Aug 02 2008
Updated and Completed Notes on Latin Mass for August 3rd (12th Sunday after Pentecost)
I posted this earlier in the week and am re-posting it here. Please note that you can access biblical and catechism references by merely placing your browser on the blue colored links. There is no need to “click”. Orange/red colored links must be “clicked on.”
May our enemies blush with shame.
The Introit is based upon Psalm 70:2-4 (Ps 69 in some older translations).
“Incline unto my aid, O God: O Lord, make haste to help me: let my enemies be confounded and ashamed, who seek my soul. Let them be turned backward and blush for shame, who desire evils for me.”
While it is certainly appropriate to ask God for help against enemies, it is also appropriate to help ourselves with God’s grace in this matter, for “our sufficiency is from God” (Epistle). Why then should we stand back and wait for God to put our enemies to shame when, by His help, we can do it-and this for their own good! Indeed, to rely on God’s immediate intervention when his grace to act is available to us would be presumptuous, and a testing of God. It would also be a failing in our vocation as Christians.
How then are we to put our enemies to shame?
“Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Pet 2:12). “Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is right? But even if you do suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence. And keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing right, if that should be God’s will, than for doing wrong” (1 Pet 3:13-16).
We must be doers of the word of God, which means being doers of the will of God. To live at enmity with men is to live at enmity with God. “When in the world do as the worldlings do” is not a code we should live by.
“19 Know this, my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, 20 for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rank growth of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. 22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. 26 If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is vain. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world….1 What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? 2 You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ” (James 1:19-27; 4:1-4).
The prayer before the Epistle:
Almighty and eternal God, by Whose gift Thy faithful are able to serve Thee worthily and praiseworthily, grant, we pray Thee, that we may run without stumbling to the fulfillment of Thy promises. Through Christ our Lord, ect.
As one would expect, the prayer picks up on a major theme of the Epistle (2 Cor 3:4-9). As the prayer acknowledges, it is only by the gift (grace) of God that we are able to serve Him worthily; or, as St Paul writes: “We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.” And he goes on to write the following concerning the ministry: “He (God) also it is who has made us fit ministers of the New Covenant…” These words bring to my mind the call of the first disciples, Peter and Andrew: “Come after me, and I will cause you to become fishers of men” (Mark 1:17 literal rendering).
We may not be the Rock on which the Church was built, nor the Apostle to the nations, nonetheless, we have a share in the apostolicity of the Church and are just as dependent upon the Triune God as they:
863 The whole Church is apostolic, in that she remains, through the successors of St. Peter and the other apostles, in communion of faith and life with her origin: and in that she is “sent out” into the whole world. All members of the Church share in this mission, though in various ways. “The Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate as well.” Indeed, we call an apostolate “every activity of the Mystical Body” that aims “to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth.”
864 “Christ, sent by the Father, is the source of the Church’s whole apostolate”; thus the fruitfulness of apostolate for ordained ministers as well as for lay people clearly depends on their vital union with Christ. 378 In keeping with their vocations, the demands of the times and the various gifts of the Holy Spirit, the apostolate assumes the most varied forms. But charity, drawn from the Eucharist above all, is always “as it were, the soul of the whole apostolate.
Gradual:
I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall be ever in my mouth. In the Lord shall my soul be praised: let the meek hear and rejoice. Alleluia, alleluia. O Lord, the God of my salvation, I have cried in the day, and in the night before Thee. Alleluia.
Because God has made us “fit to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col 1:12) by making us worthy to praise him, and giving us the sufficiency we would not otherwise have to serve Him, we are called upon to bless and praise Him at all times (see CCC 2626-2643).
Gospel: Luke 10:23-37
“Then turning to the disciples he said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes which see what you see! 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.’”
There were many things which the disciples saw and heard, not the least of which was our Blessed Lord’s refusal to punish those Samaritan’s who rejected him (Luke 9:51-56). The time of Jesus-which is also the time of the Church-is the era of glad tidings to the poor, the time for proclaiming liberty to the captives of Satan (2 Tim 2:24-26), a greatly extended year of favor from the Lord (Luke 4:18-19). Certainly a judgment is coming (Luke 10:10-16), but it will come in God’s good time, when His undeserved patience towards scoffers and deniers has run its course (2 Peter 3:8-10). Will you be safe merely because you are a Christian?
Judgment, says St Peter, “begins with the household of God; if it begins with us, how will it end for those who fail to obey the Gospel of God? And if the righteous one is barely saved, where will the godless and sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4:17:18). Do you, like James and John, seek to call down destruction, vitriol, condemnation upon the Samaritans you encounter? But if a detestable Samaritan can show compassion upon one who is physically injured, as in the parable read today, how detestable must the Christian who refuses to help the spiritually injured be in the sight of Christ? “What sort of person ought you to be, conducting yourself in holiness and devotion…(and) be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace” (2 Peter 3:11, 14).
