Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Good News #219 062726: New Life Through Sacrifice: Baptism, Kindness & Discipleship

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Good News #219 062726: New Life Through Sacrifice: Baptism, Kindness & Discipleship · Catholic Spirit Radio

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Welcome to Good News on Catholic Spirit Radio, a program for teens and almost
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teens to better understand that the gospel of Jesus Christ is relevant in their
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lives, and it's a place where your questions about faith and religion can be answered.
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And now, here's your host, Deacon Al.
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Good evening, and welcome to Good News on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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I am Deacon Al Lundy, permanent deacon of the Peoria Diocese,
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and I have the opportunity to speak with you every Saturday and Sunday evening
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here on Catholic Spirit Radio from 8 until 8.30.
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And it's been an interesting week. I found out that one of my nephews has gotten
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married. It was kind of a surprise to everybody.
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And I hope he's doing well. His new bride has four children from a previous marriage.
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And so he's an instant dad. This is his first time as a dad.
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So jumping right in with a A couple of teenagers and a couple of younger ones
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should be an interesting journey for him. So congratulations, Stephen.
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We wish you great joy together.
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Got another wedding coming up. It's that season, right? I mean,
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it's the warm weather. Everybody's getting married.
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So my own anniversary is coming up. I've got another nephew getting married in August up in Boston.
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I'm going to be running up there for a few days.
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I get to deacon the wedding. So yeah, I get to be the homilist.
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And Deacon's wedding. So I'm really excited about that.
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We're going to Apple Valley Catholic Community in Acton, Massachusetts.
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Sounds interesting, Apple Valley Community. So I'm going to go check that out.
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It's a very lovely little church.
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And looking forward to making that trip. Maybe do a couple side trips while
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we're up there in New England.
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We're not too far from Cape Cod, and we love Cape Cod.
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We used to live up there, actually, for a few years, family and I, for about six years.
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Lived upstate New York. And in the summer, we'd go and camp for a week on the beach.
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And there's a beautiful park there, a state park, and a nice beach.
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And you could go camp right on the beach.
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And yeah, it was really, really terrific.
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My son was very, very young at the time. I think he was like six, five or six.
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You could walk out at low tide and eat sea pickles off the ocean floor.
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Pretty tasty, actually. It's this little green plant that grows. And of course it grows.
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Anyway, it grows on the sandy soil of the ocean floor.
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And we can wait out sometimes hundreds and hundreds of yards and be in only
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like at the most shin deep water, mostly ankle deep.
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And then when it would come in, that same spot would be like three, four feet underwater.
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But anyway, you could actually see the sea pickles and just pluck them and eat
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them. A little salty because it's the ocean, you know, but, but it was really tasty.
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And my son just got the biggest kick out of doing that. And we would go,
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there's an animal preserve. We could go to a bird sanctuary that we would go to.
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And he enjoyed that a lot. We were out one time, a little, a very small little skiff, powered skiff.
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Going to this little bird sanctuary. And in the distance, there was this little
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island, little sandbar, basically. And it was moving.
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And as we got closer, we could see it was covered with brown seals.
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Little brown seals. Yeah, just covered. And as we got closer,
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they swam out to the boat to check us out.
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And we were surrounded. I mean, dozens and dozens of seals popping up just within
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arm's reach of the boat, just checking us out.
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I think they're looking for people probably threw him food or something and
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and so they're just bobbing around us it was just very cool and being six years
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old he was just just like it's,
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it's an it's an amazing world we've talked about this before it is such a beautiful
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world and we get so caught up in in our lives at work or in the house or in
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front of a tv screen or a computer screen or a telephone screen,
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we forget to pick up our heads and look around us and and so my wife and i love going on,
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nature vacations we don't go I have friends who go and all they do is shop. That's the big thing.
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You know, or they go to museums, which is fine. Museums are nice.
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But we like going to parks, national parks and state parks and river trips and,
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you know, just anything outdoors.
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Even bird watching, which I always thought, well, you have to be a real nerd,
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a real nerd to get up early in the morning and go look for birds.
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And maybe it comes with age. Maybe it's an appreciation that comes with age.
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We've gotten to the point where we just we love bird watching it's it's a hoot.
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And we've seen well it's such a huge variety i saw condors and,
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barn dowels and just all sorts of really great huge birds so we love doing that
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so we're going to get a chance to do that sometime this summer we're we're going to go visit alaska,
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yeah grizzly bears moose,
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Yum. Delicious. Eagles. Oh, it tastes like chicken.
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No, we're going to do some whale watching and see some more different types of seals and puffins.
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Yeah, so we're doing the Alaska thing at some point. So I'm kind of excited about that.
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Go see the clouds around Mount McKinley, Denali.
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And I say that because I have so many friends who went to Alaska strictly to see McKinley.
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And they came back saying, well, it looks like clouds. It was just always covered with clouds.
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It's a huge, huge mountain. And because of its altitude, it quite often is covered
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with clouds. So I don't know if I'm going to go see the mountain or go see the clouds, we'll see.
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But we're anxious to go do that sometime this summer.
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So yeah, Alaska, Boston, it's going to be a traveling summer sometimes.
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So looking forward to that.
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Again, just out there enjoying God's beauty. Maybe you have a favorite place to go.
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Share it with us. You can write us at goodnews at catholicspiritradio.com,
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and we'll be glad to check out your travels. Send me a photo.
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And also, if you have any questions about Catholicism or Christianity that you'd
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like to ask, we'd be happy to hear your questions and to take those.
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But what are we doing this Sunday? Well, this is the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
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We've got quite a few to go. We go all the way up to week 34 before we head
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into Advent and the Christmas season.
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So Ordinary Time is going to take us all the way through the summer and late into fall.
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And then we'll head into Advent and then, of course, Christmas.
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So in Ordinary Time, it's green is our liturgical color because we're growing.
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This is a time to grow our faith, to learn more about Christ's teaching,
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to learn to become more Christ-like in our lives.
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And that's why I really like the readings this weekend. It covers three topics,
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and then they all have a theme, a central theme that runs through all three of them.
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So we're going to look at that. But first, we're going to hear from some friends of ours.
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We're going to pause for just a few minutes, and we'll come back with more good
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news on Catholic Spirit Radio. Stay tuned. Good news will be right back on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Congratulations to Heather Rankin, who has decided to pursue a degree in nursing.
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The downside to that news is that she is leaving Catholic Spirit Radio.
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So now Catholic Spirit Radio is seeking someone for the new full-time position
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And welcome back to Good News. I am Deacon Al Lundy. You're listening to Catholic Spirit Radio.
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And we're looking at the readings from this Sunday's Mass, the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
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Our first reading is from the second book of Kings.
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Our second reading is a letter from Paul to the Romans.
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And our third reading comes from chapter 10 of the Gospel according to Matthew.
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As I say, they have three distinct themes, topics, and one theme that runs through all three of them.
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The topics that we're going to hear about in these readings,
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one is kindness, charity.
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The other that we're going to hear about is baptism. And the third topic we're
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going to hear about is the real cost of discipleship.
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And what I find interesting is through all these things, the central,
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the key root of all three is actually love.
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Love is necessary for kindness. It's necessary.
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It's a necessary part of baptism. It's also a very necessary part of being a
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disciple of Christ. But along with love comes sacrifice.
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You really can't separate the two. Real love, agape, as it's called in the Greek,
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or agape, is dependent on sacrifice.
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There's all kinds of love mentioned in Scripture, five different kinds in total,
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but the one that's mentioned the most often is this agape, this sacrificial love.
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A great way to see that is Christ on the cross.
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Christ says that no greater love has man than to lay down his life for a friend,
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which is what Christ did for all of us, to lay down his life for us, his friends.
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And so this agape, this sacrificial love, is really the highest form of love.
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And we find it in all three of these, in the act of kindness,
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in the sacrament of baptism, and then in the really radical cost of true discipleship.
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So we'll start with the second book of Kings. This is from chapter four.
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It says, One day Elisha came to Shunem, where there was a woman of influence
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who urged him to dine with her.
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Afterward, whenever he passed by, he used to stop there to dine.
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So she said to her husband, I noted that Elisha is a holy man of God.
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Since he visits us often, let us arrange a little room on the roof and furnish
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it for him with a bed, table, chair, and lamp, so that when he comes to us, he can stay there.
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Some time later, Alicia arrived and stayed in the room overnight.
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Later, Elisha asked, can something be done for her?
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His servant Geheze answered, yes, she has no son, and her husband is getting on in years.
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Elisha said, call her. When the woman had been called and stood at the door,
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Elisha promised, this time next year, you will be fondling a baby son. The word of the Lord.
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So a great act of kindness, right? This couple gave up a part of their home
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anytime the prophet came by in order for him to be comfortable,
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be cared for, have shelter, have a little respite from his work as a prophet.
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And in doing so, through this small act of kindness, new life was the reward.
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He had a God, he asked God to present her with a baby son despite their old age.
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We see this very often in Scripture, several times where people were rewarded with a newborn life.
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What I find interesting is that this came from sacrifice. This came from her
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and her husband going out of their way for their love for this prophet and because
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of being a prophet of God, a servant of God.
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So their love of God and their love of this prophet brought them to the sacrifice,
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and the sacrifice brought them to a reward of new life.
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Keep that in mind because we're going to hear about that again,
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not only in these readings, but again throughout Scripture.
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So in our second reading, a letter from St. Paul to the Romans,
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Paul writes, Brothers and sisters, are you aware that we who are baptized in
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Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
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We were indeed buried with Him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ
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was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.
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If then we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.
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We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has power over Him.
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As to his death, he died to sin once and for all.
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As to his life, he lives with God.
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Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as dead to sin and living for
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God in Christ Jesus. The word of the Lord.
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So again, a great act of kindness, baptism.
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Christ brought us baptism in order to bring us new life, but how does he do
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it? He does it through our death.
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We actually have to give up the old life, whether we're a newborn infant that's
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being baptized or whether you're being baptized as an adult.
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It's a choice to give up a past life, enter into a new life,
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and to do that, we're made anew by the forgiveness of sin.
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So through this sacrifice, because we sacrifice ourselves, we share in God's
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death and resurrection.
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So through that sacrifice of sharing in that death, the reward is new life,
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just as it was with our first reading with the elderly couple and the prophet Alicia.
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This great exchange of death for life is seen constantly throughout the Old and New Testaments.
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We see it, in fact, I see it in the Mass. One of my favorite parts of Mass is Offitory.
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God has given us this gift of the wheat of the field, and through human effort,
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we improve it into bread.
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We offer it as sacrifice back to God during the Mass.
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God accepts that sacrifice and perfects it into the living body of Christ and
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returns it to us for our salvation so that we have new life.
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So again, sacrifice leading to new life.
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We see it in the wine. God gives us the fruit of the vine. Through human effort, we improve it into wine.
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We offer that wine at Mass back to God. God accepts it and perfects it into
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the blood of Christ, given back to us for our salvation.
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New life through sacrifice.
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And baptism is the same thing. We take a life, often the life of a new child,
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and we offer it in sacrifice to join Christ in his death.
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And Christ gives us that child back as a new life, freed from sin and now imbued with the Holy Spirit.
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A whole new person comes back to us.
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So again, this gift of new life through a sacrifice.
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And if you think about it, this exchange of new life for sacrifice is found in every sacrament.
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We see it not only in baptism, but we see it in confirmation.
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We see it in the Eucharist. We see it in confession.
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In confession, you go into the confessional and you sacrifice yourself.
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You sacrifice ego and you sacrifice humility by admitting to your sinfulness,
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to the priest who acts in the person of Christ. And in return,
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you come out cleansed. You come out a new person, void of sin,
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just like at your baptism.
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And you come back to the ability of a new life in Christ.
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We see it in matrimony, where you sacrifice yourself for the good of another.
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And in return, you get this whole new life where two people become one,
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bonded with the Holy Spirit, bonded with God. So a new life.
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We see it in holy orders.
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When you give your life completely to Christ, in service to Christ,
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and you enter to a new life in either the consecrated life or the religious life.
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So constantly, this relationship with Christ requires us to make the sacrifice
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in order to gain the grace of God, the new life within God.
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And if we look at the gospel, this is gospel chapter 10 from Matthew.
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Jesus said to his disciples, Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.
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And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
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And whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of
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me. Whoever finds life will lose it.
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Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever receives you receives
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me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
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Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive the prophet's reward.
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And whoever receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive
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a righteous man's reward.
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And whoever gives only a cup of water to one of these little ones to drink because
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the little one is a disciple.
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Amen, I say to you, you will surely not lose your reward. The gospel of the Lord.
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So in this gospel, we find Christ speaking not to just any general crowd,
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he's speaking specifically to his apostles.
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This is to the 12 apostles.
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And he's about to send them off on their ministry. He's about to leave this
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earth and send them out on their own.
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And he's telling them, what's the price of this discipleship?
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What's necessary for them to truly be not just a fan of Christ,
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not just a believer in Christ, but to be a follower, a true follower of Christ's example.
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And it only takes one thing, everything. Everything.
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Everything you hold dear, you must put God in front of that,
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whether it's family or friends, spouse, parents, neighbors, enemies,
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things, stuff, possessions, desires.
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Whatever you hold most dear, if that thing is not God, then you can't really be a disciple.
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You can't fully accept or absorb the graces of God and live in the fullness
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and likeness of Christ if Christ isn't the most important thing in your life.
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That's the sacrifice that Christ requires, is a total obedience to God.
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But in return for that, he promises what? New life, an eternal life.
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So again, the trade-off for sacrifice, for love of God is new life, eternal life.
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And that's really what all three of these readings are talking about,
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whether it's about kindness and charity to others, whether it's about baptism,
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whether it's about any of the sacraments, or about the gospel message here.
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It's all about giving everything to God, making a sacrifice outside of yourself,
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a sacrifice to put others first and God before all others, that brings the hope
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and the promise of a new life.
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So no matter where you are in life, without this ultimate sacrifice.
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There is no promise of the future.
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There can be hope, but how strong a hope can that be if you really don't dedicate
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mind, strength, soul, spirit to the love of God.
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So that's why we're here. God gives us this life, each other,
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our families, our friends, even our enemies, gives us everything we have here,
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for the purpose of preparing ourselves to be more Christlike,
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to give us the opportunity to make the mistakes, but more so than that,
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to recover from those mistakes by turning to God and by taking,
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everything we are and want to be and modeling it after the teachings and the life of Christ.
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So that's what the life is all about. Christ didn't die for us to rebuke us or to punish us.
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He came to teach us what real love is.
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Our spouse, our children, our parents, our families, our church community,
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they're all here for us to practice being Christ to one another.
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So each day, through the people around you, you're given countless opportunities,
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to do great kindnesses, both large and small, to participate in your faith,
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in big ways and in small ways,
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in order to see Christ in others and for others to see Christ in you.
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May Almighty God bless you, protect you from all evil, and bring you to everlasting life.
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Amen. You've been listening to Good News on Catholic Spirit Radio,
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a program for teens and almost teens to better understand that the gospel of
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Jesus Christ is relevant in your life.
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Submit your questions to Deacon L at goodnews at catholicspiritradio.com.
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That's goodnews at catholicspiritradio.com.
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Deacon will answer your questions about faith and religion. Thank you for listening
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to Good News on Catholic Spirit Radio. Let me ask you this.
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What would you do if your kid started to whine? Mommy, I want to have another ice cream.
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Daddy, I want a puppy.
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And it's crazy making for a lot of people and I've seen parents handle it in
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different ways usually badly but I know one mom I got to give her credit she was a genius
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she had a zero tolerance policy for whining and she told her kids if you ask
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me for anything at all and you're whining you don't get it,
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ever not even once mommy I want a glass of soda nope nope now you can't have
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the soda if you ask for it properly I'll consider it but whining no she even
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told her kids, if you were on fire and asked me to put you out and you did it
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while whining, I'm not going to do it.
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And she stuck by her guns. And by golly, the kids grew up to be not whiners.
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I think that's brilliant.
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But what if I said whining isn't just part of a childhood development stage
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you need to grow out of? But what if I said it's.
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It's an important part of the moral life that needs to be confronted.
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Let me give you an example. Have you ever heard this voice within yourself?
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Being good is hard. Quit it. I don't wanna.
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Not gonna ask for a show of hands. I know that I've heard that in myself.
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I bet that you've heard it in yourself too.
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And it's actually a deadly sin. So what do we do about it?
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Stay with me. I've got a story to tell. Hi, I'm Jesuit Father Robert McKaig,
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your host here every day here at The Catholic Current, coming to you from the
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Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network. Let's take a closer look.
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Glad you're here. You know, I've been doing an occasional series on the seven deadly sins.
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In this installment, I want to talk about a sin that is unfortunately translated
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as swath, means laziness, being a slacker.
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And that's part of it, but it's not quite right. The original Latin word was
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acedia, which the Desert Fathers
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called the noonday devil, that which afflicted you when life got hard.
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And what do we do about that? Well, we need to make some distinctions.
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First of all, there is an ordinary sadness. And I bring this up because acedia,
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the scholastic said, was a kind of sadness.
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Well, there is an ordinary sadness.
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You lose your job, you fall down and break your leg, a close friend moves far away.
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There's a natural response to sorrow. It's not really voluntary. It comes and goes.
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And the scholastics call this tristitzi.
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Now, that's kind of like the weather. One day it rains, the next day it's gone.
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And then there's kind of a longer kind of sadness, a longer term.
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And if ordinary sadness is weather, this is climate. Some places it's sunny
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most days, other places it's snowy
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most days. And so this is what we call melancholy, my personal specialty.
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Long-time friends and listeners know that I refer to myself as a dark-brooding,
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melancholic Irishman with an apocalyptic imagination.
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This is the predisposition to find the cloud around every silver lining.
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You can't really control it. It's not a moral issue.
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But achetia is something different. It is a kind of sadness,
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but Aquinas calls it a worldly sadness.
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It's a sorrow in face of the recognition that being good is hard.
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C.S. Lewis once said, you don't know how hard it is to be good until you've tried hard to be good.
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And so when you have that being good is hard, quit it. Why does God want me to be a saint?
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Do I have to be holy today? Can I do holy tomorrow? Whine, whine, whine, whine.
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And I'm here to tell you, you can't listen to that whiny voice.
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That whiny voice is going to make you do one of two things.
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One is to just collapse. to just curl up on a ball, be a drama queen,
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and say, I can't, I can't.
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Or as the younger would say today, I can't even.
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But here's something else, and I think this is more common, and this is why
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I think sloth is a bad translation for achadia.
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Achadia can also make you hyper.
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And we see this among friends I've heard from younger friends that talked about
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procrastinate cleaning.
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I have to do this hard thing. I have to write a book report.
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I have to do my taxes. I know. I'm going to go vacuum the rug.
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I'm going to go clean the bathroom.
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Or I should sit down and pray and confront my sinfulness before God.
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But instead of doing that, I will do absolutely anything. I will become manic.
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I will doom scroll.
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I'll throw a party. I'll talk with friends. I'll make 55 cups of coffee.
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I will be manic so that I can't be silent before God.
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In both cases, whether it's being a slacker or being hyper on purpose,
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in both cases, it's a resistance to God calling us to be good, to be holy, to be saints.
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The sin, and it is a sin because it's a choice, the sin of achedia can cripple
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us, can hinder us from becoming who God wants us to be.
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What do we do about it? Well, there's a little-known virtue called magnanimity,
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which is the orientation of the soul towards greatness and the choice to do
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the things that lend to greatness. And by greatness, I don't mean being powerful
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and important and acknowledged.
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I mean greatness in terms of fulfilling God's call to us to be perfected,
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to be fully human, to be fully alive. Remember St. Irenaeus said,
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glory of God is a man fully alive.
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Well, how do we sustain that choice to answer the call to holiness and human perfection?
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I think it's gratitude. St. Ignatius Leola said that gratitude is the birth
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mother of all virtues, and that gratitude is the virtue that is most pleasing
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to heaven, and ingratitude is the vice that is most displeasing to heaven.
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So if you want to break the chains of acedia, if you want to silent the whiny
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vice that either makes you curl up in a ball or makes you hyper,
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but in either case turns you away from God, count your blessings.
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Count your blessings daily. Count your blessings constantly.
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Let yourself be amazed at how good and merciful God is, and then resolve to
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spend every waking moment looking for opportunities to prove to God that you're grateful.
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It is life-changing, I promise you.
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So, very simply, schedule five minutes a day, write it down,
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make it to save five minutes every day, just count the blessings and mercies
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of the past 24 hours, and then resolve to spend the rest of the day doing something in gratitude about it,
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and then let that habit become constant.
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Meanwhile, think on these things today. Take them to prayer and talk about it
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with those you love. Go in peace and please do pray for me, for I am you.