A reflection for the 3rd Sunday, Advent, Year B. The readings are Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11; Luke 1:46-54; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 and John 1:6-8, 19-28.
Always, at this time of the year, I am struck by how the days get so much shorter. I grew up in Panama and there, the times of the sunrises and sunsets are very regular – there is very little variation depending on the time of the year. No matter what time of the year is, the sunrise is always anywhere between 6 and 6:30am and the sunset is anywhere between 6 and 6:30pm. But here in Canada it’s very clear that this time of the year is a time of darkness. The sunrise this morning was 7:50am and the sunset tonight will be at 4:40pm.
It reminds me of a story about a wise teacher who asked his students to tell him how they new when the dawn had arrived; to tell him how they knew the precise moment when it was no longer night and it was now day. One student put up her hand, “I know teacher. I know that the dawn has arrived when there’s just enough light that I can see an animal 200 ft away and I know if it’s a small deer or a large dog.” “That’s very good”, said the teacher, “but it’s not the answer I am looking for.” Another student put up his hand, “Teacher, I know. I know that the dawn has arrived when there’s just enough light that if I see a tree, 500 feet away, I can tell if it’s a pine tree or a spruce.” “That’s also very good”, said the teacher, “but it’s also not the answer I am looking for.” And so, other students tried to come up with the answer that the teacher was looking for.
Read more…A reflection for the 33rd Sunday, Ordinary Time, Year A. The readings are Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31; Psalm 128; Thessalonians 5:1-6 and Matthew 25:14-30.
If Jesus was here teaching this lesson today, I think he could use these three examples:
There was a soldier who, went to war as a captain but was demoted and returned as a private. Afterwards tried starting a few businesses, which failed; went bankrupt twice, decided to run for president and was defeated 26 times before being elected into public office. That was Abraham Lincoln. Well done, good and faithful servant!
This woman, was nearly penniless, depressed, divorced and raising a child as a single mother while attending school and trying to write a novel. When she finally finished the novel, it was rejected by 12 publishers before one of them decided to give her a chance. That was JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in small matters!
No one would hire this man as an animator; he was fired from a journalism job because they said he wasn’t creative enough – he started his own company and it went bankrupt. At one point his producer stole a character he had created. He then created a cartoon character that was rejected 300 times – he was told that this character would scare women. That character was Mickey Mouse and the animator was Walt Disney. Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in small matters; I will give you more responsibilities; Come and share your master’s joy!
These three people have a few things in common: They were not afraid of taking risks; they not afraid of failure; they didn’t let failure deter them from their goals – and they certainly didn’t sit around waiting for something to happen.
This is what I think today’s parable is about.
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A reflection for the 24th Sunday, Ordinary Time, Year A. The readings are Sirach 27:30-28:7; Psalm 103; Romans 14:7-9 and Matthew 18:21-35.
I think that when Simon Peter goes to Jesus with this question, he’s thinking he is so holy. At the time, most people lived by the rule of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. The rabbis who taught that they had to forgive three times, but not a fourth time. And so Peter was probably trying to show off a bit how amazing he is at being willing to forgive, not three times like the rabbis taught, but seven times!
And Jesus responds, “Seven times?! More like seventy times seven times!” But Jesus doesn’t literally mean that we should forgive 490 times. He means we have to forgive 70 cajillion times. He’s using hyperbole.
Do you know what hyperbole is? Hyperbole is when we exaggerate something to make a point. We do it all the time. I say, “See that guy? He’s like 15 feet tall!” I don’t mean that he is literally 15 feet tall; I am making a point that he’s really tall. And at the time of Jesus, this was something people did. And Jesus does it all the time. When Jesus says ,”it’s better if you cut off your hand or pluck out your eye” he doesn’t literally mean that you should do that. Of when he says, “if you had but a little bit of faith, you could move a mountain” he doesn’t literally mean that you could move a mountain. He means that you could do great, unimaginable things. So here Jesus says, you should forgive 490 times.
He means, “Stop counting.”
Read more…A reflection for the 29th Sunday, Ordinary Time, Year C. The readings are Exodus 17:8-13, Psalm 12, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2 and Luke 18:1-8.
This gospel makes me angry.
Well… maybe not angry, but I don’t like it.
I don’t like it because it starts off by saying that Jesus tells us this story to show us that we should pray persistently and it implies that if we do, not only will God respond, but God will give us what we are praying for. But you and I know that is not true. How many people do we know who pray, persistently; they beg, day and night to be cured of cancer or for a loved one to be cured from cancer; they pray for healing or to be freed from a certain affliction, they pray for their marriages to change, or for a war to end. And God does not give them what they are asking for. We still have young mothers dying of cancer and marriages breaking up. We still have young people struggling with mental illness, anxiety and depression; we still have war. How many times have I prayed for someone to be healed and in the end they die? And so, yeah, it makes me a little angry, because, what? Am I not praying hard enough? Am I not praying long enough? Is it that I don’t believe enough or that I don’t see? Is my faith not strong enough? I’m not saying that we need Mary to appear to us with a message like she appeared 100 years ago to those children in Fatima, but something…. anything. Because a lot of times, from God, we get… nothing.
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deacon pedro 