It was 1865, in Nagasaki, Japan. Japan finally re-opened itself to foreign visitors and missionaries, but laws prevented local Japanese from contact with the missionaries, or for coming into the faith. A beautiful church was built in 1863, dedicated to Japanese martyrs, but for two years no one came.

On St. Patrick’s Day, the young Fr. Bernard Petitjean saw a group of 15 Japanese outside the church. He invited them in. As he knelt before the Tabernacle to offer a quick prayer, he heard an urgent whisper from one of the women:
“We have the same heart as you!”

Startled, Fr. Bernard asked them where they were from. They responded that they were from a local village. “There, almost all have the same heart”, the woman responded. 

Then, mustering up courage, she asked: “where is the statue of Santa Maria”? Now at this point, Fr. Bernard was stunned. She knew of the Blessed Mother. Could it be that these were the descendants of the Japanese Christians, who had given their lives 250 years ago?

As missionaries would come to learn, Christianity had indeed continued after the last priest was martyred. All with secret baptisms, Marian images made to look like Buddhist goddesses, Latin prayers, hymns modeled on Buddhist chants to camouflage their real content. The communities appointed men as catechists, and those to baptize and serve in a pastoral role. They appointed others to keep the calendar. They abstained from meat on Fridays, and observed Lent and Easter. 

With the lack of confession, they instead recited the Act of Contrition. And with the lack of Mass, they remembered the Eucharist in ritualized meals of fish and rice and saké, placing a stole over a chair, in hopes that priests would return to celebrate Reconciliation and Eucharist with them.

A martyr named Bastian had prophesied in 1660 that after seven more generations, confessors would return to Japan. And so, in 1865 - seven generations later - Father Petitjean offered them the sacraments, at a church named for their ancestors.

For 225 years, Japanese Christians endured without Reconciliation and Eucharist. Recently, for +five months, worldwide Christians endured without limited access to the sacraments. But whether it was Imperial Japan or contemporary North America, the living God sustains his people, as Paul describes in the 2nd Reading: neither anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword would separate Christians from the love of Christ.

While our present situation is quite different than that of the Japanese Christians, there is something similar that unites the two: it is the Eucharistic dynamicthat God’s grace introduces.

         In our Gospel account of the feeding of the five thousand, a commentator notes that there are four key actions that happen:

1. Jesus takes what little the disciples have on hand: even though they don’t think it’s much, He gladly makes use of it
2. He raises his eyes to heaven: Jesus raises his attention to His Heavenly Father, and not on himself 
3. He recites a blessing: Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t bless the food. He blesses God the Father for providing it
4. He breaks the bread in a gesture of sharing– even though there is sharing, there is still an abundance afterwards

1. God gladly tookthe rice and sake wine as an offering, even as they waited for the day when it would be wheat bread and grape wine
2. The Christians raisedtheir attention to Heaven when they gathered together in secret 
3. Theyblessed God for sustaining them in difficult times
4. Finally, they broketheir fear to share food, resources, and prayers with one another

• God takes what we offer him  
• We raise our eyes of attention to Him every day 
• We bless Him for His graces
• We share in what we have

Through Eucharistic living, we come to have the same heart…the same heart as that Japanese woman did, so eager to receive the sacraments again.

         Someone who is wise. Who are some wise people that you’ve known in life?

         Sometimes wisdom means the experience of years. Sometimes it means a certain knowledge, whether by book / or by life / or both.

         It seems like Solomon, our young king in the first reading, is already wisefor asking for the right thing. He asks God for an ‘understanding heart’, to judge his people and know the difference between right and wrong. So if Solomon was already wise at a young age, now God will give him more wisdom.

         But before we talk about his wisdom, there is something that Solomon first realizes…and this helps him decide what to ask God for. And this something – as we hear – is a realization. A realization that Solomon was made by God for a specific purpose– ‘O Lord, you have made me king to succeed my father David’. You didn’t make me – so that I could search out whatever pleases me in life – but rather made me with a specific purpose.

         St. Paul also makes this same incredible discovery in life, which he shares with the Romans in our 2^ndReading. Before you even came into existence, Paul tells them, God foreknew you…

• and because of that he predestined you, 
• and because of that he justified you, 
• and because of that he will glorify you.

• He made Solomon // to govern His people after David
• He made Paul // to share the Good News of God’s individual love // with the people of Rome.
• He made the women and men // who listened to Jesus’ parables on that day // giving them a different perspective

What is the specific purpose that God made you for?

Kay Mallon, of Peoria, Ill., worked as a counselor at Lutheran Social Services. It was rewarding work, but also emotionally draining. One of her colleagues was a Benedctine nun, Sr. Catherine Cleary, of nearby St. Mary’s Monastery.
Kay noticed something intriguing about Sr. Catherine.

"I knew how stressful her job was, but she always had a calm about her. I asked her how she did it. She told me about Centering Prayer and Lectio, and I started attending a group that practiced it. It has helped me be calm and balanced. I feel like I have my priorities right."

This was no small statement from Kay, given how easy it was, to emotionallytake work back home with her.

"I compare Lectio to physical exercise," she explains. "I go to the gym for the strength to pick up my grandkids, and the agility to get down on the floor and play with them. [Likewise], "I do Lectio for the strength to be in relationship with others. // I am able to listen better, to be open to other people's views and ways. I don't need to state my way of thinking as much. I'm less critical. Day to day, Lectio might be the furthest thing from my mind, but the effects of it are with me." 

In our Second Reading, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, St. Paul has been teaching his congregation that following the Law of Moses has been a divine guide toward the source of life, but not the source of life itself. But neither is giving in to their old desires the source of life. What is the source of life then? It is the Holy Spirit, who as Paul explains in today’s part of the letter, can pray through us to God.

I’m sure Kay Mallon, the person I spoke of at the beginning, had a prayer life. It may have been rote, it may have been centered on praying for others – all good and fine. But at a certain point, our prayer life can’t simply come from us. It has to start with, and end with, the action of God. If it’s all about oureffort in prayer, things to start to dry up. But when we allow God to pray through us – allowing the Spirit to “intercede with inexpressible groanings” – then something happens. Something radiates from us, like it did from Sr. Catherine to Kay Mallon, and then from Kay Mallon to her clients and family. They ‘shine like the sun’, to quote the Gospel, even if they don’t feel it themselves. Sometimes the personal effect may be to understand what’s going on in the heart – not always a pleasant discovery – but a stage of growth in Christ nonetheless.

What would it look like, if you took 15-20 minutes during the week, to use Lectio Divina, with the upcoming Sunday Gospel reading. 15 minutes a week. Now that your beach trip to Florida has been nixed, you’ve got the time. To hear God speak to you, so that you can respond back, with the Spirit’s help. Here’s how, using what a writer calls the 4 R’s:

The first stage: reading 
Read the Gospel passage very slowly, listening carefully to every word. There are no wasted words in Scripture. Listening for a word or a phrase that jumps out at you. Slowly read the passage 2, or 3, or 4 times.

The second stage: reflecting
When you have that word or phrase in mind, you reflect on it, to listen to what God is saying to you through it. In this stage, you are ruminating on your word or phrase, like the cow that chews on a cud. They chew and chew and chew and chew.

The third stage: responding
Having reflected, you pray to God in such a way that you say, “OK God, I’ve heard you say this to me” or “I’ve heard you ask this of me.”

The fourth stage: remaining
Now you remain there with Him in silence, enjoying His presence. This is, for many people, the hardest stage to get through, because we’re so uncomfortable in silence. But think about it: when you’ve had a good, deep, meaningful conversation with someone, you really shouldn’t just immediately hang up the phone or run out of the room. You remain there with your friend, who may (or may not) have one more word to say.
 
The Kingdom of Heaven will not come about by the right mix of action, circumstance, and leader. It will come about, by the Holy Spirit, praying through us.

          If God had to work at a Madison Avenue advertising firm, he wouldn’t have made a month.
          Case in point: in 1917, the world was a mess. World War I – our world’s first modern war – was raging. The Spanish Flu pandemic was just about to make its world debut. In Portugal, there was government instability after the monarchy was overthrown. 
         Yet, outside a very small village in Portugal, God sent the Blessed Mother to three children: Lucia was 10, Francisco 9, and Jacinta only 7. There, she asked them to do a few things: pray the rosary “to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war”, to pray for sinners and for the conversion of Russia, and learn how to read and write. 
         To sum it all up: she asked them to pray and do penance for conversion of the world.
         Two of the visionaries – Francisco and Jacinta, only two years later, would contract the flu. Jacinta, being separated from her family due to the pandemic, was consoled by the fact that she could see the tabernacle in the infirmary chapel from her hospital bed.
         So, if God wanted to say something to the world – at a time when the world needed to hear Him – why didn’t he direct his messaging – to the important cities of the world? To the important people of the world? What kind of advertising pro was He – sending word to three little children in a backwater village – especially when two of them – would die in a pandemic?
         Jesus explains God’s method in the Gospel. He uses the image of the sower of seeds. For three major groups of people – the message won’t take hold. But for one group – the message will take hold, and when it takes hold, the benefits will overflow, to benefit the others who didn’t get it the first time. 
         In truth, God did send His word to everyone, including the ‘important people’ back in 1917. How they received it – was a different question.
         In the first reading, God reassures His people that when He speaks His life-giving Word, it will go, refresh the people, and come back to Him, having achieved what He intended it to do. It will be ‘effective’. 
         The challenge for us, is to place our trust in that promise, because we don’t have the full perspective that God does, and may not have the faith that God’s word to three little children – would help change the world. Changing the world through prayer: to end a war (WWI) – and spiritually renew a country (Russia).
         Pope Francis touched on this gift and challenge in 2017. “With the canonization of Francisco and Jacinta, I wanted to propose to the entire Church their example,” he said. “After the encounter with the ‘Beautiful Lady,’ as they called her, they frequently recited the Rosary, they did penance and offered sacrifices to bring about the end of the War, and for the souls most in need of divine mercy.”
         God wouldn’t have lasted long in the Communication and PR field. He would have had to start his own firm, because He has some unusual ways to get His word out. When we take the time to let His Word seep into us, we become one of those ways too.
 

At the start of summer, the world witnessed a dramatic reach for freedom, in 1989. In Tiananmen Square in China, and in Eastern Europe. What marked these revolutions, was their lack of armed revolt. A resistance – without weapons.

For Poland, part of the groundwork for that revolution, was the ministry of Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II. A Polish Dominican noted that through his homilies and speeches, Wojtla gave his fellow Poles two things: dignity and responsibility. Dignity and responsibility. As they reflected upon these two things, the people began to realize that the Communists had taken away both. Desiring to reclaim both, resistance among the people took hold.

For the people in the First Reading, the people of Israel, they have just tasted freedom. They were set free from the Babylonian exile, and have returned home. But they returned to a home that was in ruins, and have to rebuild. Rebuilding took time, and energy, and hope. But hope started to lag – as they asked one another – how on earth can we get back to the days when King David reigned?

So God responds to their question, by sending the prophet Zaccariah, who tells them: 
Shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king shall come to you;
a just savior is he,
meek, and riding on an ass,
 
Their dignity, God reminds them, is not of their own making, and it’s not based in the past, in days of military conquest. Their dignity is based on God choosing them. Nothing of their own merit. Where they got into trouble before – their lack of responsibility – was to forget the God who chose them. So God encourages them – keep rebuilding – not just your homes and businesses, but also the Temple, where God may be remembered, thanked, and petitioned.

Zaccariah and his listeners wouldn’t come to see the prophecy fulfilled in their own lifetime. And Israel would be conquered, by two more empires – the Greeks, the Romans – before this promised King finally showed up. And when the King did show up – Jesus of Nazareth, riding on a donkey, on Palm Sunday – he wasn’t carrying any weapons. He wasn’t there to overthrow the Roman Empire. He was there to transform it, from the inside out, to make it His vehicle for reaching out to the world. 

Certainly the ‘little ones’ whom Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel saw in Him both relief and freedom. They were tired and burdened, by the obstacles others placed on them, and their own human nature. What does Jesus do? He honors them for their littleness – as the rest of the world honors the “wise and learned.” And he also gives them a challenge: take on my ‘yoke’ – His saving will for humanity, and their personal role in that great plan. When the little ones take on Jesus’ direction, his ‘yoke’ – a new horizon is opened up – the world beyond themselves.

In the 2^ndReading, Paul reminds his flock about the honor they now enjoy – the presence of the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit, received at their baptism, continually pulls them back to God, away from their self-focus and preoccupation. This self-focus is what Paul calls ‘the flesh’ in a very wide sense of the word. At the same time, their work and effort is to not forget that presence, that source of life. Because to forget is to dampen the Spirit’s power.

On this Fourth of July weekend:
--what is the dignity that God is calling to your attention?
--what is the corresponding responsibility that God is calling you to?

As we answer this two-part question, we come to live out our first freedom. Only from this…can revolution occur.