Daily Mass for St. Patrick’s Day

Because of the coronavirus, at Blessed Sacrament we’re doing our best to allow people to pray the Mass even if they cannot physically be there. One of the way’s we’re doing that is by streaming as often as possible on our parish Facebook page. I’ve included today’s Mass, which I celebrated, in this post. The Mass begins at time 3:30 in the video.

Daily Mass on St. Patrick’s Day, 2020

Reflection for the Fifth Wednesday of Lent

The saying “do as I say and not as I do” has always bothered me. I know that there are some who mean to say, “I am trying to do these things too, but it is very hard,” but I usually can’t see that. It always sounds like hypocrisy to me. It sounds to me like the person is saying, “I can’t be bothered to try and do this, but you should.” I much prefer a different phrase, “actions speak louder than words.”

Jesus encourages us to take this a step further in the Gospel today. After telling the Jews that sin is a type of slavery, he condemns the Jews who want to put him to death. He tells them, “You are doing the works of your father!” They reply that they are children of Abraham and not of sin, but Jesus counters their argument. He says that while they are descendants of Abraham they act in such a way that their true father is revealed to be someone or something else. If they were truly children of God, or of Abraham, they would love Jesus. Their actions against love demonstrate, for all to see, that their true master is sin, in other words: the evil one.

The story of the three young men in Daniel today shows the opposite happening. The three young men told Nebuchadnezzar that he was wasting his breath by trying to get them to worship false gods. Furious, he had a furnace heated seven times more than usual before having Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego thrown into it. Some of the soldiers died throwing them in because of the heat! But the three young men were not burned. They were spared. They were even joined by an angel. Their love for God burned hotter than any furnace ever could burn. This witness prompted Nebuchadnezzar to promulgate a decree across his entire empire that the God of Israel must be respected.

This is the power of right action. In our broken culture, we cannot even speak to some people without causing more division—no matter what we say. What we can do is provide authentic, Christian witness by living a good, Christian life in the most joyful way possible. As the song says, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” But they’ll also know us by our joy. They’ll know us by the different way in which we live.

Actions speak louder than words. Let us be joyful Christians, and work to convert the world through one action at a time.

Today’s Readings: Dn 3:14-20, 91-92, 95; Dn 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56; Jn 8:31-42

Reflection for the Third Tuesday of Lent

In the Gospel, Jesus tells a parable of a master who forgives a great debt. This servant, forgiven of his debt, then turns around and throws a fellow servant into prison for a much smaller debt. The master is displeased, and hands down a judgment in line with how the servant with great debt judged the servant with little debt.

We are the servants with a great debt. How we treat others, however, does not have to be as the servant with great treats others in the parable. Azariah recognizes this. He and two other Jewish men have been cast into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship and pay homage to false gods in Babylon. They pray a beautiful prayer amidst the flames, begging God to have mercy on them. They proclaim their trust and confidence in God, offering to Him everything that they have.

They end by asking God to bring glory to his name, which he does. The men are saved from the fire. The king of Babylon then proclaims that Israel’s God is not to be disrespected because of his great power. The three men, as well as the prophet Daniel, go on to be the most sought-after and intelligent men in the entire kingdom. By dedicating themselves to God, and acting in accord with his law, the men gave glory to God with their lives.

Let us be like Azariah, and offer ourselves to God, who has forgiven us a great debt—a debt we could never hope to repay on our own.

Today’s Readings: Dan 3:25, 34-43; Ps 25:4-5ab, 6 & 7bc, 8-9; Mt 18:21-35

Reflection for the Second Monday of Lent

In the first reading today, Daniel is begging the Lord to have mercy on the Israelite people despite their many sins and failures. This plea is also in the today’s psalm, which asks the Lord not to “remember not against us the iniquities of the past; may your compassion quickly come to us, for we are brought very low.” This has been a common theme throughout the first week of Lent: recognizing our failures and asking God to forgive us.

Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that the Father is merciful, and that we are called to be merciful like him. “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” If we do not love, if we do not have mercy, then how can we expect God to have mercy on us? Many parables have a similar message, and we even find it in the Our Father, where we ask God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

These words can strike fear into our hearts, because they force us to recognize that our salvation depends on how we treat others—and we are terrible to other people sometimes! While we must do our best, our best isn’t enough. We know that for man it is impossible to enter Heaven. Only God can bring us to Heaven. So let us ask God to help us forgive and have mercy on others, so that we might grow in these virtues, so that at the end of our days when we meet God we will be greeted with a God’s superabundant mercy and love that we tried to give to others.

(Sorry about this being late!)

Today’s Readings: Dan 9:4b-10; Ps 79:8, 9, 11 & 13; Lk 6:36-38