Daily Mass Novena-Day 7
Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop Chaput: I’d like to begin by greeting all of you who are gathered for this celebration this morning –those here in Birmingham and also those watching on television. But in a very special way I’d like to greet the members of the Board of Trustees of EWTN. We are gathering today for a meeting and we ask for your prayers that we make good decisions because our decisions affect the ministry that Mother Angelica and the Sisters began and which continues today. Before my reflections I’d like to give you an explanation so you don’t accuse me of liturgical innovation. You might have noticed when I came in I didn’t genuflect; I bowed. I’m going to have knee replacement surgery and I can’t genuflect. So, it’s nothing, nothing other than that but I would very much appreciate your prayers as the surgery approaches. We are in the 7th day of the novena and I’d think it’d be good to begin by talking about the meaning of the Novena. I haven’t been able to watch all of the Masses these past days, perhaps someone has done this before. But whenever the Church gathers for a novena, the Church is imitating the Apostles and Mary and the early disciples as they prepared for the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The time between Jesus ascension to the Father and the coming of the Holy Spirit was 9 days. And so that was an important moment in the life of the Church. So, as we approach other important moments in our lives as individual Catholics or as a community, we often imitate the Apostles and Mary as they gather for prayer, asking for the Holy Spirit to come upon us. Now, there’s a danger, of course, when you adopt practices in the Church that you forget what it means. Sometimes people are a bit superstitious about novenas – that if you just pray for 9 days, somehow that’s magical. What’s magical is that the Holy Spirit hears our prayers and always responds. But the Church knows that that 9 day period of prayer is an extraordinary commitment on our part to union with the Church praying for the intercession of the Holy Spirit at first Pentecost. So, as we pray these 9 days we know that God hears our prayers. And whenever we invoke the Holy Spirit to come upon the Church, it always happens. We can have confidence that God hears our prayers. The name of our novena is dedicated to “Mary, Mother of God, to the Nations.” Its location here in the month of October prior to the elections in November is deliberate. We’re praying that the Holy Spirit will guide our nation, all its political leaders but in a very special way we pray for ourselves and our fellow citizens that we will be attentive to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit as we make decisions about who we’re going to vote for. Voting is an obligation, I think, for Christians to have a voice in what’s happening in the world around us. Patriotism is still a virtue associated with the 4th Commandment. Those of us, who are older and studied the “Baltimore Catechism,” remember we studied 2 things together – filial piety; the piety of daughters and sons towards their parents and patriotism. They’re part of the same package, which means a commitment to the most important communities in our lives. And minimally what that means is that we think and we read and we study and we vote when it comes to making political decisions because those decisions affect the common good of the community and also the dignity of every individual. We’re obliged as Catholics always when we make decisions, political decisions, to keep both of those issues in mind – first, the dignity of every individual from the moment of existence into eternity and the common good, which doesn’t mean the good of most people. It means the good of everyone. Common means everyone. Everyone’s good. You can never make a decision that undermines the dignity of another person. If you do that doesn’t serve the common good. So, we ask the Lord to be attentive to us as we pray this novena along with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Who prays with us and Whose prayers God always hears. The theme of today for the novena prayer is “Mary at Calvary,” – a very important moment for us because it was the moment of Jesus’ self-giving to the Father, for our salvation. Mary accompanied Him, courageously standing at the foot of the cross, unlike most of the other disciples. She had courage where we do not and She had the courage born of a Mothers heart. There’s nothing more ferocious than the protective love of a mother for her child. Mary stood at the foot of the cross, expressing her fidelity and Her love to Jesus. She shares in His suffering in a way that’s beyond the imagination of most of us. I think mothers can understand Mary’s pain as She stood at the foot of the cross in ways that others can’t. So, we ask Mary to teach us to stand with Christ as His sufferings continue in the world around us. St. Paul tells us we need to make up what’s lacking in the sufferings of Christ. What that means is that we suffer with the world around us. “Blessed are those who weep...” If we don’t care about what’s going on in the world around us, about the sufferings of others. We’re not Christians. So, we need to be faithful to the example of Mary as She stood under the cross of Jesus. But also at that moment – and I think this is why we are focusing on Mary at Calvary today – is that’s the moment when the Lord Jesus entrusted us to Mary as Her children and entrusted Mary to us as our mother. The difference between Protestants and Catholics generally when it comes to devotion to Mary isn’t respect for Her. I think everyone acknowledges that Mary is the first Christian and the best of Christians. That’s common Christian experience. But an essential part of the Catholic understanding of Mary, She’s also our mother and that became a reality at this moment in our salvation History when Jesus gave Mary to the Church and to us individually as our Mother when He said to St. John, “Behold your mother.” And then of course the other side and more importantly that Mary has received us as Her children when Jesus said to Her, “Mother, behold your son.” So, we ask the Lord to give us a childlike relationship with Mary. That we know Her not only as a good Christian, not only as the model of our response to the Gospel but in a very unique and special way as a Mother Who stands with us under the cross of Jesus but also stands with us as we carry the crosses that God has placed in our lives. So, we all turn to the Scripture readings which are always a gift from God. Every time we hear a Scripture reading at Mass, we know that from all eternity God planned you and me to be here at this moment to listen to these words and to reflect together about them. So, we ask the Lord to help us receive this Scripture as a gift into our lives. The Gospel is where I’d like to begin. It’s a very short reading and one that may on the surface appear rather negative. To understand this we have to understand the context. Whenever we read a passage of Scripture, we don’t read it itself; we read it in the context of the broader section of the Gospel but then that Gospel in the context of the rest of the Gospel and the other Gospels. So, it’s always important to understand context. And the context here is that Jesus has sent His disciples out for the first evangelization. We talk about the “New Evangelization” – well this is the very first evangelization when He sent them out two-by-two to preach the Gospel. He gave them instructions on what they were to do and what they were to say. Then there’s this passage where Jesus expresses His concern, His surprise in a rather strong way about the lack of receptivity on the part of those to whom the Apostles had been sent. So, the focus of today’s Gospel is on the lack of response in the world around us and more importantly in our lives to the proclamation of the Gospel. Three cities are mentioned. Jesus speaks about the woes that will come upon them. We wouldn’t want Jesus ever to say to us; “Woe. Woe to you.” So, this is a very serious challenge and Jesus is leading us to reflect, not just about them but about ourselves. What’s unique about these cities is that 2 of them we know very little about but one of them, Capernaum, was the place where Jesus lived when He did His Galilean ministry. It’s the place of the home of St. Peter. So, this was the center of the first evangelization when Jesus began His preaching. And yet, that gift wasn’t received by the people to whom the gift was given. They were proud and resistant to hear the Gospel. And because of their pride and resistance Jesus challenged them and warned them about the consequences of not being open to the grace of God. “As for you Capernaum, will you be exalted in Heaven?”—the place where Jesus did His ministry. “No, you will go down to the nether world.” And then Jesus tells us why when He says, “Whoever listens to you listens to Me.” So, when the Gospel is proclaimed, it is Jesus who’s speaking. And when the Gospel is preached, it is Jesus whose voice comes to our ears. It’s so important for us to understand that the Word of God is alive in the Church today. Jesus is speaking to us here. So, inattentiveness, resistance to the Word of God which is more common – sometimes unconscious resistance but sometimes very deliberate resistance – all of that would lead Jesus to speak these words of woe about us. “Will you be exalted in heaven? No, you will go down to the nether world. Whoever listens to you, listens to Me; whoever rejects you, rejects Me; and whoever rejects Me, rejects the One who sent Me.” Jesus was sent by the Father. Jesus sends the Church. We are the recipients of that gift. So, we ask Our Lord to help us be receptive to His Word in our lives. And that leads me to a longer reflection I’d like to make about today’s First Reading which is from the Old Testament, which is also the Word of God. We Christians have 2 sources as our Scriptures – one is the New Testament, the Gospels, the receptacle of wisdom that’s been transferred to us through the preaching of the Apostles. We’re deeply grateful to god for that gift. But also we believe that the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures are also the Word of God. In today’s First Reading, as the reading this week, is from the Book of Job, which is one of the most commented on writings of the book, the Old and New Testaments by the Fathers of the Church. Now, that means it was important to them that they commented on it and preached about it. The question I would ask you – I don’t want you to raise your hands – but have you read the Book of Job? I think many of us have not. We know something about it but sometimes we don’t pay attention to the Old Testament as God’s Word and we’re not familiar with it. It’s very, very important for us. It’s part of the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament. The Wisdom Literature is a collection of writings which not so much contain revelation, which is information that God gives us that we couldn’t come to on our own. It’s about human wisdom guided by the Holy Spirit that will lead us to think as God thinks and to act as God acts. To be a wise woman or a wise man is different from being smart. Smart means you know a lot of things. To be wise means you understand those things and understand the importance of some things and the lack of importance of others and you integrate them appropriately into your life. There is a lot of wisdom in the world around us, sometimes contained by the old, the elderly, sometimes contained in the words and lives of the young. It comes to us in various ways. But wisdom is the ability to receive the gift of thinking like God thinks and then acting like God acts. And that’s where this reading comes from. It’s about a faithful man, Job, who despite his fidelity suffers misfortune time and time and time again. And the book is the dialogue about that. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” – a thought that many of us have had. We think about ourselves in “Why do these bad things happen to me? I’m good. I go to Mass every Sunday, maybe every day. I travel all the way to Irondale for this Mass. I give to EWTN” – which is very important for everyone to do so that this ministry continues – “all these very important things. And yet I suffer. My children don’t go to Church. Or I’m having struggles in my marriage. Or I don’t have the kind of income I thought I would have for my retirement. Or how is it possible that this party gets elected so often in the political struggles of our country?” We all have different issues that we complain to God about. And we often sometimes complain because we think good things ought to happen to good people. That’s not God’s way. His wisdom is a wisdom beyond our ordinary way of thinking. So, the Book of Job has several different sections. One of the most interesting parts, which is not the part we had today, is Job arguing with his friends who keep telling him that the reason bad things are happening to him is because he sinned against God because they think that only bad things happen to bad people. Job is constantly arguing with them about the providential care of God in his life, despite his misfortune. But then towards the end of the book – and that’s where our reading and where it comes from – there’s this marvelous section about Job’s dialogue with God. And it’s in his relationship with God in his prayer and his reflection on God’s Word in his life that Job comes to a moment of submission and submits himself to wisdom that’s beyond our human wisdom. What does this mean? A number of things. First of all, we have a God Who speaks to us. I mean this is marvelous – something we take for granted because we’re used to it. God speaks to us in such big ways; the biggest way of course is the Word Become Flesh, Jesus Christ, Who is God’s clearest Word to us, His complete Word to us. But God also speaks to us in other ways – in the Scriptures and in our personal prayer. And for us to have a God who cares about us, despite the immensity of the universe, it’s rather extraordinary.