Seeing This Great God: The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024

                                                           Seeing This Great God:

The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024

October 27, 2024

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Isaiah 53:10-11; Psalm 33; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45

 

Jeremiah tells us about God’s compassionate actions to the people’s suffering. This God has shown up for the people and gathered them together, and it is not just the righteous and the healthy. It is a gathering of everyone, including those who society forgets about on the side. God wants to be a caring, loving parent who consoles the suffering and loneliness of every person. This is the God that Bartimaeus meets when he encounters Jesus. He is someone who has been pushed to the side because of his disability, and no one takes him seriously, not even the Disciples of Jesus, but Jesus calls him to himself and asks the important question, “What do you want me to do for you?”

 

Mark intended this Gospel to be a “coming to sight,” a “coming to faith” narrative. It is the final moment in the Gospel before Jesus leaves the plains of Jericho to go up the mountain to Jerusalem where he will confront the religious authorities. Bartimaeus replies to Jesus, “I want to have faith,” and he is granted his wish. It teaches us that God wants to be generous to us and to be in deeper friendship.

 

Jeremiah reminds us that God has a huge heart and wants the best for us. It seems clear that God lives with a broken heart when we experience anything that separates us from community, from God, or even from ourselves. Jesus reveals God’s emotions to us. We in the Church must ask the people we meet the same question, “What do you want us to do for you?” Perhaps their answer is much like Bartimaeus – We want to see. Do we in the church sufficiently show the people how big God is? Have we domesticated God to fit into our small perceptions of experience, and does this vision have to be enlarged?

 

What are some other names of God that we can use – The ground of being and meaning, Serendipitous Creativity, Incomprehensible Mystery, or Transcendent Presence? When we lift our minds in prayer, do we contemplate that God who existed before the creation of the cosmos 13.8 billion light years ago and created life out of inanimate objects? Science and telescopes probe into the cosmos to get a deeper understanding of the God of nature, the God who creates life, consciousness, and compassion. How is it that we can give sufficient praise and worship for the gift of life within God’s presence? We are all seekers. We know that questions will lead us to greater depth. We want to know more about this infinitely large God who for some reason personally cares for us, and when we realize what God is doing for us, then we repeat the words of Jeremiah and the Psalmist: we come back rejoicing.

 

Bartimaeus shows us God’s personal care for us, and yet, God still wants us to boldly ask for what we need. This is a very generous God who seeks the best for us, who wants to rid any barriers to friendship, who sees no sin but our striving to love well, who sees no frontiers or limits to our seeking and understanding, who wants us to live fulfilled, meaningfully connected lives so that we live in the joy intended for us. This is a great God who wants us to recognize that happiness is within our grasp. Let us follow this God. Let us go forth like Bartimaeus for our faith has saved us. 

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

Monday: (Ephesians 2) You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.

 

Tuesday: (Ephesians 5) Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the Church, he himself the savior of the Body.

 

Wednesday: (Ephesians 6) Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on earth.

 

Thursday: (Ephesians 6) Draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power.
Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the Devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.

 

Friday (Revelation 7) I, John, saw another angel come up from the East, holding the seal of the living God. He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels who were given power to damage the land and the sea, "Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God." 

 

Saturday (Wisdom 3) The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace.

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (Luke 6) Jesus went up to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles.

 

Tuesday: (Luke 13) Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like? To what can I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden.

 

Wednesday (Luke 13) Jesus passed through towns and villages, teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, "Lord, will only a few people be saved?" He answered them, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate.

 

Thursday (Luke 13) Some Pharisees came to Jesus and said, “Go away, leave this area because Herod wants to kill you.” He replied, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I accomplish my purpose.

 

Friday (Matthew 5) Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.

 

Saturday (John 6) And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day.

 

Saints of the Week

 

October 28: Simon and Jude, apostles (first century) were two of the Twelve Disciples called by Jesus, but little is known about them. We think they are Simon the Zealot and Judas, the son of James. Simon was most likely a Zealot sympathizer who would have desired revolution against Rome; Jude is also called Thaddeus and is patron saint of hopeless causes. Both apostles suffered martyrdom. 

 

October 30: Dominic Collins, S.J., priest and martyr (1566-1602), was a Jesuit brother who was martyred in his native Ireland. He became a professional solider in the Catholic armies of Europe after the Desmond Rebellion was put down in 1583. He joined the Jesuits in 1584 at Santiago de Compostela and was sent back to Ireland in 1601 with a Spanish contingent. He was captured, tried for his faith, and sentenced to death.

 

October 31: Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J. (1532-1617) was widowed at age 31. When his three children died, Alphonsus joined the Jesuits as a lay brother at age 40 after attempting to complete the rigors of study. He was sent to the newly opened college in Majorca where he served as a porter for 46 years. His manner of calling people to sanctification was extraordinary. He served obediently and helped others to focus on their spiritual lives.

 

October 31: All Hallows Eve (evening) owes its origins to a Celtic festival that marked summer's end. The term was first used in 16th century Scotland. Trick or treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling when poor people would go door to door on Hallomas (November 1) receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2.)

 

November 1: All Saints Day honors the countless faithful believers - living and dead - who have helped us along in our faith. Our liturgical calendar is filled with canonized saints, but we have many blesseds and minor saints who no longer appear on it. We have local saints across the world. We have many people who live Gospel values who we appreciate and imitate. We remember all of these people on this day.

 

November 2: All Souls Day is the commemoration of the faithful departed. November is known as All Souls Month. We remember those who died as we hasten towards the end of the liturgical year and the great feast of Christ the King. As a tradition, we have always remembered our dead as a way of keeping them alive to us and giving thanks to God for their lives. 

 

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• October 27, 1610. The initial entrance of the Jesuits into Canada. The mission had been recommended to the Society by Henry IV. 
• October 28, 1958. The death of Wilfrid Parsons, founder of Thought magazine and editor of America from 1925 to 1936. 
• October 29, 1645. In the General Chapter of the Benedictines in Portugal, a statement published by one of their order, that said St Ignatius had borrowed the matter in his Spiritual Exercises from a Benedictine author, was indignantly repudiated. 
• October 30, 1638. On this day, John Milton, the great English poet, dined with the Fathers and students of the English College in Rome. 
• October 31, 1602. At Cork, the martyrdom of Dominic Collins, an Irish brother, who was hanged, drawn, and quartered for his adherence to the faith. 
• November 1, 1956. The Society of Jesus was allowed in Norway. 

November 2, 1661. The death of Daniel Seghers, a famous painter of insects and flowers.