Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Go and Glorify

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Father Phillip W. DeVous

Contributor

For many years now I have thought the main reason people drift away from the practice of the faith is due to the total fragmentation of our attention and our capacity to pay attention to God. Attention is a sacred act for the simple reason that we become that to which we pay attention.

Because of our frayed and fractured attention spans, we have become less capable of paying attention to anything important, especially God. At a fundamental level, faith may be understood, at a minimum, as the attention we pay to the God who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ.

How do we recover that attention which is so essential to the life of faith; that in some sense IS the life of the faith? Let us turn our mind’s attention to our Blessed Lord: “Jesus was praying…”

We must take the time to pray. Prayer, which as the philosopher and mystic Simone Weil understood it, is “laboring to give our attention to God.” When I have struggled in prayer over the years, I have always found comfort in Weil’s understanding of prayer. My very labor to pay attention to the living God was itself prayer.

It is essential to note that prayer, deep prayer, is hard and we, like the disciples, turn to the Lord and pray for the gift of prayer, asking, “Lord, teach us to pray.” And the Lord answers that prayer.

“Father.” Jesus reveals to us that God is not some cold, distant first cause or prime mover, but the source of my existence and life. He is Father to each of us and all of creation. Though our heavenly Father is certainly almighty, he revealed by Christ to be in familial relation of generativity and intimacy to us.

“Hallowed be your name.” When we enter in the labor of praying, we recognize the one to whom we direct our attention is like no other. To call upon the Father is to do more than enter some kind of random chat. When we are praying, we enter a communion with the all-holy God and in so doing, His holiness becomes transformative to us. His holiness hallows us, that is, makes us holy, for prayer is one of the means by which our Father shares the divine life with us.

“Your kingdom come.”  In the person of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God is at hand! The Kingdom of God is made present and personal in Jesus Christ. In prayer we come to see that a whole new manner of being, and relationship of God has come to us as we receive Jesus Christ in prayer, which is the most fundamental act of faith.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” We pray for our daily bread — the things we need to sustain life. This, however, goes beyond the earthly and material life, for what we really need to sustain us is the “bread of life” wherein we feed on the very life of God. Thus, the “true bread come down from heaven” that sustains us in the divine life of God is the Most Holy Eucharist. Every Holy Mass that is celebrated is the Father’s direct and personal answer to this prayer.

“Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.” This single line embodies the absolute primacy of divine mercy in our lives. Having received the divine mercy of Jesus in His paschal mystery, we are enjoined to liberally extend forgiveness to others. If we pay close attention to this petition, we get the sense that we are not forgiven of our sins if we do not forgive others. Therefore, essential to our Eucharistic Communion with the Lord is active sense of mercy sought, mercy received, and mercy extended-from God, to us, and from us to others.

“Do not subject us to the final test.” The Christian life is a life of spiritual warfare against the forces of the world, the flesh and the devil. We must turn to the Lord and ask him to deliver us from evil and give us the grace of final perseverance in our communion and friendship with Him as we navigate life’s trials and sufferings. It is precisely this grace for which we pray when we say, “that through the powerful working of your grace (that) these most sacred mysteries may sanctify our present way of life and lead us to eternal gladness.”

Father Phillip W. DeVous is the pastor of St. Charles Parish, Flemingsburg and St. Rose of Lima Parish, Mayslick, Ky.

Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Go and Glorify

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Father Joshua Whitfield

Contributor

The readings for the fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time — Cycle C — are: Deuteronomy 30:10–14, Colossians 1:15–20 and Luke 10:25–37.

“In the face of so much pain and suffering, our only course is to imitate the Good Samaritan,” Pope Francis wrote just a few years back. These words, found in “Fratelli Tutti,” remain true and urgent as ever. They are moral words I’ll never forget.

He was talking about how in our connected world, a world of global communication and commerce — our world of purchasable splendor and the supply chains that support them, often labor exploitation too; also our online world of information and misinformation, love and hate — we mustn’t lose sight of the humanity comprising our connectedness nor the moral responsibility we must own for one another both locally and globally, in person and even on social media.

We must not, Pope Francis said, elegantly shift our gaze from the poor and the exploited, crushed underneath either inhuman economic systems or nature-denying ideologies, simply because if we honestly accounted for the marginalized or, for example, the unborn, it would disturb us, disturb our pretty world, showing us that we are not as moral as we like to think we are.

No, Pope Francis said, we must see these brothers and sisters, all of them — Todos! We must not turn our gaze away from such people even if seeing them makes us uncomfortable or calls into question our conventional morality or is bad for profits.

That’s what I think Pope Francis meant by saying our only moral option is to imitate the Good Samaritan. He was, of course, simply iterating New Testament truth, the truth that faith without works is dead and that a person who claims to love God while hating neighbor is a liar (Jas 2:17; 1 Jn 4:20).

The point is we can boast all we want about our achievements and our knowledge, our success or our theology, but if none of it compels us to care for others, it’s basically a lie, rubbish, no good at all. We must see others, even those we may not want to see, if we are to see God; that’s the point.

Which is the first lesson of the parable of the Good Samaritan found in Luke’s Gospel. The lawyer’s correct theology did not by itself matter. The challenge was whether he wanted to live out the orthodox theology he proudly professed. “You have answered right; do this, and you will live,” Jesus said to him (Lk 10:28). These are some of the most challenging words Jesus ever said to anyone, words not simply of truth but words also of action.

But again, the demand is that we followers of Jesus are the kind of people who can see. We must be able to see the suffering, the poor, the vulnerable, our fellow human beings. But not just see, we must also see with compassion.

For the story is clear: the priest and the Levite did in fact see the man on the side of road, beaten and half dead, it’s just they saw him without compassion. They saw him and “passed by on the other side.” The Samaritan, on the other hand, “came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion” (Lk 10:32-33). Then the Good Samaritan served him, caring for him at his own expense; his seeing, his compassion and his charity materially benefitted a man who was to him a stranger, whom he made his neighbor by the practice of tangible charity.

Which I guess is the point, that this sort of real love and real mercy should shine like the sun on everyone, like God’s love and mercy does — shining through believers who dare to love beyond boundaries and beyond fear. Or at least that’s the idea.

Which is the unsettling question. In your life as a Christian is love simply an idea? As a Catholic, are you merely sentimental? Is there no morality, no ethics, attending your belief or your devotion? Do you not serve others or care for the poor at all? Are you proud of your Catholic belief, your grasp of theology, but never, say, volunteer? Have you never thought about either the positive or negative effects of your participation in the economy? Have you never wondered who makes all those affordable things you buy, never wondered about their wellbeing?

You understand what I’m getting at? There are plenty of people suffering on the many sides of the many roads of today’s world, but do we see them? And further, do we care? If we are Catholics, we must care. That’s why Pope Francis insisted we imitate the Good Samaritan. He was saying nothing different than what Jesus said to that lawyer. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus said to him. Those words are meant for us too. But will we listen?

Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas, Texas. His column has been provided by OSV News.