2025 Jul 20 SUN: SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Gn 18: 1-10a/ Ps 15: 2-3. 3-4. 5 (1a)/ Col 1: 24-28/ Lk 10: 38-42

We may have been confused last week by some words of St. Paul in this letter to the Colossians, and today he provides us with another puzzle.

He says, "In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body, the Church." And we have to ask, what could that possibly mean?

We understand and we teach consistently that the suffering, the passion of Jesus, His death, His resurrection, these things are sufficient for our salvation, that free gift we often talk about.

So what could Paul mean by this? It seems that he is thinking about the growth of the Church, and feeling a sense of solidarity, we might say, with all the people who will come into the Church, the People of God. As he makes his way around various communities along the Mediterranean Sea, he witnesses growth, and he knows that sufferings will have to take place as a result of this growth.

And we turn to the first reading today, and we have a demonstration of a quality to be expected in that world at that time. The quality -- the virtue -- of hospitality.

And we find this to be a somewhat strange story, because it's kind of disjointed. First it says that Abraham met the Lord, and then it says that there are three men before Abraham.

So this is rather confusing. As Christians, we have tended to look back on this incident of Genesis chapter 18, and we see here a foreshadowing of the revelation of God as Trinity, one God, three persons. And of course the Trinity was not revealed until the time of Jesus. So that is a thing that we as Christians can do when we reflect on the Old Testament, that there are things there that are pointing to the Christian revelation.

And so Abraham and Sarah exercise hospitality. Their world was a bit different from ours. And we can reflect and realize that you and I have time itself sort of chopped up into little pieces, because we are going here and there and meeting social responsibilities of various kinds.

Abraham's world was not like that. They had the time to pay attention to somebody who would just show up. They had traveled long distances themselves, and they knew that there were very, very few stops along the way for refreshment. 

So they exercised hospitality, and then comes the message: "By about this time next year, Sarah will have a son." And if we go on further in chapter 18 of Genesis, we find out that Sarah is listening and she's laughing. And later Abraham said, "You were laughing." And she replies, "No, I wasn't." So it's quite a thing, and an obvious thing to laugh about if you are past childbearing. But yes, they had their son, Isaac, and that name comes from a root meaning laughter. 

Hospitality is at work in the Gospel as well. And this time, Martha, the one offering the hospitality, is consumed with anger, not anger, with anxiety. Yeah, there's anger mixed in there too, definitely, as she thinks that Mary ought to be helping her. But what prevails in Martha is anxiety. And Jesus speaks to calm her.

"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things. Only one thing is needed, and Mary has opened herself to that one thing necessary."

Every one of us knows that we have a lot of anxiety. This is kind of well an unorganized feeling, you might say. We know that we believe that much is expected from us, and we go about meeting various obligations, and we wonder whether we have met them all.

And so, like Martha, we can be filled with anxiety. I know I have been in such circumstances, and there is no contrast like the contrast between anxiety and peace.

And we know that our God wants peace for every one of us. And so, with Martha, we trust, we learn to know what really matters, what things are peripheral, so we can settle ourselves in great peace.

Remembering that we can have this gift because God does care for us as Jesus expressed it to Martha. You are anxious and worried about many things, and all you need is my peace.

2025 Jul 13 SUN: FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Dt 30: 10-14/ Ps 69: 14. 17. 30-31. 33-34. 36. 37 OR Ps 19: 8. 9. 10. 11/ Col 1: 15-20/ Lk 10: 25-37

We have all heard from teachers and other people that there is no such thing as a dumb question. No such thing as a stupid question.

We may find ourselves having to ask quite fundamental questions, for instance, if we're in an unfamiliar situation and we just have to get ourselves oriented. We have a case here of someone who is afraid that he has asked a dumb question.

This scholar of the law reminds me of the wealthy man that we also find in the Gospel who asks the same question. And it seems as if both of them want to figure out how to get this salvation thing sewn up, because it is such an inconvenient thing to have to be thinking about salvation all the time.

This man has to give himself credit, because when he answered Jesus' question about what is in the law, he took two laws that are in different books of the Torah and put them together. That is actually something to be proud of.

But after he receives that answer from Jesus, he feels embarrassed. He thinks, "I just asked him a dumb question." And so he had to justify himself by going deeper, and he latches on to that word "neighbor." He asks, "Who is my neighbor?" And Jesus definitely has an answer for him.

So we have this man who has been robbed, stripped, beaten up, and is in a terrible condition on the road. And then along comes what we could call a professional religious person.

And what does that professional religious person do? He says, "I didn't see that." And likewise, another, a Levite, likewise a priest, comes along, sees what has happened in the road. And he says, "I didn't see that." 

And then Jesus says that a third person comes along, and he is a Samaritan.

Now it's kind of strange. The origins of the division between Jews and Samaritans is rather obscure. But it may be somewhat like the situation of our own families, where maybe there's one branch of the family that we don't have anything to do with.

And someone might ask, "Why is that?" And the reply may come back, "I don't remember." But there was this split.

Well, the Samaritan who is looked down upon by the Jews acts with compassion. He is reading the law which is in his heart.

He's in an unexpected situation, but he knows that he has the time and he has the money to address this situation. And he is doing precisely what Moses is talking about. When Moses says, "The law is not up in the sky. The law is not across the sea. It is right here in your heart. You have only to carry it out."

So we have to think very deeply about the answer that Jesus gives to this scholar of the law. And it is interesting that this man cannot bring himself to say "the Samaritan." He says: "the one who treated him with mercy." And Jesus says, "Yes, that is what it means to be a neighbor." And he says, "I respond to the common humanity of all of us in spite of any barriers we may put up." 

In addition, we're beginning to read from St. Paul's letter to the Colossians, which begins with actually a hymn, a canticle, which describes Jesus as the firstborn of all creatures. That line has caused us a lot of trouble. It was especially troublesome in the very early Church. People read that line and said, "Oh, Jesus is not God. There was a time when he was not." But we corrected that mistaken notion.

In fact, it's been said that it's probably well to translate that line, the firstborn OVER all creation. And we remember that there is another line in there that echoes that line. It is the line, "He is the firstborn from the dead." It's good for us to keep those two lines of this canticle in our mind and in our heart, remembering that Jesus toward us has been the good Samaritan, responding to the sorry state, the state of sin that we find ourselves in. He has responded to us on the road and he has lifted us up.