Philemon 7–20 • Psalm 145(146):7–10 • Luke 17:20–25

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A key ingredient of Jesus’ teaching is that the kingdom of God is within us. Expounding this truth, Paul taught that the kingdom of God is not a matter of rules and regulations but ultimately of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (see Rom. 14:17). St Anthony of Egypt said: “There is no point in us travelling to find the kingdom of heaven, or crossing the sea in search of virtue. As the Lord has already told us, God’s kingdom is within you.”

Jesus turned the idea of the kingdom of God on its head. The Jewish people were expecting a political Messiah who would overthrow their Roman oppressors and re-establish the Davidic dynasty They rejected Jesus because he did not measure up to these expectations. The kingdom of God was breaking into their world but they were too preoccupied with their own notions and ideas of the kingdom to recognise it.

The kingdom of God, manifested in Jesus, is first and foremost a spiritual reality rather than something of this world (vv. 20-21;John 18:36). The kingdom is not a place or a way of life but a person. Jesus is the kingdom and the kingdom is Jesus. Where Jesus is, there is the kingdom. As the Scripture scholar Origen once said: “The gospel of Jesus is autobasilea, the kingdom himself.”

Reflecting on the words contained in the Our Father, the great saint and Church father Cyprian of Carthage wrote, “ ‘Thy kingdom come’ . . . Christ himself is the kingdom of God, whom we day by day desire to come, whose advent we crave to be quickly manifested to us. For Since he himself is the resurrection, because in him we rise again, so also the kingdom of God may be understood to be himself, because in him we shall reign.” The closer we are then to Jesus, the closer we are to the kingdom of God. And the closer we are to Jesus, the more we wıll pray for his return to earth, because those who love long to see the beloved, the One they love.

We manifest the kingdom of God to the world by showing that we know Jesus. How do we show this? By our witness of peace, love, joy and righteousness in the power and grace of the Holy Spirit.

“Let the proud seek and love earthly kingdoms, but blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” ( St Augustine)

Chris 

From Bible Alive

Philippians 4:10–19 • Psalm 111(112):1–9 • Luke 16:9–15

Money, money, money!’ – as the Abba song goes – ‘it’s the rich man’s world.’   And that’s where the problem lies.  Money is tainted, as Jesus describes it, because it carries the danger of reducing our world to the attainment or acquisition of money.  When money is our world, then it also becomes our God and we can find ourselves even serving it.

Like the Abba song, today’s few verses mention money so many times that it almost seems like a little world in which money dominates. But, of course, there is no real intrinsic problem with money. It is strictly an artificial means invented by our ancestors to facilitate trading with each other  In the past, trading happened through barter,  putting an equivalent value on various goods, even tıme, so that a day of a man’s work was said to be equivalent to, for example, a sack of potatoes. Money was invented to represent the same value as the hours of work or a quantity of vegetables, so that we would not need to carry around sacks of potatoes if we wanted a skilled worker to do a job for us. Money was a great idea and it facilitated society because we could give something we had in exchange for something we wanted. It was a way of using our gifts, skills, goods to service others and to benefit from those skills, etc., of others in return.

The taint of money comes not from money itself but from the human heart in which greed resides. From within the heart, the need and desire to build society and to exchange goods and skills can be corrupted into the lust simply for profit. The heart can produce a self-centredness that wants to take advantage of others. As mentioned above, the corrupt heart can shrink the world simply to ourselves.

Jesus invites us to use money in a different way. Profit is no bad thing: it becomes bad only insofar as it is used wholly to serve ourselves. What matters in the end is the state of our heart. It is through our union with Jesus that our hearts are transformed. Like the heart of Jesus, who came to serve and give his life as a ransom for many, our hearts can give money its true value in the building of society and the kingdom of God.

Most Sacred Heart ofJesus make our hearts like unto thine. Amen.

 

Chris 

From Bible Alive

 

Philippians 2: 5-11

In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus: His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

A note from the Life Application Bible:

2:5-11 These verses are probably from a hymn sung by the early Christian church. The passage holds many parallels to the prophecy of the suffering servant in lsaiah 53. As a hymn, it was not meant to be a complete statement about the nature and work of Christ. Several key characteristics of Jesus Christ, however, are" praised in this passage: (1) Christ has always existed with God;

(2) Christ is equal to God because he is God (John 1:1ff; Colos- sians 1:15—19); 

(3) though Christ is God, he became a man in order to fulfil God’s plan of salvation for all people; 

(4) Christ did not just have the appearance of being a man — he actually became human to identify with our sins; 

(5) Christ voluntarily laid aside his divine rights and privileges out of love for his Father; 

(6) Christ died on the cross for our sins so we wouldn’t have to face eternal death; 

(7) God glorified Christ because of his obedience; 

(8) God raised Christ to his original position at the Father’s right hand, where he will reign for ever as our Lord and Judge. 

How can we do anything less than praise Christ as our Lord and dedicate ourselves to his service!

Pope Francis must be a bit of a nightmare for the Roman Curia. His easygoing, warm and inviting Latino approach to life has certainly ruffled a few feathers and raised a few eyebrows over the years since he became Pope. He has a kind of healthy and rather amusing approach to pomp, circumstance and the trappings of his centuries-old office.

However, Pope Francis is undoubtedly very conscious that he stands in the shoes of the humble fisherman. He refuses to wear the traditional papal red leather shoes, preferring instead his well-worn pair. He chooses to travel in a clapped-out Ford rather than the papal limo. He has declined to have the kind of security fitting for a leader of state, even saying no to bulletproof glass. He refuses to be a prisoner of the Vatican but rather its liberator. We should thank God that he is our Pope. Of course, Pope Francis is walking in the steps of jesus — because Jesus too ruffled feathers, kicked against the status quo and moved in the power of the Spirit.

Today we join Jesus seated at a 'nd of banquet, given, it would appear, in his honour. Many of the religious establishment of the day were there, watching to see whether he would step out of line. It is very likely that the sick man was a fellow guest but, remarkably, when he was healed by Jesus there was no joyful celebration, only stony silence. The law of the Sabbath had taken precedence over the law of God’s life and grace. What is at the heart of the matter here? Jesus was constantly challenging preconceptions about God and how to live by faith. He clearly loved the Pharisees, who on the whole were good men devoted to God and his law. They were, however, closed to what God was doing in their midst.

At the World Youth Day in Brazil in 2013, Pope Francis urged the young people present to mess things up in their parishes when they returned home. He meant that when following God’s will we may have to step out of line, ruffle feathers and challenge the status quo – we need to respect what has gone before but be open to what the Spirit is doing now in our midst.

Lord teach me to be open to the work of the Spirit both in my own life and in your world today.

Chris

From Bible Alive

Philippians 1:1–11 • Psalm 110(111) • 1–6  • Luke 4:1-6

Luke 13:10–17

Luke 11:47–52 • St Teresa of Avila

Make no mistake and be under no illusion, the Pharisees and Jesus were on a collision course and it was never going to be pretty — the gloves were off, the hostility was out in the open.  Jesus did not hold back but called them to account for the blood of the prophets from Abel, the son of Adam and Eve (Gen. 4), to Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, the chief priest during the reign of Kingjoash of Judah (837–800 BC), who was killed in the temple when he tried to call the nation back to true worship (see 2 Chron. 24:17–22).  Jesus’s fate was sealed, his path to the cross certain, as the religious establishment of the day was rocked to its very core by his exposure of their hypocrisy.

The Pharisees built tombs for the prophets their forefathers had persecuted and martyred; they claimed to speak for God but resisted the words. spoken by the prophets. Injesus we see the culmination of the ministry of every prophet of old. Israel’s prophets spoke about Christ and always pointed to Christ. Now someone greater than the prophets, the Christ, was among them, and so began a profound resistance which would culminate in the plot to kill him.  Jesus condemned the Pharisees because their hearts had become hard and resistant to God’s plan of salvation. They had become closed to the work of God in their midst and in their lives.

True, we might not kill the prophets but we can kill the work of God by being hard and resistant to what the Spirit is doing in our lives and in our Church. The Spirit is at work today in many individuals and movements or streams, such as the Charismatic movement, the Neocathechumenate, Opus Dei, Focolare, the MaltFriscans, Youth 2000 and, last but not least, the sincere young people in our parishes who are ever eager to sing at Mass, play musical instruments and participate in the life of the Church. We must guard our hearts against our own prejudice and preferences – the Spirit blows where the Spirit wills, and we must learn to celebrate his work in our midst and not undermine it or even kill it.

Heavenly Father, by your grace may we resist and overcome ways of thinking which limit the work of the Spirit, and may we rejoice in what you are doing in the Church today.

Ephesians 1:1–10 • Psalm 97(98) • Luke 11:47–54

St John Henry Newman (Feast)

2 Timothy 1:1–5 • Psalm 95 (96) • John 15:9–17

There are two extremes into which people fall when it comes to their attitude to evil and the devil. At one end of the spectrum is to believe in the devil and evil excessively, and at the other not to believe in evil or the devil at all — with plenty of people fitting somewhere in-between!  This is as true in our age as any other, and we have ample evidence of excessive belief in innumerable blockbuster films and books and even weekend courses on the occult and demons.

We, for our part, are guided and governed by the Scriptures and the wisdom of the Church passed down through the ages. The Church has always affirmed that the devil and his realm is a reality (see, e. g. Catechism of the Catholic Church 407) which we ignore at our peril.  Jesus is the strong man who by his death and resurrection has redeemed the world.  By his cross, in his name and through his blood we who have received the grace of baptism are protected and kept safe, but we need to call upon this shield of God’s grace.

We are invited to enter into the spiritual battle which is waged every day. This notion of spiritual conflict or engaging the enemy can seem rather obscure or remote, especially when the daily  struggle to deal with the problems of this world is hard enough.  Perhaps the great saint and martyr Thomas More shed some light on' this when he said: “Occupy your minds with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones; unoccupied they cannot be.”  Being passive and undisciplined in our thinking and in our behaviour can open us up to the devil and his ways. The devil delights in an idleness of mind and a passivity which does not actively take up the good fight of faith.

A mind filled with God’s truth and God’s thoughts is a mind which is bolstering and protecting itself against the snares and attacks of the Evil One. God created us with the gift of free Will, and the greatest challenge we face every day is to choose God and reject the devil, to choose the good and repel evil, and to stand firm in faith.

Lord Jesus, protect us from the snares, wiles and schemes of the Evil One.  I call upon the power of your name, cross and blood, that I may live more and more in your presence.

Chris

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 • Psalm 143(144) 1–4 • Luke 9:18-22

It is sometimes difficult to express simply and clearly what we believe. For some, it may stem from a lack of confidence or a fear of being rejected. For others, it might be that they don’t even have the words.

Take those suffering with dementia, for example. There are in the UK 700,000 people suffering from dementia, and that number is steadily increasing. Being diagnosed with dementia is distressing for the individual concerned and for their family and friends. As someone’s ability to relate to the world around them is diminished, they become more isolated. Communication becomes increasingly difficult – they might not be able to talk or to communicate in other ways.

Jesus asked Peter, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ (v 20). Peter knew exactly who Jesus was, just as God knows exactly who we are. He knows the number of hairs on our head (Luke 12:7). Whatever happens to our mental functions, we remain spiritual beings. The Catechism fo the Cat/90hr Church states that ‘The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God’ (para. 1700).

Peter recognised Jesus as the Christ (v. 20). Do we look for and recognise God in those with dementia? The decline in someone’s mental faculties does not end their personal journey of faith or diminish their full human integrity. They continue on their pilgrimage, usually aware of the continuing importance of their deeply held spirituality, and often finding comfort in familiar prayers and rituals. God is there in their loneliness to give them comfort.

Would Peter have openly stated his faith if he hadn’t been directly challenged byJesus? He might not have made such a declaration without prompting, but he knew what he thought and felt. He had faith. For those witnessing the mental decline of their loved ones, faith becomes all the more important too. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear…” (Ps. 46:1-2).

Loving Father you are close to the broken-hearted. Look with compassion on those whose lost memories have robbed them of home and belonging. Comfort and strengthen those who care for them. May they make their home in you. This we ask through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Chris

Graphic from: https://slmnallotey.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/jesus-the-word-of-god/

Julia received this in an email from Richard Rohr; I found it profoundly calming and reassuring. The election clearly refers to that approaching in the USA, but many countries are facing problems which could be treated in similar fashion.