Hi Everyone,
Updates:
1. Confessions. Somehow Thursday snuck right up on me, so this is a little late! Sorry about that. If you're looking to go to confession, you can reserve a slot on this sheet. The blocks of time are Friday at St. Anthony's 10:30 - 12:00, at OLA from 4 - 5:30, and Saturday, at St. Anthony's, from 10 - 11.
Reserve your slot here: https://docs.google.com/
2. I celebrated Mass today for the intentions of Emily Parker, and for all of you, the parishioners.
3. Reflection -- coming later tonight!
And the reflection!
http://www.usccb.org/bible/
The Apostles, free from prison, are re-arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin, the assembly of the Jewish leaders, who angrily remind St. Peter and the Apostles that they had already ordered them not to preach the name of Jesus. St. Peter gives his famous reply: We must obey God rather than men.
This is the trial of faith in every period. Will our standard of action be obedience to God, or will it be some other principle? The world always proposes some compromise; it proposes obedience to God unless, or until, or except when. It always introduces some other standard that competes with God's standard. It assumes a standard that qualifies God's own. St. Peter nips all these considerations in the bud: we must obey God rather than men.
The world inevitably considers the unqualified obedience of the saints very strange, since the saints act by unseen standards. The saints are living for the invisible, spiritual things of heaven. The people of this world, however, are living according to visible things. The two standards they use, therefore, will not always agree, nor even agree for long. Sooner rather than later the proposals will diverge. St. Peter is ready when they do: we must obey God rather than men.
As Christians living on this earth, we are caught so to speak between these two ideals or patterns of living. On the one hand, we accept the claims of God; we know that his standard is the correct one. Yet the pull of the worldly claims, on the other hand, still has a hold on us. Caught between these two pulls, C. S. Lewis says that "Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted." We keep a stubborn hope that we can satisfy the claim of God and still have room to attend to and satisfy the pursuits of the world. (And, perhaps, there will be room for those pursuits.) But the mistake is the heart's stinginess, the reluctance to renounce the world. It takes a resilient effort, day after day, to pull the heart back to God and say, we must obey God rather than men.
St. John Henry Newman once presented the issue in the following way. Speaking of an Old Testament figure named Balaam, he says this: "Balaam obeyed God from a sense of its being right to do so, but not from a desire to please Him, not from fear and love. He had other ends, aims, wishes of his own, distinct from God's will and purpose, and he would have effected these if he could." Then comes the real zinger. "His endeavor was, not to please God, but to please self without displeasing God." His heart was divided. He admitted God's claims, but his heart was not in them. He desired to please himself, without displeasing God. In the end, he was displeasing to God, simply from not desiring to please him. Balaam had not taken to heart that We must obey God rather than men.
May we lay to heart that we must obey God rather than men and, like the Apostles, act upon it.
May God bless you all!
Peace,
Fr. Rensch