Cycle B Sunday Resources

What are we celebrating with today’s feast? Some say that when Pope Pius XI established the feast of Christ the King in 1925, he wanted to combat secularism and also, some say, to remind the nations of Europe that even after losing its secular power, the Catholic Church remained more important than political realms.

Today, the Book of Daniel and Mark’s Gospel invite us into the apocalyptic mindset, a point of view that, in summary,  proclaims that the worst of times will give birth to the best of times. Apocalypse simply means revelation or “uncovering.” Apocalypse uncovers the hidden trajectory of the world.

Have you ever cringed at least a little at the story of the widow’s mite? Did you ever wonder if Jesus really wanted a poor, vulnerable woman to “give her whole livelihood” to the Temple treasury? 

When I ministered in Peru, I had the privilege of knowing a model disciple named Luzmila. She was a prayer leader, catechist, organizer, goad and the self-appointed development director in charge of collecting funds (a nickel at a time) to build a dignified chapel in our little town. 

Last year I went on a minibus ride with clients of a center for people with disabilities in Ecuador. Sitting next to me was Letitia, a petite, wrinkled and worn 60-year-old woman who was propping up her severely disabled 7-year-old grandson, Jimny. As we chatted, she talked of how grateful she was that while the boy received therapy, a special education teacher was teaching her to read and write. 

“Just who the #*!! do they think they are?!” That is how I imagine Mark would have quoted the 10 angry disciples in today’s Gospel if he had been able to do it in the style of Sarge, a character from the “Beetle Bailey” comic strip.

There was a time when Catholic popular piety promised that in addition to regular Mass attendance and annual confession, wearing a scapular, making the nine First Fridays or collecting an adequate number of plenary indulgences were good investments in eternal life insurance. Lighting candles and praying for the souls in purgatory worked like today’s supplementary policies.

What we have learned from Charles Darwin and the anthropologists who seem pretty certain that human beings first emerged in Africa — or maybe Greece or Bulgaria — does not nullify what Genesis has to teach us about the meaning of creation and human life. 

Elsewhere on the planet, poverty has a strangle hold on much of the world’s population. At least 80 percent of humanity lives on less than 10 dollars a day. A bi-product of poverty is hunger. 

Most average people in the U.S. don’t think of themselves as having servants. That’s because it’s so easy to forget about the grocery store clerks and the janitors, not to mention the workers who harvest our strawberries and fill the potholes on our roads. We have lots of servants, but since we don’t usually hire them directly, we rarely take note of them the way the lords of Downton Abbey did of Mr. Carson, their butler. 

“Who do you say that I am?” That’s the final, blunt question that Jesus puts to the disciples in today’s Gospel. No more hiding behind popular speculation; they had to answer for themselves. Worst of all, their answer could not be just an opinion. 

The Letter of James stands out in Christian literature for its relentless insistence on justice in action as the sign of Christian faith. The vignette James gives us today may be the Christian Scripture’s first condemnation of “profiling.” 

The Pharisees and scribes who gathered around Jesus in today’s Gospel reading were like fastidious amateurs who watch figure skating solely to note each flaw or ungainly gesture. In today’s Gospel, these experts in righteousness focused on the disciples’ disgraceful deficiency in handwashing practice. 

A few months ago, a group of sisters gathered at their motherhouse on the feast of St. Joseph, a traditional day of recess from Lent. After a beautiful liturgy, someone remarked, “We forgot to renew our vows on our feast day!” One of the young sisters standing nearby asked wryly, “Are you afraid that our octo and nonagenarians are getting ready to leave the community?”

“The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” (Munificentissimus Deus #44). With these words, Pope Pius XII on Nov. 1, 1950 declared the Assumption of Mary to be Catholic dogma. 

Manna sounds like a pretty nice treat, doesn’t it? Some parts of Scripture make it appear like a near relative to milk and honey. Surprisingly, it got its name because when the Israelites first discovered it on the desert floor they said something like, “Manna?”

I remember growing up in a family in the mid-1950s into the mid-1970s, and not until the mid-1980s did my parents have an empty nest after my sister and brother left home to marry.

“Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock!” This is a favorite theme of prophets, parishioners who are not happy with their pastors, and folks who want to bash the hierarchy or critique politicians who foment divisiveness. But pay attention! 

Our liturgy of the word begins with the Prophet Amos. As the priest in charge is evicting him from the kingdom for being a prophet of doom, Amos protests that he never had any intention of becoming a prophet. 

In 2 Corinthians, Paul addressed a community he knew all too well. He loved them in spite of their petty competitiveness and pretensions to wisdom and holiness. When Paul wrote this passage, he had just finished a surprisingly brief description of his extraordinary experience of visions — what we would think of as mystical experiences.

In January 2018, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column entitled “Now Is the Time to Talk About the Power of Touch.” In a wonderfully expressive phrase he spoke of the power of “disenchanting emotional touch,” a touch not grounded in love or commitment which, when abusive, has the power to cripple if not destroy the immeasurably positive potential of loving touch. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is going to challenge us with two puzzling parables.  He created these early in his ministry to summarize his teachings about the coming of the kingdom of God. The first is not good news for autonomous activists, loner cowboys or determined do-it-yourselfers.

Teachers of deaf children explain that when a child with a severe hearing impairment closes her eyes, she effectively cuts off all communication from the outside. With a distinct advantage over hearing children who must just pretend they don’t see or hear, she can prevent any new information from penetrating her world. 

Today’s Liturgy of the Word guides us through the religious developments that led to our Eucharist. We begin as Moses leads his people in a spectacular liturgy of sacrifice. In what was almost participatory theater, the people renewed their covenant with the God who had led them out of Egypt and gave them commandments to assure a good life.

Although today’s feast, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, sounds as if it might call us into the heady heights of dogmatic discourse, the readings invite us into a decidedly practical, down-to-earth reflection, not only on God, but on who we are as disciples.

Luke’s story-telling ability sparkles in the Pentecost story. He narrates it in what we might call the “energetic superlative.” Luke portrays all of Jesus’ disciples gathered when suddenly the sound of a wind (like the Creator Spirit of Genesis) fills the air and balls of fire hover like tongues over each of them. 

We are in post-Resurrection times, but the Lectionary offers us a Gospel reading that looks back on Jesus’ last days before his death. In John’s Gospel, we listen to Jesus’ prayer that he offers to God for his disciples before he makes his final journey to God. 

The feast of the Ascension of the Lord is ultimately a reminder of the mission Jesus handed over to his followers, and each of the readings gives us a perspective on that reality. The opening of the Acts of the Apostles presents the scene in which Jesus told the disciples that they were to wait until they received their share of his power to evangelize. 

Scripture teaches us that the Holy Spirit works in subtle and mysterious ways, so when the Spirit fixed up a blind date between Peter and Cornelius, it turned out to be an encounter full of surprises for everyone involved.

In our high-tech global environment, many of us have smartphones, iPads, tablets plus desktop and laptop computers for personal and professional use. Some people spend a lot of time messaging, browsing, friending, tweeting and sharing. 

When we were children, one single proclamation was all that was needed to bring a definitive end to any debate about what should be done or to answer any child’s whining question, “Why?” That statement was simply: “Because I am Mother.” 

The most important detail in Luke’s accounts of the disciples meeting the risen Jesus may be the fact that he slowly opened their minds to understand what they had previously been unwilling or unable to grasp. Their facile and self-interested ideas about Jesus as Lord or Messiah all fell apart with the Passion. 

In the 17th century, the Jesuit missionary Jean Pierre Médaille published a book called Maxims of Perfection for Souls Aspiring to Great Virtue. In the tradition of Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life, it was compiled for lay people who wanted to deepen their relationship with God and carry on Christ’s mission in the world. 

When Mark opened his Gospel with the words, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he was telling us the title of the entire work: The “beginning of the gospel” applies to Mark 1:1 to 16:8.

As we enter the sacred time we call Holy Week, the church overwhelms us with liturgy, Scripture and symbols. Each day has its own particular theme until we reach the climax of the liturgical year in the three-day-long liturgy we call the Triduum. 

What do you think about death? About your death? It is a subject that we often try to avoid — a reaction that only strengthens its ability to disturb us. Have you noticed that while lots of TV shows depict death — be it in gun battles, car crashes, murder, mayhem, war or “justifiable homicide,” entertainment rarely depicts a funeral?

Lex orandi, lex credendi! This ancient dictum states that “The law of prayer is the law of belief.” Interpreted in a general way, it means that the way we pray is a very good sign of what we believe, or that our prayer forms our belief. It is a pretty solid principle, much like the advice that if you want to know how a guy will treat his future wife, watch how he treats his mother and sisters. 

John loves to hide hints to deeper meaning in his Gospel, thus enticing his readers to go back and find more each time they encounter it. In this story, Jesus arrives at the temple area and calls it his Father’s house; with that he is claiming to be God’s Son as described in Psalm 2. 

Today we hear the Genesis account of God’s test of Abraham. Often when we think of Abraham as the man of great faith, we are remembering his leaving everything behind in order to go to the land God was preparing, in order to receive the promise that his descendants would be as uncountable as the stars. 

In today’s psalm, we pray to learn God’s ways. We sing of God’s compassion and mercy, of God’s love and goodness. Then, we blithely ask to share those. As Jesus warned James and John, we may not know what we are asking.

It made no sense to put ashes on the forehead of the homeless for they know, better than any of us, what it is to remember their mortality. … In many ways, to pay attention to the homeless is to have ashes placed on our foreheads. 

Mark tells the story of Jesus and the man with leprosy with moment-enhancing emotion. Perhaps it is because Jesus had just told his disciples that going out among the people was the very reason for which he had come. 

Today, St. Millie, one of the seldom noticed model disciples in Mark’s Gospel, is going to show us what happens when one is touched by Jesus. Mark didn’t actually tell us her name, he only identified her as the mother of Peter’s wife. 

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” That’s the first question put to Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. It is really the core question of the Gospel. 

A little more than a year ago, Thomas Friedman published the book Thank You For Being Late. The book deals with the unprecedented pace of change our whole world is experiencing. Friedman says that humanity has known nothing like this since the days when Johannes Gutenberg invented his press which put the Bible, and much more, in the hands of the public. 

“What are you looking for?” That is the question today’s liturgy puts before us. It is a question addressed to us, but also one we address to God. It is the question of vocation. Put another way it asks, “What do you and God want to do with the life you have been given?”

 Luke’s Christmas story can startle us into asking the question: What space and time would we give Christ in our crowded and busy lives? No matter how beautifully we sang “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,”

As people grow older and prepare for their transition into the next life which Catholics call eternal life, the notion of “legacy” becomes important. Some people wonder what their legacy will be. Will it be a list of successful accomplishments?

There’s a thought-provoking contrast in the images we have in the first reading and today’s Gospel. David, the great king, wanted to build a temple for God and God said “No.” Instead, God came to a humble woman to ask for a home, and she said “Yes.”

“Who are you?” That question may be asking for the most basic information possible, or it could be requesting a much deeper response that can only be answered by an entire lifetime. A lot depends on the context. The question is different when asked during a social event or at a doctor’s office. 

Today is the Second Sunday of Advent. What’s the line that sticks with you? Is it “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” or “Every valley shall be exalted”?  That might be the test of whether you are more a fan of Godspell or Handel’s Messiah. Those two show us how popular culture picks up on Scripture and brings it into mainstream consciousness.

There’s an old joke with lots of variations that says that kids were out playing in the parish yard and they saw Jesus coming. They ran into the church offices and excitedly told the secretary. He looked out the window and then ran to the DRE.

If your experience has been similar to mine, you may recall that when you were incorporated into the life of Christ and the life of the church through the sacraments of initiation, you were called a “soldier for Christ.” As such, we were expected to be staunch defenders of the faith. Yes, later — and in affirmation of the idea — we learned “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Kurt Vonnegut is quoted as saying, “People say there are no atheists in foxholes. A lot of people think this is a good argument against atheism. Personally, I think it's a much better argument against foxholes.”