Weekday Readings

The Thirtieth Week of the Year October 28 - November 2, 2024 Monday Luke 13.10-17 In this Gospel reading there is a glimpse of eschatological victory in the cure of the crippled woman looking toward the second coming of Christ. At the words of Jesus the glory of his Father with all the angels is manifest in a simple miracle. All the adversaries of the Kingdom are put to shame by this miracle anticipating their final defeat when Christ is manifested in glory: “this daughter of Abraham has been released from the shackles of Satan.” And all the peoples of the world rejoice in the glorious things that have been done by Christ Jesus. A true Sabbath of wholeness and wellness fills all creation in its being made new in transfigured glory. A creation held bound by Satan is set free. It is the eternal cosmological event. Now it is prefigured in the cure of the woman bent over for all those years. Our prayer opens us up to be healed by Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus sustains us against the opposition that now rages against the Kingdom. Thy Kingdom come. Tuesday Luke 13.18-21 In my prayer I experience the Kingdom of God. It is like a bush standing against the sky. It has grown from a very small seed. It is small but strong. It resists all its adversaries. I am sheltered amid its branches. I have found my nest within the safety of its branches. I will remain and grow with the bush into eternal life. And then in the other image, so miraculously rises the bread of eternal life. The yeast, such a smelly, vile substance can bring about the transformation of the dough into bread. God uses the weakness of our humanity to raise the bread of eternal life for the whole world. My prayer puts me into the miracle of grace that is the Church, the first fruits of the Kingdom of God. My prayer becomes the daily deepening of my soul within the soul of Christ, the eternal Word, who enlightens me, enlivens me, who holds me in the bosom of his Father. Wednesday Luke 13.22-30 What is it to be saved? The people in Noah's ark were saved from the flood. Abraham pleaded with God to save the people of Sodom because there was a minimum of just men in the city. The whole human race is born outside of the Kingdom of God. Every one born into the human family has to be saved. Only if I am in Christ Jesus by his grace, in faith, hope and love will I be saved from the condemnation laid against the human. Only Christ will save me from my sins. Left to myself I deserve hell for my sins. Only Jesus saves me from that eternal separation from God. Membership in the human race does not merit me automatically a place in the Kingdom. My prayer is an awesome relationship with Christ in the Spirit. It is the narrow, open door. Prayer flows into everyday behavior that reflects the narrow, hard road to salvation in Christ. The road that leads to perdition is wide and easy. Lord, deliver me. Libera me, Domine! "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." Yet I should not feel everyone is on the way to perdition and only I and people like me only am safe. Everyone else is more worthy than I to be saved. Thursday Luke 13.30-35 Jesus feels the rejection by Jerusalem. It is their free will. “Let the pagan, secular governments know that I go about doing the work of the Kingdom. Then let them do with me as they will. I finish my course on the third day. It is the Day of Resurrection. That day will abide through all the ages until I come again in my glory. Come to me and abide now in me in your love, faith and hope. Take the yoke of my Spirit and live for the Father that you can accomplish the work that I give you. Know in the depths of your heart the Presence that is the Trinity. Be transformed into the fullness of your humanity through me. Let me gather you into me as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. Be willing. Surrender in your prayer and in all the events of your life. I am there with you, my companion and friend.” Friday All Saints Day, Readings: Revelation 7.2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3.1-3; Matthew 5.1-12 We have a daily practice of silent, contemplative-like prayer, twice a day. In that prayer practice, we remain, as it is said, in the cloud of unknowing and forgetting. We center into God in the intentionality of our heart-center through love. We remain there in our center in the intention of love, “retaining no thought, reacting to no thought, resisting no thought, returning to the sacred word” of our intention, ever so gently. We accept the gift of faith that is the dark night, as St. John of the Cross teaches, clinging and returning to the simple intention of loving God. This practice is part of a doctrine of prayer in a long line of Catholic mystics—theologians call this the apophatic path. We allow the whole panoply of revealed light to remain in the background, surely the beginning of our life in Christ for we are justified by faith. Only love in unknowing is in the foreground, in the center. The apophatic, the path of unknowing is, however, complementary to the path of light, of revealed truth that is the glory of the orthodox and catholic Church. This is known as the kataphatic dimension of our union with God. God's love calls us into this light, just as God's love calls us into the unknowing. It is during such a feast as All Saints that we are strengthened in our practice of prayer by the light of the mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ. As we share in the life of the Mystical Body we are one here on earth with a multitude of the faithful, with the holy souls being purified in purgatory and, most gloriously, with the saints in the existence of sharing perfectly in God’s glory we call heaven. Our practice in is never in solitude. We are never, never, alone with the Alone. There is no such thing in the light of our Christian faith. From the bosom of the mystery of God which is Divine Relationship, the Triune Divine Relationship, a passionate love comes forth, a divine eros as Origen would say. This divine love creates the manifold creation of so many beings, visible and invisible, in a varied hierarchy of orders that is more vast than the stars of heaven or the grains of sand on the beach. In that particular order of the earth with its levels of living beings and of the human family, we witness a deep, serious disorder that comes from the abiding disobedience of man's nature. Original sin with its consequences of personal sin and death afflict the human race. The fault only manifests better the love of God in His redeeming act of re-creation. In spite of the sin we have known in the pain of our human family's history, God's love in manifest in the power of Jesus our Savior. See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God (Second Reading)! And then immediately in the text of the Second Reading comes this statement of fact: *Yet that in fact is what we are, we are children of God. The sentence can become a sacred sentence or refrain that rings in our hearts: "Yet that in fact is what we are –children of God!" When we sit in quiet prayer in all its simplicity of intentionality, it is that sentence which is the foundation of our prayer. "Yet in fact that is what we are." We center into the fact, a reality that is held in love, simple, pure, direct, renewed over and over again. A REALITY exists, the absolute, Christ in glory, Christ within us and Christ endures beyond our feelings, our own natural powers, amid the mercurial ups and downs of our emotional life or our fortunes. See what love the Father has bestowed* *in letting us be called children of God.* *YET THAT IN FACT IS WHAT WE ARE.* We are part of All Saints. By our baptism we have been sanctified, made holy, deep down, in grace. We are not any longer banished, disaffected children, outside the family. No, we are in! We are in God, all of us together, because we are in Christ Jesus. And in our hope we pray that the whole human race born again into that adoption as children of God. *Dearly beloved, we are God's children NOW[!]; what we shall later be has not yet come to light.* Here in that sentence is the unknowing of our faith--"...has not yet come to light." We sit into the fact in unknowing. But the reality is there; in fact, the more the unknowing, the more deep is the Presence, the Reality, the Fact. Another part of the unknowing is the density of our worldliness, our rebellion against God's love. The worldliness still moves within us (and we will have that condition until we are risen in Christ in the new creation--see the First Reading). We bear within us so much of the world that is systematized against God's light. *The reason the world does not recognize us is that it never recognized the Son* (Second Reading). The "world" here does not mean God's beautiful earth or multitude of human beings, all and each one made in God's image and called to grace. The world is the accumulative, organized systems devised by people to exploit the passions and drives of a fallen race with a world view that excludes the mystery of Christ and of His Gospel. The world does not accept Christ's Mystical Body incarnate in the Church. The world has made the eve of All Saints, Halloween, a secular feast celebrating, in many cases, all the craziness of our human family. Our prayer brings us with all our brothers and sisters, the Saints, through to the Light. The Light is always there to empower us: *These are the ones who have survived the great period of trial: they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb* (First Reading). Our process of prayer into the Word leads us to the Eucharist, to the Body and the Blood of the Lamb who gives us the victory of the saints. Saturday All Souls Also: Luke 14.7-11 The strategy of genteel etiquette becomes the parable of humility in the Kingdom. My prayer must make me seek a true place among people which is most probably to be last since I must acknowledge that I am the greatest sinner of all. Yet the solution is to flee feelings about myself in relation to others and rest in the grace of Christ. It is in the divine mercy that I am elevated into the state of the children of God. William Fredrickson, OBLSB, D.Min. --
For questions, comments or other communication, please contact: William Fredrickson Fredrickson46@msn.com

The Thirtieth Week of the Year

October 28 - November 2, 2024

Monday
Luke 13.10-17
In this Gospel reading there is a glimpse of eschatological victory in the cure of the crippled woman looking toward the second coming of Christ. At the words of Jesus the glory of his Father with all the angels is manifest in a simple miracle. All the adversaries of the Kingdom are put to shame by this miracle anticipating their final defeat when Christ is manifested in glory: “this daughter of Abraham has been released from the shackles of Satan.” And all the peoples of the world rejoice in the glorious things that have been done by Christ Jesus. A true Sabbath of wholeness and wellness fills all creation in its being made new in transfigured glory. A creation held bound by Satan is set free. It is the eternal cosmological event. Now it is prefigured in the cure of the woman bent over for all those years. Our prayer opens us up to be healed by Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus sustains us against the opposition that now rages against the Kingdom. Thy Kingdom come.

Tuesday
Luke 13.18-21
In my prayer I experience the Kingdom of God. It is like a bush standing against the sky. It has grown from a very small seed. It is small but strong. It resists all its adversaries. I am sheltered amid its branches. I have found my nest within the safety of its branches. I will remain and grow with the bush into eternal life. And then in the other image, so miraculously rises the bread of eternal life. The yeast, such a smelly, vile substance can bring about the transformation of the dough into bread. God uses the weakness of our humanity to raise the bread of eternal life for the whole world. My prayer puts me into the miracle of grace that is the Church, the first fruits of the Kingdom of God. My prayer becomes the daily deepening of my soul within the soul of Christ, the eternal Word, who enlightens me, enlivens me, who holds me in the bosom of his Father.

Wednesday
Luke 13.22-30
What is it to be saved? The people in Noah's ark were saved from the flood. Abraham pleaded with God to save the people of Sodom because there was a minimum of just men in the city. The whole human race is born outside of the Kingdom of God. Every one born into the human family has to be saved. Only if I am in Christ Jesus by his grace, in faith, hope and love will I be saved from the condemnation laid against the human. Only Christ will save me from my sins. Left to myself I deserve hell for my sins. Only Jesus saves me from that eternal separation from God. Membership in the human race does not merit me automatically a place in the Kingdom. My prayer is an awesome relationship with Christ in the Spirit. It is the narrow, open door. Prayer flows into everyday behavior that reflects the narrow, hard road to salvation in Christ. The road that leads to perdition is wide and easy. Lord, deliver me. Libera me, Domine! "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." Yet I should not feel everyone is on the way to perdition and only I and people like me only am safe. Everyone else is more worthy than I to be saved.

Thursday
Luke 13.30-35
Jesus feels the rejection by Jerusalem. It is their free will. “Let the pagan, secular governments know that I go about doing the work of the Kingdom. Then let them do with me as they will. I finish my course on the third day. It is the Day of Resurrection. That day will abide through all the ages until I come again in my glory. Come to me and abide now in me in your love, faith and hope. Take the yoke of my Spirit and live for the Father that you can accomplish the work that I give you. Know in the depths of your heart the Presence that is the Trinity. Be transformed into the fullness of your humanity through me. Let me gather you into me as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. Be willing. Surrender in your prayer and in all the events of your life. I am there with you, my companion and friend.”

Friday

All Saints Day,

Readings: Revelation 7.2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3.1-3; Matthew 5.1-12

We have a daily practice of silent, contemplative-like prayer, twice a day. In that prayer practice, we remain, as it is said, in the cloud of unknowing and forgetting. We center into God in the intentionality of our heart-center through love. We remain there in our center in the intention of love, “retaining no thought, reacting to no thought, resisting no thought, returning to the sacred word” of our intention, ever so gently.

We accept the gift of faith that is the dark night, as St. John of the Cross teaches, clinging and returning to the simple intention of loving God. This practice is part of a doctrine of prayer in a long line of Catholic mystics—theologians call this the apophatic path. We allow the whole panoply of revealed light to remain in the background, surely the beginning of our life in Christ for we are justified by faith. Only love in unknowing is in the foreground, in the center.

The apophatic, the path of unknowing is, however, complementary to the path of light, of revealed truth that is the glory of the orthodox and catholic Church. This is known as the kataphatic dimension of our union with God. God's love calls us into this light, just as God's love calls us into the unknowing. It is during such a feast as All Saints that we are strengthened in our practice of prayer by the light of the mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ. As we share in the life of the Mystical Body we are one here on earth with a multitude of the faithful, with the holy souls being purified in purgatory and, most gloriously, with the saints in the existence of sharing perfectly in God’s glory we call heaven.

Our practice in is never in solitude. We are never, never, alone with the Alone. There is no such thing in the light of our Christian faith. From the bosom of the mystery of God which is Divine Relationship, the Triune Divine Relationship, a passionate love comes forth, a divine eros as Origen would say. This divine love creates the manifold creation of so many beings, visible and invisible, in a varied hierarchy of orders that is more vast than the stars of heaven or the grains of sand on the beach.

In that particular order of the earth with its levels of living beings and of the human family, we witness a deep, serious disorder that comes from the abiding disobedience of man's nature. Original sin with its consequences of personal sin and death afflict the human race. The fault only manifests better the love of God in His redeeming act of re-creation. In spite of the sin we have known in the pain of our human family's history, God's love in manifest in the power of Jesus our Savior.

See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God (Second Reading)!

And then immediately in the text of the Second Reading comes this statement of fact:

Yet that in fact is what we are, we are children of God. The sentence can become a sacred sentence or refrain that rings in our hearts: "Yet that in fact is what we are –children of God!"

When we sit in quiet prayer in all its simplicity of intentionality, it is that sentence which is the foundation of our prayer. "Yet in fact that is what we are." We center into the fact, a reality that is held in love, simple, pure, direct, renewed over and over again. A REALITY exists, the absolute, Christ in glory, Christ within us and Christ endures beyond our feelings, our own natural powers, amid the mercurial ups and downs of our emotional life or our fortunes.

              See what love the Father has bestowed
               in letting us be called children of God.
               YET THAT IN FACT IS WHAT WE ARE.

We are part of All Saints. By our baptism we have been sanctified, made holy, deep down, in grace. We are not any longer banished, disaffected children, outside the family. No, we are in! We are in God, all of us together, because we are in Christ Jesus. And in our hope we pray that the whole human race born again into that adoption as children of God.

Dearly beloved, we are God's children NOW[!]; what we shall later be has not yet come to light.

Here in that sentence is the unknowing of our faith--"...has not yet come to light." We sit into the fact in unknowing. But the reality is there; in fact, the more the unknowing, the more deep is the Presence, the Reality, the Fact.

Another part of the unknowing is the density of our worldliness, our rebellion against God's love. The worldliness still moves within us (and we will have that condition until we are risen in Christ in the new creation--see the First Reading). We bear within us so much of the world that is systematized against God's light.

The reason the world does not recognize us is that it never recognized the Son (Second Reading).

The "world" here does not mean God's beautiful earth or multitude of human beings, all and each one made in God's image and called to grace. The world is the accumulative, organized systems devised by people to exploit the passions and drives of a fallen race with a world view that excludes the mystery of Christ and of His Gospel. The world does not accept Christ's Mystical Body incarnate in the Church. The world has made the eve of All Saints, Halloween, a secular feast celebrating, in many cases, all the craziness of our human family.

Our prayer brings us with all our brothers and sisters, the Saints, through to the Light. The Light is always there to empower us:

These are the ones who have survived the great period of trial: they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (First Reading).

Our process of prayer into the Word leads us to the Eucharist, to the Body and the Blood of the Lamb who gives us the victory of the saints.

Saturday

All Souls

Also:

Luke 14.7-11
The strategy of genteel etiquette becomes the parable of humility in the Kingdom. My prayer must make me seek a true place among people which is most probably to be last since I must acknowledge that I am the greatest sinner of all. Yet the solution is to flee feelings about myself in relation to others and rest in the grace of Christ. It is in the divine mercy that I am elevated into the state of the children of God.

William Fredrickson, OBLSB, D.Min.