10 Catholic Things that Caught My Eye Today (Sept. 2, 2015)

10 Catholic Things that Caught My Eye Today (Sept. 2, 2015) September 2, 2015

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2.From Origen in the Liturgy of the Hours today:

For just as that physical body of Christ was crucified and buried, and afterward raised up, so in the same way the whole body of Christ’s holy ones has been crucified and lives no longer with its own life. For each of them, like Paul, makes his boast of nothing else but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which he has himself been crucified to the world, and the world to him. But each Christian has not only been crucified with Christ and crucified to the world; he has been buried with Christ too, as Paul tells us: We have been buried with Christ. But as though already in possession of some pledge of the resurrection, Paul goes on to say: And we have risen with him.

3. Today’s Mass readings.

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5. And his homily notes from today (there’s audio, too):

Even after an exhausting time preaching and healing in the synagogue, when he arrived at Simon’s house after a long Sabbath, he cured his mother in law of a severe fever and then the entire city was bringing the sick to Peter’s house. It would have been easy for Jesus to have asked to rest, or even, to shorten his work, to do a “mass healing,” which was totally within his power. But the Good Shepherd, who knows his sheep by name, healed every one individually, because he had come not principally as a doctor to cure physical maladies but as a Savior to cure us of our spiritual cancers through a life of grace and faith. Simon’s mother-in-law shows us the purpose of health when, as soon as she was cured of a severe fever (think 103 degrees), she got up to serve others. She was essentially considered to be on her death bed, yet once she was healed, rather than taking it easy she began taking care. She teaches us that our health is giving to us so that we may serve others, as Jesus serves, and she served. When Jesus gives us a similar grace — such as when we’ve been blessed by health without even needing to be cured! — we’re called to use that gift to build his kingdom by serving each subject Christ invites into that kingdom.
It seemed Jesus had cured and met with the individuals healed all night. In the morning, he sought to escape at dawn in order to pray and the crowds found him. He then told us something really important: that he had come to proclaim the kingdom of God and for that reason needed to go to the other towns as well: “For this purpose I have been sent,” he said. He saw himself as essentially a missionary of the Father. Jesus could have easily set up shop in Capernaum and had people come to him, but he knew that the blind, the crippled, and so many others would never make the journey. He had come to go in search of the lost sheep and that’s what he was intent to do. This teaches us that we, like Jesus, must get out of our homes, even of our parishes, and go hunt people down for God, to share with them the gift of salvation we have received in Christ. Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium said that he wants us to get to the point that each of us has a similar missionary identity, to say, “I am a mission in this world. This is the reason why I am here.”

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9. In Magnificat today, from Servant of God Madeleine Delbrel:

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