The Peace of the Risen Christ

Third Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I’m going to apologize up front here, because this will probably not be my best homily.  Between vacation (which wasn’t that restful) and trainings for the Michigan State Police I needed to attend, I feel like I’ve been playing catch-up and simply dealing with things as they pop up, like an arcade game of whack a mole.  In addition, a friend of mine who is a Trooper was shot early on Monday morning in Detroit, and I have been trying to help him and his fiancee, whose wedding I will celebrate in October, deal with his serious injury (he’s going to be fine, but he will certainly need some time before he gets back to work).
    So I’m giving this the best I have.  I haven’t had my usual times to think and pray over the readings like I normally do.  I don’t have any funny or deep connections to make at the beginning to draw you in.  I have to preach, and I’m relying on the Holy Spirit to hopefully help draw you ever more deeply into the sacred mysteries and how the Word of God applies to our daily lives (the Holy Spirit is always the one who gives any good message, I just feel like I usually have more time and energy to cooperate with Him than I have had this week).
    The Catholic life is always simply giving our best and allowing God to work out what has to happen.  We don’t see Christ in the Body in the same way that the Apostles did.  That should give us a certain sadness.  We fight through struggles; we can seem overwhelmed by our family situations, by work, by the fears of the world which seeks to silence the Gospel and which so often drives toward violence and division.  Sometimes all of this weighs heavy on our heart.  We are like our Lord described, a woman in labor, who struggles through intense pain, giving all she has.  

    In the midst of this; in the midst of the chaos and busyness of my own life and the reality that I cannot be everywhere to help everyone, nor can I be all things to all people, the first words of Pope Leo XIV rang in my ears: “Peace be with you.”  He continued, “this was the first greeting of the risen Christ, the good shepherd who gave His life for the flock of God.”  
    And this is the only greeting I can share with you today.  The Risen Christ gives you His peace.  He assures as, us His Vicar, the Supreme Pontiff, assured us, “evil will not prevail.”  You are struggling.  You are fighting for truth.  You are working hard to protect and serve your family, your community, your parish, your country.  Sometimes things go well, but so often things break down or go contrary to what you think is best.  Christ did not promise us a world without sorrow, without struggle.  Indeed, He promised us we would have it.  But He also promised that He would see us again and our hearts would rejoice in seeing Him again.  And He promised that the joy of seeing Him again would be a joy no one could take from us.
    The peace and joy that Christ desires to give us can only come when we make room for Him.  When we try to do everything ourselves, without His grace, it all collapses like a house of cards.  We cannot have the peace and joy of Christ if we do not make room in our hearts for Christ Himself.  Sometimes we act like atheists, who do not believe in God and so do not turn to God for help in the midst of our struggles.  But God does not want us to struggle alone.  He wants us to make room for Him in our hearts and in our days, even if it’s simply a few minutes or seconds here and there.  Those stolen moments while the kids nap, or during a snack break in the office, or driving somewhere in the midst of running what seems like a free Uber service, make all the difference in the world, because they invite the peace and joy of Christ back into our minds, hearts, and souls to strengthen us.

Our Lady, Queen of Peace

    And on this Mother’s Day, let us not forget to invoke our heavenly mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, in whatever struggles we may have.  She is the woman who labors in heaven for our safe deliverance to the Father’s house, who feels the pain of our sorrows and fatigue, who wraps us in her loving embrace when we feel overwhelmed, who shows us that the pains we go through, if united to Christ, can lead to a joy that words cannot fully describe.  Never be afraid to call on her when all seems lost, or like we can’t make it one more day, because she will help us to be open to receive the peace and joy that the risen Christ desires to share with us always.  I will end this homily in the same way our new Holy Father ended his first words at the loggia of St. Peter’s basilica: Hail Mary…. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Obvious to Some, Not to All

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Country star Randy Travis

    Country music is the best non-liturgical music there is.  Others may think differently, and they’re entitled to their opinions, but they’re wrong.  That’s not to say that there aren’t other good songs.  I grew up on lite rock (with bands and singers like Chicago, REO Speedwagon, Rod Stewart, Cher, etc.), and also listened to the great songs of the 50s and 60s, so I enjoy other types of music, too.  But, as a whole, country music is the best.  Now, what amazes me is that not everyone shares my opinion.  Even good people sometimes don’t appreciate fully (or at all) how wonderful country music is.  While country music is just three chords and the truth (which is part of what makes it great), others will joke that when you play a country song backwards you get your dog back, your truck back, and your wife back.      Of course, I jest…somewhat.  But sometimes things can seem so obvious to one person, but others do not appreciate the same things.  And we hear that reality in our first reading, which regards the people’s appreciation for something even greater than country music: the faith.  We skip what Paul said to the synagogue, but we get the reaction of those who heard: they start arguing with Paul and telling him that he’s wrong, all because the Gentiles, non-Jews, started to believe Paul and Barnabas and began following Christ.  
    But this makes no sense!  Paul was so learned in Judaism because he had been a Pharisee and had studied his faith deeply.  He understood how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, and could explain that to the Jews, who would understand those prophecies.  So how could they reject Paul’s preaching?
    Following Jesus is not just a matter of understanding facts.  St. James reminds us in his letter that the demons know who God is.  But they do not follow him.  They have all the facts in the world, but they do not love Him.  Catholicism is not just a matter of the head (though we certainly have things we need to believe).  Living the Catholic life means loving Jesus and conforming our lives to His.  So if we wish to be disciples, we do not only need to form our minds, but also form our hearts so that we love what God loves, and will what God wills.
    And this is where people struggle, because their hearts are not always totally given over to God, and their wills desire things on their own, contrary to what God wants.  We call this concupiscence.  We may know what is right, but because of some other factor, we reject what is right for what is convenient or less challenging.  God wants us to be His sheep, to belong to His sheepfold, but we wander away, because we would rather listen to a voice that does not lead us towards happiness, but leads us to temporary pleasure.

    Knowing the disconnect that can happen between the head and the heart is not only important in our own lives and helping us to follow Christ, but also when we seek to share the Gospel, like Sts. Paul and Barnabas did.  We might be able to give people facts about Jesus, but can we help them love Him?  Cardinal Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, recalled a time when he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  His Jewish classmates would ask him questions about the faith and he would respond, but without much success.  He said, “I answered as the catechism answers and I realized from her face that she had not understood anything.  I was unable to make myself understood. It took some time for me to understand that the Resurrection is not explained.”  He wrote that what makes the difference is helping people understand that “there is nothing better in life than to encounter Jesus Christ.”  Again, that goes beyond just head knowledge, and goes to the heart, to loving Christ.
    If, in times past, we erred on the side of the head, that we know what God teaches us, today we err on the side of the heart, which then seems to ignore sinful activity because a person is good in other areas.  In reality, we need to affirm both head and heart.  Simply hitting others over the head with the teachings of Christ often does not work, but neither is it helpful to ignore the teachings of Christ so that we pretend what is evil is, in fact, good.  Of course our actions, living the connection of head and heart out, needs the virtue of prudence and has to be motivated by true love for the other person and their eternal salvation.
    What can seem obvious to some is not obvious to all.  We should always be looking for new ways to share the Gospel, and finding ways to make the proclamation more effective.  This is the heart of the New Evangelization: the teachings of the Church are the same, but we find new ways to proclaim them in convincing ways to new generations of people who have new struggles and new needs.  We connect head and heart in sharing the Good News about Jesus and His teachings.  May the Holy Spirit fill us with wisdom, courage, and prudence to share the joy of the Resurrection, and all that Christ has revealed to us as necessary for salvation.  

A Tradition Unlike Any Other

Third Sunday of Easter

    A few weeks back, during a few, rare downtimes on Palm Sunday weekend, I was able to tune in to the Masters Tournament at Augusta National coverage on TV.  I don’t golf, but there is something about the Masters which draws even non-golfers in.  While I was primarily rooting for Jordan Spieth, who ended up with a decent set of scores, I was also very happy to see Rory McElroy not only win his first green jacket, but also complete the career Grand Slam of winning all four major championships: the PGA Championship, US Open, Open Championship, and the Masters.  There’s something about the Masters that signals spring is finally here.  It’s not just the game itself; it goes beyond a simple few days in Georgia.
    The same could be said for our Gospel passage today.  But I want to focus more on the second part of the Gospel passage, Peter’s interaction with Jesus, which also goes beyond a simple apologetic conversation, though it is that.  Part of the beyond is Jesus again supporting Peter’s special role as pope and head of the Apostolic College, the group of apostles.  But it also demonstrates for us what confession is mean to be like.
    The Gospel writers are clear that Peter denied Jesus on Holy Thursday evening and into Good Friday.  They are clear that he wasn’t at the cross, but that, once the cock crowed after Peter had denied Christ, he went away weeping, knowing that he had betrayed the Lord.  But we never hear anything else, until this passage, about the reconciliation.  Peter had been going all this time after seeing the Risen Christ on Easter Sunday without dealing with his sin.  But now the Lord invites Him to reconcile.
    How many times do we carry sins with us, perhaps even avoiding confession because we are ashamed?  We, in our own way, have denied and betrayed the Lord.  And while we have later seen His goodness and His new life, we’re afraid to confront our sin.  But if we don’t reconcile, we can’t receive healing.  And if the wound is mortal, deadly, then we could perish forever.
    So the Lord invites us to speak with Him in confession, and the priest acts in His name, in persona Christi capitis, in the person of Christ the Head, we say in theological language.  And He asks us, “‘do you love me more than these?’”  Now, in the Gospel, perhaps Jesus meant more than the other apostles, or more than fishing.  But with us, the Lord asks us if we love Him more than we love our sins.  The act of confessing makes us confront what or who we love more.  
    In the Greek (and Venerable Fulton Sheen makes a whole homily about this), the type of love Jesus asks Peter is not the type of love that Peter responds to Jesus.  Jesus asks, <<𝛼𝛾𝛼𝜋𝛼𝜍 𝜇𝜀;>> or, “Do you love me with the love of God?”  Peter responds, <<𝜙𝜄𝜆𝜔 𝜎𝜀>> or “I love you with brotherly love.”  The second time Jesus asks the same question, and Peter responds the same way.  But the third time, Jesus asks, <<𝜙𝜄𝜆𝜀𝜄𝜍 𝜇𝜀;>> or “Do you love me with brotherly love?”  Hence, Peter gets upset that Jesus asked, not only a third time, but changed the type of love (though that was the love Peter could muster in response).  But he still responds in the same way.  
    Jesus desires us to have 𝛼𝛾𝛼𝜋𝜀, or caritas, or selfless, Godlike love.  But He knows we are weak, and He accepts that we can’t always affirm that.  So he takes what we can give.  When we sin, especially mortal sins, we should have perfect contrition: the sorrow that comes, “not because of the loss of heaven or the pains of hell, but most of all because they have offended thee, my God.”  Still, through the sacrament, God raises our imperfect contrition, the fear of punishment, and makes it perfect by His grace so that we can be forgiven.  

    Through the Sacrament of Penance, which we often call confession, God reconciles us to Himself, even when we’re not fully ready to be reconciled.  We need to be sorry in some sense, confess our mortal sins in kind and number, have a firm purpose to not commit sin again, and be ready to accept penance, but God knows that sometimes we cannot honestly say that we love Him the way He loves us.  Still, He doesn’t want anything to stand in the way of His relationship with us, so He forgives us.  He asks us to love Him and let that love be manifest in our actions.
    The Gospels tell us what Jesus truly did and taught for eternal salvation, as Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from the Second Vatican Council taught.  But the Gospels go beyond the telling of true stories.  They also help us continue our life in Christ.  May our hearing and reading of the exchange between Jesus and Peter draw us closer to our Lord as we confess our sins, receive forgiveness and healing, and help us to live with the mission Christ gave us: to be saints.

Seeing the Risen Jesus

Solemnity of Easter

The entrance to the aediculum

   [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  One of the most memorable things that I experienced when I went to the Holy Land for the first time in 2007 as a seminarian was attending Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus died and rose from the dead.  At the place where the tomb was, there is a small building inside the church called the aediculum, and inside that aediculum is where a slab of stone rests that held the dead body of our Lord.  The Franciscans gave us permission to have Mass there one day.  The way Mass works in that space is that the Liturgy of the Word/Mass of Catechumens happens outside the aediculum.  For the Liturgy of the Eucharist/Mass of the Faithful, the priest enters the aediculum and says the Eucharist Prayer inside there, which you can hear, but not see, because of how small it is inside.
    The great moment is when the priest gets to the point where he says, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” because the priest leaves the aediculum, and, holding the Body of the Lord above the chalice says, while showing the Eucharist to the people.  Part of the power is that this is the same risen Lord, coming from His tomb, alive for us to see, though of course under sacramental signs.
    As we celebrate Easter today, we remember the event that changed the course of human history.  While the Prophet Elisha had raised a person from the dead in the Old Testament, and our Lord had raised the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus from the dead, the resurrection was altogether different.  Our Lord’s Body no longer suffered under the restrictions of the physical world, as we will hear next Sunday when we hear about Him entering a locked room through the door.  While the Body was certainly His, and bore the marks of His crucifixion, in a glorified state there was something different about it.  I often imagine it as having a slight glow to it, though maybe that was not the case.  It was different enough that the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize Christ as He walked with them, until He broke bread in a room with them.  
    But that event that changed everything, starting really with Good Friday and culminating with Easter Sunday, we celebrate and enter into each Sunday in particular, and each time we come to Mass more generally.  At the Mass, we begin by acknowledging that we are sinners and that Christ suffered for us and because of us.  We stand at the foot of the Cross and nail our sins there with Christ so that they can be forgiven.  We offer our lives–the joys and sorrows, pain and comforts, work and leisure–since the last time we attended Mass united to the perfect offering of Christ to His heavenly Father on Calvary.  We stand there at Calvary and hear God’s word proclaimed to help us understand what work God does in our lives.  And then, during the Eucharist Prayer/Canon of the Mass, we enter into Christ’s offering of Himself on the cross, and His burial in the tomb.  In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church references how the altar, besides being symbol of Christ Himself and the Cross, also symbolizes the tomb.
    And that is perhaps a bit clearer as we celebrate Mass facing the Lord together, or ad Dominum.  During the three days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Christ’s Body laid in the tomb, unseen by all others.  After the elevations which follow the words of institution, the words that Christ Himself spoke (“This is my Body”; “This is my Blood), Christ is not seen by the faithful in the pews until the priest shows the Body of Christ while saying, “Behold the Lamb of God.”  This is, as it were, Christ breaking forth from the tomb, and appearing before His disciples after the Resurrection.  The same experience I had in Jerusalem, of seeing Christ in the Eucharist come forth from His tomb you can experience as I remove the Body of Christ from the tomb of the altar and He rises so that you all can see Him and His glorified Body, which is not limited in the way our bodies are limited.
    And the Lord does not just show Himself from afar as I show Him to you.  At the time for the reception of Holy Communion, He comes near to you, as He came near to Mary Magdalene at the tomb or as He came near the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples in the Upper Room.  He stands right before you, and then even enters in to you to bring that power of the Resurrection into your individual lives.
    And what is our response, then?  The same as the disciples who realized that Christ was risen: they had to tell other disciples, and, after Pentecost, everyone.  Knowing that Christ had died, but that He was truly risen, they could not remain silent, but shared that joy and the transformation of their lives that the Resurrection made.  Death no longer had the last say.  Sin no longer could hold them in slavery.  They could not contain the joy of that revelation, but had to tell others.  And so should we.  The joy of this day should cast away all sorrow and fear and lead us to greater holiness of life.

Inside the aediculum

    Christ has risen from the dead.  It is not just a past event, but a reality that we get to join every Sunday, which the Church calls a “little Easter.”  May we recognize the Risen Christ as we see and receive Him in the Eucharist, the Lamb of God, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, live and reign for ever and ever.

Getting the Bigger Picture

Easter Vigil
    I know someone well who is very smart.  His mind is a well-oiled machine.  When faced with different data points, he can put it together to make sense, and anticipate challenges and/or opportunities, and adjust expectations or actions as necessary.  Because of this, he is very gifted at administration.  When it comes to friendships: he struggles a bit more.  Because his mind tries to get to why a friend didn’t tell him something, or why did a friend use the words he did, and is that friend trying to communicate something subtly that he doesn’t want to say directly.  And then anxiety kicks in and his brain goes into overdrive trying to make sense of it all, and often reading into things that are much more innocent.
    I try to help him by reminding him to consider other facts that he knows to be true that will put his mind at ease.  I encourage him to expand the amount of data that his mind is analyzing to include more positive facts and input, and not just the negative ones to which his brain so easily goes.  While it takes work, seeing the bigger picture can help calm his fears of rejection and realize that he really does have good friends who aren’t looking to get rid of him.
    Maybe you don’t have an analytical mind, but with what has happened over the past few days, starting on Holy Thursday, there’s a lot to process.  In this one grand liturgy that began with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we entered into the model of service in the washing of feet; the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist at the Last Supper; and the agony in the garden at the altar of repose.  On Good Friday we joined with Christ in the fruits of the betrayal by Judas and our God, Savior, and hope dying in the most horrible way possible.  Earlier today we just waited, joining with the apostles who had all likely lost hope and were wondering what they should do now that their Master was in a tomb.  And now, tonight, we celebrate that hope did not die, but that God raised His Son from the dead and conquered sin and death forever.  If we take these events seriously, they should make us wonder what God did and what it all means.  We may not get anxiety, but it calls for a deeper reflection on more facts, more data to understand God’s plan.
    And that’s why we had all these readings tonight.  We heard about how God created life to be good and an expression of His love.  We heard about Abraham almost sacrificing his beloved son, but God providing a ram to take Isaac’s place.  We heard about the Egyptians being put to death in water, which was also the way that God’s chosen people were saved: through water.  We heard the Prophet Isaiah talk about how God would take us back, though we had abandoned Him, and how God would give us the good things of life and renew His covenant with us.  The Prophet Baruch encouraged us to follow the ways of the Lord and so receive light and favor.  And we heard God tell the Prophet Ezekiel that God would give new life to His people, cleanse them from their sins, and lead them back to their promised inheritance.  
    These are all realities we all need to hear tonight, to better understand God’s plan.  But especially you, Dylan and Isaiah, need to hear these as you prepare to become Catholic through your baptism, confirmation, and reception of the Holy Eucharist.  You will go through water which will destroy all that is fallen in you, but will give you new life in Christ.  God will send His Spirit upon you to help you live the new law of grace.  And God will prepare for you the “rich fare” of the Eucharist, the food which is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, which will help join you to Christ in the closest union you can have with anyone while on earth.  Your stories–what brought you to this holy night, your path of conversion–now becomes a small part of the larger story of salvation, by which God gives us a greater gift even than the Garden of Eden, which He created for us, the people He has made in His image.  God made Eden for Adam and Eve, who lost it by their disobedience.  God opens heaven to you, greater than any earthly paradise, and you can receive it by your life of obedience to God.  

    The price of this great gift of heaven was costly indeed: the death of the Son of God.  But Christ accepted it lovingly as the will of the Father and because it meant you could go to heaven and be united with Him for all eternity, which is exactly why God created humanity in the first place: for union with Him.
    So do not only consider the drama of the past few days.  Do not fix your minds on what causes anxiety.  Consider all of salvation history, and how God, who created you in love, has redeemed you in love, and now welcomes you into His family of love, the Catholic Church, and now shows you the straight and narrow way to enter into eternal love in heaven.  

Being Carried to Mount Doom

Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

    One of the many moving scenes in the third movie, “Return of the King,” of  the trilogy “The Lord of the Rings,” is when Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee are on the slopes of Mount Doom, the mountain in which the One Ring has to be destroyed in order to end the growing strength and power of the evil Sauron.  Frodo has almost no strength left from the weight of the ring on a chain around his neck, as it grows heavier the closer it gets to destruction.  Sam, too, is tired, but is doing all he can to help his friend complete the quest, without which all of Middle Earth will fall into darkness and despair.
    Even though Sam has offered to carry the ring to help, Frodo has made very clear (to put it lightly) that the ring can only be borne by Frodo.  It is his burden to bear.  So, as Frodo is exhausted on Mount Doom, full of despair and darkness, and cannot take another step, Sam says, “‘I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”  And Sam carries Frodo up the slopes towards a small door that grants passage to the fires that will destroy the One Ring.  You can watch the rest of the movie, or, better yet, read the book, to learn how it all turns out.

    J.R.R. Tolkien demonstrates his genius and masterful Catholic storytelling by not having any one character always correspond to one person in salvation and the Scriptures.  Many often compare Frodo to Christ, because he carries the ring like Christ carries the cross and our sin.  And in this sense, we are called to be like Sam, a friend who never leaves the side of the one he loves.  We are to be like the Blessed Mother, John the Apostle, St. Mary Magdalen and the other holy women, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus, who stayed with Christ through His entire Passion, His entire agony on the cross.  And we are here today to do precisely that.  Through this long, ancient liturgy, begun last night at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we show our love for Christ, who showed His love for us by dying on the cross.
    And it’s not much.  We’re not fighting against the soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross.  We’re not arguing with the Pharisees and the Sadducees who convinced Pilate to crucify the Lord of Glory.  We’re just here, with Jesus, in the liturgical presentation of His last hours before He dies.  We remain here, mourning, recognizing that our sins led Jesus here and made this day necessary.  
    But, Samwise Gamgee also represents Christ.  We are like Frodo, with the weight of sin around us.  We know that sin has to be destroyed, and we have done all we can to destroy it, but without any success.  The weight is too heavy for us to bear.  Sin clouds our vision so that we can no longer remember our home of heaven, union with God.  Sin gives the devil clear sight of us, a gaze which burns our souls and causes us to lose hope.  But Christ does not abandon us, though we have no strength to carry on.  He lifts us up on His shoulders and carries us so that sin can be destroyed and hope can be restored.  
    So today, we stand at the foot of the cross, remaining here with our Lord so that He does not have to be alone.  We see the cost that our sins have created.  But, let us make our own the words of Samwise Gamgee, the words Christ encourages us with as He suffers for our salvation: “Then let us be rid of it, once and for all.”  As Christ destroys sin and death: come, let us worship.

Bracing for Impact

Holy Thursday–Mass of the Lord’s Supper
    When I served as the Administrator of St. Joseph parish in Adrian, before Bishop Boyea assigned me as pastor, I still kept the same dentist in Williamston I had had growing up.  On 24 November 2014, I had morning Mass, and then started the drive up M-52 to get to Williamston for my appointment.  It had snowed recently, and there was maybe an inch on the ground, the roads were clear, except in the middle of the two-lane road and on the shoulders.  The sun was out and it was mostly clear skies.

My car after the accident

    Just after I left the village of Stockbridge, heading north on a straight stretch of road at around 55 mph, there was a Chevy Tahoe traveling south.  All of the sudden, the Tahoe started to slide into my lane, and I knew what would happen next.  I closed my eyes out of reflex as the moment of impact came, and tensed up, bracing for impact (which is, ironically, one of the worst things you can do if you know you’re going to be hit).  When I opened my eyes I was facing west, between 10 and 20 feet into a field on the east side of M-52.  All my airbags had deployed, and I could not feel any major injuries.  While I was taken to the hospital for evaluation, I had no major injuries, though my car was totaled.
    I knew something bad was going to happen, and I braced myself.  Tonight, as we begin this Sacred Triduum, these three holiest of days, I invite us this year to look to our Lord to see what He did as something not just bad, but awful, prepared to happen.
    In the Gospel tonight we simply hear about the washing of feet.  But, between Palm Sunday and Good Friday’s Passion Narratives, we know what else happened.  The Lord instituted the priesthood (which we celebrated liturgically this morning at the Chrism Mass) and the Eucharist.  He then went to the Garden of Gethsemane, not too long of a walk from the Upper Room, and there prayed so intensely that blood dripped from his body.  As the night progressed, Judas, one of His hand-picked Apostles, His closest friends, betrayed Him, and the Jewish soldiers took Jesus to the house of the High Priest for questioning.
    What a dramatic shift!  It’s like the weather in Michigan: going from 70 degrees one day to 30 degrees that night.  Christ had the joy of being with His closest friends and telling them that they would share in His power to change bread and wine into His Sacred Body and His Precious Blood.  But none of them quite understand.  And then, as He goes off to pray, the three closest of the closest–Peter, James, and John–all fall asleep, perhaps emotionally overwhelmed themselves in confusion of having their feet washed and eating what looked like bread, but that Christ had assured them was His Body.  
    The mental anguish was so much that Christ lost blood while praying to His Father, hoping that there could be another way to save humanity, but entrusting Himself in obedience to the will of the Father.  And then that moment, a moment He saw coming, when Judas came to betray Him with a kiss, and He was arrested and taken away, while His closest friends mostly scattered and fled.
    Throughout it all, Christ leans into His relationship with the Father.  St. John the Apostle and Evangelist records the beautiful, poetic, and cryptic monologue that we call the Last Supper Discourse, where Jesus talks about His connection to the Father.  We struggle when we try to explain the love we have for a spouse or a best friend.  Even more so do words fail to properly communicate the love between the Eternal Father and Co-Eternal Son.  

The church built over the place in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed

    And in the agony in the garden, the first sorrowful mystery of the Rosary, Christ leans in on His relationship with the Father to ask that the chalice of suffering might pass, but that God’s will would be accomplished, and that Christ would be obedient to it, no matter the cost.  How fully the words of Psalm 116 were fulfilled on Good Friday as Christ took up the chalice of salvation and called on the name of the Lord.
    So, when we struggle with difficulties, as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we should lean in to our relationship with the Father.  We are His beloved children, adopted in Christ.  When any difficulty comes our way, do we go to God immediately?  Do we ask for His help?  And, like Christ, do we humbly submit to the will of the Father, even when the chalice of suffering cannot pass by?  
    As we enter these three most holy days, may we cling to our love of the Father and His love for us, the love that saved us from sin and death, and opened heaven to all believers.

Entering into the Events which Saved Us

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  A beautiful spiritual practice is to put ourselves in the Gospel accounts.  One can imagine him or herself as a particular person, like Peter or Mary or one of the other disciples, or one can put oneself into the story as a new bystander, observing what happens and noting one’s own physical and emotional response.
    I think that anyone who takes the Bible seriously would eventually ask, “What would I do if I were there?”  Especially given the Gospel before the Mass about the entrance into Jerusalem, as well as the long Passion narrative, it shouldn’t take much more to insert oneself into the profound stories we know so well of our Lord’s last week in His earthly ministry.  Would I have welcomed Christ like the crowd?  Or would I have been like a Pharisee, criticizing this display?  Would I have scattered in the Garden of Gethsemane, or what I would have remained with our Lord just a few steps behind the soldiers?  Would I have clamored for Barabbas, or would my cries to release the true Son of the Father have been drowned out by the mob asking for crucifixion of the Lord of Glory?
    But we don’t only have to imagine ourselves in the major events of our salvation.  This week, especially during the Sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, we participate in our salvation, in the events that gained for us eteral life.  In the Mass, we enter into those events, not just remember them.  While they are present sacramentally, they are also present truly, such that the fabric of time gets folded into itself, and we enter into the eternal present of God, in our own limited way.  
    So, the question is not, ‘what do I imagine myself doing at the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, Calvary, or the tomb?’, but will I be present at those events that saved me?  Will I come to the liturgies that make present what happened some 2,000 years ago?  Or do I have more important things to do than spend time with our Lord?
    This is not to make light of those who have no choice but to work on those days.  And none of the Sacred Triduum is a holyday of obligation.  But will we make ourselves present to our Lord if we can?  Will we put our life on hold for the one who gave up His life for us?  Yes, they are long liturgies.  Yes, they happen at irregular times from what we’re used to with Masses.  But if we were willing to take off work to see a presidential candidate, are we not willing to take off work to see the King of Kings and be with Him in His agony?
    The choice is yours.  And I will not be your judge as to whether you could or could not have gone for legitimate reasons, or whether you absented yourself due to sloth.  That is for God to judge.  But if we can, the Savior deserves extra time spent with Him this week.  He gave His all for us?  Can we give a little more than usual for Him?  [Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.]

Working Out With God

Passion Sunday

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Two Thursdays ago I met up with Sgt. Anthony Dent to work out with him and some other Troopers and Cadets of the Michigan State Police.  Anthony likes to push me when we work out, and I think one of his proudest moments working out with me is when his workout made me throw-up.  This particular workout was in the cross-fit style, and had us paired up, going against other pairs of Troopers and Cadets.  For the workout, each pair would share the following exercises in this order, not moving on to the next exercise until the previous was completed: 100 burpees; 100 calorie row; 100 barbell thrusters; 100 ab-mat sit-ups; 100 push presses; 100 box jumps; 1-mile run with a 14-pound medicine ball.  The first set was a challenge.  The second set started to kick my butt.  The third set and following got much harder, until I couldn’t even do the box-jumps, but had to substitute 2 box step-ups for every 1 box jump.  As each set progressed, Anthony did a greater percentage of the exercise.  I even had another sergeant help me with the box step-ups, because I was very gassed.
    When it comes to salvation, we might feel like we just have to muscle through and do it ourselves.  God gives us the rules (the workout), and we have to do it in order to get to heaven (rest).  While I’m loathe to compare Anthony to God, because he already has a very-healthy sense of self-worth, what we often find is that the harder we try to keep up, the more we fall behind.  We give it our all, but get more and more tired, until we are exhausted and don’t feel like we can do anything else.  And, unlike working out with others, you can’t have someone else do the exercise for you.
    So today’s first reading provides a great reminder for us: Christ already saved us!  His sacrifice, not ours, however good they may be, won reconciliation for us and the Father.  Before Christ, we tried all sorts of things to be saved: living according to the law, offering different sacrifices that God Himself had told us to make.  But that old covenant, written in stone, could not bring us into right relationship with God.  As the Apostle says elsewhere, it was only a tutor for us, to know how wrong our passions led us astray.  The new covenant, sealed in the Precious Blood of Christ, opened for us our eternal inheritance of heaven.  
    But so often, we try to do it all ourselves.  We live as if our entrance into the heavenly Temple depends only on us and our moral rectitude.  But if we live that way, we become more and more tired, are able to do less and less, and end up in failure.
    So, does that mean we can say that we simply believe in the Lord, confess that the Savior died for our sins, get baptized, and then never worry about going anywhere other than heaven?  While that is what some of our Protestant brothers and sisters seem to espouse, that is the other extreme, which we also need to avoid.  Rather, virtue lies in the middle between trying to earn our salvation (which we cannot do) and presuming our salvation (which we should not do).  Our response is to put faith in what God has done (which we could never do) while also working out our salvation with fear and trembling, to paraphrase St. Paul.
    Our good actions find their goodness inasmuch as they are connected to Christ.  By themselves, they do no more than the blood of goats or calves.  But if we unite to the cross our daily efforts to live in according with the covenant written in our hearts, prophesied by Jeremiah and fulfilled by Christ, then we will get somewhere.  We will advance in holiness because our efforts are now connecting to the “effort” that truly made a difference, the sacrifice of the unblemished Lamb of God.  To go back to my cross-fit analogy, it’s as if God has already done the entire workout and won us the prize.  But He wants us to engage in it because it will help us become more like Him.  Still, He knows we cannot do it all on our own, so He’s right there, by our side, picking up our slack, doing what we can’t, and encouraging us to do more than we think is possible, because all things are possible with Him.
    That is the day that Abraham saw from afar and in which he rejoiced.  Abraham longed for the day when God would close the gap that we had created by our disobedience.  He looked forward to a time when he would not simply have to act by faith, and presume his own efforts would be enough.  He rejoiced in God accomplishing what no mere human could: defeating sin and death and opening up eternal salvation.  And Abraham’s faith was not disappointed.
    So, by all means, in these last two weeks of Lent, may we not slack off on our Lenten disciplines and penances.  Work hard to put to death all within us that is not of God.  But do so knowing that God has already saved us; salvation doesn’t depend on us.  But God does want us to cooperate with Him in the work of salvation, complete the race, and enjoy the prize of eternal rest with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

The Desire for Life

Fifth Sunday of Lent–Third Scrutiny
    We spend so much of our energy trying to avoid or cheat death.  “The experts” suggest foods that we should eat or not eat.  Companies make large amounts of money selling creams, vitamins, and pills which aim to prolong life, or even just the appearance of life.  One of the things I have learned with my work with the Michigan State Police is that a drowning person will push a potential rescuer under water if that Trooper is not prepared in order to try to stay above water and not drown.  A person in the cold will start to lose function in most parts of the body, except the brain and the loins, the two seats of preserving current life and perpetuating life, which shut down last.  While some may say that death is natural, the fact that we try to avoid death at all costs shows that God made us for immortality, not simply like the animals who are born into this world and then die and decay.
    As Catholics, we know that death entered the world through our disobedience to God, the source of life.  God further expelled us from the garden and the tree of immortality, which some Church Fathers interpret as a mercy, as it meant that we wouldn’t live forever with sin, but that the reign of sin in our earthly bodies would end at death.  But, even with this, we have an innate sense that God made us to live forever with Him.  And so we fight death as much as possible.
    And while we cannot support euthanasia, assisted suicide, or suicide, because every life has value, and only God is the Lord of Life, we all have to die.  In order to get to heaven, we have to die.  Not before our time, but as a necessary preamble to eternal life, hopefully in heaven, death will come.
    But we know of another kind of death that we must undergo in order to live, and that is the death of baptism. St. Paul speaks very clearly about death needing to occur in order for the spirit to live, and then the body to be raised on the last day.  He also says in Romans chapter 6, verse 3: “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”  Water was an ancient symbol of death, because it wasn’t as sure and steady as the ground.  The waters of chaos swirled about before God ordered them and created light and life in the beginning.  In the early church, the priest fully submerged the elect in the waters.  And anyone afraid of water knows that being under water you can’t breathe, and, if it takes too long, you drown and die.  Baptism is death.
    But that submersion did not signify the end.  The priest would then also raise the elect out of the waters where he or she could breathe, signifying new life.  St. Paul in Romans, chapter 6 continues:
 

We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.  For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be untied with him in the resurrection.

Christ died, and so rose to new life.  In baptism we, too, die, and rise to new life with Christ, with a downpayment here on earth, and the fulfillment in heaven, if we stay faithful to Christ.

    Lazarus, then, and his death and resurrection, prefigures both Christ’s death and resurrection, as well as our own death and rising to new life through baptism.  The four days of his death are like the entire life of the Catholic after baptism, where new life is present, but death seems to reign.  Four score is 80 years, and the psalms describe the life of a strong person as 80 years.  So the four days are like a full life.  But then, after our death to sin in baptism, and staying faithful to dying to sin during our earthly life, we rise to new life with Christ, as He calls us out from the tomb.  
    Dylan and Isaiah, you are about to go into the tomb in just a couple more weeks.  At the Easter Vigil you will die with Christ in the waters of baptism, but because of that death you will also get to receive new life from Christ, and a pledge of future glory for when your earthly life is done.  In some sense, you life after baptism will be a practice in dying.  Each day you will have opportunities to die to your sinful self, and stay alive with Christ.  You will die to your own sinful past, and choose to nail your own will to the cross along with anything in you that does not imitate the life of God.  
    But do not be afraid of that death, because it brings life.  Only fear the eternal death that comes when we reject God and His ways in our daily actions and words.  This earthly death may seem scary, like holding your breath for a long time under water, but if you stay faithful to God you will rise to new life.     
    So do not fight the death of all that is not of God.  Embrace the penances and pain that come from denying our sinful passions.  Because if we die that death, starting with our death in the waters of baptism, we have a sure and certain hope that we will live with Christ for ever in joy beyond all description.