Walkin’ on the Water: 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

   

1 Kgs 19:9a, 11-13a

Ps 85

Rom 9:1-5

Mt 14:22-33

 

"Lord let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation."

 

Psalm 85 brings the two readings and the Gospel together.  Each reading is about faith fraying along the edges or faith that seemed to be lost.  Each of the speakers:  Elijah, Paul, and Peter could have easily uttered the psalm response from his position of desperation, discouragement, or fear.  We can identify with those feelings and add a few of our own. 

 

Things can't be worse for Elijah.  He fled to escape the wrath of the evil Jezebel

who wanted him dead.  While in hiding an angel instructed him to eat and prepare for a journey.  All Elijah wanted was to die.  He was despondent and had lost hope.  His faith was shaky.  He ate only because the angel demanded that he do so.  Then, he began a journey of forty days. 

 

The Jewish Study Bible notes that when unencumbered and alone a man could walk between 15 and 25 miles per day Multiplied by 40 days, Elijah walked between 600 and 1000 miles.  To put the distances into perspective, it is about 500 miles south from Boston to Washington, DC and 1000 miles west to Chicago. 

 

What went through his mind during that arduous trek? What goes through our minds during the 40-day journeys we are forced to take during life, the journeys of chemotherapy, chronic pain, or the seemingly endless journey of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's?

 

Elijah's encounter with God in a whisper rather than an earth-shaking event is one of the remarkable images in the Old Testament.  Elijah had to be open and willing to hear that whisper.  He had to be attuned to and ready for it.  Similarly, we have to be prepared and willing to hear the voice of God in a whisper, in the brief moment of quiet that interrupts the background noise that complicates our lives. 

 

Paul’s discouragement that his people rejected Jesus is palpable.  His distress was such that he would have been willing to have himself cut off from Christ if they would accept the great gift of salvation. We all know Paul’s frustration. We know the pain when no one will listen to us.  We know the frustration of being met with opposition by everyone in our lives: family, friends, co-workers and so on.  We know that feeling of radical loneliness  when we plead: "Lord let me see you kindness and grant me your salvation."  Today’s Gospel take place immediately after Jesus fed the multitude with a few loaves and fishes.  The crowd had dispersed.  He dismissed his disciples and went up the mountain alone to pray.  Something important happens here, something we fail to notice much of the time. Pope Benedict XVI wrote that we know from the Gospels that Jesus frequently spent nights alone in prayer and  conversation with His Father.  He suggests that Jesus’ speech, preaching and ministry grew out of that silence and matured within the accompanying solitude.

 

While Jesus was praying the apostles were crossing the 4 1/2 mile wide Sea of Galilee.  They were a few miles off-shore and in no position to swim if the boat capsized.  It was very late.  The fourth watch of the night was between 3:00 and 6:00 AM.  Thus they had been struggling to cross--and Jesus had been in prayer--for hours. 

 

We can identify with their terror when they saw Jesus walking on the water toward them. And then, as we heard,  Peter acted. when he ”got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus.”  But his faith wavered when he saw how strong the wind was.” Fear replaced faith. This brings up the difficult question, “What is faith.”

 

Australian Trappist Fr. Michael Casey makes an important point:  “Faith has to grapple constantly with the doubts we may experience when we hear the words of the poet Robert Browning  God is in his heaven—all’s right with the world.'  So often it doesn’t seem that way.”  Many times in our lives it doesn’t seem, or didn’t seem, that God is in his heaven or that anything is right with the world. 

 

Casey goes on to define faith:  “Faith means letting go of our ambition to control, understand, or even cope with what happens. Faith means releasing our anxieties into God’s hands and seeing all that happens as coming from the hand of God. The fact that I cannot comprehend the logic of events means simply that my intellect is limited.  Our relationship with God is often undermined by fears about impending disaster”

 

It is terrifying to be wheeled into an operating room.  It is panic-inducing to hear a diagnosis of cancer. No one can describe the emotions upon the death of one’s child.  Our faith wavers and, like Peter, we begin to sink.  Our faith may waver when we realize the seriousness of our situation.  We may suddenly doubt as the river rises above flood stage in our lives. 

 

Faith does not mean that life will go smoothly.  Faith is not a shield against trauma. Faith does not protect us from pain nor is it a Berlin wall against the anguish of grief. Faith is an umbrella over us during these crises. Peter’s faith was strong when he jumped out of the boat because he wasn't thinking about it too much. When he began to intellectualize and pay attention to the storm he tried to take control.  For the moment his faith vanished.  And then he prayed; “Lord.  Save me!”  We also try walk on the waters of a stormy lake at night. In those moments

we can only plead as did the psalmist:

 

"Lord let us see you kindness and grant us your salvation."

 

 _____________________________________________-

Photos are from tertianship in Australia in 2011.  We were there for 8 months, half of the time in Sydney and the rest scattered all over the country.  These are from all over the country but not Sydney.  That is a separate topic. 

 

 

Rainbow after a violent storm arcing over Out Lady of the Angels, the church at which I spent five weeks during the second 'experiment.'

Oil rig visible from the porch of the church rectory. 

The beach at Warrnambool was magnificent and only a short walk from the church at which I was giving retreats in daily life for three weeks. 

Sunset at Sevenhill, South Australia where we made the long retreat. 

Walking after Mass at Sevenhill.  The camera was part of my anatomy during the entire thirty days there either hanging from my shoulder of under the chair. 

Sunrise at Gerroa, NSW.  Beautiful place at which we spent the first ten days of the retreat getting to know each other.  

 

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration

  

6 August 2026

Dn 7:9-10, 13-14

Ps 97:1-2, 5-6,99

2 Pt 1:16-19

Mt 17:1-9

 

The Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, draws us into a mystery that is well beyond our understanding or comprehension.  The Transfiguration represents the fulfillment of the prophecy we just heard in the reading from Deuteronomy that  also tried to describe something beyond the ability of words and images. "The Son of Man received dominion, glory, and kingship; all peoples, nations, and languages serve him.  His dominion is everlasting; his kingship shall not be destroyed."

 

"His dominion is everlasting; his kingship shall not be destroyed."

 

On this Feast we recall Jesus appearing in brilliant glory; speaking with Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets in front of three of His disciples.

 

Imagine the scene: Dazzling light.  Moses, Elijah, and Jesus conversing. What were they saying? How did their voices sound?  Place yourself with the apostles. Stand on the mountain with them.  The tension is increasing, it is almost unbearable.  And then you hear God's voice: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."  The Father confirms that Jesus is the Christ, the Beloved Son of God, the one whom Peter confessed him to be in the previous chapter of Mark's Gospel.

 

And then the Father gives you a mission: "Listen to him." 

 

Like the apostles, you are stunned into silence and overcome with awe.  Jesus--the Nazorean and teacher, Son of Mary and Wonder Worker, Jesus, the carpenter, healer, and prophet who was given no honor in his native place, was revealed in his Divinity. 

 

But, there is another transfiguration, there is another revelation, we must recall today. That event was also marked by blinding light, overshadowed by a cloud, and a deafening sound led to a stunned silence. 

 

On August 6 the Church recalls that Jesus was revealed in his Divinity on a mountain.  On August 6, 1945 the human race revealed its depravity at Hiroshima.  The world would never be the same.  Hiroshima captured in one event the sum total of human sin from the fall of Adam and Eve. 

 

The event of Hiroshima, and three days later, Nagasaki, condensed the cumulative horrors of all the wars of the past centuries, into a single and singular event.  This time God did not give mankind a mission from the cloud.  There was a terrible silence. There was a void. 

 

Or was there?

           

The voice of God was obscured by the explosion.  It was not silenced. 

 

Almost 2000 years since Jesus' incarnation, birth, passion, death, resurrection and ascension, and eighty-one years since Hiroshima, God's mandate to the apostles, and thus His mandate to us: “listen to him” is more compelling and urgent  than it was for the shaken apostles.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated man's capability for destruction on an unimaginable scale, a scale that is unique to our present time and technology.

 

"This is my Son; listen to him.”     

 

As we listen to Jesus, as we take his teaching to heart and allow that teaching to transform us, we move a bit closer to the eschatological glory of  the transfigured Jesus. At the same time we move that much farther from the apocalyptic destruction of the nuclear bomb, the human destruction of  past genocides in Armenia, Rwanda and Burundi, the unbearable memories of WWII and many others throughout the world up to and including Ukraine and the Middle East.

 

And, as we heed God's mandate to listen to his beloved Son, we begin to move further from the systematized attacks on morality and vulnerable human life being waged in the U.S. today, abortion, the planned killing of the elderly, and the castration of prepubertal children for the sake of a perverted agenda.

 

"The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the LORD of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his justice,
and all peoples see his glory."

 

"The Lord is king, the Most High over all the earth."

 

"This is my beloved Son,

listen to Him."

 

____________________________________________

I won't try to elaborate why the Feast of the Transfiguration is so deeply meaningful for me, even before I began working with the monks at the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration in Vermont. I'm not certain I can put the reasons into words anyway.

The photos are from the Charterhouse over the past years

 

 

 

A depiction of the Transfiguration on the staircase leading to the Church.  It is about five feet high and proportionately wide.  Note the quote at the bottom.  

The miracle of Transubstantiation

Taken from the choir stall to which I was assigned on my first visit ten years ago.  It never changed.  The books are in Latin, Gregorian Chant, and are huge.  

 

Have a Blessed Feast

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD 

 

Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola_2026

  

Feast of St. Ignatius

31 July 2026

 

AMDG.  Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, To the Greater Glory of God. These four words comprise the Jesuit motto.  We frequently use AMDG at the beginning or end of a letter.  My vow ring is engraved with it. 

 

Ignatius of Loyola was a complex man.  Born in 1491or 1492, his youth was spent learning to be a soldier and a member of the royal court.  He admits to being very vain regarding his appearance in his younger years, preferring the 16^th century equivalent of skinny jeans so as to look good. Though mostly uneducated, he could read and had very fine penmanship.  At twenty-two years of age the hot-headed Basque was injured while leading his overmatched men in the Battle of Pamplona.  It was one of the most blessed injuries in the history of war. 

 

While convalescing in the castle of Loyola he was gradually drawn to the desire to follow in the footsteps of Christ, he discerned a call to do great things for the Greater Glory of God.  It is a fascinating story. 

 

Because he had not had an adequate education he went back to the equivalent of junior high school in his twenties to learn the Latin and Greek he needed to go to University.

 

Ignatius was charismatic.  A group of men gathered around him at university to do the Spiritual Exercises that he composed while in Manresa following his conversion.  Some of these men, including Sts. Francis Xavier and Peter Faber, were among the original nine companions when the Society of Jesus was established in 1540. 

 

Two days ago we heard the well known Gospel narrative of Martha and Mary.  Mary at prayer as she sat at Jesus' feet, Martha grumbling and whining as she did the work of preparing the meal.  In St. Ignatius we see a combination of Mary's contemplation of Jesus' word and Martha's busy-ness in response to demands of work without the complaining. 

 

The totality of Ignatius’ presence to Jesus word was like Mary’s.  Like Martha he had many distractions. He wrote 7000 letters, was composing the Jesuit Constitutions, missioning men throughout the world, and answering hundreds of questions as the Society grew.  At times he had to put his foot down.  All novices read his famous letter on obedience, a 4000 word missive that he wrote to young Jesuits in Portugal who were in a rebellious mood. But it was the fruit of his prayer that influenced world history in ways that can never be overestimated. 

 

Despite the enormous demands of the rapidly growing Society, establishing schools, dealing with hostility from other orders and the occasional pope, missioning men throughout the world, and writing the constitutions for the Society, he was disposed to hear and contemplate the word of God in the midst of and despite many distractions,

 

His health was not good.  Yet, he continued to pray and work without grumbling, always to the Greater Glory of God. Ignatius died in 1556, age 65.  He had been named the first general of the Society in 1541 and was still holding that office at the time of his death.  Jesuits pray a number of prayers written by Holy Father Ignatius. One of these is the Prayer for Generosity that outlines how to live AMDG.

 

"O Lord, teach me to be generous

To serve you as you deserve

To give and not to count the cost

To fight and not to heed the wounds

To toil and not to seek for rest

To labor and not to ask for reward

Save that of knowing I do your holy will."

 

 __________________________________________

 

 

 

The injured Ignatius at Pamplona.  The French were so impressed with his tenacity that they helped transport him back to the castle of Loyola.

Parts of the castle and the dome of the basilica.  Took this because of the trees.  Ya' don't see these in Northern New England

Sometimes I get distracted by something small, like a flower. 

Statue of Ignatius situated way above the main altar.  Could only get this with a 150 mm lens and standing almost directly below it. 

The castle and the dome of the basilica.  Loyola was a photo bonanza both in the basilica as well as the landsccape.  

 Happy Feast!

 

 Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

 

Going to try this again

I don't know what the problem is with this web site The print doesn't show up normally. But am going to try yet again. This is the homily from this past Sunday. Will also give a shot at the photos. 

 

That was one serious find:  Homily for the 17^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

1 Kgs 3:5, 7-12

Ps 119: 57, 72, 76-77, 127-128, 129-130

Rom 8:28-30

Mt 13:44-52

 

We make most daily decisions, without much effort: do I cross now or wait until that car passes?  Orange or apple juice?  Take a nap or exercise?  Other choices however, require discernment and thought.  We have all made life changing choices and will do so in the future.  Among the most important of those choices is the choice for or against Jesus.

 

The first reading and gospel both involve life-changing choices. 

 

God asked Solomon what he desired.  He was young, nothing more than a kid.  Despite that he did not ask for things most of us would want: a long healthy life, riches, or a great car.  Solomon asked for understanding,  he asked for the wisdom to discern between good and evil, and the ability to be a good leader.   His request pleased God.  It was granted.  We can only pray that our national leaders--BOTH parties--desire the same as opposed to the ugly and uncivil power struggles characterizing life in the U S of A.  Imagine legislatures praying for the wisdom to be good leaders rather than legalizing human sacrifice on the altar of abortion rights, the killing of the sick and elderly, rather than worshipping power, and encouraging the perverse and bizarre.

 

Every choice we make involves a cost.  Sometimes we anticipate that cost while other times it comes as a surprise.  When we make a particular choice other options  are closed off.   Sure we can change our minds about orange vs. apple  juice, or even have both, but the most important choices close off the other possibilities.  Choosing to marry a particular person closes off the choices among all others. Choosing to enter religious life closes off the option to marry and have a family,

 

The three short gospel parables are about choices. While they are related each has a unique message.  Unlike their usual response the apostles replied 'yes'

when Jesus asked if they understood. Repetition seems to have had an effect. 

They finally got it,  just as we get it and begin to understand what Jesus is telling us the more we listen to His word.

 

The first two parables bring to mind an event that blew the art world and the  Society of Jesus out of the water in 1990 when Dublin's Leeson Street Jesuit Community sent a painting that had been hanging in the dining room for sixty years to be cleaned.  It was thought to be a copy of a long-missing Carravagio painting called "The Taking of Christ." 

 

But one of the art restorers noticed something.  It WAS the missing painting worth tens of millions of pounds.  It was both the treasure discovered accidentally in a field and the pearl of great price noticed by an expert. 

 

What about buried treasures?

 

At the time the gospel was written invasions were a regular threat.  One way to keep a treasure safe was to bury it in a field.  Of course before selling the field it was important to remember that and where it was buried. Today we hear stories of very valuable objects found at flea markets, in attics, and at estate sales.

Indeed, Antiques Road Show is premised on this gospel passage.  

 

When the man realized what he had found buried he went away happy, chose to sell everything he had, and purchased the field so as obtain the treasure.  When we realize the value of the Kingdom of Heaven, when we truly understand and commit ourselves to following Jesus, we too can go off happy, knowing that we have found the most valuable of treasures.  

 

The man’s discovery in the field was an accident.   Not so for the merchant. He was an expert on a quest to find pearls. He found an exceptional one  and realized, on the basis of his expertise and knowledge, that this was the real thing.

He had found the pearl for which he was searching.   He too chose to act and commit to a course of action so as to obtain it.

 

The merchant’s excitement mirrors that of the one who discovers Christ later in life or the one who, having been baptized rediscovers what he or she had given up during that spiritual chaos known as young adulthood.  As a result he returns

to active participation in the sacraments.   Both of these figures made irrevocable choices.  Neither could have repurchased what he had sold. Neither could ever go back to the time before the decision.

 

The final parable is a bit different.  All of us can identify with fishing though few have experienced fishing with a drag net.   A drag net picks up everything: 

fish, plant life, and all kinds of inanimate objects.  After the net is hauled ashore

the fishermen go through the contents, keep the good fish, discard those that are not good, and dispose of the garbage. This parable recalls last week's gospel

about the weeds and the wheat. When the field was harvested the weeds were thrown into the fire and the wheat bundled into barns.

 

Politics, good, and evil, virtue and sin, have coexisted since the beginning of time. That will never change.  Our dilemma is whether or not we choose to trust

in the promises of Christ as described by Paul, “We know that by turning everything to their good God cooperates with all those who love him,

with all those that he has called . . .”  

 

Accepting or refusing God’s grace is our free choice.  We can never be forced

to accept or cooperate with that grace.  However, all the other important choices in our lives depend on that decision. 

 

___________________________________________________________

 

 

The photos are all from sv. Višarje, a three-country pilgrimage site in Italy just across the borders of both Austria and Slovenia.  Extremely beautiful place where I spent ten days doing some work with kids learning ENglish.  I was the only native speaker.  It was photo heaven.  

 

 

 

 

Prophesy, Preach, and Proclaim: Homily for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus sent His apostles on mission with power over unclean spirits and the mandate to ‘cure every disease and every illness.’ It is a powerful mandate that includes an important distinction. Giving the apostle the instruction to cure disease AND illness might strike some as redundant. However, the distinction is important to understanding the mission of the Church that heals illness but rarely cures disease. Disease and illness are not synonymous. Few physicians are able to cure disease. True, surgeons can remove a diseased organ and effect a cure. Internists are able to cure some diseases but more often we stabilize them. Think diabetes or high blood pressure. Psychiatrists? I’m still not sure after thirty five years. However, despite the limitations all have the mandate to heal illness. Disease is a biomedical affliction with identifiable pathological changes in an organ or organ system at some level. While a disease affects only the patient, illness is a sociocultural perspective that includes how the individual and others understand and experience certain disvalued and feared states caused by disease. Illness affects not only the individual but the family, the community, and at times all of society, in ever widening circles. The dichotomy is apparent in scripture when we consider leprosy. Leprosy as described in both Old and New Testaments never had anything to do with what is now known as Hansen’s disease. Leprosy was a catch-all term for visible scaly lesions including vitiligo, psoriasis, and blemishes. Jesus cured the disease of leprosy in those afflicted but more significantly He cured the illness and thus returned the sufferers to themselves and to society. There are many modern illustrations of the difference between disease and illness. AIDS as disease was first described in June 1981. By 1990 almost 101,000 Americans had died of the disease with 1/3 of those deaths reported in 1990. The toll of AIDS as illness, a toll exerted on family, friends, community, society, and the world of medicine, was, is, and will remain beyond accounting. Thanks to covid we had a refresher course on the difference between disease and illness. The disease, which affected only individuals, killed the elderly age 65 and above in disproportionate fashion. The illness was an even greater disaster. Many of those elderly, as well as patients hospitalized for other reasons were forced to suffer and die in anguished solitude. Many perceived abandonment by their families and friends who were prevented from visiting. And no, a computer is not a good substitute for someone dealing with cognitive impairment. They were bereft of the sacraments as well. The illnesses: loneliness, depression, anxiety, fear, and for many, cognitive decline came from a combination of government fiat, irrational fears of administrators, lack of compassion, and generalized stupidity on the part of too many who should have known better. The slogan, “Follow the science” was a dismissive cudgel used to beat others into submission regarding vaccination. Many lives were destroyed. As with AIDS the impact of the illnesses of covid can never be estimated, particularly when one factors in the disastrous impact of school closures. The disease has faded. The illness will echo for decades to come. How did the twelve apostles perceive Jesus’ mandate to cure disease and illness? How did they feel when it was given to them? How did they feel when the going got rough or when they realized the risks? Ideally they did not respond in the same way as a young physician who wrote an op-ed column in response to covid titled, “I Didn’t Sign Up For This,” an extended whine about having to work under the conditions and risks of covid. It might be best for this young doc to hang up the stethoscope now and seek a different line of work. Apparently he or she likes the title but not the obligations that come with it. Mandate derives from the Latin mandatum: manus (hand) and dare (to put) thus ‘to put into one’s hands.’ The foot washing of Holy Thursday is referred to as the mandatum, from Jesus’ words at the Last Supper “I have given you an example, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” The histories of AIDS and covid as diseases AND illnesses have a shameful element in common. That shame was, and is, the refusal of too many with training and ability to treat patients because of the diagnosis. The stories of refusing to allow patients with AIDS to even enter a medical office were many during the early years. During covid, Arthur Caplan, a so-called medical ethicist in New York published a column on Medscape titled, “It’s Okay for Docs to Refuse to Treat Unvaccinated Patients.” The good news is that Caplan is not physician. He cannot treat patients. The over 700 responses to his column from physicians were overwhelmingly negative, angry, or both. It is never OK to cherry pick who or what is treated based on diagnosis or social agenda. I suspect had Dr. Caplan written that it was OK to refuse puberty blockers for so-called transexual children he would have been fired right quick. It is not easy to treat disease. Sometimes the best we can do is keep it at bay for a little while. “A cure for cancer in our lifetime.”? Nothing more than a moronic bumper sticker reflecting no knowledge of the thousands if disease that fall under the umbrella term cancer. Treating the illnesses of modern times is even more difficult. That is a separate homily. We have all been given the same mandate as that given to the apostles. That is to treat illnesses and proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven through our words and the example of our lives. _____________________________________ Will try to post photos next week. This is truly a miserable web site.

New try

Am going to try to restart this blog as I cannot understand the procedures for some of the others.

NEW BLOG, NEW SITE

I moved the blog from this site to frjacksjmd.net. It will take some getting used to but this site has become undependable. Will continue to post regularly on the blog and on faceback.