What a comfort it is this way of love! You may stumble on it, you may fail to correspond with grace given, but always love knows how to make the best of everything; whatever offends our Lord is burnt up in its fire, and nothing is left but a humble, absorbing peace deep down in the heart.
--St. Therese of Lisieux
TODAY'S READINGS
February 17, 2023
Friday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 339
Reading I
The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.
While the people were migrating in the east,
they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.
They said to one another,
"Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire."
They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city
and a tower with its top in the sky,
and so make a name for ourselves;
otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth."
The LORD came down to see the city and the tower
that they had built.
Then the LORD said: "If now, while they are one people,
all speaking the same language,
they have started to do this,
nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do.
Let us then go down and there confuse their language,
so that one will not understand what another says."
Thus the LORD scattered them from there all over the earth,
and they stopped building the city.
That is why it was called Babel,
because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world.
It was from that place that he scattered them all over the earth.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (12) Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
The LORD brings to nought the plans of nations;
he foils the designs of peoples.
But the plan of the LORD stands forever;
the design of his heart, through all generations.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Blessed the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people he has chosen for his own inheritance.
From heaven the LORD looks down;
he sees all mankind.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
From his fixed throne he beholds
all who dwell on the earth,
He who fashioned the heart of each,
he who knows all their works.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I call you my friends, says the Lord,
for I have made known to you all that the Father has told me.
R. Alleluia
Gospel
Jesus summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
"Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the Gospel will save it.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?
What could one give in exchange for his life?
Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words
in this faithless and sinful generation,
the Son of Man will be ashamed of
when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
He also said to them,
"Amen, I say to you,
there are some standing here who will not taste death
until they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power."
******************************
High on a Tower or a Cross
In wanting to feel closer to God, we try different ways of reaching him. When it seems our prayers are not being answered, we bargain with him (“God, if I go to Mass every day, maybe then you’ll do something about my request”) or we increase our prayers by adding in novenas or by invoking saints. While there’s nothing wrong with this of course, our motives need to be examined: Are we really trusting God? Or are we trying to manipulate him?
To feel successful in our spiritual lives, we seek spiritual highs. We want to feel more loved and more cared about. We want to feel so important to God that he’ll grant us miracles. But if we don’t feel his concern on an emotional level, we assume that he’s not yet doing enough to make us happy, and we think that the solution is to “build up” our faith, hoping this will get us closer to the joys of heaven.
The people in today’s first reading wanted that same emotional-spiritual high. To get it, they tried to reach heaven by building the tallest tower that their engineers could conceive. They defined spiritual success as fame, i.e., making a name for themselves that the rest of the world would notice. They thought they could feel heavenly by working together to build a towering accomplishment.
Was their motive really to get closer to God? Literally, yes, it was, but spiritually, no, because they were not seeking an improved relationship with the Lord. They wanted to reach heaven by their own efforts. This motive was very arrogant.
Contrast this to what Jesus says in today’s Gospel reading. We reach heaven by following in Jesus’ footsteps. And where did he climb? Not up a tower. He climbed onto a cross. He built the Kingdom of God in the humility of self-sacrifice and a willingness to suffer for the sake of others.
It doesn’t make sense. And we surely don’t like it. But it’s true: Our greatest accomplishments don’t come from reaching personal heights of success and fame; they happen when we build up other people.
We are at our best when we give love sacrificially. We reach God when we walk on lowly ground to reach those who need help. We experience our biggest spiritual highs when we join Jesus on the cross, which means embracing our hardships as opportunities for serving others, because that’s the only way to a glorious resurrection.
What cross are you nailed to? What hardship have you been forced into? Now here’s the most important question, the one that raises us up in resurrection: How can this cross benefit the Kingdom of God?
Today's Prayer
Lord, give me strength and a clear conscience to follow You, to love You, and to proclaim Your Word even in the most difficult moments and situations. Amen.
The mother of Jesus promised St. Dominic that, “one day through the rosary & the scapular I shall save the world!”
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