Sister Susan Quaintance, OSB, is a member of St. Scholastica Monastery in Chicago, IL. She has served her community in several positions, including formation director, secretary, and liturgy committee member. She is currently Director of Client Services at Comfort Keepers, an in-home caregiving company.February 27, 2022,
Susan Quaintance OSB, St. Scholastica Monastery in Chicago, IL
Sir 27:4-7; 1 Cor 15:54-58; Lk 6:39-45
“Shine like lights in the world as you hold on to the words of life.” That’s the gospel acclamation today, Philippians 2:15d and 16a.
If you’re anything like me, you spend a fair bit of time these days, wondering how the world got to the state it’s in. So much hatred and incivility, destruction and violence. Our democracy, our natural world, our sense of the common good: all of it in deep distress and peril. Hasn’t humanity gotten beyond the tribalism that deems any interest other than my own as evil? Apparently not.
The Philippians didn’t really fit into their cultural milieu, either. Two different commentaries refer to the “hostile environment” in which the church at Philippi lived. Philippi was kind of a big deal among Roman cities; it was where Marc Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius in 31 BCE.
February 20, 2022,
“Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in heaven.” That is what the cantor will sing between the “Alleluias” this morning: Luke 23ab.
The gospel acclamation today is Matthew 4:19: “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Exclusionary language aside, I find myself rather aghast at Jesus’s imperative here. Not a please in sight. Or a reason why following him is a good idea. What if fishing (with its metaphorical counterparts of evangelizing, kingdom-building, and living a life of discipleship) isn’t something I’m good at, or even interested in?
Jer 1:4-5, 17-19; 1 Cor 12:31—13:13 or 13:4-13; Lk 4:21-30
Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Cor 12:12-30 or 12:12-14, 27; Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21
Though the Advent Sunday liturgies didn’t give us any Isaiah, there has been plenty in the Christmas season. Today, as we come to the close of the extended feast with the Baptism of the Lord, we hear the words of Isaiah’s first Suffering Servant Song in the first reading.
Epiphany could be called “The Feast of Changing One’s Mind.”
I grew up in a family that went to church together every Sunday. There was no going to whatever mass worked for my schedule nor was there the option of being like the cool families who came into church together but then the kids scattered to sit with their friends. We were there, in the third pew on the right side of church, with me (the youngest) usually wedged in between Mom and Dad.
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, our prophet is Micah. Though he was a contemporary of Isaiah’s, they are different in context and concern. While Isaiah was a prophet of the royal court, interested in Jerusalem and its relationship to God and the world, Micah was from the country, tuned in to what life was like for the poor.
How appropriate to hear from the prophet Zephaniah on this third Sunday of Advent, coinciding as it does with the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Oxford Biblical Commentary calls Zephaniah “a thoroughly radical prophetic book – a charter for the ‘little people’ of all corrupt societies.”
Today’s prophet is Baruch. Though that was the name of Jeremiah’s secretary, the author here is probably someone writing after the Babylonian Exile, using Baruch’s name to encourage the kind of repentance and humility that Jeremiah had called for and Baruch had promulgated.
If you’re anything like me, you probably think of Isaiah as the prophet of Advent: valleys being filled in and mountains being made low, streams bursting forth in the desert, a virgin bearing a son and naming him Immanuel. All Isaiah.