned. The Emperor than had her tortured on a spiked wheel, but it fell to pieces & she remained unhurt, although some spectators her willed by flying splinters.'Tis also the festival of Saint Peter of Alexandria, Bishop & Martyr (died 311, A.K.A. Pope Peter I of Alexandria), seventeenth (XVII) Pope of Alexandria, martyred in the reign of the Roman emperors Maxentius & Galerius, a victim of the Great Persecution: Martyr-link & Wikipedia-link; Diocese-link Alexandria & Wikipedia-link Alexandria, Persecution-link & Wikipedia-link Great Persecution.
Friends, today’s Gospel tells of the poor widow who gave her last penny to the temple treasury. Her behavior makes us consider our possessiveness. What do we tell ourselves all the time? That we’re not happy because we don’t have all the things that we should have or that we want to have. What follows from this is that life becomes a constant quest to get, to acquire, to attain possessions.Video reflection by Monsignor James Vlaun: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Do you remember the parable about the foolish rich man? When his barns were filled with all his possessions, he decided to tear them down and build bigger ones. Why is he a fool? Because (and I want you to repeat this to yourself as I say it) you have everything you need right now to be happy.
What makes you happy is always right in front of you because what makes you happy is love. Love is willing the good of the other, opening yourself to the world around you. Love is not a feeling. It’s an act of the will. It is the great act of dispossession.
"The way that God is seen in this world is by following Christ; seeing is going, is being on the way for our whole life toward the living God, whereby Jesus Christ, by the entire way that He walked, especially by the Paschal Mystery of His suffering, death, Resurrection, & Ascension, presents us with the itinerary."Christian Quote o' the Day
—Pope Benedict XVI (born 1927, reigned 2005-2013)
"Sainthood lies in the habit of referring the smallest actions to God."Chesterton Quote o' the Day
—C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
"It was the problem of how men could be made to realise the wonder & splendour of being alive, in environments which their own daily criticism treated as dead-alive, & which their imagination had left for dead."
—G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925 with his encyclicalQuas Primas ("In the first") to respond to growing nationalism & secularism. He recognized that these related societal ills would breed increasing hostility against the Church. His encyclical reminds the faithful that while governments & philosophies come & go, Christ reigns as king forever.Scripture of the Week
Friends, today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. This day reminds us what the Christian thing is all about: that Jesus really is the King, the Lord of our lives. It affirms that we belong utterly to him; that we can say, with St. Paul, "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me."Dominus, our Lord—or we are missing the point.Video reflection by Father Greg Friedman, O.F.M.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
If we say anything else, we are horsing around with Christianity and not really living it. If we pay lip service to Jesus but do not submit completely to him, we are fooling around and not treating him as the King of our lives. If we let him into one or two rooms of the house and not every room, he isn’t our King.
Jesus is our
Does it not strike you as a great poverty of leadership that here in America we cannot put one person on the evening news who can be acknowledged by Americans from coast to coast as a Catholic leader? Where is the "someone" who speaks for us? It is true that occasionally a bishop or cardinal effectively harnesses the media in his diocese & establishes a vibrant identity as a Catholic leader in his geographic area. It is also true that some lay Catholics who occupy positions of prominence in the business world, the entertainment world, or the political realm have successfully established a Catholic identity in different ways. But we have no national figures, not within the clergy & not among the laity. Does that not strike you as a massive poverty of leadership? Where is the Catholic leader who can speak to the people of our time in ways that are bold, brilliant, logical, articulate, & inspiring.†
"Who has not heard Dostoyevsky’s oft-quoted remark: ‘Beauty will save us’? Usually people forget to mention, however, that by redeeming beauty Dostoyevsky means Christ. He it is whom we must learn to see. If we cease to know Him only through words but are struck by the arrow of His paradoxical beauty, then we will truly come to know Him & will no longer merely know about Him secondhand. Then we will have encountered the beauty of truth, of redeeming truth. Nothing can bring us into contact with the beauty of Christ Himself more than the world of beauty created by faith & the light that shines upon the faces of the saints, through which His own light becomes visible."Saint Quote o' the Day
—Pope Benedict XVI (born 1927, reigned 2005-2013)
"The Church reminds us & admonishes us: Christians, be conscious of your state; Christians, be consistent; Christians, be faithful; Christians, be strong. In a word, Christians, be Christians!"Chesterton Quote o' the Day
—Pope St. Paul VI (1897-1978, feast day: 29 May)
"I have only found one creed that could not be satisfied with a truth, but only with the Truth, which is made of a million such truths and yet is one."
—G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Friends, today’s Gospel reports a conversation Jesus had with some of the Sadducees, who held that there is no life after death. We could practically hear their speech on the lips of secularists today. But Jesus is having none of it. The dead shall indeed rise, he says. Otherwise, how could Moses have spoken of God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all of whom were long dead by Moses’ time? But their risen existence, though in continuity, even bodily continuity, with what has gone before, will be transformed, transfigured, raised up.Video reflection by Sister Annie Bremmer: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Those who hold to the resurrection of the body are those who are most effective at working for justice and peace in this world. If you are a complete materialist and secularist, you hold that everything and everybody, in the end, just fades away. But if you believe in the resurrection of the body, then everything in this world is destined for redemption. Everything matters.
"To preach the Gospel of forgiveness seems absurd to human politics, because in the natural economy justice does not often permit forgiveness. But in the Christian economy, it is not absurd. Difficult, yes, but not absurd."Saint Quote o' the Day
—Pope St. Paul VI (1897-1978, feast day: 29 May)
"¡Viva Cristo Rey!"
—Bl. Miguel Agustín Pro (1891-1927, feast day: 23 November)
"Joy comes from within & not from without."
—G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
"…We will need to music to uplift,The Re-consecration of the Temple by the Maccabees
It'll be a Godsend, it'll be a gift,
And hope and glory to coincide,
We'll need the strength, the warmth, the comfort that the music will provide!"
She is the patroness of musicians. It is written that as the musicians played at her wedding she "sang in her heart to the Lord."'Tis also the festival of Saints Philemon & Apphia, Martyrs (died circa 68), martyred in the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, recipients of the Letter to Philemon: Martyr-link Papa, Martyr-link Alpha, & Wikipedia-link; Wikipedia-link Epistle.
Friends, in today’s Gospel we see Jesus cleansing the temple. What did it mean for a provincial prophet to come into the holy city of Jerusalem and make a ruckus in the temple? Well, you can probably imagine. To make matters worse, Jesus says something that is as shocking as his actions. He says, "I will destroy this temple and in three days rebuild it." No wonder that it was precisely this act that led to his Crucifixion.Video reflection by Paula Triglo-Galan: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
So what was he doing and why? First, in showing his lordship over even this most sacred symbol, he was announcing who he was. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus acts in the person of God. Secondly, he was instituting a new Temple, the Temple of his crucified and risen body. Jesus himself is the place where God dwells, and we, in the measure that we are grafted on to him, are temples of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is passing judgment on all of the inadequate, corrupt forms of human religion and is establishing the new and eternal covenant, the new Temple, in his own person.
"You produce music, poetry & art, drama, painting & sculpture, & literature. All those things reflect the soul of a nation being influenced by the Spirit of Christ for the perfection of humanity."Saint Quote o' the Day
—Pope St. John Paul II the Great (1920-2005, feast day: 22 October)
"Arise, soldiers of Christ, throw out the works of darkness & put on the armor of light."
—St. Cecilia (died circa 176-235, feast day: 22 November)
"What is always crumbling is not the creed but the criticism."
—G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
