Roncalli Newman Catholic Parish - Bishop Barron Gospel Reflections

Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

2/21/2019

Mark 8:27-33

Friends, today’s Gospel reports Peter’s confession of faith. In the midst of his disciples, Jesus asks that strange question: "Who do people say that I am?" What he gets by way of response is, first, a public opinion survey: some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.

Then Jesus turns to those closest to him, and he asks them, "But who do you say that I am?" They are silent, afraid, unwilling to speak. Finally it is Peter who says: "You are the Christ." And he gets it right. Does he get it right because he is the most intelligent? Please. Because he is holy and close to Jesus? No. We know the whole story of Peter’s weakness, which is marked by betrayal and stupidity.

It is the Father who has given Peter this insight—not Peter’s clever mind or searching heart. It is a supernatural gift, a special charism. And it is upon Peter and this inspired confession that the Church is built.

Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

2/19/2019

Mark 8:14-21

Friends, a few days ago, we read about Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Then in today’s Gospel, which takes place just a few verses later, the disciples ask again about bread. But Jesus turns their attention elsewhere.

He warns them about "the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." What does he mean by this? He’s referring to the contagious and dangerous "food" offered by these leaders. For example, the Pharisees knew the law of God but used it to oppress people rather than liberate them. They could point out, with great accuracy and articulation, the wicked things that people were doing, in order to bring those people down, to humiliate them.

Beware of that sort of food, Jesus suggests. Instead, seek the true bread of heaven, which multiplies grace upon grace.

Saint of the Day: Saint Conrad of Piacenza

Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

2/18/2019

Today's Gospel: Mark 8:11-13

Friends, in today’s Gospel the Pharisees demand Jesus give them a sign in order to prove his authority, perhaps a miracle. But I’d like to draw your attention to the final line in the passage: “He left them, got into the boat again, and went off to the other shore.”

Whose boat was this? Well, the previous verses confirm it belonged to his disciples. Jesus entering the boat calls to mind his first encounter with Peter. One day, Peter was going about his ordinary business, washing his nets and preparing for a catch. Then without warning, without asking permission, Jesus got into his boat. Now, the boat was everything for Peter; it was his livelihood, his security. But Jesus just got in and began giving orders.

So it goes in the order of grace. The true God cannot be manipulated, determined by us, or controlled through our efforts. We can’t act like the Pharisees in today’s Gospel, demanding that God behave for us. Rather, he comes into our lives—often unbidden and unexpected—and determines us, controls us. His presence is pure grace.

Don’t demand signs from God. Instead, do what the disciples did and let him enter your boat.

Saint of the Day: Blessed John of Fiesole

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2/17/2019

Luke 6:17, 20-26

Friends, our Gospel for today is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, less well known than Matthew’s but actually punchier, more to the point. It all hinges on that decisively important spiritual attitude of detachment--apatheia in the Greek fathers, indifferencia in Ignatius of Loyola. It means that I am unattached to worldly values that become a substitute for the ultimate good of God.

How bluntly Luke’s Jesus puts things. Look at Luke’s first beatitude, a model for all: “Blessed are you poor; the reign of God is yours.” What if we translated this as, “How lucky you are if you are not addicted to material things.” When we place material things in the center of our concerns, we find ourselves caught in an addictive pattern.

Because material goods don’t satisfy the hunger in my soul, I convince myself that I need more of them. So I strive and work to get more nice things—cars, homes, TVs, clothes—and then I find that those don’t satisfy me. So I strive and strive, and the rhythm continues.

Therefore, how lucky I would be if I were poor, unattached to material goods, finally indifferent to them.

Read todays Gospel here.

Saint of the Day: Seven Founders of the Servite Order

Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

2/16/2019

Mark 8:1-10

Friends, today’s Gospel tells of Jesus feeding the four thousand with seven loaves and a few fish.

An awful lot of contemporary theologians and Bible commentators have tried to explain away the miracles of Jesus as spiritual symbols. Perhaps most notoriously, many preachers tried to explain the multiplication of the loaves and fishes as a “miracle” of charity, with everyone sharing the little that he had.

But I think it’s hard to deny that the first Christians were intensely interested in the miracles of Jesus, and that they didn’t see them as mere literary symbols! They saw them for what they really were: actions of God, breaking into our world.

Read today's gospel here.

Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

2/15/2019

Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Mark 7:31-37

Friends, our Gospel for today has to do with Jesus’ healing of a deaf man with a speech impediment. As always, we have to look at the surface and at the depth. Jesus is performing a physical miracle. But every one of his actions should also be read symbolically, so as to uncover a deeper spiritual meaning.

So what does Jesus do? He "put his finger in the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue." Jesus establishes, as it were, an electrical current, running from God the Father, through him, to this man. He—almost literally—plugs him into the divine current, compelling him to hear the word. He says "Ephphatha," be opened. When he does, his speech impediment is immediately overcome. Now he is able to speak the word of God clearly.

So this deaf man stands for all of us who do not hear the word of God, who have grown oblivious to it. And what is the result of this deafness? A speech impediment. At the spiritual level, if you don’t hear the word of God clearly, then your capacity to speak it is also severely compromised.

Saint of the day: Saint Claude de la Colombiere

Memorial of Saints Cyril and Methodius

2/14/2019

MEMORIAL OF SAINTS CYRIL AND METHODIUS
MARK 7:24-30
Friends, our Gospel for today, the story of Jesus’ conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman, is one of those famously problematic passages in the New Testament. This poor woman, a Canaanite, a foreigner, comes forward and tells Jesus of her daughter who is troubled by a demon. She prostrates herself at his feet, but Jesus says, "It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs."

Of course, the woman responds with one of the best one-liners in the Scriptures, almost all of which otherwise belong to Jesus himself: "Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps." At this point, Jesus praises her for her faith and cures her daughter.

What’s going on here is really interesting and provocative. The Syro-Phoenician woman is being invited into a life of discipleship, into the following of Jesus. She is resisted, not because Jesus is having a bad day, but because he wants the strength of her faith to show itself.

What defiles?

2/13/2019

FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
MARK 7:14-23
Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus explains that sinful behavior flows from within our hearts. How often the Bible speaks of the “heart.” By that it means the core of the self, the deepest center of who we are, that place from which our thoughts and actions arise. God wants to penetrate that heart, so that he is the center of our souls.

But there is something terribly black in the human heart. We are made in the image and likeness of God, but that image can be so distorted by sin as to be barely recognizable. Our faith clearly teaches the awful truth of the fall, and we see the evidence of it in the mystery of sin, which is not to be ignored, not to be trifled with, not to be rationalized away. We are all capable of dark and evil acts. I’m not okay and neither are you.

Have our hearts become hardened, so that God cannot get in? Is there a deep resistance in us to grace?

An Observant Jew

2/12/2019

FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
MARK 7:1-13
Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who have imposed their interpretation of the Law on the Israelites. Keep in mind that the first Christians and the writers of the first Christian documents were all Jews, or at least people formed by a Jewish thought world. They made sense of Jesus in terms of what were, to them, the Scriptures.

Jesus himself was an observant Jew, and the themes and images of the Holy Scriptures were elemental for him. He presented himself as the one who would not undermine the Law and the Prophets but fulfill them.

All of those social and religious conventions that had effectively divided Israel, he sought to overcome and expose as fraudulent. He reached out to everyone: rich and poor, healthy and sick, saints and sinners. And he embodied the obedience of Israel: “I have come only to do the will of the one who sent me.” “My food is to do the will of my heavenly Father.”

The Miracle Worker

2/11/2019

FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
MARK 6:53-56

Friends, today’s Gospel reports Jesus healing many people at Gennesaret. We hear that people brought the sick from all over the region and all of them were cured. "Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed."

It’s hard to deny that Jesus was known as a healer and a miracle worker. And there is also abundant evidence that the performance of miracles was a major reason why the first preachers were taken seriously.

In addition to miracles, we also have the witness of martyrs. Miracles and martyrs: two beacons of light that illuminate the truth of Jesus Christ.

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is a daily devotional based on the Mass readings of the day, the saint of the day or any other topic worthy of reflection in light of Catholic tradition.
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