This week’s memory verse: And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
Mark 16:15
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, You endowed us with the gifts and skills needed to build Your Kingdom. Grant that these gifts grow in us and that we use them each day to draw many into the Kingdom life. Amen.
In all wisdom and insight, He has made known to us the mystery of His will in accord with His favor
Today Jesus sends out His twelve Apostles, who at the time were still disciples (they were learning, not teaching). They were to go to every village and town and proclaim repentance for forgiveness of sins as well as the immanence of the Kingdom which was at hand. They were also empowered to heal.
Indeed, this experience was a learning. Today we would call it on-the-job training. Overall, the disciples learning was concentrated on internal discovery as to whether they would trust in God or not. That is why they were instructed to take nothing, to go forth with courage and determination. That is why they were told to also hold responsible those they encountered.
For ten or so days I have worked with young people who were learners. Certainly, some were open to learning, others were not. We spent our time documenting our gifts, those received, those given, those we have in us, and those that will grow in us as time progresses.
As we covered the gifts yet to grow in us, we discussed how they might be built up. That takes recognizing them and then practicing with them – on the job training. We talked about making our gifts bigger, better, and how we might add unto them. Finally, we spoke about taking those gifts and wrapping them up to make them really beautiful. This is what Jesus did with His disciples. He knew what they had in them, and He wanted it to grow. This is also what Jesus wants from us.
Brothers and sisters, for us it starts with recognizing what Jesus wants from us and the gifts He has instilled in us to make His requirements come to reality. It is no more than this: That we proclaim the Kingdom to those we encounter.
Our on-the-job training is to find the gift God has given us then grow it and use it. The gifts we have are specifically for building His Kingdom.
Of course, trust is required, but an amazing thing that happened to the disciples and will happen to us is that we will be successful in doing Jesus’ work.
It is simple: Do you know Jesus? I do and He has done remarkable things in my life. Do you have a church? No, then I know a great one where you can get to know Jesus.
The words and actions and gifts must be our own, the trust must be ours, and the work and learning, the OJT, must be how Jesus intends it to be.
Today and every day I will use my God given gifts to show His Kingdom. Then I will watch and see people entering the Kingdom, also sharing their gifts and rejoice!
This week’s memory verse: “The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.”
Luke 10:16
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, those who should love You often reject You and those You send. Grant us perseverance in the face of push back and give us strength to witness to You at all times and in all places. Amen.
They said, “Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!” And they took offense at Him.
Today we encounter Jesus getting a lot of push back. His hometown people hated Him. Jesus was so offensive to them that they revolted. The text of our Opening Hymn came to life: Ah! sinful nation, people laden with wickedness, evil race, corrupt children! They have forsaken the Lord, spurned the Holy One of Israel, apostatized. If you abandon Him, He will abandon you.
And, that is what Jesus did, He left them because of their lack of faith and trust. It was beyond His power to move their hearts because they refused His grace, they rejected the love of God and God’s gifts placed before them.
This experience of Jesus is much like our own, isn’t it? His experience tells us something about ourselves and what we can do in the face of push back. It is Jesus’ revelation of our likeness to Him and a call to His service even when we are faced with challenges.
We have many gifts. We are not really different from Jesus because we share in His gifts and in our ability to use them for the Kingdom. He calls us to grow our gifts through faith, trust, and confidence in Him and He lets us know that if we are part of His life, if we are with and in Him, He has us, is with us, and in us.
Jesus knows all the gifts we have. God, through the Holy Spirit, fills each of us with the gifts He wants us to have, those that will best build His Kingdom. God’s gifts are never pointless. Some gifts we hold in common; some are unique to each of us. Some of the gifts we have are fully present in us right now and others will emerge in the future, in God’s time and according to His plan.
For our part we must be open to using the gifts God has given us for His glory and praise. We must do that in practical ways that build His Kingdom.
Some of those practical ways are giving God the credit for the gifts people see in us, our talents and intellect, our smile and joy, our seriousness and concern, our charity and compassion. We are to call people into the Kingdom and bring them into the Church. We are to show them the way to life by our witness to our friends, parents, and relatives. We are to accept Jesus and all the gifts He offers. We are to let people know we said yes to Jesus, yes to His grace.
Like Jesus, we will get ignored, people will push back. It is not that they do not see our gifts, but their sin corrupts their view of the gifts we offer and Who and what we work for. That push back doesn’t really matter because in the end, like Jesus, we will have victory! In the end the Kingdom will be built through our gifts.
This week’s memory verse: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
James 1:5
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, in You is all wisdom. Grant that Your teaching and way may be the mark of my life so that others might also grow closer to You through me. When I shudder grant me insight to overcome. Amen.
People from the synagogue official’s house arrived and said, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?” Disregarding the message that was reported, Jesus said to the synagogue official, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”
Today we encounter Jesus doing some tough problem solving that is completely consistent with the statement in the Book of Wisdom: God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
In the Old Testament, Wisdom is personified as a woman, or the female face of God. The female imagery of Wisdom personifies God’s creative counsel and purpose, as well as God’s presence and active involvement in the world as its builder and the lover of our souls. She personifies the gift given to us by God for guidance in obeying His commands and responding to His calling. Lady-Wisdom, then, represents wisdom itself, in all its forms and manifestations. However, wisdom was never understood to be a goddess or a divine being independent of the one and only God. Neither is “Wisdom” ever used in Scripture as a substitute or alternative name for God.
Wisdom can be alluded to as Israel’s homemaker – the one who cares for the people and sees to their need, the builder of family life.
She is the counselor. With patience and care she teaches the values of justice, well-being, and life. She offers the opportunity of salvation to those who listen to her counsel.
Finally, she is lover, a personification of the intimacy God desires to have with us. God’s love is an intimacy marked by faithfulness, fidelity, and truth. God stand before us constantly offering love, but never forcing us to accept it. Indeed, only the wise accept His love.
See how Jesus fulfills these aspects of His Godhead. He lets us know that He has come to draw us into intimacy. We see in today’s encounters that sickness, doubt, a lack of understanding and trust, and even death will not get in the way of Jesus’ reaching us. He removes those evils.
Throughout this passage Jesus counsels those He encountered, as well as us, in God’s way of doing things. Jesus protects the family and the home, that is the community of believers. He loves abundantly and draws us into an intimacy that gives life.
Jesus came to destroy death, break the chains that bound us, and reveal the fulness of the Father. In accord with God’s plan death and destruction has no place with Him. Let us be wise then in following His wisdom way.
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus begins with the Beatitudes. In the ninth Beatitude above, Jesus continues by saying those insulted because of Him will “Rejoice and be glad, because great is [their] reward in heaven.”
At this year’s Men’s Spiritual Retreat we erected a huge “Cross on Kicker Hill.” Some members of our Polish National Catholic Church may remember the term “Kicker.” That, along with the words “warcholy” (brawlers and sowers of discord), ‘heretics, unbelievers, and masons’ were used by Roman Catholics to denigrate members of the Church. In some places these words are still used. The rhyme thrown at us was: “Ringer, ringer, ring that bell. Kicker, kicker, go to hell.”
Members of the Church had to choose their response. Would they return insult for insult or act in accord with Jesus’ gospel way of life? They chose to act as Jesus commanded. The Solemnity of Brotherly Love was instituted in 1906 to counteract these acts of hatred. At various gatherings of the Church and Its Societies banners stating: “Bóg z nami — Kto przeciw nam?” “God is for us — Who will stand against us?” were on display.
The Cross on Kicker Hill is a paradigm for building and the future.
As a Church and as a parish, our focus must remain on growth, building the Kingdom of God here and right now. This is done through our presence as a sanctuary of peace and security for anyone wishing to pray. It occurs through our individual acts of evangelization, bringing family, friends, neighbors, and even strangers into the family of God. It is in how we love and care for all we come into contact with. It is who we are – builders.
You may have heard of other Churches closing – Baltimore, Buffalo, and likely soon in the R.C. Diocese of Albany; nearly 50% of parishes closing. We must be prepared, going forward, as a place of refuge and welcome and a sure symbol of God’s Kingdom being built right here. Rejoice! Be glad!
Welcome to our July/August 2024 Newsletter. we had a wonderful June including a very special Men’s Spiritual Retreat. Read the report. Ready for County Fair season? We will be at the Altamont Fair this year. Sign up and volunteer to help. We begin recognizing those who have graduated. Stay tuned for more. Summer events are underway so mark your calendars. Join us at Spójnia Farm for its 95th Anniversary and the blessing of the new Great Hall on the 4th of July. We start with Holy Mass at 11am. We have made great progress in establishing a Food Bank at the parish. Check out the details. See the list of great articles on relationship, marriage, and parenting. Fantastic offers from the PNA continue (IRAs, insurance, and annuities). All this and more in our July/August 2024 Newsletter.
This week’s memory verse: There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat, and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain.
Isaiah 4:6
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, as I face the nighttime storms of my life grant me a clear vision of Your presence with me, Your power to overcome, and my call to perceive the Ark in which I am safe. Amen.
The wind ceased and there was great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”
Last week we heard Jesus’ parable of the seed and the grower. We spoke about God’s imperative, that is the thing He has made vitally important and crucial and that He authoritatively commands, i.e., that we grow. We have work to do in this green season. Growth in our likeness to God and in His Kingdom is dependent on us. The seed planted in us must yield fruit.
Today we encounter one of those moments in the disciples’ journey with Jesus that has a lot packed into it. There is of course the display of Jesus’ power and authority over all creation – a teaching moment for the disciples. We see Jesus demonstrating His care for those He loves. There are themes of trust and faith. There is a recalling of the Ark tossed about in the storm, but now with God fully present and buoying the ship. It is no longer the Ark of Noah, but that of God in which we are all contained.
St. Paul goes further to remind us that we are a new creation in Christ Jesus and the way we regard, i.e., how we view and treat each other must be changed. Our way of life together is no longer about what one can do for the other, what one has, or how one looks, but completely about our likenesses to Jesus. We are all in the Ark of God, thus the way we view and treat each other reflects the way we view and treat Jesus.
This event in the boat, or the new Ark, is not a one-off isolated thing. It literally follows what we heard last week, where we ended on Mark 4:34. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything. Mark 4:35 began, as we just heard, On that day.
Jesus went right from a long discourse about discipleship, being light to the world, and growth to this nighttime journey.
We all have nighttime journeys, maybe in the past, now, or in the future. Let us ask God today for clarity when we encounter those journeys. Let us not just stop at ‘help me Jesus,’ but search deeper.
In my nighttime journeys do I perceive Jesus calmly at rest in the midst of it and from that gain confidence? We should. We should also recognize His power to overcome for us, not just ‘get us out of it,’ but to conquer.
The storm is a call to growth in more than our own faith and trust, but also in our perception of the Ark we are in and who we are with. Growth requires our vision change.
This week’s memory verse: And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:11
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, You have changed and challenged me. Grant that I may meet the imperative You have set for me by growth through grace and evangelization to the Kingdom. Amen.