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2 KGS 4: 8-11, 14-16; ROM 6: 3-4, 8-11; MT. 10: 37-42

Anecdote: Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality. The eighth of November marks the 111th anniversary of the birth of Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980), the uncanonized saint of the homeless, the American journalist turned social activist and devout member of the Catholic Church. She was also an outspoken advocate for the poor.   For most of her life she agitated for better treatment of the disadvantaged.    The Catholic Worker Movement, which she started in May 1933, was a further extension of her interest in the poor.   With the help of her friend Peter Maurin she revived the idea of hospitality once fostered by monasteries.  All were welcome:  the poor, the downtrodden and losers.   She also started the first House of Hospitality where she could care for the poor. Dorothy and Peter suggested that every Catholic parish should have such a place of hospitably. Today there are nearly 175 of these Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality.  “Those who cannot see the face of Christ in the poor,” she used to say, “are atheists indeed.”  "If I have achieved anything in my life," she once remarked, "it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God." In today’s gospel Jesus instructs Christians about how they should be hospitable and generous.

Introduction: The common theme of today’s readings is the work God gives us to do as the followers of Jesus: work of hospitality, generosity, commitment and charity. 

Scripture lessons: In our first reading, we see a radical illustration.  It tells how the prophet Elisha was welcomed by a childless woman who lived in Shunem.   She recognized the holiness of Elisha. She showed him reverence and hospitality by inviting him to dine with her and her husband and by allowing the prophet to occupy an upper room of her house.  Elisha promised her, "This time next year you will be fondling a baby son." The promise was fulfilled by God.

The second reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans explains why those who care for the followers of Jesus are caring for Jesus himself, and those who show hospitality to any one of them are eligible for reward. By our baptism, we have been baptized into his death and buried with him and we look forward to resurrection with him (Rom 6: 5). Since baptism is our entrée into this new life, it makes us part of the body of Christ and Christ is truly present in us. That is why the one who welcomes us welcomes Christ and becomes eligible for reward.

Today's gospel lesson concludes Jesus' great “missionary discourse” in which he instructs his twelve disciples on the cost and the reward of the commitment required of a disciple. The first half of these sayings of Jesus is about the behavior expected from his disciples and the second half is about the behavior of others towards the disciples. Even the shameful death on the cross is not too high a price to pay if one is to be a true disciple because the reward is great. Jesus assures his disciples that whoever shows them hospitality will be blessed. Those who receive Jesus receive the One who sent him. So, too, those who help the "little ones" (messengers) will be amply rewarded.

Exegesis: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…."  These words may sound a bit extreme, since family comes first to most of us. 1) What Jesus means is that all loyalties must give place to loyalty to God.   The wants of any person or any group of people (e.g. a family) cannot be met by trampling on or denying the rights and needs of others.  If members of your family   act unjustly, you must, in conscience, separate yourself from them.   In other words, you cannot condone immoral practices even by members of your family.

2) These words of Jesus can have another meaning. All those who become followers of Jesus belong to a new family.  It is a family where every single person, including relatives, friends and even strangers are truly my brothers and sisters. We become part of a larger family to whom we also have responsibilities.  Jesus means that there will be times when we  will have to give more love and compassion to  the hungry,  the sick, those in prison, the social outcasts, the unemployed or the unemployable, the handicapped, the lonely  than to  members of our  own family.  In other words, Jesus is not speaking against the family, but rather reminding us that we are part of a larger family of our fellow Christians.

Be ready to take up your cross and lose your life for Christ: In ancient Palestine, the cross had a terrible meaning.   It was a vicious way of executing people, and it was reserved only for those who were not Roman citizens. Only the worst criminals were crucified. The people there who heard Jesus' call for taking up ones cross in order to follow him must have been horrified. Yet that is what Christ wants from his disciples. The main   paradox of the Christian life is that we lose in order to find it and we die in order to rise again. ("Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."). We live in a world where "finding their lives" is the paramount ambition of the majority of people. But Jesus tells us very clearly that this should not be our main concern. What he asks of us is that we should “lose this life" which means that we must stop living for ourselves alone.   We must forget our own security and work toward the security of others.  We must forget to take our own health a bit less seriously in order to care for those who are sick and hungry.   We must stop polluting the environment so that the rest of the world will have clean air to breathe. All these things fall into place when we lose ourselves in caring for others.

Hospitality to strangers in Jesus’ name. (“offering a cup of cold water..”): For the people there, receiving a person's representative or messenger was the same as receiving the person himself. Hence receiving a man of God who teaches God’s truth was considered equivalent to receiving God himself. The four main links in the chain of salvation are i) God who sent Jesus with His message, ii) Jesus who preached the ‘good news’, iii) the human messenger who preaches Jesus’ message through words and life, and iv) the believer who welcomes the message and the messengers. Giving hospitality to a preacher or a believer is the same as welcoming Jesus Himself. This is why welcoming others is given such high priority in the New Testament and is a tradition which still lives on in many parts of the Church today. The basis of all hospitality is that we all belong to God’s family, and that every person is our brother or sister. In the game of life, while we would prefer to be the quarterback -- the hero -- Jesus' heart leans toward the water-boy or water-girl.   Hence providing a cup of water is a valid vocation.

Materialism and consumerism dominate our lives and turn our homes into isolated fortresses with iron gates, intruder alarms and surveillance cameras.   Society believes in competition, power, influence and success. Jesus’ argument is that when we work hard to ensure that everyone has enough, there will be enough for us too. Hence the question we should ask is:  Am I living my life at the expense of others? Am I trying to live in solidarity with others?  Am I aware of people in my area who are in real need? In the words of Mother Teresa, "The gospel is written on your fingers." Holding up her fingers, one at a time, she accented each word: "You-Did-It-To-Me." Mother Teresa then added: "At the end of your life, your five fingers will either excuse you or accuse you of doing it unto the least of these.”

The reward promised to preachers and helpers: “Today’s Gospel lesson implies that there might be differing rewards for prophets, righteous persons, and little ones -- and differing rewards for those who receive prophets, righteous persons, and little ones. The good news is that the modesty of our circumstances does not limit our potential rewards.  We don't have to be a prophet to receive a prophet's reward--we have only to receive a prophet.  We don't have to be a great saint to receive a great saint's reward--we have only to show hospitality to such a saint.  The smallest gift to the littlest disciple brings a certain reward.  Just as God knows and cares about every hair of our heads, so also He knows about our generous acts in behalf of the faithful.  Such gifts are counted as gifts to Jesus -- and gifts to Jesus are counted as gifts to the Father. Another bit of good news is that, as we are engaged in the Lord's work, those who help us are also promised a reward.  That is true whether we are clergy or lay people, preachers or janitors.  We may not be comfortable being on the receiving end rather than the giving end, but the Lord has ordained that our receiving becomes a means of blessing to the giver.

Life message: Be hospitable and generous: Hospitality means encountering the presence of God in others, usually in those whom we least expect. The virtue of hospitality is the virtue of recognizing the presence of God in others and nourishing this presence. We as a community are to look for the opportunities to be hospitable--and, of course, there are plenty of occasions for hospitality.  Maybe it is simply a kind word to a stranger - or even a smile. When we live in such a busy and hectic world, we tend to brush off people who need help. A kind smile or a “hello" to someone waiting with us in a grocery line may be the only kindness that person encounters all day.

We become fully alive as Christians through the generous giving of ourselves. What is more important than sending checks for charitable causes is giving of ourselves to people: in the way we speak to them and about them, in the way we forgive their failings, in the way we encourage them, console them and help them, and even in the way we think about them. These types of generosity reflect warmth radiating from the very love of God. (prepared by Fr. Anthony Kadavil). 

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(Vatican Radio)  Myanmar’s prominent Catholic Church leader has appealed to the government to probe allegations of ‘ethnic cleansing’, war crimes and crimes against humanity in a truly independent way that results in justice and accountability.  In a statement on Monday,  Cardinal Charles Bo said he was raising his voice “at a great personal risk”, to speak out for the rights and dignity of every people against “religious extremism.”  “Even when many voices were muted, I have raised my voices against religious extremism, the plight of IDPs [internally displaced persons] and treatment of  minorities,” he wrote in the 26 June statement.

The cardinal who is ‎archbishop of Yangon, spoke against the peresecution of minorities and described the “horrific persecution” of the Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state as “an appalling scar on the conscience” of his country.  The “devastating report” of the United Nations on the treatment of  ‘Rohingyas’, he said, should ‎have served as “a wake-up call for all.”  ‎He urged for a full and independent investigation of allegations of so-called “ethnic cleansing”, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states, and throughout ‎Myanmar, in a way that “results in justice ‎and accountability."‎

Myanmar’s first cardinal indicated that extreme positions and words, unless reined in, could force the country back to the dark decades military dictatorship “where no one had any rights”,  and ‎Myanmar, he said, “cannot live through another such spell.‎” 

The 68-year old archbishop was however optimistic that peace conferences and inter-religious peace  gatherings were gaining strength, sidelining the extremist elements.  

In a special greeting to Muslims on the occasion of Eid that marks the end of their holy month of Ramadan, Card. Bo noted they have “served the poor and vulnerable in this country through commendable generosity.”   “The holy month has given way to celebration of fraternity,” the cardinal noted and wished peace and joy to those “brothers and sisters” suffering “war and displacement.”

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met on Tuesday with members of an Orthodox delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate who are here in Rome to celebrate the feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

In his greeting, the Pope noted that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the first exchange of visits between a Roman pontiff and an Ecumenical Patriarch. It was those historic encounters that inaugurated the tradition of sending Catholic and Orthodox delegations to Rome and Istanbul to celebrate the patron saints of the East and Western Churches.

Philippa Hitchen reports:

Half a century ago, in July 1967, Pope Paul VI travelled to Istanbul and visited the Phanar, the headquarters of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. There he met with the Orthodox leader Patriarch Athenagoras, who would travel to the Vatican in October of that same year.

In his warm words of welcome to the visiting delegation, Pope Francis spoke of those two men as “courageous and farsighted pastors” who encourage us “to press forward in our journey towards full unity”.

The traditional exchange of delegations in June and November, he said, “increases our desire for the full restoration of communion between Catholics and Orthodox, of which we already have a foretaste in fraternal encounter, shared prayer and common service to the Gospel”.

Unity must not be bland uniformity

The Pope noted that throughout  the first millennium, Christians of East and West shared at the same Eucharistic table, preserving the same truths of faith while cultivating a variety of theological, spiritual and canonical traditions. That experience, he said, is a necessary point of reference and a source of inspiration for our efforts to restore full communion in our own day, a communion that must not be reduced to a bland uniformity.

Pope Francis also recalled his own meetings with Patriarch Bartholomew, in particular their recent encounter in Cairo, which highlighted “the profound convergences” of approach to the challenges facing the Church and the world today.

Catholics and Orthodox travelling together

Looking ahead to the next meeting of the coordinating committee for the joint dialogue group on the Greek island of Leros in September, the Pope said he hoped it will be fruitful and recognize the journey already being travelled together by many Catholics and Orthodox in different parts of the world.

Finally the Pope recalled Jesus’ own prayer for the unity of his disciples, saying that through the intercession of Saints Peter, Paul and Andrew, we must ask the Lord to make us instruments of communion and peace.

Please see below the full address to the Delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

Your Eminence,

Dear Brothers in Christ,

         I offer you a warm welcome and I thank you for being here for the celebration of Saints Peter and Paul, the principal patrons of this Church of Rome.  I am most grateful to His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and to the Holy Synod for having sent you, dear brothers, as their representatives, to share with us the joy of this feast.

         Peter and Paul, as disciples and apostles of Jesus Christ, served the Lord in very different ways.  Yet in their diversity, both bore witness to the merciful love of God our Father, which each in his own fashion profoundly experienced, even to the sacrifice of his own life.  For this reason, from very ancient times the Church in the East and in the West combined in one celebration the commemoration of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul.  It is right to celebrate together their self-sacrifice for love of the Lord, for it is at the same time a commemoration of unity and diversity.  As you well know, the iconographical tradition represents the two apostles embracing one another, a prophetic sign of the one ecclesial communion in which legitimate differences ought to coexist.

         The exchange of delegations between the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople on their respective patronal feasts increases our desire for the full restoration of communion between Catholics and Orthodox, of which we already have a foretaste in fraternal encounter, shared prayer and common service to the Gospel.  In the first millennium, Christians of East and West shared in the same Eucharistic table, preserving together the same truths of faith while cultivating a variety of theological, spiritual and canonical traditions compatible with the teaching of the apostles and the ecumenical councils.  That experience is a necessary point of reference and a source of inspiration for our efforts to restore full communion in our own day, a communion that must not be a bland uniformity.

         Your presence affords me the welcome opportunity to recall that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the visit of Blessed Paul VI to the Phanar in July 1967, and of the visit of Patriarch Athenagoras, of venerable memory, to Rome in October of that same year.  The example of these courageous and farsighted pastors, moved solely by love for Christ and his Church, encourages us to press forward in our journey towards full unity.  Fifty years ago, those two visits were events that gave rise to immense joy and enthusiasm among the faithful of the churches of Rome and of Constantinople, and led to the decision to send delegations for the respective patronal feasts, a practice that has continued to the present.

         I am deeply grateful to the Lord for continuing to grant me occasions to meet my beloved brother Bartholomew.  In particular, I recall with gratitude and thanksgiving our recent meeting in Cairo, where I saw once more the profound convergence in our approach to certain challenges affecting the life of the Church and the world in our time.

         Next September, in Leros, Greece, there will be a meeting of the Coordinating Committee of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, co-chaired by Your Eminence and Cardinal Kurt Koch, at the gracious invitation of Metropolitan Paisios.  It is my hope that the meeting will take place in a spiritual climate of attentiveness to the Lord’s will and in a clear recognition of the journey already being made together by many Catholic and Orthodox faithful in various parts of the world, and that it will prove most fruitful for the future of ecumenical dialogue.

         Your Eminence, dear brothers, the unity of all his disciples was the heartfelt prayer that Jesus Christ offered to the Father on the eve of his passion and death (cf. Jn 17:21).  The fulfilment of this prayer is entrusted to God, but it also involves our docility and obedience to his will.  With trust in the intercession of Saints Peter and Paul, and of Saint Andrew, let us pray for one another and ask the Lord to make us instruments of communion and peace.  And I ask you, please, to continue to pray for me.

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Boston, Mass., Jun 27, 2017 / 03:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A case about whether a troubled teenager convinced her depressed boyfriend to commit suicide through her words and text messages may have possible implications for physician-assisted suicide cases.

On June 16, a Massachusetts judge ruled that Michelle Carter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, for words and texts exchanged with her depressed boyfriend Conrad Roy III as he attempted to commit suicide two years ago. Both Carter and Roy were teenagers at the time.

The ruling of manslaughter was decided based on Carter’s words to Roy, mostly in a phone call, urging him to re-enter a truck she knew to be full of carbon dioxide, where he was attempting his suicide. Carter had also sent Roy numerous texts encouraging his suicide and later texted a friend about her phone call with Roy.

In Massachusetts, an involuntary manslaughter charge can be brought when an individual causes the death of another person by engaging in behavior that is considered reckless enough to cause harm.

While some states have laws that criminalize the encouragement of suicide, Massachusetts does not, complicating Carter’s case.

Legal experts wonder whether the case could set new legal precedents when it comes to legalizing assisted suicide.

Daniel Medwed, professor of law and criminal justice at Northeastern University school of law, told USA Today that the case may set a precedent of criminalizing those who sympathize with someone who expresses a desire for assisted suicide.

“Don’t forget, there’s a still a big societal debate going on about assisted suicide,” he said. “This sort of verdict would imply that anyone being sympathetic to a loved one could be at fault.”

Matthew Segal, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said the verdict “is saying that what she did is killing him, that her words literally killed him, that the murder weapon here was her words.”

Anti-assisted suicide groups believe that the case is significant because of the weight it places on outside pressures on already vulnerable people to take their lives, though it remains unclear if the case will set any legal precedent regarding the issue in reality.  

Tim Rosales, a spokesperson for Patient’s Rights Action Fund, told CNA that when it comes to assisted suicide, there are often outside pressures that can influence the person’s decision to end their life.

“Whether it’s the denial of a certain type of treatment, or there is the insinuation by a physician or a family member or someone close to them about the potential of assisted suicide versus (continued care), all of those go into someone’s mindset and decision making,” he said.  

These outside pressures can be particularly strong “when they’re in a vulnerable state, and mental illness as well as physical illness can be one of those things that puts people in a vulnerable state,” Rosales said.  

“I think we have to be exceedingly cautious and that’s one of the big reasons why you have a lot of opposition to something like assisted suicide, because at its very core it is fraught with the possibility for abuse or dangers,” he said.

“I think in (the Carter case) certainly the dynamics surrounding it kind of give us an indication of how vulnerable people can be at times and how influential those close to us are during those vulnerable times.”

John B. Kelly, New England Regional Director of the disability advocacy and anti-assisted suicide group Not Dead Yet, told CNA that he does not believe the Carter case will affect future assisted suicide legislation because the decision drew heavily from a 2002 case, Commonweath v. Levesque.

In the case of Commonwealth v. Levesque, homeless couple Thomas S. Levesque and Julie Ann Barnes were found responsible for the death of six firefighters who ran into a factory building as it burned. Levesque and Barnes had been living in the factory, escaped the fire and failed to report it.

In the Carter case, Judge Lawrence Moniz drew from the case directly in his verdict, saying that “where one's actions create a life-threatening risk to another, there is a duty to take reasonable steps to alleviate the risk. The reckless failure to fulfill this duty can result in a charge of manslaughter.”

“I don’t think that it adds any legal precedent to deciding what are words and what’s coercion (in assisted suicide cases),” Kelly told CNA.

“But I think we can say that words matter, and that this ruling underlines the commonsense notion that we make choices in a context, and that those contexts can be influenced by other people,” he said.

“Assisted suicide proponents argue that an individual makes that choice freely without any impact, but we know that it’s hard to choose...when you’re seen as a burden by those around you and your doctor thinks you would be better off dead, those are influences that would be very difficult for vulnerable people to resist.”

 

 

 

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Vatican City, Jun 27, 2017 / 04:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday Pope Francis said that the older generation should not stop striving in their spiritual lives, but that God calls them to be spiritual ‘grandparents’ to young people, who can learn from their experiences.

“And this is what the Lord today asks us: to be grandparents. To have the vitality to give to young people, because young people expect it from us; to not close ourselves, to give our best: they look for our experience, for our positive dreams to carry on the prophecy and the work.”

“I ask the Lord for all of us that he give us this grace,” the Pope said June 27.

Pope Francis said a special Mass June 27 in the Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his ordination as an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992.

The Mass was attended by the cardinals in Rome. This was the Pope's final morning Mass before the start of the usual summer break from morning activities. They will resume in September after he returns from his apostolic trip to Colombia.

For his homily, Francis preached on the day’s first reading, which contains the continuation of a dialogue between God and the now elderly Abraham. In this dialogue we hear three imperatives, the Pope said: “Get up! Look! Hope!”

Abraham, he said, was more or less the same age as those present when God called him.

“He was going to go into retirement, in retirement to rest... He started at that age. An old man, with the weight of old age, old age that brings pain, illness.... But you, as if you were a young man, get up, go go!”

“And to us today the Lord says the same: ‘Get up! Look! Hope!’ He tells us that it's not time to put our life in closure, not to close our story, not to compile our story. The Lord tells us that our story is open, still: it is open until the end, it is open with a mission. And with these three imperatives tells us the mission: ‘Get up! Look! Hope!’” Francis emphasized.

The Pope reflected that there are some people who might not want the older people around, maybe calling them a “gerontocracy of the Church.” These people don't know what they are saying, he explained: “we're not geriatrics, we're grandparents.”

And if we don’t understand this, we should pray for the grace to do so, he said.

This is because we are “Grandparents to whom our grandchildren look. Grandparents who have to give them a sense of life with our experience. Grandparents not closed in the melancholy of our story, but open to give this. And for us, this ‘get up, look, hope’ is called ‘dreaming,’” he said.

“We are grandparents called to dream and give our dream to today's youth: they needs it.”

Pope Francis explained what these three words mean. To get up, he said, means you have a mission, you have a task. Just like Abraham walked, not making a home anywhere but only taking a tent, we are called to continue forward, all the way to the end of our lives.

In the second command, to “look!” God tells Abraham set his gaze on the horizon, always looking and moving ahead. There is a mystic spirituality to the horizon, the Pope said. It doesn’t end, but the further forward you go, the horizon continues to recede into the distance.

The third imperative was to have hope. Just like Abraham should not have been able to have children because of his age and because of the sterility of his wife, the Lord promises him offspring as numerous as the stars and Abraham has faith in the word of God.

This is the kind of hope in God's promises we are called to have, Francis said.

At the end of the Mass, Pope Francis thanked Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, for his kind words, as well as everyone for their well-wishes and for celebrating Mass with him on his anniversary.

“Thank you for this common prayer on this anniversary, asking forgiveness for my sins and perseverance in faith, hope, charity,” he said.

“I thank you so much for this fraternal company and ask the Lord to bless you and accompany you on the road of service to the Church. Thank you very much.”

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