deacon pedro

A reflection for the 24^th 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.”

A reflection for the 29^th 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.

A reflection for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, year C. The readings are Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29; Psalm 68; Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a and Luke 14:1, 7-14.

“The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” That was last week’s message. Today’s is very similar: “All those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” These two messages can be better understood when we recognize that for the last couple of weeks and, in fact, for the next weeks – all the way to the Feast of Christ the King, at the end of November, the end of the Liturgical Year – Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem for the last time. This is it. He’s on his way to Calvary and so all his lessons have to do with salvation. They have to do with God’s mercy and the Kingdom of God. And so we hear a lot of parables, stories and lessons that tell us something about what we need to do to be saved; and today, it has to do with humility.

Humility is an important theme in Jesus’ ministry – not just what he preached but how he lived and how he died. In the Gospel of Luke, humility is also a big theme. It is Luke who gives us the Magnificat – that beautiful prayer that Mary prays when she goes to visit Elizabeth: “He has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly” (1:51-53).  It is also Luke that tells us that “the least among you is the greatest” (9:48) and that the greatest is the one who serves (22:26).

A reflection for the Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord, year C. The readings are Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47; Ephesians 1:17-23 and Luke 24:46-53.

 There’s a quote from St. Augustine for this day, the Solemnity of the Ascension, that says: “Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him.” It’s a good reminder that today’s feast is not just about Jesus ascending to be with the Father, like St. Paul says in today’s second reading, to be seated at the right hand of God, above all principalities and authorities, and with and all things beneath his feet, but also that this feast is about how we can also already be in heaven with him. As the opening prayer today says, where Christ ascends in glory, we will follow in hope. Just as he didn’t leave heaven to be with us on earth and remains with us even after his ascension, we too are already in heaven with him, even though what has been promised has not yet been fulfilled. That means that even though our bodies are not yet in heaven, we can start lifting our hearts to heaven with Jesus. And so, I’ve been thinking about what it means to “lift up our hearts”. We say it at every Mass: “The Lord be with you; and with your spirit. Lift up your hearts; we lift them up to the Lord.” I’ve never really thought about what it means to lift up our hearts to the Lord so today I want to share with you four ways in which you can lift up your hearts with the ascended Jesus.