Daily Reflections

2 Corinthians 7:10, see 9

The sorrow God sends us produces a repentance
that leads to salvation,
– but worldly sorrow brings death.

Our sorrow was used by God,
and so we suffered no loss.
– But worldly sorrow brings death.

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Traditional)

Saint Peter Chrysologus, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church 

God says to Solomon, “Ask what you would like Me to give you.” “It pleased the LORD that Solomon should have asked” for an understanding heart, rather than long life or riches (First Book of Kings 3:5, 5-12). For with such a request, God can work miracles. “Turning everything to their good, God co-operates with all those who love Him.” Solomon’s heart is like that of the man who sells all he owns in order to buy the field where treasure is buried. The desire of Solomon is like that of the merchant who risks his whole livelihood in order to acquire a very fine pearl (Matthew 13:44-52). Such sacrifices can be made only because of the certainty that this treasure, this pearl of great price, corresponds to the deepest longing of a “discerning” heart: the longing for Christ Himself.

TRADITIONAL:

God is our Helper, and He will always come to our aid: He will open the ears of His mercy to our prayers, and will not allow us to be tempted beyond our strength. Let us obey therefore with joy the precepts of the LORD, let us virtually attend the mysteries of holy Mass, and partake of the Body of the LORD, the manna of our souls.

EPISTLE: 1 Cor 10: 6-13

Terrible punishments incurred by the people of Israel on account of their idolatry, is there lust, and their murmuring.

GOSPEL: Luke 19: 41-46

Jesus wept over Jerusalem and its future destruction. The sellers were driven from the temple for having transformed the house of prayer into a den of thieves.

SAINT PETER CHRYSOLOGUS, BISHOP, CONFESSOR, DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH 

St. Peter was born about the year 380 at Imola in Emilia, and there entered the priesthood. He was elected Bishop of Ravenna in 424 and instructed his flock by his learned sermons and writings. He died around the year 450.

From a sermon by Saint Peter Chrysologus, Bishop, Doctor of the Church
(Sermo 148: PL 52, 596-598)

The Incarnation and Human Dignity

A virgin conceived, bore a son, and yet remained a virgin. This is no common occurrence, but a sign; no reason here, but God’s Power, for He is the cause, and not nature. It is a special event, not shared by others; it is Divine, not human. Christ’s birth was not necessity, but an expression of Omnipotence, a sacrament of piety for the redemption of men. He who made man without generation from pure clay made man again and was born from a pure body. The Hand that assumed clay to make our flesh deigned to assume a Body for our salvation. That the Creator is in His creature and God is in the Flesh brings dignity to man without dishonour to Him who made him.

Why then, man, are you so worthless in your own eyes and yet so precious to God? Why render yourself such dishonour when you are honoured by Him? Why do you ask how you were created and do not seek to know why you were made? Was not this entire visible universe made for your dwelling? It was for you that the Light dispelled the overshadowing gloom; for your sake was the night regulated and the day measured, and for you were the heavens embellished with the varying brilliance of the sun, the moon and the stars. The earth was adorned with flowers, groves and fruit; and the constant marvellous variety of lovely living things was created in the air, the fields, and the seas for you, lest sad solitude destroy the joy of God’s new creation. And the Creator still works to devise things that can add to your glory. He has made you in His image that you might in your person make the invisible Creator present on earth; He has made you His legate, so that the vast empire of the world might have the LORD’s representative. Then in His mercy God assumed what He made in you; He wanted now to be truly manifest in man, just as He had wished to be revealed in man as in an image. Now He would be in reality what He had submitted to be in symbol.

And so Christ is born that by His birth He might restore our nature. He became a child, was fed, and grew that He might inaugurate the one perfect age to remain for ever as He had created it. He supports man that man might no longer fall. And the creature He had formed of earth He now makes heavenly; and what He had endowed with a human soul He now vivifies to become a heavenly spirit. In this way He fully raised man to God, and left in him neither sin, nor death, nor travail, nor pain, nor anything earthly, with the grace of Our LORD Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, for all the ages of Eternity. Amen.

DAILY MEDITATION 

[Jesus] has come from His Father, come to represent His Father, and to make Him known, come to keep His laws perfectly and to give Him a perfect service, and He cannot pass over this desecration of His Father’s House (Luke 19:41-47).

The traffickers with no doubt have ready excuses for what their conscience told them was wrong. The animals were necessary for the sacrifices, the doves were the offerings of the poor – it was much more convenient for the people to be able to buy at the very gates of the temple – the moneychangers were simply a necessity, for had not every Jew to present the half shekel in the coin of the country? So would they salve their consciences; and so do we, when Jesus comes into the temple of our souls, and finds so much in His Father’s house that He cannot approve, so much traffic going on in His Father’s name, which is simply a traffic for self.“LORD, LORD, have not we prophesied in Thy name, and cast out devils in Thy name and done many miracles in Thy name? Then will I profess to them: I never knew you. Depart from Me, you that work iniquity“ [Matthew 7:22–23]. These are the words of Him who cleansed His Father’s temple and they were spoken to those who would never allow Him to cleanse the temples of their souls, but who went on trafficking for self till it was too late. 

They know He is right, and they hasten after their animals, which He has chased out of the temple  court with His “scourge of little cords” [John 2:15]. He upset the moneychangers’ tables and told the bird sellers to take the doves away.  He does not, as some pictures would have you suppose, open their cages and let them fly. This would have been a serious loss to their owners, and also would have prevented the poor from obtaining their offering.  Jesus is at home in the temple; it is His father’s house, and He will not have it desecrated.

Mother Saint Paul [d. 1940] – Superior of the Retreat of the Sacred Heart Sisters in Birmingham, author of many popular devotional works

Recognising the Great Treasure We Have in Christ

“They are the ones He chose specially long ago and intended to become true images of His Son, so that His Son might be the eldest of many brothers. He called those He intended for this; those He called He justified, and with those He justified he shared His glory. After saying this, what can we add? With God on our side who can be against us? Nothing therefore can come between us and the love of Christ.” (Rm 8:29-31, 35).

This is how the mystery of divine election appeared to theenlightened gaze of the Apostle. The ones He chose specially long ago: Are not we of that number? Cannot God say to our soulwhat He once said through the voice of His prophet: “Then I saw you as I was passing. Your time had come, the time for love. I spread part of My cloak over you and covered your nakedness; I bound myself by oath, I made a covenant with you—it is the LORD who speaks—and you became Mine.”(Ezk 16:8). Yes, we have become His through Baptism, that is what Paul means by these words: those He called; yes, called to receive the seal of the Holy Trinity; at the same time we have been made, in the words of Saint Peter, “to share the divine nature” (2 P 1:4), we have become “co-heirs with Christ” (He 3:14). Then, He has justified us by His Sacraments, by His direct “touches” in our contemplation in the depths of our soul; justified us also by Faith and according to the measure of our Faith in the redemption that Jesus Christ has acquired for us. And finally, He wants to glorify us, and for that reason, says Saint Paul, “He has made it possible for us to join the saints and with them to inherit the Light (Col 1:12), but we will be glorified in the measure in which we will have been conformed to the image of His Divine Son.

So let us contemplate this adored Image, let us remain unceasingly under its radiance so that it may imprint itself on us; let us go to everything with the same attitude of soul that our holy Master would have. Then we will realise the great plan which God kindly made in Christ from the beginning, to… “bring everything together under Christ, as Head” (Ep 1:9-10).

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity († 1906) was a French Carmelite nun whose writings focused on the indwelling of the Trinity. She died from Addison’s disease at the age of twenty-six. [From I Have Found God: Complete Works, Volume I, General Introduction: Major Spiritual Writings, Sister Aletheia Kane, o.c.d., Tr.

“The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.” – Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen