Daily Reflections

Jeremias 25:15; Matthew 27:24

Thus saith the LORD of hosts the God of Israel:
Take the cup of wine this fury at My hand:          – and thou shalt make all the nations to drink thereof, unto which I shall send thee.

Pilate washed his hands before the people, saying:
I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it.
– and thou shalt make all the nations to drink thereof, unto which I shall send thee.

Wednesday of the Twenty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

Feria After Pentecost (Traditional)

Simon’s mother-in-law “immediately got up and began to wait on them” (Luke 4:38-44) moments after being gravely ill. She exhibits the liveliness that comes from “faith in Christ Jesus” (Colossians 1:1-8). We should not fear turning to the Son of God with our “diseases of one kind or another”, for we can “trust in the goodness of God for ever”.

From a commentary on John by Origen, Priest, Doctor of the Church
(Tomus 10, 20: PG 14, 370-371)

Christ spoke of His body as a Temple

Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise It up. It seems to me that Jesus meant the Jews in this episode to stand for sensual men and those desirous of carnal and sensual things. These Jews were angry at His expulsion of the people who were turning His Father’s house into a market. So they asked for a sign to justify these actions, a sign that would show that the Word of God, whom they refused to accept, was acting rightly. The Saviour’s reply combines a statement about the temple with a prophecy about His own body, for in answer to their question: What sign can you give to justify your conduct? He says: Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise It up.

Indeed, I think that both the temple and the body of Jesus can be seen in a single perspective as a type of the Church. For the Church is being built out of living stones; it is in process of becoming a spiritual dwelling for a holy priesthood, raised on the foundations of apostles and prophets, with Christ as its chief cornerstone. Hence it bears the name “Temple.” On the other hand, it is written: You are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it. Thus even the harmonious alignment of the stones should seem to be destroyed and fragmented and, as described in the twenty-first Psalm, all the bones which go to make up Christ’s Body should seem to be scattered by insidious attacks in persecutions or times of trouble, or by those who in days of persecution undermine the unity of the Temple, nevertheless the Temple will be rebuilt and the Body will rise again on the third day, after the day of evil which threatens it and the day of consummation which follows. For the third day will dawn upon a new heaven and a new earth when these bones that form the whole house of Israel are raised up on that great day of the LORD, when death has been defeated. So the Resurrection of Christ, accomplished after His suffering on the Cross, embraces the Mystery of the Resurrection of His whole body.

For just as that physical body of Christ was crucified and buried, and afterward raised up, so in the same way the whole body of Christ’s holy ones has been crucified and lives no longer with its own life. For each of them, like Paul, makes his boast of nothing else but the Cross of our LORD Jesus Christ, by which He has Himself been crucified to the world, and the world to Him. But each Christian has not only been crucified with Christ and crucified to the world; he has been buried with Christ too, as Paul tells us: We have been buried with Christ. But as though already in possession of some pledge of the resurrection, Paul goes on to say: And we have risen with Him.

DAILY MEDITATION 

Let us adore Jesus Christ, teaching us in the Gospel not to allow ourselves to be so taken up with the affairs of this world as to neglect our salvation. Let your first solicitude, He says to us, be your salvation, and holiness, which is the sole means of obtaining it. Let us thank Him for such useful and necessary advice.

In order to fill ourselves with a lively faith in this Truth, let us first question the saints – the men who studied the best during their lives, and who have learnt it by experience since their death. As long as they lived upon earth, they believed that they never could do enough in regard to so serious a matter, and they were always afraid of never doing enough; the whole of their life was continually occupied in pursuing it day and night, and in constantly advancing this great affair. 

Abraham, forsakes his country, his possessions, his family; Moses prefers the sufferings and the poverty of the People of God to all the pleasures and all the treasures of Egypt. Under the Old and the New Law, hermits, bury themselves in deserts, hide themselves in caverns, become extenuated by fastings and watchings; martyrs allow themselves to be devoured by flames, torn by wild beasts, deluged in blood; multitudes of others, lead a life of purity, of prayer, and devotion, in the midst of the world; and now that they are in Heaven, far from believing that they have done too much, if they could feel any regret, it would be not to have done a thousand times more for an affair in which success gives so much happiness, and in which an unhappy issue is so terrible. And I, my God! What have I done for my salvation in comparison with Thy saints? Are there in Heaven saints who have been saved by living as I live, by praying as I pray, without mortifying themselves anymore, without being more humble, more recollected, more generous in serving Thee? 

Fr. André Jean M. Hamon [d. 1874] – French Sulpician professor of dogmatics, and author of several spiritual and historical works.

APOSTOLIC ENCOURAGEMENT 

The priest is not a priest for himself alone, but for others… the priest is the light of the world, the salt of the earth, and it must be clear to all that he is this by proclaiming the Truth of Christianity. 

But is it not equally clear that the Priesthood will be of but little use if the priest compromises by his conduct what he preaches in words?  His hearers, contumeliously indeed, but not without reason, object: “They profess that they know God, but in their works the deny Him” [Titus 1:16]; they reject the teaching and fail to profit by the light of the priest. Hence Christ Himself, made in the form of the priests, taught first by His action, then by His words…. So, too, if sanctity is neglected, the priest cannot be in any way the salt of the earth. 

Most of all as his ministers in the most august sacrifice, which is renewed with perennial virtue for the life of the world, we must be filled with the Spirit with which He offered Himself to God…. Very aptly, Saint Charles Borromeo in his address to the clergy insisted: “If we remembered, beloved brethren, how many wonderful things the LORD God has placed in our hands, what force this thought would have in impelling us to lead lives worthy of ecclesiastics! What is it that the LORD has not put in my hands when He has put in them His own Only Begotten Son, coeternal and coequal with Himself? In my hands, He has put all His treasures, Sacraments, and Graces; He has put the souls than which nothing is dearer to Him, which in His love He preferred to Himself, which He redeemed with His blood. In my hands, He has placed Heaven, which I can open and close to others…. How, therefore, can I ever be so ungrateful for such  bounty and love as to sin against Him, as to offend His honour, as to pollute this body which is His, as to stain this dignity, this life consecrated to Him?”

– Pope Saint Pius X, Haerent Animo

1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Leviticus 11:43, 44

Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost,
Who is in you,
whom you have from God; and you are not your own?

For you are bought with a great price.
– Glorify and bear God in your body.

Do not defile your souls;
be holy, because I am holy.
– Glorify and bear God in your body.

“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