Friends, our first reading is that wonderful story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, which is a kind of hidden gem in the Old Testament. Like so many of the stories in the Bible, it is very understated, but chock full of spiritual meaning. And it has to do with how we respond—and the strange and surprising ways God might respond to us— when things are toughest.

Friends, the readings for this Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time take us to very holy ground. In the first reading, taken from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, we hear the “shema,” a prayer fundamental to Jewish theology and spirituality. And in the Gospel, when one of the scribes asks Jesus which is the greatest commandment, the Son of God, the Torah made flesh, recites the same prayer. We can’t get any more sacred or any clearer indication of how we should govern our lives.

Friends, all three readings for this Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time have a golden thread running through them, which is the idea of the call—of the primacy of God’s action in the life of salvation. Whenever we start thinking that this is our own ego project and that we are in command, we are ipso facto on the wrong path.

Friends, our Gospel this Sunday is taken from the tenth chapter of Mark, and it is high-octane spiritual business. Something pivotal is being laid out for us in this passage, and it has to do with power, suffering, and a willingness to go where Jesus goes.

Friends, for this Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our first reading from the marvelous book of Wisdom presents an old biblical trope: If you were to ask God for something, or if God were to come to you and say he will give you whatever you want—what would you ask for? This is a really clarifying question. And while many things might come to mind, the answer of the paradigmatic wisdom figure is instructive.

Friends, the first reading from Genesis and the Gospel from Mark this week are of great importance. They have to do with what we call Christian anthropology—the biblical understanding of who we are—and most specifically, in relation to marriage and family. This question of how we define ourselves is of course on the minds of many people today, and the readings, in a beautifully compact way, bring out the Christian answer.

Friends, the first reading and Gospel this Sunday have to do with the Church at war with itself. The devil is the scatterer, the divider, and one of his favorite tricks is to take the Church—which is meant to be an instrument of the Gospel in the world—and to turn us against one another.

Friends, why was the story of Jesus with the little children, versions of which appear in the three synoptic Gospels, so vividly remembered by the first Christians? I think they intuited that it got very close to the heart of Jesus’ teaching. The way Mark sets up his account of this story in our Gospel for this weekend is frankly funny, and it’s an example of the disciples completely missing the point of everything. 

Friends, “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”—and this week, I am going to go once more into the issue of faith and works, which has been dividing Western Christianity since the Reformation. Our second reading from the Letter of James is a key text on this issue, and its metaphor of healing—together with Paul’s forensic metaphor—orient us to the Catholic view of justification.

Friends, our Gospel for today is the evocative scene of Jesus healing a man who cannot hear and cannot speak. This man is beautifully symbolic of many in our culture today: we don’t listen to God, and therefore we can’t speak clearly about God. To us, as to him, Jesus says, “Ephphatha!”—be opened to the Word of God!

Friends, as Americans, we have a very ambiguous relationship to law. On the one hand, we are a nation of independently minded people; we don’t like the law imposing itself on us. At the same time—let’s face it—we are a hyper-litigious society. We see the same ambiguity about law—both its beauty and its shadow side—in our three readings today.