Faith

Our Scriptures this weekend invite us to consider the offerings of three different people, beginning with the widow of Zarephath. She encounters the prophet Elijah at a critical time for both of them.

The Eucharist has a transformative effect. If we cooperate, the Eucharist has the power to change us, not in a small way, but in a major way, to re-create us into a new and better person. When Jesus gave us the Eucharist at the Last Supper and asked us to “do this in memory of me,” he asked us to receive him, the bread of life, true bread from heaven (Jn 6:41), on a regular basis, because of his deep desire that each of us would have a complete makeover, a total transformation.

In the second reading for Oct. 28, we find this fascinating statement attributed to Christ: “Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek” (Heb 5:6). The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews drew this from Psalm 110, a prophecy about the coming of the Messiah.

Q. I try to pray. I try to participate in the Mass. But it always just feels so empty. It’s like I’m just going through the motions, and there is nothing there. Is this all there is, or is there something I can do?

October is usually when I preach about stewardship. So, the last thing I want to hear from Jesus is, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Eucharist as viaticum is holy Communion given to a person when death is imminent.

One of the most memorable characters in Charles Dickens’ 1861 novel “Great Expectations” is Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster jilted at the altar, perpetually in mourning for what might have been and wearing her decaying wedding dress every day for the rest of her life. She directed that the remnants of her wedding breakfast and cake remain rotting on a table in her dilapidated mansion.

As a college student, I worked at Byerlys’ restaurant in Roseville as a greeter. My job was fairly simple: Welcome people into the restaurant, get them seated and send them off with a friendly gesture as they left.