A Pharisee and a tax collector go into the Temple to pray—it sounds like the setup for a joke. The formula would be perfect if they’d both gone into a bar, but of course a Pharisee would never drink or dine in the same place as a tax collector. Just about the only place these two might meet is on the grounds of the Temple.
When Jesus comes again, will he find faith on earth? That is a haunting question. Where would any of us go to seek faith—that is, to seek the people who put their trust radically in God’s promises? Would we go to houses of prayer and worship? Would we go to monasteries and cloisters?
There are two kinds of people in society: the healthy and the sick. We have many ways of dividing these populations. We confine the ill to hospitals, nursing homes, care facilities, sickbeds—and that is often necessary for their best interests. But other ways we separate the sick from the well do not serve their interests at all, but ours.
Faith is a word many believers misunderstand. It isn’t concerned with whether God exists. Faith means we’re confident that God is reliable. Faith, then, is not about reciting doctrines like a checklist of orthodoxy to be signed with our intellectual assent. Frankly it doesn’t matter what we accept as true if it doesn’t affect the way we live. If we have faith in God’s reliability, then we depend on God like gravity. We take every step confident in the force of God’s love to hold onto us.
Today’s a great day to do some catechesis on the social teaching of the church—but don’t say that or you’ll lose everyone’s attention! Nothing sounds worse than catechesis, unless it’s social teaching! A few useful terms will introduce the great Catholic writing on this subject and help us concentrate on the essentials.
Whatever our differences, most of us put self-preservation very high on our lists. Even a soldier or martyr willing to die for a cause usually prefers to survive it. Mothers and fathers who make great sacrifices for their children still look for a fragment of the day that belongs to them alone. Whatever else we desire to do, above all we want to live.
I can think of two good reasons to be happy this week: the fate of the prodigal son and the hope extended to his self-righteous brother. Because I’ve been both obvious sinner and self-proclaimed do-gooder at various times in my life, and I’m glad to know God is looking out for me whether I stray to the left or to the right.
Today is Grandparents Day, an observance signed into existence by President Jimmy Carter in 1978. It took almost a decade of lobbying by several people convinced of the significance of elders in their own lives to get Grandparents Day on the calendar.
The funny thing about Labor Day is that it’s the one day of the year no one expects to work! We celebrate work by not doing any. We honor the value of labor by putting it out of our thoughts for an extra-long weekend. Work is an activity we esteem most when we’re not doing it. In a period of unemployment, for example, work seems like the grandest and most longed-for opportunity of all.
By no means is Jesus narrowing the gene pool of the saved by his teaching. Rather he’s saying divine rescue comes more easily to the outsider (presumed damned) than to the insider (presumed saved).