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November 18, 2008 –  Tuesday of 33rd Week in Ordinary Time       DAILY LITURGICAL/THEME MEDITATION: "Zacchaeus made haste and received Jesus joyfully" UNIVERSAL CHURCH/WORLD EVENT(S): Bishop Prays for Obama’s Conversion SAINT OF THE DAY Dedication of St. Peter and Paul  GENERAL MARIOLOGY The Virgin Mary in the New Testament, Part I: Matthew and Luke - Genealogy of Jesus DIVINE MERCY On Blessed Virgin Mary: My Dearest Mother  TEACHING/TESTIMONY/CONVICTION: Pro-lifers Defend "Italy's Terri Schiavo"   Monthly Index

DAILY LITURGICAL MEDITATION

Tuesday (11/18):  "Zacchaeus made haste and received Jesus joyfully" Scripture:  Luke 19:1-10 1 He entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 And there was a man named Zacchae'us; he was a chief tax collector, and rich.  3 And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, on account of the crowd, because he was small of stature. 4 So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way. 5 And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchae'us, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today." 6 So he made haste and came down, and received him joyfully. 7 And when they saw it they all murmured, "He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner." 8 And Zacchae'us stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of  anything, I restore it fourfold." 9 And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost." Meditation: What would you do if Jesus knocked on your door and said, "I must stay at your house today"? Would you be excited or embarrassed? Jesus often "dropped-in" at unexpected times and he often visited the "uninvited" – the poor, the lame, and even public sinners like Zacchaeus, the tax collector! Tax collectors were despised and treated as outcasts, no doubt because they over-charged people and accumulated great wealth at the expense of others. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector and was much hated by all the people. Why would Jesus single him out for the honor of staying at his home? Zacchaeus needed God's merciful love and forgiveness. In his encounter with Jesus he found more than he imagined possible. He shows the depth of his repentance by deciding to give half of his goods to the poor and to use the other half for making restitution for fraud. Zacchaeus' testimony included more than words. His change of heart resulted in a change of life, a change that the whole community could experience as genuine.   Saint Augustine of Hippo urges us to climb the sycamore tree like Zacchaeus that we might see Jesus and embrace his cross for our lives:       Zacchaeus climbed away from the crowd and saw Jesus without the crowd getting in his way. The crowd laughs at the lowly, to people walking the way of humility, who leave the wrongs they suffer in God’s hands and do not insist on getting back at their enemies. The crowd laughs at the lowly and says, “You helpless, miserable clod, you cannot even stick up for yourself and get back what is your own.” The crowd gets in the way and prevents Jesus from being seen. The crowd boasts and crows when it is able to get back what it owns. It blocks the sight of the one who said as he hung on the cross, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing. … He ignored the crowd that was getting in his way. He instead climbed a sycamore tree, a tree of “silly fruit.” As the apostle says, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block indeed to the Jews, [now notice the sycamore] but folly to the Gentiles.” Finally, the wise people of this world laugh at us about the cross of Christ and say, “What sort of minds do you people have, who worship a crucified God?” What sort of minds do we have? They are certainly not your kind of mind. “The wisdom of this world is folly with God.” No, we do not have your kind of mind. You call our minds foolish. Say what you like, but for our part, let us climb the sycamore tree and see Jesus. The reason you cannot see Jesus is that you are ashamed to climb the sycamore tree. Let Zacchaeus grasp the sycamore tree, and let the humble person climb the cross. That is little enough, merely to climb it. We must not be ashamed of the cross of Christ, but we must fix it on our foreheads, where the seat of shame is. Above where all our blushes show is the place we must firmly fix that for which we should never blush. As for you, I rather think you make fun of the sycamore, and yet that is what has enabled me to see Jesus. You make fun of the sycamore, because you are just a person, but “the foolishness of God is wiser than men. Sermon 174.3.    The Lord Jesus is always ready to make his home with each one of us. Do you make room for him in your heart and in every area of your life? "Lord Jesus, come and stay with me. Fill my life with your peace, my home with your presence, and my heart with your praise. Help me to show kindness, mercy, and goodness to all, even to those who cause me ill-will or harm." Psalm 15 1 O LORD, who shall sojourn in thy tent? Who shall dwell on thy holy hill? 2 He who walks blamelessly, and does what is right, and speaks truth from his heart; 3 who does not slander with his tongue, and does no evil to his friend, nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor; 4 in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear the LORD;  who swears to his own hurt and does not change; 5 who does not put out his money at interest, and does not take a bribe against the innocent.  He who does these things shall never be moved.   RETURN TO TOP

UNIVERSAL CHURCH/WORLD EVENTS

Bishop Prays for Obama’s Conversion Calls on Catholics to Integrate Faith and Politics   FARGO, North Dakota, NOV. 17, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The next months will require tireless work from Catholics in order to preserve the fundamental right to life, and from priests to make Church teaching known, says a U.S. prelate. Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo affirmed this in a column written for the November issue of New Earth, his diocesan newspaper. He congratulated president-elect Barack Obama, and assured him of prayers for "the conversion of his heart and mind to recognize the dignity of human life from the moment of conception until natural death and the truth that no government has the right to legalize abortion." Observing Obama's voting record and his public support of the Freedom of Choice Act, the prelate asserted that the president-elect opposes the position of the Catholic Church. He added: "On a purely political level, he even disagrees with the majority of Americans, who at least want some limits on abortion. "The Church, and most especially bishops and priests, will need to make the teaching of the Church known to every Catholic." Clear teaching Bishop Aquila wrote about letters he received expressing a desire for more outspoken and clear teaching on abortion. He stated, "Catholics need to promote the Gospel of Life and understand, as Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessors have made definitive and clear, that the question of the moral legality of abortion is non-negotiable. It is always and everywhere wrong, and this moral truth must be enshrined in law in every civil society." He addressed the misunderstandings that he encountered regarding a Catholic's role faced to abortion. "Abortion is an intrinsic evil," he explained, "which means that in no circumstance is it permitted nor may it ever be supported, even as a means to a good end." The prelate reiterated the message of other U.S. bishops, on the central and primary importance of the issue of human life among the many other political issues to be weighed in the balance. Faith in politics The bishop addressed the misunderstanding about the relationship between the Church and the state, and more particularly, how each Catholic is called to live his faith in daily life and political decisions. He lamented the removal of "religious and moral values from the public square," observing that "some Catholics in the separation of their faith from decisions in the political order abandon God and embrace secular atheism." "Abandoning the truth," he continued, "is directly opposed both to our ideals as Christians and to the founding principles of our country as seen in the Declaration of Independence which acknowledges the ‘laws of nature's God' and ‘the Creator.'" The prelate quoted from the nation's first president, George Washington: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." Based in these ideals of the founding fathers, as well as the teachings of the Church, Bishop Aquila called on Catholics to live out their faith: "Being faithful to the call and mission given to us by God can never be limited to Sunday worship, but requires the surrender of our complete and entire lives. "If we are faithful Catholics, everything we do will be influenced by our relationship with God, his truth, his love and his constant inspiration. If we withhold the beauty and truths about human life from our nation's laws, we diminish our society." RETURN TO TOP

DAILY LITURGICAL SAINT

November 18, 2008 Dedication of St. Peter and Paul  St. Peter’s is probably the most famous church in Christendom. Massive in scale and a veritable museum of art and architecture, it began on a much humbler scale. Vatican Hill was a simple cemetery where believers gathered at St. Peter’s tomb to pray. In 319 Constantine built on the site a basilica that stood for more than a thousand years until, despite numerous restorations, it threatened to collapse. In 1506 Pope Julius II ordered it razed and reconstructed, but the new basilica was not completed and dedicated for more than two centuries. St. Paul’s Outside the Walls stands near the Abaazia delle Tre Fontane, where St. Paul is believed to have been beheaded. The largest church in Rome until St. Peter’s was rebuilt, the basilica also rises over the traditional site of its namesake’s grave. The most recent edifice was constructed after a fire in 1823. The first basilica was also Constantine’s doing. Constantine’s building projects enticed the first of a centuries-long parade of pilgrims to Rome. From the time the basilicas were first built until the empire crumbled under “barbarian” invasions, the two churches, although miles apart, were linked by a roofed colonnade of marble columns. Comment: Comment: Peter, the rough fisherman whom Jesus named the rock on which the Church is built, and the educated Paul, reformed persecutor of Christians, Roman citizen and missionary to the Gentiles, are the original odd couple. The major similarity in their faith-journeys is the journey’s end: Both, according to tradition, died a martyr’s death in Rome—Peter on a cross and Paul beneath the sword. Their combined gifts shaped the early Church and believers have prayed at their tombs from the earliest days. Quote: Quote: “It is extraordinarily interesting that Roman pilgrimage began at an…early time. Pilgrims did not wait for the Peace of the Church [Constantine’s edict of toleration] before they visited the tombs of the Apostles. They went to Rome a century before there were any public churches and when the Church was confined to the tituli [private homes] and the catacombs. The two great pilgrimage sites were exactly as today—the tombs, or memorials, of St. Peter upon the Vatican Hill and the tomb of St. Paul off the Ostian Way” (H.V. Morton, This Is Rome). RETURN TO TOP

GENERAL MARIOLOGY

The Virgin Mary in the New Testament, Part I By Fr. Settimio M. Manelli, F.I.   Genealogy of Jesus This "anomaly" at the end of the genealogical list refers to a direct intervention of God in this concluding generation, as will be stated expressly just a bit further on, in relation to the conception and birth of Jesus by the working of the Holy Spirit (1:18-21). The passive voice used in 1:16, can in fact be considered a theological passive, referring back to God himself, the only agent. Another "anomaly" noted in this genealogical list is that the third group, in order to reach the number of 14 ancestors, must include Mary in the thirteenth place: a woman instead of a man (59), as in the rest of the list. As G. Leonardi remarks, this is truly "exceptional in a Hebrew genealogy, where only the father is counted and not the mother; but this is intentional here, given the extraordinary case of the virginal birth of Jesus from Mary by the working of the Holy Spirit" (60). Scholars have sought to explain the fact that St. Matthew, generally more attentive to male figures, reports the names of four women in his list (61). True, the role of these four women differs from that of Mary, who alone forms a "link" in the chain, while the other four are only united to their husbands. Nonetheless, the question arises here, specifically how St. Matthew ever came to cite exactly four women all marked by "irregularities," while he does not cite the mothers of Israel or other glorious women, such as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, the sister of Moses, the mother of Samuel (62). Fr. Stefano Manelli observes on this point: One should see in these four women, or at least in some of them, sinners, to show that the Messiah would come to save sinners. One should see in these strangers and pagans, who demonstrate the universality proper to the saving plan of the Messiah Redeemer. In particular, one should see in these four creatures women who have become mothers in an irregular manner, but not sinful, inserted into a design directed from on high, to prepare or prefigure the maternity of the Mother of Jesus, who was above every normality (63). These four women "have played an extraordinary personal role in the history of Israel and more exactly in the dynastic history" (64). Hence, the probable scope of St. Matthew in inserting these four women in the list is the assurance that God is "faithful to himself and to his promises" of salvation for the people of Israel (65), notwithstanding the unforeseen which in turn prefigure "the unexpected and different role of Mary" (66). In this way it should have become credible to his contemporaries that "she was the sole human origin of Christ" (67). We may conclude, therefore, by saying that the genealogy offered by Matthew is intended to communicate two inseparable facts: the miraculous, virginal conception of Jesus by Mary, and his belonging to the house of David in accord with the ancient messianic prophecies. (to be continued)  RETURN TO TOP

DIVINE MERCY

Dairy from St. Faustina On Blessed Virgin Mary Tuesday, November 18 My Dearest Mother O Mary, my dearest Mother, guide my spiritual life in such a way that it will please your Son (Diary, 240). †  The Mother of God told me to do what she had done, that, even when joyful, I should always keep my eyes fixed on the Cross, and she told me that the graces God was granting me were not for me alone, but for other souls as well (Diary, 561). RETURN TO TOP

CATHOLIC  TEACHING/CONVICTION/TESTIMONY

Pro-lifers Defend "Italy's Terri Schiavo" High Court Gives OK to Disconnecting Feeding Tube   ROME, NOV. 17, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Italian associations are making last-minute appeals for the life of Eluana Englaro, after Italy's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that her father's wish would be granted and her feeding tube will be removed. Englaro, 37, has been in a coma since 1992, when she suffered a car accident. Her case has been called Italy's version of the Terri Schiavo battle that raged in the United States in 2005, and ended in Schiavo's death by dehydration and starvation. For 14 years, Englaro has been in the care of a group of nuns who, according to Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, are the only ones "close to the young woman who still fight for her life." Her father has led the legal battle to have her feeding tube disconnected. "Many words have been said in Eluana's case," the cardinal stated. "The most beautiful and persuasive of these are those [spoken] by the nuns: 'If there is someone who considers her dead, may they leave Eluana to continue with us, who feel she is alive ... Leave us the freedom to love and to give ourselves to one who is weak.'" Appeals Last weekend, more than 500 representatives of Italy's Centers for Aid to Life gathered to ask Parliament for an emergency measure that would protect people in situations like that of Englaro. The Movement for Life organization also wrote Italy's president, requesting that he use his "moral authority so that Eluana can continue to be fed by the nuns of Lecco, who have cared for her until now." Carlo Casini, president of the movement, affirmed that the court's decision "endangers thousands of seriously impaired people who depend on society's capacity to receive them. In short, it endangers all of us when we become marginalized or useless." Casini added that "the battle for life and for the family is becoming ever harder," so that "reasonable work is not enough; it's necessary to pray more." The Science and Life association also weighed in on the decision, affirming that it is "a true and authentic death sentence." Their statement asked caustically if the state would follow the example of those nations that prescribe the death penalty, and allow Englaro's death to be filmed, so that "our children and grandchildren can see how an Italian citizen can be condemned by a judge in a civil and democratic state to die of hunger and thirst." Asleep Cardinal Antonelli, nevertheless, expressed his hope that "in the last minute, the case will be reopened and ideology will not completely blind consciences." "Eluana is in a 'vegetative state,' but she is not a vegetable. She is a person who is sleeping," he said. "The person, also when she is sleeping or disabled, conserves all of her dignity. The person is valuable in herself, not for what she produces or consumes, or for the pleasure or satisfaction she gives to others." [Antonio Gaspari contributed to this report]   RETURN TO TOP

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