BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH   ( Click here for today’s readings )  I usually sign MS after my name. It means “Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette.” I think I’ll start adding my academic titles: PhL (Licentiate in Philosophy)and STB (Bachelor of Theology). More impressive, no? Like a doctor with MA, and MD, and PhD. This way I can show off my qualifications and accomplishments. Degrees are not to be sniffed at, much less anything to be ashamed of. What’s wrong with showing people that I’m “somebody”? And yet, Jesus says we are to call ourselves “unprofitable servants.” We may be tempted to reply, “What? After all I’ve done for you?” In the opening scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the old king asks his three daughters to say how much they love him, and he will give them a portion of his kingdom in proportion to their love. The first and the second carry on, boasting that they love him more than life, beauty, honor, etc., and that the

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH ( Click here for today’s readings )    If the purpose of a homily is to explain the point of the readings, especially the Gospel, I could stop right here. Both the first reading and the Gospel state emphatically, unequivocally, that we cannot, may not, must not ignore the poor and the hungry. There are plenty of other passages that reinforce the message: Whatever you did/failed to do to one of these least, you did/failed to do to me (Matthew 25). It’s not enough to say “Goodbye and good luck” to a person in need (James 2). Real fasting includes freeing the oppressed and sharing your bread with the hungry (Isaiah 58). Hunger is truly a burden, a yoke, a kind of oppression. In the best case scenario, the rich man would have invited Lazarus in to share his table. That failing, he could have sent food out to him. That failing, he could have told him where he might find food. That failing,

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH ( Click here for today’s readings )  Today’s readings couldn’t be any clearer. The first reading and the Gospel have the same message, and it is blunt: greed is evil. It’s not money that’s evil, not private property, but the “relationship” with money and possessions that interferes with the more important relationships—with other persons and with God. Coincidentally, one of the most direct statements on this subject in the New Testament is from 1 Timothy, though not in the passage found in today’s second reading. It comes four chapters later, in 1 Timothy 6:10: “The love of money is the root of all evils.” The dishonest steward of the parable loves money. He is dishonest throughout. He uses his position not only to squander his master’s property, but also to save himself from being put out on the street, as either a day-laborer (digging) or a beggar. From beginning to end he is thinking only of himself. He is

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability, and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete . - by Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. from The Making of the M

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