The Work of Ongoing Creation:
The Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024
October 6, 2024
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Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 128; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16
Genesis begins with one of the Creation accounts, and it seems appropriate to focus upon the Season of Creation considering the feast of St. Francis of Assisi on Friday. The story in Genesis tells us that we are not to be alone, that we are designed for communion and unity, that we are in relationship with one another and the earth. We are told that humans were created from the dust of the earth, and we hear also that from out of the ground God created wild animals and birds of the air, denoting that we share a common origin and heritage. The universe was made for unity. We were given each other for companionship.
In the Gospel, Jesus reminds us that it is from our hardness of hearts that we create divisions and separation, and he says that we were created for unity. I am going to speak more broadly than the case on divorce that the Pharisees brought to test Jesus because the larger truth is that we belong to each other. We must begin to transcend our religious principles so we can see ourselves as part of a larger whole.
We are live in a world that is bombarded by stories of tragedy, violence, and hatred, and we see fewer stories of the common good, strength in unity, and harmony, but they exist in greater number and happen more frequently than we perceive. All the same, many people feel disconnected and lonely, and this is the place we, a people of faith, need to be present. We live continuously in an Easter drama. Jesus descended into hell because of human cruelty and violence, and he went even further – he fell into abandonment by God. This tells us that we, who bear the mystery of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection in our souls, must be people who cannot turn away from the deepest wounds in humanity. So many people today ask the question: Why, O God, have you abandoned me?
Who are we if we do not catch the news and bear broken hearts for the loss of life in Lebanon or Gaza or Ukraine or the Southeast United States. Our heart ought to break for the way our globe is crying out for relief. No matter our political worldview or ideology, the death of another human is a tragedy and it breaks our hearts. We cannot let our hearts be hardened because of our incomplete judgments and positions. We must keep our hearts open to a suffering world because the wounds of people’s lives remain open and unhealed and the questions about the meaning of suffering remain unanswered. Our faith compels us to enter the darkness of the cross and pray in silence within the tomb of Jesus. Why can we do this? We believe in the Resurrection.
The Resurrection changed Jesus beyond recognition because of his experience of death. The Resurrection is always a radical transformation and an ongoing creation that we cannot anticipate. Our faith does not allow hell and death to have the final word because in the end, love is stronger than death. Nothing can separate us from one another with this Resurrected love. For us today, to remain united, to touch our origins and our goal in life, is to keep our hearts open and to realize that today, in this present moment, Jesus is now rising from the dead and calling us to new life.
Scripture for Daily Mass
Monday: (Galatians 1) I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel (not that there is another). But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the Gospel of Christ.
Tuesday: (Galatians 1) You heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I persecuted the Church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it, and progressed in Judaism
beyond many of my contemporaries among my race, since I was even more a zealot for my ancestral traditions.
Wednesday: (Galatians 2) After fourteen years I again went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. I went up in accord with a revelation, and I presented to them the Gospel that I preach to the Gentiles–but privately to those of repute–
so that I might not be running, or have run, in vain.
Thursday: (Galatians 3) O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? I want to learn only this from you: did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard?
Friday (Galatians 3) Realize that it is those who have faith who are children of Abraham.
Scripture, which saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, foretold the good news to Abraham, saying, Through you shall all the nations be blessed.
Saturday (Galatians 3) Scripture confined all things under the power of sin, that through faith in Jesus Christ the promise might be given to those who believe. Before faith came, we were held in custody under law, confined for the faith that was to be revealed.
Gospel:
Monday: (Luke 10) There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said,
“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”
Tuesday: (Luke 10) Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Wednesday (Luke 11) Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."
Thursday (Luke 11) “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’
Friday (Luke 11) When Jesus had driven out a demon, some of the crowd said: “By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons.” Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven.
Saturday (Luke 11) “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
Saints of the Week
October 6: Bruno, priest (1030-1101), became a professor at Rheims and diocesan chancellor. He gave up his riches and began to live as a hermit with six other men. They had disdain for the rampant clerical corruption. The bishop of Grenoble gave them land in the Chartreuse mountains and they began the first Carthusian monastery. After serving in Rome for a few years, Bruno was given permission to found a second monastery in Calabria.
October 7: Our Lady of the Rosary recalls the events in 1571 of the Christian naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto near Corinth. Victory was credited to Mary as confraternities prayed the rosary for her intercession.
October 9: Denis, bishop and martyr, and companion martyrs (d. 258), was the first bishop of Paris. He died during the Decian persecutions by beheading at Montmarte, the highest hill in the city. Lore has it that he picked up his head after the beheading and walked six miles while giving a sermon. Denis was sent to Paris to bring Christianity and was thereby called, “The apostle to the Gauls.”
October 9: John Leonardi (1542-1609), was a pharmacist’s assistant before studying for the priesthood. He became interested in the reforms of the Council of Trent and gathered laymen around him to work in prisons and hospitals. He contracted the plague while ministering to those who were sick. He founded the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God to care for the sick.
October 12: John Beyzym, S.J., priest (1850-1912), was Ukranian-born, entered the Jesuits, and petitioned to work among the people of Madagascar who had Hansen’s disease (leprosy.) Since the lepers lived in remote shanty buildings with no windows or facilities, Beyzym worked hard to improve their living conditions, build a hospital, and a church. He died after contracting the disease.
This Week in Jesuit History
- October 6, 1773. In London, Dr James Talbot, the Vicar Apostolic, promulgated the Brief of Suppression and sent copies to Maryland and Pennsylvania.
- October 7, 1819. The death of Charles Emmanuel IV. He had been King of Sardinia and Piedmont. He abdicated in 1802 and entered the Jesuits as a brother in 1815. He is buried in San Andrea Quirinale in Rome.
- October 8, 1871. The Great Chicago Fire. Most of the city was destroyed, but it missed Holy Family, the Jesuit parish, as the fire turned north thanks to the prayers of Fr. Arnold Damen. The fire lasted three days; 250 were killed.
- October 9, 1627. Jansenius left Louvain for Salamanca to foment antipathy against the Jesuits and thus prevent Philip IV from giving the Society a large college in Madrid. The theological faculty at Salamanca were hostile to the Society.
- October 10, 1806: The first novitiate of the Maryland Mission opened as ten novices began their Long Retreat under the direction of Fr. Francis Neale (himself a novice who had entered the Jesuits that day.)
- October 11, 1688: King Louis XIV forbade all correspondence and interchange between the French Jesuits and Fr. Thyrsus Gonzalez, the Spanish General Superior of the Society.
- October 12, 1976: The murder in rural Brazil of Joao Bosco Burnier, SJ, who was shot and killed by soldiers for protesting the torture of two poor women.
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