One last glance at Christ the King before Advent. I was so taken by this verse of Crown Him with Many Crowns that we sang on Sunday:
Crown him the Lord of peace.
Whose power a scepter sways
From Pole to pole, that wars may cease,
Absorbed by prayer and praise.
His reign shall know no end,
And round his pierc-ed feet
Fair flow-rs of paradise extend
Their fragrance ever sweet.
How our world needs His crucified and merciful love and the firmness of his authority!
Image credit: Alvaro Jose Jimenez
“We are a capacity, a pure capacity for Jesus; none can actuate and fill it but He…. We must not suffer ourselves to be in ourselves, except to see to it that Jesus Christ be living in us, and that He may use and enjoy possession of all that is within us.” (Cardinal Pierre de Berulle)
Image credit: Luis Carlos Bonilla Soto from Cathopic
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-7znhx-140eec3
Highlights:
Questions about life’s meaninglessness, about the way in which our days pass like vapor, about how all that we do and accomplish seems to vanish without a trace as we age, these burden not just the heart of Qoheleth in today’s first reading, but at certain points in our lives these questions haunt us too. I once heard that the book of Ecclesiastes identifies the question to which the whole of Revelation is the answer. In this quickly changing world, all that our life has been seems to slip through our fingers, and our heart longs for life, true life, life that is a treasure that neither moth nor rust can destroy.
There is something cyclical in this description of continual, unending, “coming and going” of things. In this reading there is no sense of the enduring, of divine gift and guidance and mission, of an end which has been ordained for all things by God. Instead, the more things change, as the saying goes, the more things stay the same, endlessly repeating to seemingly no purpose.
Today many experience life in this way. Not being grounded in the fertile soil of God’s action and love, much of what constitutes activity in our world seems to have no real meaning. I believe that during the pandemic many began to feel this way. The tasks they had been doing in their jobs were now no longer satisfying to them, no longer seemed purposeful, no longer worth devoting their whole life to. They began to seek something more meaningful to do with their careers.
It is ultimately only God who truly defines us and the purpose of our lives, their unending purpose.
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https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-2nuuz-140eeae
Highlights:
In the Gospel passage that recounts the calling of the tax collector, Matthew Jesus shows us that he is where we are. Whether we are living a holy life, struggling with temptations inundating us like a hurricane, or lost in the mire of vice or sin, Jesus is always passing by.
Jesus is not passing by intent on avoiding us. He is passing by in order to see us, to show us that we are seen with the eyes of respect and love. Jesus sees us, as we most deeply are. He delights in us, for he has made all things good.
There are many reasons why I want to avoid your gaze, Jesus. I don’t feel worthy. I don’t know how to respond to you. I’m afraid. But here you are, passing by, seeing me as you saw Matthew.
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https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-qkjcf-140ee21
Highlights:
In order to live, we need to nourish ourselves, we need dignity and peace. The hearts of the people in this crowd were hoping against hope that things could change for them on a temporal level. They just didn’t realize that things had already changed. With the radical newness of the incarnation of the Son of God, everything had already become new. A greater hope of a more eternal promise was being fulfilled before their very eyes. Yet they could not recognize it. They were enamored still of the loaves of bread they had eaten. They were still looking for the food that perishes. Their imagination was too small.
When we have found him, when we have let ourselves be seen by him, when we have allowed ourselves to be saved by him, we will no longer be absorbed by what we can get for ourselves, but in how we can tell others about Jesus.
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Image: Gabriel Manjarres
In the last days of July in 1941 in Block 12 at Auschwitz, Germany, during World War II, a prisoner escaped. When he was not found after a thorough search, the other men of Block 12 were led out before commandment Karl Fritsch. The men trembled in fear. They knew the rule. If someone escaped, ten men would die as a consequence.
“The fugitive has not been found!” the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. “You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.”
The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, who sobbed, “My poor wife! My poor children! What will they do?”
Quietly, a man with a long beard broke rank and stepped forward. He silently took off his cap and said, “I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.”
Astounded, the Nazi commandant asked, “What does this Polish pig want?”
Father Kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated, “I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.” Amazingly, Fritsch granted Kolbe’s request. Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place.
Gajowniczek later recalled: “I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me – a stranger. Is this some dream?” (http://auschwitz.dk/Kolbe.htm)
Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and left there to starve. As the men grew weaker from starvation, Maximilian Kolbe encouraged them by saying prayers, singing psalms, and offering meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks, the cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner, a criminal called Bock, came in and injected a lethal dose of carbolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer on his lips, he raised his arm for the executioner. On August 14, 1941 at the age of forty-seven years, Maximilian Kolbe died, a martyr of charity.
Maximilian Kolbe’s act of offering his own life was truly heroic, and certainly not a choice many would make. In the history of Auschwitz no one before Kolbe and no one after is known to have done the same. To offer one’s life for another is not the expression of a universally binding moral norm. Every man standing there that day was not obliged by any law to do what Maximilian did. However, Maximilian Kolbe felt the Holy Spirit at work within him, urging him to give his life for another as Jesus had. His action expressed who he was as a Catholic priest as well as who Christ was for him. By remaining safely in line that day, breathing a sigh of relief that he had not been chosen for the starvation bunker, Kolbe would have broken no commandment. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit was asking him an extraordinary act of charity and Kolbe said yes.
The gift of fortitude is a special supernatural habit by which the Holy Spirit strengthens the soul for the practice of virtue, with the energy and confidence of overcoming all difficulties may arise. It is an instinctive interior impulse that proceeds directly from the Holy Spirit by which we practice virtue so that with perseverance these acts will spring from the soul with energy, promptness, and perseverance. I know how my energy and promptness in practicing at least some of the virtues comes and goes depending on who is asking and how I’m feeling that day and how much effort it’s going to take and what I’d rather be doing. For those who practice virtues continually with perfection, this perseverance requires the active operation of the gift of fortitude.
Pope Francis has said that for most of us the gift of fortitude will be exercised in our patient pursuit of holiness in the circumstances of our daily lives. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to list the difficulties that plague people’s daily lives. I am forever in awe of people who have been dealt a difficult “deck of cards” and yet live with a joy and selflessness I can only hope one day to attain. Through the gift of fortitude we receive the strength to do God’s will in spite of our own natural weakness and limitations. The Holy Spirit through this gift helps us to overcome our weakness and confers an extraordinary readiness to undergo trials for love of God or in fulfillment of the divine will.
The gift of fortitude brings to those who have it a dauntless spirit of resolution, firmness of mind, and indomitable will to persevere with a quiet faith in God’s providence that overcomes all obstacles:
Here are two habits you can develop that will strengthen the gift of fortitude.
Prayer
O Holy Spirit! I too have been given a mission, a mission that unfolds each day in your requests for my courageous yes to all you ask of me, to all you give me. Make me faithful in the small things so that when the greater moments of decision come to me I will be ready to respond always, “Yes.”
Touching the Sunrise 