8th Week of Pentecost

Acts 18:1-11
After this he left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. He went to visit them and, because he practiced the same trade, stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. Every sabbath, he entered into discussions in the synagogue, attempting to convince both Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began to occupy himself totally with preaching the word, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus. When they opposed him and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your heads! I am clear of responsibility. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” So he left there and went to a house belonging to a man named Titus Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next to a synagogue. Crispus, the synagogue official, came to believe in the Lord along with his entire household, and many of the Corinthians who heard believed and were baptized. One night in a vision the Lord said to Paul, “Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack and harm you, for I have many people in this city.” He settled there for a year and a half and taught the word of God among them.

Luke 11:27-32
While he was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” While still more people gathered in the crowd, he said to them, “This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here. At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here.

Prayer of the Faithful, vol. III:
Safro – OPENING PRAYER

Lord,
great and just Judge,
on the Morning of the world to come you will sit in judgment
and repay each one according to his deeds.
Deliver us from shame and confusion,
and invite us to share the joy and exultation of your
blessed ones,
who dwell in indescribable light.
We shall glorify you, your Father and your Holy Spirit,
now and forever.
Amen.

Saint of the Day: Saint Seraphia the Martyr (Seraphia of Syria) died 110 A.D.
When Seraphia was very young, her family fled from Syria to Italy to escape the persecutions of Hadrian. Orthaned as a young woman, she had many offers of marriage, but was drawn to a religious life; she sold all her possessions, gave her money to the poor, and then sold herself into slavery. By her good example, she converted her owner, Saint Sabina.

Meditation:
The Truth of Christ: Always Radical
In the Gospel of Luke between when our Lord tells his disciples that to those who much is given much will be required and that because of his word there will be division so great that father will be against son and son against father, Jesus said: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49) The Word of God is like fire, it is the fire of truth that will consume the old earth and the old heaven, so that the new earth and the new heaven may come in their fullness.
The truth is always radical because it will never accept that which is false, that which is from below and not from above. To be a Christian today is be radical, it means not always “fitting in”, it means to “love” while others hate, it means to “forgive” when others cannot, it means “poverty” in the sense of not being fulfilled in what the world has to offer us as fulfilling, and ultimately it means the Cross, as saint Paul reminds us, “For the message about the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1Corinthians 1:18)
The Church: Ascetical and Eucharistic
The pagan world into which the Church was born, which the Church challenged and overcame, that pagan society accused the early Christians of not being religious – they were wrong and they were right. How so? They were wrong in the sense that they found it odd that a religion did not have “sacred stuff”. Why did Christians not have sacred groves and forests, magic, sacred animals, secrets and all they “stuff” of paganism. In the famous dialogue (Contra Celsum) between the Church Father, Origen and the pagan philosopher Celsius, he attacks Christians for being kidnappers of children, masquerading as a religion. Therefore in the eyes of pagans they were not a religion for they were not like the religions the world was use to. They were correct although they did not know it, in the sense that Christianity is not a religion, it is the end of religion.
The Christian faith is not a religion in the sense of a remedy for the trials and tribulations of living in the natural world. It does not make us rich in the eyes of the world, it makes us rich in grace, it does not keep us from natural death, it destroys eternal death, it will not alleviate all earthly suffering, it will unite us to the salvific sufferings of the Cross of Jesus. The Church is by its nature ascetical, always poor, always simple, always striving to grow in faith, hope, and love, always in prayer to grow to full stature in Christ. In the early Church, when one asked what is it Christians believed, the answer was lex orandi lex credendi (the rule of prayer is the rule of belief), by experiencing Christians at prayer, there was the revealing of the truths of the Christian faith.
In the Church we existentially encounter the freedom of being the sons and daughters of God. It is not the freedom that the world offers, the freedom of choice or movement, the freedom of exercising my individualism and my individual freedom. No, the freedom given to us by the Christ is the freedom of our being, freedom from the constrictions of the natural world of birth and death, it is the freedom of eternal communion with one another and with the Holy Trinity. Jesus reveals to us in his Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection that true freedom is the communion/relationship; and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit by whose power Jesus rose from the dead, we too are brought into the eternal communion of love, a love that never ends. This is why the Church is Eucharistic, it is the living vision of the new heaven and the new earth, the Eucharist is never about the individual, is never a private devotion, it is the Body of Christ gathered together, professing the same faith and receiving the same Lord’s unifying sacramental presence in his body and blood.
Conclusion
The Church is a living organism, where sinners are called to be saints, to be holy and find new life in Christ. Life in the Church is a challenge to let go, of the false notions of freedom, of the false understandings of individualism, of what the world judges as success, letting go of attempts to rule what we cant rule, which is the natural world and all its pitfalls. In the Church, especially in the celebration of the Eucharist, we discover the other as brother and sister, not as threat or enemy. In the celebration of the Eucharist we discover that the natural must give way to the divine, the created to the uncreated, death to eternal life.
God calls each of us to be ecclesial beings, to find in our communion as the Body of Christ, communion with the Holy Trinity. We are called not be perfect, wise, rich, important, or successful as the world judges these, for they lead nowhere. We are called to be holy, like the Divine Master, to lay down our lives for our friends, to be the last so that we will be first, to be of love – for only those who love shall see clearly what we now only see dimly, a new heaven and a new earth.