7th Sunday C - February 23, 2025

7th Sunday C

February 24, 2025

The scene in the first reading of today’s mass reminds me of the scene from the Broadway Musical Le Miserable where the policeman Javert is spared by the thief Jon Valjean  and can’t deal with the debt he now owes to this thief.     Before he takes his life Javert sings:

Who is this man?

What sort of devil is he

To have me caught in a trap

And choose to let me go free?

It was his hour at last

To put a seal on my fate

Wipe out the past

And wash me clean off the slate!

All it would take

Was a flick of his knife

Vengeance was his

And he gave me back my life!

This is much the situation for Saul and David.  David could have killed Saul, but he chose to spare his life.  David had not heard the sermon on the plain in today’s gospel, but he chose to love his enemy, not to hurt God’s anointed one.

Saul was the first king of Israel and when his kingdom was under siege by the Philistines it is a young shepherd boy who goes up against and slays the giant Goliath.  Saul should be happy, but when the people begin to praise David over him, he grows jealous and seeks to kill David.   The women sing words that hurt Saul:

 “Saul has slain his thousands,

David his tens of thousands’

As Saul chases David, one day Saul goes into a cave to relieve himself and there is David hiding and he has the chance to slay Saul, but instead he cuts a tassel off his cloak. The second time David meets Saul is today’ s first reading.  David has decided to love his enemy. He sees Saul as the anointed of God and deserving of God and David’s love.

Loving one’s enemy is not an easy thing.  We may not all have the kind of grievance David against Saul, but we all have men and woman who we find it hard to love.  Love sometimes is a choice, we choose to love not because the other is loveable, but because they are created in the image and likeness of God and therefore deserving of our love, even if they don’t earn it.  Choosing to love others may not change them, but it may change who we are.

How hard it is to pray for one’s enemies. The prayers may stick in our throats, but in offering them we change our attitude toward them and the world.  A challenge we are given is to see our enemy, as like us, created in the image and likeness of a loving God.

There is a story told of the Christmas truce in the first world war. A group of British and German soldiers stopped the war for a time to celebrate Christmas. After this celebration many of them were unable to continue to fight.  They had come to know the enemy as fellow humans and could not choose to destroy the men they came to know.

If we turn on the evening news, we will hear much about violence and hate in our world.  We can choose to contribute or look for other news of the kingdom of God at work around us.   Looking for the presence of our God during hate and violence is a discipline.   One, we develop over time.  This doesn’t mean we deny the brokenness of our world, but it means we don’t choose to let that be the whole story. 

This week in the New Yorker Magazine I read a story about a deacon and a group of nuns who chose to visit women on death row in Texas.   The women went into the prison full of fear and found they had much in common with the women on death row.  They met them as fellow travelers and loved them as children of a loving God.   The words of today’s psalm ring true:

Merciful and gracious is the LORD,

slow to anger and abounding in kindness.

Not according to our sins does he deal with us,

nor does he requite us according to our crimes.

We are invited to imitate the attitude of our God. We pray for those who hurt us and let God be the one to judge them and punish them.

We may not like it, but we may be surprised that the mercy of God extends even to those who hate us, or those who we think we hate.

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

By Deacon Paul Cerosaletti • October 19, 2025
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25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

By Deacon Paul Cerosaletti • September 21, 2025
Language scholars who have studied the origins of the word mammon in Hebrew and Aramaic have found clear association with words meaning wealth, riches, money, profit and possessions. But there is also evidence that one of the root words for mammon also means “that in which one trusts.” On all of our US currency — each coin and paper bill — is a simple (and, I suspect, often overlooked) phrase: “In God we trust.” This phrase was added during the Cold War to distinguish our currency, and nation, from that of the atheist Soviet Union. On each of our denominations of currency, both coins and paper bills, we have this simple reminder in whom we should be placing our trust in — God — and not what we should be placing it in: the fruit of our human activity, especially money. It is a poignant reminder to us today in light of the Gospel passage we hear and our current experience. This reminder begs us to ask two questions of ourselves and collectively as a country and society: Do we trust in God first? Always, everywhere, in everything? Or do we place our trust first in small-“g” god, or gods of human origin? In answering those questions, we might ask ourselves, what do our actions say about whether we place our trust first in God, or in humans? Where are we spending our time and treasure? This past month has brought us yet more tragic and traumatic reminders of our society’s misplaced trust. The recent spate of wounding and taking of innocent lives through gun violence in service of an ideology of retribution is just the most recent in a continuing human saga of such behavior, behavior that places trust in leading with human action to resolve differences, over our openness and trust in allowing God to lead us to a conversion of heart and to reconciliation. There is more that could be said about the responsible use of wealth in service to God. About detachment from ‘goods’ of this world — goods that God gives us out of love to draw us closer and more deeply into love with God, that we might revere God and God’s creation, but not take those goods in place of God. But in light of our continuing tragedies and the lack of reverence for human life, created by God in the image and likeness of God, of which they are clear evidence, the most important response we can offer is what St. Paul exhorts us to in his letter to Timothy, when he writes: First of all, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth. And so we will pray to God, as St Paul asks. Pray collectively for those who have suffered violence in all forms against humanity. We will pray collectively for those wounded, those who have lost their lives and their families. And then perhaps most difficult of all, we will pray for those who perpetrated this violence, and all who are tempted to perpetrate violence against humanity. We should be challenged in our prayers to pray for people we don’t want to pray for. We may find the heart that is converted is our own. In all these prayers we place our trust first and foremost in God, who desires to save us, and who “proves his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). In this is our act of Faith. In this is our act of Hope.

Solemnity of Peter And Paul - June 29, 2025

By Fr. Chris Welch • July 1, 2025
Solemnity of Peter and Paul June 29, 2025 Peter and Paul are called the saints of Rome. Partly this is because, both died in the city. You may visit their burial places. The grave of St Peter is under the Basilica bearing his name and St. Paul is buried under the church of St. Paul outside the walls. (Being a Roman citizen Paul was buried outside the walls of Rome, while Peter was killed and buried in the city of Rome.) More about the churches later. Paul and Peter couldn’t be more different. It is said “God draws straight with crooked lines”. Why did God choose these men? A good question. It has been said “God doesn’t call the qualified, God qualifies the called.” Paul was a well-educated, Pharisee. An official of the temple. Paul spent his early career persecuting the followers of Jesus, until he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Peter was a simple fisherman. He often said the wrong things and at times had flashes of insight, as in today’s gospel. Peter spent time with Jesus and denied knowing Jesus the night before his passion and death. Later Peter was asked 3 times “do you love me” by Jesus. Peter was the apostles to the Jews, while Paul was the apostle to the gentiles (the non-Jews). The Basilica of St. Peter is probably the most famous church in the city of Rome. For years it was thought that the church held the remains of St. Peter. This was confirmed in the 1940s when excavations took place to find more room to bury popes in the crypt of the building. Workers found and ancient cemetery under the church. Today we can take the tour, often given by seminarians from the North American College Seminary. Be sure to reserve the tour before you arrive in Rome. The tours are limited. At the end of the tour, you will come to the Marble box with the bones of St Peter in it. When the bones were tested, they were found to belong to a man from the first century. After Constantine made Catholicism the official faith of the republic, He constructed a simple church over the cemetery. Later it was added to and today it is the large church we know of as St Peter’s Basilica. You may visit the Constantine chapel in the crypt of the church to see where the first church was located. When I was on my sabbatical in Rome in 2008, I invited my family to visit me and I arranged to offer mass in the Clemintine chapel. After mass I noticed that one of the metal doors on the wall was open. We crawled in and went behind the altar to tough the marble box where the bones of St Peter were placed. What a thrill to be so close to the great saint’s remains. To visit the tomb of St Paul you need to travel outside of Rome to the church of St Paul outside the walls, most of the tour buses do not go here, so be carful which tour bus you take. The church is next to a monastery with a nice cloister garden. On the base of the dome are faces of the popes. Years ago, excavations took place, and the bones of St Paul were found in the base of the church. Today we honor the great saints of the early church. It is due to the preaching of St Paul that we the gentiles, non-Jews are here. A few months ago the successor to St. Peter was a man from our nation, Pope Leo the XIV. Let us give thanks for these great man and these great saints.