A man named Stein goes into the pet store to buy a parrot.  There are three sitting in the cage, so he points to the first one, asking the price for the bird.  $500, says the store owner.  What makes the bird worth $500? Stein asks.  The storekeeper says, This parrot knows the entire five books of Moses!  Listen!    And the bird flawlessly recites the verses from memory.  Now, Stein was impressed, but he was still shopping, so he points to the second parrot.  $3,000 – he knows the entire Talmud!   The bird then answers the most difficult questions on Jewish Law that Stein can come up with.  Impressive!  So he points to the last parrot.  How much?  $5,000.  $5,000?  What can the bird possibly know to cost so much?  Well, says the storeowner, we really aren’t sure.  èèè  But the other two call him Rabbi. We know that jokes and stories can teach, as well as amuse.  Jesus knew this too.  His parables and miracles were meant to carry a meaning for us today, far beyond what the people of His time saw and heard.  St. Paul’s letter to Timothy says that even though he was suffering in prison, chained like a criminal, the Word of God was not chained.  That is the way that the living Word of God works.  In Vatican City two years ago this month, our Bishops closed their Synod on “The Word of God in the Life and the Mission of the Church,” using some pretty powerful imagery that summarizes the gift of eternal truth that we share, breaking open the Word together.  Here is what the Bishops had to say about God’s Word:

“The divine Voice sounds at the origin of Creation giving rise to the wonders of the universe.  It is a Voice that penetrates into history, a history lacerated by human sin and troubled by suffering and death.  It is a Voice that descends into the pages of the Sacred Scripture which we now read in the Church, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

Imagine:  God’s own Voice of creation, penetrating our history, freeing us from our sin and suffering.

And it so true:  Scripture continually overturns our accepted values.  Throughout the history of salvation, the last are first, shepherd boys become kings, and outsiders teach important lessons to insiders.  Who in Old Testament Israel would ever expect God to show mercy to a Syrian like Naaman?  And to the audience of Jesus’ day, who would ever expect a lesson in gratitude from a leprous Samaritan?

Most of us don’t know very much about leprosy, an infectious disease that has been known since Biblical times.  It’s characterized by disfiguring skin sores, nerve damage, and progressive debilitation.  The World Health Organization reported over 213,000 diagnosed cases in 2009, so the disease is still with us.  But while doctors have recently begun using multi-drug treatments on lepers and get good results, in the days of Elisha and Jesus, contact with a leper didn’t just make you unclean.  Contracting the disease was a sure sentence to a horrible, lonely death.

So what is God telling us when lepers are cured, freed from this dread disease, with their lives restored?

In the Gospel account, the one who is doubly despised as Samaritan and leper, stops in his tracks and turns around, praising God at the top of his lungs.  Unthinkable only moments before, this former outcast falls at Jesus’ feet, thanks Him, and is told that his faith has saved him.  Not a bad turn of events!  Bible translators use the Greek verb, “sozein” to describe the healing of the Samaritan leper, a word that means both “heal” and “save.”  This miracle of healing performed by Jesus isn’t only physical, but life-changing.  As Jesus heals and saves this outsider, he goes forward a changed man, in body and spirit. We listen for God’s Voice in our lives, even as God heals and saves us. This was made abundantly clear a year ago this weekend, when our own Little Sister, St. Jeanne Jugan, was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome.  But if you will remember, leprosy was in the news this time last year too.  Father Damien who is known as the Apostle of the Lepers, was the Church’s ninth canonized saint to have lived and served in what is now the United States of America.

This Belgium-born “Leper Priest” was ordained in Honolulu, Hawaii, and nine years later, volunteered to serve in the leper colony on Molokai.  Damien cared for lepers of all ages, but was particularly concerned about the children of the segregated colony.  He announced he was a leper in 1885 and continued to build hospitals, clinics, and churches, and some six hundred coffins, until his death in 1889 at age 49.  Fittingly, today St. Damien is the unofficial patron of those with HIV and AIDS, representing the lepers and outcasts of our day.  On October 11, 2009, Pope Benedict recognized the fear and the loathing of leprosy, while recognizing the courage of Damien’s convictions:

“Father Damian made the choice to go on the island of Molokai in the service of lepers          abandoned by all.  He exposed himself to the disease of which they suffered.                          With them he felt at home.  The servant of the Word became a suffering servant,                     leper with the lepers, during the last four years of his life.

Father Damian staked his own life, to receive eternal life” In a few moments, we will gather around our Eucharistic Table, to give thanks to the God who heals us and saves us from our sin.  We gather as one people, with all of the saints who have gone before us, and with those still in our midst, that saint on your left, and that  saint on your right, telling and retelling our stories.

We are never alone in this journey that can sometimes seem like a battle, so let’s ask for help from our patrons:

St. John Francis Regis – pray for us.

St. John Baptist DeLa Salle – pray for us.

St. Jeanne Jugan – pray for us.

St. Damien – pray for us.

All you holy men and women — pray for us.

Catastrophes or accidents which take people’s lives constantly force people to ask, Why? or Why them? Why was President Kennedy shot in the prime of his career? Why did Princess Diana die so tragically at the age of 36? Why was Gandhi killed just when his country needed him most? Why did that young mother die giving birth to her child? Why did that young father die of cancer and leave behind a family struggling to survive? Why did my father die at the age of 66 while my mother lived to be 92?

Today Jesus mentions two apparently recent incidents in which lives were lost. In one case, Pilate the Roman governor had some Galileans killed in the Temple precincts. Perhaps the Galileans had violated some Roman regulation about public order. In the other, eighteen people were killed when a tower in Siloam, inside the south-east section of Jerusalem’s wall, fell on top of them. There is no other record in history of either of these two events. However, the first is regarded as typical of Pilate’s administration. The New American Biblecarries the following note:

The slaughter of the Galileans by Pilate is unknown outside Luke; but from what is known about Pilate from the Jewish historian Josephus, such a slaughter would be in keeping with the character of Pilate. Josephus reports that Pilate had disrupted a religious gathering of the Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim with a slaughter of the participants (Antiquities 18,4,1 **86-87) and that on another occasion Pilate had killed many Jews who had opposed him, when he appropriated money from the temple treasury to build an aqueduct in Jerusalem (Jewish War, 2,9,4 **175-177; Antiquities 18,3,2 **60-62).

It seems that some people at the time were saying that this was a punishment of God on these people for moral wrongs they had done. Jesus disagrees. “Do you think they were more guilty than anyone else who lived in Jerusalem?” Jesus asks. “Certainly not!” he asserts.

In fact, he says, his hearers will all meet a similar fate unless they change their ways. The sins of the victims were not the cause of their death but they are certainly warnings to the rest of us to see if we are ready for such an eventuality. And he goes on to illustrate his meaning with a parable.

A man had a fig tree in his garden which did not produce fruit. Eventually he told the gardener to cut the tree down because it had not given fruit for three years in a row and it was only taking up space. However, the gardener urged that the tree be left for one more year and be given one more chance. In the meantime, he would hoe the ground and add fertiliser. If, after those efforts, there was still no fruit, let it be cut down.

The story can be linked to what Jesus has just said. In a sense the people he has been talking to are like fig trees that have not borne fruit. The three years mentioned in the story may refer to the length of Jesus’ own ministry. However, they still have a chance to turn their lives around, a chance which was not given to those who had died in those two incidents.

We, too, are being given a chance – For a day? A month? Several years? We have no idea. What is clear is that there is no time to waste; we have to start today. For God, the past is not what counts or the future but only the present. As long as I am with him NOW I have nothing to worry about.

From Fr. Doyle of the Irish Jesuits sacredspace.ie.

Gospel for Sept. 29th the Feast of the Holy Archangels: http://www.usccb.org/nab/092910.shtml

“Knowing and Loving God with the Help of the Archangels God knows each one of us –– our joys, strengths and weaknesses, our successes and failures, our faith, our intentions, needs, hopes and dreams. In John’’s

gospel today, Nathanael was surprised that Jesus knew that he was a true Israelite. Nathanael said to Jesus, ““How do you know me?”” And Jesus said, ““ called you, I saw you under the fig tree Not only does God know us; He loves us. The first reading from the Book of Daniel presents a vision of the Son of Man, the One in whom and through whom the salvation of God’’s people came to be realized. The Book of Daniel writes, ““ dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed on saying ““Yes”” to God and participate in His plan of salvation. How eternal, how immense and great is God’’s love for us! We are indeed graced and blessed by God, especially through Jesus Christ! But how much do we know God? How much de we love God? We know and love God through prayer, through our ministries, in our religious lives and in our relationships with other people. We know and love God through our participation in the sacraments, through Scripture and meditation and through our studies of theology. We know God through the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. So we have various ways of knowing and loving God. Our Holy Father St. Augustine even says in the But how about knowing and loving God with the help of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, whose feast we celebrate today. Michael, in Jewish meaning “who is like God,” appears twice in the Old Testament and twice in the New Testament. He is the protector of the Chosen Peoples, both Christian and Jew, leader of the Heavenly Host against Satan, and protector of Christians at the hour of death. He is usually shown as a winged warrior subduing the devil and sometimes carries a set of scales for the weighing of the Soul at death. Gabriel –– his name means ““Strength of God”” or ““Hero of God.”” In the Old Testament he appears twice in the Book of Daniel and in the New Testament he announces the birth of John the Baptist to Zacharias and the birth of Jesus to Mary. In Christian art he is frequently represented as a winged figure, often holding a lily representing purity, bringing the message of the Incarnation to the Virgin Mary. Raphael –– his name means ““God heals”” so we can ask for his prayers for healing and recovery. In the Old Testament, the Archangel Raphael appears in the Book of Tobit, where he cures Tobit’’s blindness by instructing the son Tobias to put the gall bladder of a fish on his father’’s eye. The Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael –– they all point us to God, through Jesus Christ, who is our protector, our strength, our hero and our healer. But we, too, have these responsibilities –– of protecting each other, of strengthening each other, of healing each other. This is partly what the Loving and supporting one another –– this is our vocation, this is our commitment to each other, this is our Augustinian religious life –– a life of real self-sacrifice, as St. Thomas of Villanova once said. We can ask for St. Michael’’s prayers for spiritual protection and to help us to protect each other. We can ask for St. Gabriel’’s prayers for strength, for courage and to help us to strengthen one other and announce each others’’ goodnesses and gifts. We can also ask for the prayers of St. Raphael to help us to heal each other and comfort each other in time of difficulty and distress. These are some of the ways in which we can truly know and love God. Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, please continue to pray for us and lead us to that beatific vision with God. Before Philip.””His.”” Imagine that! Our salvation is happening right now, as long as we keepConfessions, ““Lord, let me know myself, let me know You.””Rule of St. Augustine is all about”-