Please Put Up With Me

Please Put Up With Me

Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

If only you would put up with a little foolishness from me!  Please put up with me.  2 Corinthians 11:1

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.  Matthew 6:8

Piety

Father put up with our foolishness until we show the common sense enough to turn to you to work out the problems we encounter in daily life.

Study

The Lord’s Prayer is the perfect prayer for what it is, what it presents and what is calls us to do and to be.It opens with Faith, Hope and Love.  Faith in Our Father.  Hope in the Kingdom to come is our great longing.  Love in following His will and not ours just as Jesus did so in the Garden. 

The Lord’s Prayer continues with the four cardinal virtues:  prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude.  Prudently we ask God to give us what we need for our daily life – not more than we need, but certainly not less than we need.  We seek forgiveness as we, in justice, forgive others when we walk all over their lives and infringe upon their rights. But also, we seek help in learning how to forgive ourselves.  We ask the Lord to lead us into a temperate life of restraint, not into the path of evil and temptation and finally to give us the fortitude to resist evil and follow in His way. We ask God, in this last petition, to save us from what troubles us.

In the old Laurel and Hardy films, Oliver would sometimes turn to Stanley and remark, “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC1ajVYFh6Y  When we cannot save ourselves or each other, we know through our faith that God will be there to pluck us from the belly of the beasts within us and beyond us. No matter what we do, the Lord will put up with us more than Oliver puts up with Stanley.

Action

Jesus introduced the Lord’s Prayer as a suggested way for the disciples to carry on an interactive conversation with God.  How will you conversation with the Lord proceed today? What will you say?  What will you ask?  How will the Lord respond before you even ask?

God Loves a Cheerful Giver

God Loves a Cheerful Giver

Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

By Colleen O'Sullivan

Brothers and sisters, consider this:  whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.  Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:6-8)

Lavishly he gives to the poor; his generosity shall endure forever; his horn shall be exalted in glory. (Psalm 112:9)

Piety

Lord, all I have and am comes from you.  Help me to share the abundance of your good gifts with others.

Study

In today’s first reading, St. Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth about being generous to their brother and sister Christians in Jerusalem, who are in great need.  He goes on from there to expand on giving in general and makes the statement that God loves a cheerful giver.  But how does a person become a cheerful giver?  

Certainly not by listening to the messages propagated by our consumer-oriented society.  We’re constantly being lured to buy more, accumulate more, build bigger houses, purchase fancier cars.  According to the commercials and ads that saturate our TV networks, emails and web sites, we can never have enough, whether it’s beauty, youth, possessions, prestige, or money.  If this is the message our hearts take in, we’ll never become cheerful givers.  We’ll always be reluctant to give anything to anyone else, because what if we then don’t have enough for ourselves?  Over time, the concept of “enough” has become totally distorted.   “Enough” is having what we need, but our minds have been brainwashed into confusing our needs with our wants.  Unfortunately, many people make their way through life with this scarcity mentality.

The secret to being a cheerful giver is to tune out the media hype and, instead, reflect on the overwhelming love God has for us and how generously God has blessed us.  One of the prayer practices that St. Ignatius of Loyola recommended is a daily examen.  (For more information on this type of prayer, you can go to http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-examen/rummaging-for-god-praying-backward-through-your-day/.)  Once we have consciously put ourselves in God’s presence, St. Ignatius says we should review our day with gratitude or thanksgiving.  No matter how bad our day has been, we can always find some small thing to be grateful for.  When we do this prayer review day in and day out, the small things begin to add up.  Over time, we begin to realize how truly blessed we are by the Lord.  We begin to see and feel the abundance of grace Paul talks about.  When we know we’re overflowing with good things, we find ourselves wanting to share out of that abundance.  At that point, being a cheerful giver comes naturally.  It’s just the opposite of having a scarcity mindset. 

Action

Take a few minutes this evening to review your day with the Lord.  Particularly, spend time looking for the things for which you can be grateful – the child who told you she loves you, a co-worker who had a few kind words for you, the driver who let you into the lane you needed to be in on the Beltway, the friend who called just to say hello and see how you’re doing.  When you look hard enough, life is full of small blessings and God is in all of them.

As Loving Children

As Loving Children

Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

By Beth DeCristofaro

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father … (Matthew 5:43-45)

Piety

Bless, O Lord, those who cut me off in traffic.  Bless my associate who is so strident.  Bless leaders who make hurtful decisions because of their unbending adherence to an agenda rather than to the people they serve.  Bless the former acquaintance who no longer speaks to me.  Bless those who don’t take me seriously because of what I believe.  Bless, dear God, those who make war.  Bless me, Father, when I do any of these things to another and guide me that I might love rather than persecute.

Study

When she was a child, Sr. Jose Hobday reacted to an act of discrimination against her mother.  In doing so, she learned a valuable lesson.  At a restaurant they refused to serve her mother because she was Native American.  Jose had lighter hair and complexion, being only half Native American, and thus the waitress brought her a cold glass of milk.  Jose settled the score by pouring out the cup of milk all over the table and floor.  However, Jose’s mother did not thank her.  Instead she told the young girl that Jose had chosen to act just like the discriminators and that vengeance always brings sour results.[i]

God’s love is free.  We do not earn it by being good or doing the “right thing.”  Jesus loved the hard-to-love.  In fact as Cursillo reminds me, Jesus loves me even in my least loveable moments.  As difficult as it is to love sometimes, by not doing so we sour our own soul. 

Action

Compose your own prayer to bless persecutors in your life.  Then say a prayer for yourself for the ways you persecute.  Ask for God to help you love more fully.

---

[i] “Spilled Milk” from Stories of Awe and Abundance, Sr. Jose Hobday, OSF, Continuum, New York,  2001, p. 33.

Possessing All Things

Possessing All Things

http://usccb.org/bible/readings/061713.cfm

Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful; as unrecognized and yet acknowledged; as dying and behold we live; as chastised and yet not put to death; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing; as poor yet enriching many; as having nothing and yet possessing all things.  2 COR 6:8b-10

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’  But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil.  When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.”  Matthew 5:38-39

Piety

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.  (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

Study

Today’s first reading may not contain the poetic power of that first paragraph from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.  After all, this is not the best of times, nor the worst of times.  It was, as St. Paul writes, an acceptable time.  But an acceptable time is time for salvation.  Just as Dickens started his most famous novel with a series of opposing statements, so, too does Paul address the people of Corinth.

Through this litany of experiences (“afflictions, hardships, constraints, beatings, imprisonments, riots,
labors, vigils, fasts”), we are reminded that the life of the early Christians was not easy.  Despite their intentions, they were upsetting the status quo and challenging not only the people of Jewish faith, but also the various pagan religions of the day in favor of following the path of Jesus.  For such an actions, they experienced glory and dishonor, praise and insult. 

While such experiences may not be welcome, they mark time that is acceptable to the Lord.  Early in Luke’s Gospel, we also encounter the same phrase about “acceptable” time for the Lord. As Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah, the passage ends with proclaiming a year “acceptable” to the Lord. 

Action

Do we think we will have it any easier? After all, this is not the best of times, nor the worst of times.  This is just ordinary time. 

Paul and the early Christians did not offer to the Lord one hour on Sunday.  They offered their whole lives to the Lord and to the early community. We, on the other hand, are called to keep holy the Lord’s Day – the whole day, every day.  Sometimes, the rest of that Sabbath day and the week, is devoted to ourselves.

Yet, we have been told what will make time acceptable to the Lord.  We are asked to “bring glad tidings to the poor,” “to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” 

How can you make this week “acceptable” to the Lord in your piety, study and action?  What specific plans are you making to turn this week into the best of time for the poor, oppressed, blind and captive?