October 28, 2018

          

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Today Fr. Romeo said that we have no power except through God.  “Spiritual life begins in the beggar.  Every prayer is efficacious, but we must have sight to make the journey.”

Our Lord, who had heard Bartimaeus right from the beginning, let him persevere in his prayer.  He does the same with you.  Jesus hears our cries from the very first, but he waits.  He wants us to be convinced that we need him.  He wants us to [beg] him, to persist like the blind man waiting by the road from Jericho (St. Josemaría Escrivá).

[I]t is only when we make demands on Christ and come closer to him and he to us that we find ourselves confronted with the question of who we really think Christ is and what we do want Christ to do for us (Martin Ganeri, OP).

“[The] Kyrie eleison… prayer is a plea for God’s effective mercy, the grace that gives us what we need for faithful discipleship at any moment” (Mary M. McGlone, CSJ).

          

          

          

October 28, 2018

   

October 21, 2018

                

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time:

Today’s readings beg the question: “Disciple, just who do you think you are?”  The true answer comes from knowing what we seek and the company we keep (Mary M. McGlone, CSJ).

If Jesus is followed in faith and honesty, then confusion can be driven out by wisdom, fear by courage, pride by humility, rivalry by collaboration, and selfish ambition by a self-giving love.  There is hope for all of us yet.  Such is the life-giving power of the ransom, which he has paid for us (Dermot Morrin, OP).

Christ shows us the fullness of who God is and how God leads: by self-sacrificial love and service.  It is this model that has been placed before each of us to follow.  Therefore, for any of us to bear the name of Christ and exercise leadership any other way is to be a living contradiction of the Gospel (Daniel P. Horan, OFM).

“Let us throw ourselves into the ocean of [God’s] goodness where every failing will be canceled and anxiety turned into love” (St. Paul of the Cross).

            

October 21, 2018

      

*Photos: October 21, 2012.

October 14, 2018

            

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Fr. Romeo told us that wisdom and prudence help us to better understand and accept God’s will for us.

Living in God’s wisdom requires a further step beyond knowing that there is a difference between God’s wisdom and our own.  We are called to accept God’s invitation to know the difference by welcoming that wisdom into our lives along with all the predictable and unanticipated consequences that will follow (Anne McGowan, PhD).

“The word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

            

            

October 14, 2018

                

October 7, 2018

            

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: Fr. Romeo told us that marriage is both sacrament and vocation.  At its highest level marriage is a couple’s unconditional yes to God’s master plan, a collaborative trust that his will be done, not ours.

Jesus has invested marriage with a dignity which represents something quite new in reference to all that we have considered until now.  He raised it to the rank of a sacrament.  He made of this sacred bond a specific source of grace.  He transformed marriage… into something sanctifying (Dietrich von Hildebrand in Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love).

“When God pulls down the curtain on the drama of the world’s redemption he will not ask what part we played, but only how well we played the role assigned to us” (Ven. Fulton J. Sheen in Victory over Vice).

            

            

            

            

October 7, 2018