June 17

[media presentation below]

GospelThink

Tuesday, June 17

MATTHEW 5:43-48
I say it directly to you: love even your enemies.

Prayerthoughts
a. This has been called “the unique” doctrine of the Christian, to love one’s enemies. In general, do I “love” those who disagree with my way of thinking, even though they disagree with me and would never “love” me?

b. There are a number of believers in God, especially in special circumstances such as war, who still believe that they should do harm to enemies. I should pray for them as well.

c. “Pray for those who persecute you.” Generally, I do not have persecutors as such, but I should think in terms of the early Christians or those who are persecuted in our world. Would I have the thought to pray for them?

d. The reasoning behind loving everyone is that God created everyone. I should look at all creation as God’s gift. I should take the time to praise our God for creation. (This is the task of the meditation.)

e. I should think in terms of doing “more” than merely acknowledging them. I should “love” them. Studying my actions with others, say yesterday, did I show that I truly accepted them as people that I “loved”?

f. Jesus tells me to be perfect as God is. As a human, obviously I cannot accomplish that, but do I come close to it in the way I speak, act and think?

g. My prayerthoughts…

Today, I will list the gifts of creation that for which I am most grateful.

Some Thoughts on the Liturgy

GENEROSITY AND LOVE OF OTHERS

+ There are many virtues that “prove” that we are the offspring of God,

- that is, that we really want God to be part of our lives

- two of them are mentioned here in today’s liturgy

- both essential to the spiritual life, both among the most difficult things to accomplish as we strive to follow Jesus’ directive to be…

…perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

- that directive is obviously an ideal since we will never reach it, but we can have it as a goal, something that we are always striving for, and realizing that we will never quite reach it

+ Of the two virtues mentioned today, the first comes from the letter to the Corinthians: the Christian directive to be generous

- Paul writing about the churches of Macedonia: “they gave themselves first to the Lord.”

- giving of what we have

- giving of time, talent and treasure to God who has given to us so much through the Son

- and the reason for this “giving” must be completely understood

- we are giving of what we have, not because we are being kind or even generous

- but because we are absolutely convinced that we are alive and well because of God, and therefore we must give back to God in some way, somehow, and in a significant manner

- it is a matter of justice

- we owe God, and therefore we must be generous

+ The Gospel gives us the second virtue of the Christian to consider today: honest love of others, this coming from the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount—

- he has spoken of anger, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and now love of enemies

- most of us can love those who love us

- that is easy enough, but it is not so easy to love those who don’t love us

- those who would be categorized as “enemy”

- people who do not agree with us

- people who do not like our families

- people who have spoken out against us

- people upon whom our natural tendencies is to take revenge

- people who continue to “not like” us

+ Two virtues that deserve some serious meditation are presented to us today

- they might serve as a practical gateway to the way of perfection:

- generosity and true love of everyone, even enemies.

MEDIA PRESENTATION

Movie: "Moneyball" -- beginning session

TO THINK AS GOD DOES

The Gospel

MARK 8:31-33

MARK 8:31-33

[Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days. He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Gospelthink: I tell you to try to think as God does which means that I should think in terms of love of others. Am I improving in my thinking?

The movie "Moneyball" begins with a quote from Mickey Mantle who said: "It is unbelievable how much you don't know about a game you've been playing all your life." He did not know about the business of baseball. The movie based on a true story as told in the book, "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" by Michael Lewis, is about the business of baseball. As he began the 2002 baseball season, Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, realized that he had a serious problem if he did not want to lose. And losing, as he said, was something that he hated to do. He had lost his three best players due to free agency and did not have enough money to hire them back or to trade for better players. His staff was thinking the usual way of thinking in baseball circles: you bring up the players you have in the minor leagues or you trade. Billy was searching for another solution and after he met a young man by the name of Peter Brand who was only educated in economics, he began to think in a different mode.

Jesus gives us a distinction that we should take to heart. When it was clear that the future leader of his Apostles did not understand what he was doing, Jesus reminds him that he must begin to think as God thinks. Peter was thinking as human beings think: we become so taken up with our own feelings that we cannot possibly understand another point of view. Peter had to learn to think in a totally different way, and when he finally did, he began to see what God wanted in his life.

Fundamentally, thinking the way God wants us to think involves objectivity. We must be able to view problems without our own personal feelings. Peter illustrates for us a pattern that we can study. As we are called to determine solutions to problems in our lives, our solutions may be prejudiced by our own set of circumstances. We may not be able to see beyond what we think. Billy Beane in the movie "Moneyball" was able to see beyond his set of circumstances. It meant that he had to change his own thinking first before he discovered a solution to winning baseball games.

British author Phyllis Bottome once said that there are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them. Much of the time the difficulties are going to remain, no matter what we do; then, if we want to find a solution, the way we approach them may have to change. Only when we are able to look at things in another light will we be able to see that there are answers to problems that at one time seemed unsolvable.

We all have difficulties in life and we search for solutions. One of the solutions might be to look at the difficulties in a different way. It might mean that we have to begin thinking of them the way God thinks of them, and begin to see that our thinking may be part of the problem.

PRAYER

Good and gracious God, our human natures tend to look at the problems of our lives from our own point of view. As your Son told his apostle Peter, help us learn to think as you think so that we will be able to solve our problems a little better. Be with us, we pray.

+++++

GUIDE FOR CLASSROOM PRESENTATION AND PERSONAL ENRICHMENT

Theme: Sometimes we have to change our way of thinking about the problem in order to solve it.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
(session: approximately 63 minutes)
1. What scene during this session of the movie is most striking? Why?
2. Jesus is speaking of the process of redemption in this passage. What is your understanding of Jesus' redemption? See Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, numbers 599-618.
3. Give some instances in our world today in which you see people thinking as they think and not as God thinks.
4. Analysis: "$114,457,768 vs $39,722,689." Should professional sports people be paid as much as they are? Yes or no and why?
5. Analysis: describe the character of Billy Beane as presented by the movie.
6. Dialogue analysis: Beane: "If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we will lose to the Yankees out there." What does Billy mean?
7. What do you think of the approach to baseball that Peter Brand gave Billy Beane?
8. Analysis: the disagreement between General Manager Billy Beane and Manager Art Howe. What is the best way to solve this difficulty?
9. Analysis: Beane obviously has an "anger" problem. What is the best way to control "anger" in our lives today?