September 2024: Points to Ponder
Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 September 2024 o World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation
Pope Francis’ Season of Creation sets out to awaken our respect for creation. It invites us to see the world, not as something apart from us, but as a delicate and interlocking set of relationships of which we are part. It invites us to appreciate our world through the lens of God’s love in the making of our world and in all our relationships in it. The Season calls us to be thankful., overwhelmed by gratitude for being called by God to be part of it.
When we attend to the beauty of our world, we notice how complex and delicate are the relationships of which we are part. We notice the scent of flowers in spring, the light green of new growth, the plumage of lorikeets and the part that scents and colours have in the drive of nature to perpetuate itself. We notice, too, how nothing is superfluous in nature, nothing is ugly. The fallen bark and dead grasses provide material for birds to nest and mulch in which ants and other insects can find food.
To notice and celebrate the season of creation reinforces our commitment to respect it. This can take many different forms. We can join campaigns to draw attention to the ways in which creation is disrespected. We can celebrate the beauty of creation and try to embody respect for it in our ordinary lives – in the way in which we travel, eat and sleep, for example, read, sow seeds, wrap and dispose of rubbish. The season of creation is a time to attend to our world, to celebrate its beauty and respect its delicacy, and to join others in coming to its defence.
Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ
www.catholicoutlook.org
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Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
8 September 2024
We all have ears, but very often we are not able to hear. Why is this? It is interior deafness, which is worse than physical deafness, because it is the deafness of the heart. Taken up with haste, by so many things to say and do, we do not find time to stop and listen to those who speak to us. We run the risk of becoming impervious to everything and not making room for those who need to be heard. I am thinking about children, young people, the elderly, the many who do not really need words and sermons, but to be heard. Let us ask ourselves: how is my capacity to listen going? Do I let myself be touched by people’s lives? Do I know how to spend time with those who are close to me in order to listen? This regards all of us, but in a special way also priests. The priest must listen to people, not in a rushed way, but listen and see how he can help, but after having listened. And all of us: first listen, then respond. Think about family life: how many times do we talk without listening first, repeating the same things, always the same things! Incapable of listening, we always say the same things, or we do not let the other person finish talking, expressing themselves, and we interrupt them. Starting a dialogue often happens not through words but silence, by not insisting, by patiently beginning anew to listen to others, hearing about their struggles and what they carry inside. The healing of the heart begins with listening. Listening.
Pope Francis
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Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
15 September 2024
We can all find it easier telling people who we think they are than listening to them trying to tell us who they really are. In particular, we can struggle to hear the story of someone’s brokenness, especially when the person speaking matters a great deal to us and has become very significant for us. No one wants to see a friend or a loved one suffer. Peter had left everything to follow Jesus. He wasn’t able to hear Jesus talking about himself as a broken, failed, rejected Christ or Messiah. It was really only after the resurrection that Peter and the disciples were able to come to terms with Jesus’ ignominious death as a rebel king on a Roman cross. It can be a struggle for us to accept failure and brokenness in others. That may be because to struggle at times to accept our own brokenness and failures. Jesus could accept his own pending experience of rejection, failure and brokenness and he could talk about it to those closest to him, because he trusted that God his Father would make him whole again. He believed that out of his suffering and death God would bring new life for himself and for others. Because he could accept the painful reality of his own brokenness and suffering, he was at home with the suffering and brokenness of others. The broken, the rejected, the failures of this world, flocked to him, and, in his presence, they began to become whole again.
Fr Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin
Frmartinshomiliesandreflections
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Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
22 September 2024
As much as conflicts are inevitable in life, we must not allow them to tear us apart. Sadly, the root of most of such conflicts is selfish ambitions. So, James admonishes us not to allow selfish ambitions destroy our relationships, families and communities.
In today’s gospel, Jesus foretells his imminent suffering, death and resurrection. Unfortunately, instead of reflecting on what Christ was saying, his disciples were busy quarrelling secretly over who was the greatest. Of course, their argument was aimed at the earthly government they imagined that Christ had come to establish. So, Like the community that James wrote to, Jesus’ disciples were experiencing a conflict of interest.
This is what we often see in any society, church, family, and indeed anywhere that personal ambition is considered more important than anything else. There, we see in-fighting, gossips, indifference, aggression, threats to lives and properties, hatred, and all sorts of vices. All these, come at the expense of the common good and peaceful coexistence. Wherever these exist, there can be no progress, prosperity and peace. Therefore, by using a child as an example for us today, Jesus is simply teaching us that we have to become like children in order to be great. Of course, this does not mean being childish. Rather, it means being child-like. It means that, we have to live our lives in humble service to God and to one another.
Fr Njoku Canice Chukwuemeka CSSp
Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
29 September 2024 o World Day of Migrants and Refugees
Pope Francis reminds us, ‘the presence of migrants and refugees – and of vulnerable people in general – is an invitation to recover some of those essential dimensions of our Christian existence and our humanity that risk being overlooked in a prosperous society.’ The Eucharist is a summons for us to examine how we respond to those in need: ‘We must not forget that ‘the ‘mysticism’ of the sacrament has a social character. When those who receive it turn a blind eye to the poor and suffering, or consent to various forms of division, contempt and inequality, the Eucharist is received unworthily’ (Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, no. 186). The more we choose to love one another, the more fully we exist and share in the mystery of life with God. On the contrary, the more we limit our relatedness and acceptance of those relationships, the more we diminish our existence and holiness. For indeed, when Jesus prayed to the Father, he prayed that all may be one… ‘as we are one’ (Jn 17:21). The best way to experience and foster this unity is through the reception of Holy Communion by receiving Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity; we become the Body of Christ.
In the midst of the current reality of women, men, and children risking everything for a better life, let us remember that the Body of Christ includes migrants and refugees. Let us share the journey and break bread together at the table of the Lord. Each migrant and refugee we encounter represents an opportunity to live the mystery of the Eucharist more fully and transform our own prejudices and vulnerabilities.
Yohan Garcia
My migrant journey and the Eucharist