Because the Lord Loves You

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

To adopt a child is an act of kindness nearly without parallel. The love that motivates a would-be mother and father to accept a child not their own into their home and call him their own can only come from our loving heavenly Father. A special, unreproducable bond exists between flesh-and-blood family, but there is something wonderful that binds together parents who choose to receive and a child who is given to them by means of adoption. The adoption of children gives us a beautiful picture of what the unconditional love of God is like.

Unconditional love is a wonderful thing. We hear it mentioned often in religious circles. Unconditional love, in Hebrew hesed and in Greek agape, is the love with which only God can love. It is the type of love with which St. Paul exhorts us to love one another in the Holy Spirit. It is the love of Christ for His people. And yet, it is beyond our grasp.

Out In the Weeds

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we hear another parable from Jesus about the kingdom of heaven. This time, it is compared to a field in which the master has sown good seed, and yet the enemy comes after him and sows weed seed over the top of the wheat. The servants are concerned about what to do, but the master instructs them to wait until the harvest to separate them, so as not to harm the growing wheat. Then, at harvest, the weeds will be burned, while the wheat is gathered and stored safely away.

In the context of Matthew 13, we know that the seed sown is the Word of God. Now, since it is from God, we know that the Word is good. In last week's lesson, the prophet Isaiah proclaimed that the Word of the Lord comes from His mouth from heaven to earth, and it accomplishes the purpose for which He sent it. The Word of God does what it says. When He says, “Live,” you come to life. When He says, “Rain,” it rains.

God's Word Does What He Says

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

and do not return there but water the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

In these words, the prophet combines a multitude of teaching from our Lord. Here, we learn of the nature of God's provision for us in our bodies, His care for our souls, and He, by inference, reveals Himself and how He works toward us.

The Cost of Peace

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” That sounds like something out of the mouth of a warlord or a conqueror. Something to strike fear into the hearts of those faced with the point of that sharp sword. A message of death and destruction. One certainly does not expect to hear such words from the Prince of Peace. Yet that is what our Lord says.

The world likes the baby Jesus. That Jesus is easy to handle. You can picture Him nursing at His mother's breast. You can imagine Him crying in the stable, under the watchful eye of the cattle and sheep. The world loves to sing carols like “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger”. This Jesus is easy to deal with because He is cute and cuddly and inoffensive.

This is the catholic Faith

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith.” With its opening sentence, the Athanasian Creed lays down the line regarding who will or will not be saved. Only those who hold the catholic faith can go to heaven. But what is the catholic faith? What does it mean to be catholic? To be catholic, in the true sense of the word, is much more than to be under the Bishop of Rome.

This is not a new question. In the fifth century, the Church was embroiled in a great many scandals and controversies, and a solution was sought as to what made one a part of the one holy catholic Church. What was the measuring rod that determined whether a teaching newly propounded was worthy of acceptance? To this question, St. Vincent of Lerins proposed an answer, accepted by the Church, which has been handed down to us under the name of the “catholic principle”. St. Vincent wrote, “In the catholic Church itself, every care should be taken to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.”

Flowing Waters of Life

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pentecost was an event like none other. First, Jesus had told His disciples, “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” ( Luke 24:49). So they went back to Jerusalem and waited. But for what did they wait? They had no idea. Jesus gave no indication of what the “promise of my Father” was, nor did they know what it would mean to be “clothed with power”. The whole situation was rather odd.

And it only got more odd when the day of Pentecost actually happened. Luke records that a mighty wind swept through the house, and tongues of fire came to rest upon the disciples. Then they went out and began preaching about the resurrection of Jesus in the public square. Furthermore, they were preaching in every language of their hearers, languages they had never spoken before, possibly that they had never heard before. They experienced a “reset”, if you will, of the curse inflicted at Babel thousands of years before. And then the message - “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Salvation preached in the name of the man the Jews had murdered less than two months ago.

Kept in the Name

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

To be in the name of someone or something is no light matter. When the president of the United States of America speaks officially, he speaks in the name of 310 million Americans. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he speaks in the name of God, allegedly. When a lawyer enters a plea or brokers a deal, he speaks in the name of his client. In this spirit, the president of the Republic of Ireland is, by constitutional limitation, not allowed to speak officially or to leave Ireland without express permission of the Irish Parliament. To bear the name of someone is a weighty matter, and certainly even more so when it is the Name of God that you bear, which indeed you do.