September 7 through 13, 2025
* * * * *
(September 7, 2025: Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time)
* * * * *
"If one of you decides to build a tower, will you not first sit down and calculate the outlay to see if you can accomplish the project?"
Life can be frustrating enough at times without making it worse by failing to look ahead. How many times have we had to go back to the grocery store because we didn't first make a list of what we needed to buy? How often have we run to Lowe’s or Home Depot three, four, five times or more on the same day because we simply didn't take the time to first consider all the materials that we would need in order to accomplish a project? How many vacations or trips have been soured because we failed first to sit down and consider all the things we should bring?
Anything worth doing - no matter how simple or complex - is worth doing well. And the first step in doing something well is to plan ahead.
We clearly hear echoes of this truth in the parable from Luke's Gospel. Jesus admonishes his audience to determine first what it is they will need to complete an important task before embarking on the task itself. For his part, St. Francis de Sales recommends:
"Be careful and attentive to all the matters that God has committed to your care. Since God has confided them to you, God wishes you to have great care for them."
Of course, we know that the Salesian tradition cautions us not to become so obsessed with advanced planning that we become anxious or compulsive. However, this same tradition cautions us against performing tasks or projects in a careless or haphazard manner. Our own experience clearly demonstrates that when we fail to plan we are frequently planning to fail.
Take a page from the life of Jesus himself. Before undertaking his public ministry, he went into the desert where he no doubt took stock of all that he would need to accomplish God's great project for him: the salvation of the human family. Jesus didn't begin his ministry in a haphazard fashion; he didn't make it up as he went along. He was deliberate; he was prudent. Before he began his ministry in earnest, he first considered all that he would need - with the Father's love - to redeem all creation through his life, love, passion, death and resurrection.
God has entrusted to us the most important of all projects: to continue Christ's work on earth and to be sources of God's peace, justice, reconciliation, truth, hope, care, concern and love for one another. Like the tower in today's Gospel parable, accomplishing this task can sometimes be a tall order indeed. Few of us, however, have the luxury of setting aside forty days in the desert to determine what we need in order to follow God's will - to be the kind of people that God calls us to be. When are we supposed to calculate what we'll need to be successful - to be faithful - in pursuing this greatest of all projects?
How about starting with the first few minutes of every new day?
* * * * *
(September 8, 2025: Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
* * * * *
“We know that all things work for good for those who love God…”
When Joachim and Ann welcomed their daughter Mary into the world, who could have known – or imagined – that she was destined to become the mother of the Messiah? Who could have thought that this simple, poor and unassuming maiden would be the vehicle through whom God would fulfill his promise of salvation? Who could have anticipated that her simple “yes” as the handmaid of the Lord would change the course of the world forever?
How about you? Who could have thought that God would bring you out of nothingness in order that you might experience the beauty of being someone? Who would have imagined that God would use your ordinary, everyday life to continue his ongoing creative, redemptive and inspiring action? Who could have known that your attempts to say “yes” to God’s will on a daily basis – however imperfectly – could change other peoples’ lives for the better?
God did it! God continues to do it! And God will continue to do it!
Forever!
* * * * *
(September 9, 2025: Peter Claver, Priest)
* * * * *
“As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted in him…abounding in thanksgiving.”
“A contemporary of St. Francis de Sales, St. Peter Claver was born at Verdu, Catalonia, Spain, in 1580, of impoverished parents descended from ancient and distinguished families. He studied at the Jesuit college of Barcelona, entered the Jesuit novitiate at Tarragona in 1602 and took his final vows on August 8th, 1604. While studying philosophy at Majorca, the young religious was influenced by St. Alphonsus Rodriguez to go to the Indies and save ‘millions of perishing souls.’”
“In 1610, he landed at Cartagena (modern Colombia), the principal slave market of the New World, where a thousand slaves were landed every month. After his ordination in 1616, he dedicated himself by special vow to the service of the Negro slaves - a work that was to last for thirty-three years. He labored unceasingly for the salvation of the African slaves and the abolition of the Negro slave trade, and the love he lavished on them was something that transcended the natural order.”
“Boarding the slave ships as they entered the harbor, he would hurry to the revolting inferno of the hold and offer whatever poor refreshments he could afford; he would care for the sick and dying, and instruct the slaves through Negro catechists before administering the Sacraments. Through his efforts three hundred thousand souls entered the Church. Furthermore, he did not lose sight of his converts when they left the ships but followed them to the plantations to which they were sent, encouraged them to live as Christians, and prevailed on their masters to treat them humanely. He died in 1654.” (http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=94)
Peter Claver was certainly rooted in Jesus as he spent over thirty years of his life ministering to African slaves. How might our efforts to remain rooted in Jesus help us in our attempts to minister to others in our little corners of the world?
* * * * *
(September 10, 2025: Wednesday, Twenty-third Week Ordinary Time)
* * * * *
“Think of what is above…”
In today’s Gospel selection from Luke, Jesus describes what it looks like when we are thinking “what is above”:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for the Kingdom of God is yours.
Blessed are you who are now hungry,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who are now weeping,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude and insult you,
and denounce your name as evil
on account of the Son of Man.”
As we spend this day thinking of “what is above,” let us recommit ourselves to living our earthly lives here below in a heavenly way by being a source of beatitude – that is, a blessing – in the lives of others.
* * * * *
(September 11, 2025: Thursday, Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time)
* * * * *
“The measure you measure will in return be measured back to you.”
In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales wrote:
“Be just and equitable in all your actions. Always put yourself in your neighbor’s place and place your neighbor in yours, then you will judge rightly. Imagine yourself the seller when you buy and imagine yourself the buyer when you sell – then you will sell and buy justly. A person loses nothing by living generously, nobly, courteously and with a royal, just and reasonable heart…This is the touchstone of true reason.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 36, p. 217)
Francis tells us we lose nothing by measuring generously when it comes to how we deal with our brothers and sisters. Jesus goes one step further – generosity toward others offers us the promise of eternal life for ourselves…and then some!
* * * * *
(September 12, 2025: Holy Name of Mary)
* * * * *
“I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord.”
“The Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, or simply the Holy Name of Mary, is a feast day in the Roman Catholic Church celebrated on 12 September to honor the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It has been a universal Roman Rite feast since 1684, when Pope Innocent XI included it in the General Roman Calendar to commemorate the victory at the Battle of Vienna in 1683.”
“The feast day began in 1513 as a local celebration in Cuenca, Spain, celebrated on 15 September. In 1587 Pope Sixtus V moved the celebration to 17 September. In 1622 Pope Gregory XV extended the celebration to the Archdiocese of Toledo and it was subsequently extended to the entire Kingdom of Spain in 1671. The feast was removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, as it was seen as something of a duplication of the 8 September feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 2002, Pope John Paul II restored the celebration to the General Roman Calendar.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Name_of_Mary)
Mary is a role model for us, insofar as we, too, are strengthened by Jesus Christ. Like Mary, how can we be “grateful to him who has strengthened “ us?
* * * * *
(September 13, 2019: John Chrysostom, Bishop/Doctor of the Church)
* * * * *
“Every tree is known by its fruit.”
In a letter to St. Jane de Chantal (not long after the first time to two met at a Lenten mission in Dijon, France), Francis de Sales wrote:
“I once saw a tree in Rome which is said to have been planted by St. Dominic; people go to see it and venerate it out of love for the one who planted it. In the same way, having seen the tree of your desire for holiness that our Lord planted in your soul, I cherish it tenderly and take more pleasure in thinking about it now than I did while I was with you. I beg you to do the same and to with me: ‘May God make you grow, O beautiful tree planted by Him; and you, divine and heavenly seed, may God grant that you yield your fruit in dur season, and when you have produced it may He protect you from the winds that make fruit fall to thew ground were it will be eaten.’”
How might we help to produce good fruit from the tree of life that God has planted within each and every one of our hearts?
* * * * *