18 March 2024

Made for More

Passion Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  This is the time of year that new assignments start coming out.  Just last Monday we received the notice of the movement of a number of pastors and parochial vicars to new assignments.  I was subsequently speaking with a brother priest and telling him how I received an email a couple of months ago from a parishioner at Immaculate Conception parish in Milan, Michigan (not to be confused with Milan, Italy) who asked me to apply for that parish because I am a young priest with lots of energy.  I joked with my classmate that I am not as young as I used to be.  And, besides that, I really feel that St. Matthew is the perfect fit for me (and I hope you feel that way, too, at least most of the time).  That’s not to say that we don’t have any challenges here and ways that we can continue to grow, not only in population but in our relationship with Christ.  But I really feel like I belong here, that we compliment each other well, and that we challenge each other to grow as a parish family.  As many of you live outside of the territorial boundaries of this parish, I know that you, too, feel like St. Matthew is a perfect place, and you witness to that by driving past other parishes that are geographically closer to you.

My installation as pastor of St. Matthew
    But while St. Matthew seems like the most perfect assignment I’ve had so far as a priest, and hopefully the most perfect parish for you, our epistle today is a good reminder that this is not all there is.  Christ is the High Priest, the Supreme Pontiff, of a greater and more perfect temple, not made with hands, in heaven.  As St. Paul says, we have here no lasting city.  We are made for heaven, and that is the temple into which we should all strive to enter.
    It is so easy to focus on what is here below.  Our church building can rightly be called beautiful as it reflects the truth of what this place proposes to be: a house of God, who is utterly transcendent and awesome.  The precious materials like marble and gold leaf offer to God the best of what we have for His glory.  The images of the saints throughout this church, like in our stained-glass windows, the medallions near the ceiling, and the statues (which are now covered) remind us that what we participate in is not just an earthly affair, but is the meeting point between heaven and earth, where saints and angels worship God together with us.  In this place we not only remember but participate in the offering of Christ in the Holy of Holies, no longer with the blood of a dumb animal, but with the precious blood of the Son of God, the blood which speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.  We join ourselves to the one Mediator between God and men, the God-Man Jesus Christ, who invites us into a covenant not carved on stone by the hand of God, but carved into our hearts; a covenant not marked by the cutting away of flesh in circumcision, but the cutting away of that which separates us from God, original sin; a covenant which brought not temporary purification, but opened up for us the possibility of eternal life in heaven if we keep our wedding garments clean in the Blood of the true Unblemished Lamb in which they were washed.
    But God reminds us today through the readings that His covenant surpasses anything that came before, and, in fact, fulfills them all.  Even that great covenant with Abraham, wherein God made Abraham and his descendants the People of God, looked forward to the covenant with Christ, as Christ Himself noted in the Gospel that Abraham looked forward to the day when God would take union with man and redeem man once and for all.  The Jews picked up stones to kill our Lord because they recognized that Christ was not claiming to be another prophet or religious leader like so many that had come before Him.  The Savior claimed that Abraham rejoiced in Him, which made Himself equal to God.  He also used in some way, that sacred name of God that God Himself revealed to Moses: I AM.  Christ is a prophet, but also greater than the prophets, and the God who inspired the prophets.
    For us, then, the Lord invites us not only to keep in mind His Divinity, but that, while we exercise good stewardship of this earth and all that lives in it, we also keep our minds fixed on what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father.  As good as this earth is, our time on it will end, either by death or by Christ’s return in glory at the parousia.  At the end of time, what is good will be perfected and what is bad will be cast away.  Even the sacraments will end in heaven, because we will no longer need material reality to mediate God’s presence.  We will be able to behold God face to face, no longer dimly, as in a mirror.  The indelible marks of the sacraments will still remain–baptism and confirmation, and for those in holy order, the mark of ordination–but no longer will we baptize, confirm, or ordain, because Christ will be all in all.
    So while we remain on this earth, we also do what so many advise against: keep our heads in the clouds.  Not in the sense that we are absent minded or distracted, but that our attention is ever-split between earth and heaven, keeping before us always the destination for which God created us.  As good as life can be here, something even greater awaits those who remain faithful to the covenant sealed in the Precious Blood of Christ our God.
    So yes, let’s continue to build up St. Matthew parish.  Let’s draw others to this beautiful House of God.  It truly feels like where I belong, and I hope you feel like it’s where you belong as well.  But, even so, may we also remember the tabernacle not built with hands, greater and more perfect than our tabernacle here, where Christ, our High Priest, eternally intercedes for us, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

11 March 2024

Two Approaches

Fourth Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Sometimes we have Scripture passages that we really like, that “hit us in the feels” or that motivate us to follow Christ more deeply.  Other times there are Scripture passages with which we struggle, which seem harder to digest.  And perhaps St. Paul’s epistle today is one of the latter.  

    St. Paul tells us today about the two covenants: that of Sinai (the law) and that of Christ (freedom in Him).  And St. Paul seems to suggest that we should get rid of the law because it connects us to slavery, where as the covenant in the Blood of Christ gives us the true freedom of the heavenly Jerusalem.  But how can we square this with the fact that we are still supposed to follow the Ten Commandments?  Certainly, we don’t have to follow all of the dietary and ritual laws of Judaism, and every time we eat bacon we can thank God for that.  But what does St. Paul mean?  Especially when we consider that Christ Himself said, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.  I have come, not to abolish, but to fulfill.”  
    What the Apostle speaks of today is how God saves us.  And this was and is a rather big point in how we view salvation, which still challenges us today.  Both in the Epistle to the Galatians and in the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul outlines how the law doesn’t save, but existed as a tutor to help us grow in holiness.  It didn’t gain for us salvation.  And the Apostle to the Gentiles shares how no one, once God gave the law, ever lived up to all its 613 precepts perfectly.  
    Christ came and gave us a new law, one that built upon the old law, but surpassed it, as much as light surpasses shadow and reality surpasses sign.  Christ fulfilled the law perfectly, and even took upon Himself the punishment or curse due to those who did not follow the law, as the law says, “Cursed be he who hangs on a tree,” and Christ allowed Himself to be hung on the tree of the cross so that He could take away the curse from us and grant us everlasting life.  This new law is seen especially in Matthew, chapter five, as Christ, the New Moses, gives us the Beatitudes and reinterprets the law to go beyond simply “Thou shalt not,” and move into the positive area of blessings and fulness of life.  These are the teachings, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…”.  The fulfillment of the law that Christ talks about is, from the point of action, much more difficult, as it’s easier to not murder someone than it is not to hold anger in the heart, or not to have sex with someone other than your spouse than it is to avoid even lustful glances at others.  
    But, going deeper, the dichotomy that St. Paul points out between the covenant of Sinai and the covenant of Calvary points to a more profound difference: do we save ourselves or is salvation a gift?  If the law saves, then salvation is something that I achieve for myself.  I may ask God for help; I may lean on others to support me in following each commandment, but I am the main actor in my salvation.  On the other hand, if Christ saves me, then I have a part to play in my salvation, but it is a supporting role, not the lead in the movie.  And if Christ saves me, then if I mess up, it doesn’t mean salvation is lost to me necessarily.  It simply means that I have temporarily interrupted salvation.  But if I save myself and I do not fulfill the requirements of the law, then there is no hope for me; I have spent my chance for redemption and have nothing but despair for my eternal future.
    This is the good news of salvation: salvation doesn’t depend on me!  And, at least as far as I, personally, am concerned, that’s great news!  Because I don’t always do the good I intend, and I sometimes do the bad I do not intend to do.  The freedom comes from knowing that I am not my own savior, so I don’t have to act as if everything depends on me.  Because it doesn’t.  If everything depends on me, then I am in slavery, striving with all of who I am to follow a law that I am bound to break at one time or another.  
    So, the Law does not save.  Christ saves.  And thanks be to God for that.  But does that mean that I can forget the Ten Commandments?  Does that mean that my choices don’t matter?  Of course not.  Again, the new law of freedom means we act in a certain way that goes even beyond the old law.  Christ has won for us salvation, so that we don’t have to earn it (because we can’t earn it).  But in order to receive that gift of salvation, we still have to follow Christ and conform ourselves to Him.  Because really, being in heaven is a matter of being united to Christ.  If we are united to Christ, then heaven is the logical destination for us because Christ is already there and we are joined to Christ.  But, if we sever ourselves from Christ by doing things that are contradictory to who Christ is, then we cannot hope to be in heaven because Christ is in heaven and we have separated ourselves from Him.
    So we still do our best to avoid: having other false gods; taking God’s name in vain; working on the sabbath (the Lord’s Day, now, rather than Saturday); disobeying our parents; murdering others; committing adultery; stealing; lying; and coveting our neighbor’s spouse or goods.  And we even go beyond that.  We ask God to help us avoid: even other swear words, wrath, lustful thoughts; to be content with what we have, mean what we say, and not give in to envy.  But we do so as our response to what God has done for us, not trying to earn His love or eternal salvation.  While we can still reject salvation, our salvation is not up to us, in the end; Christ has already accomplished it for us.  We merely need to show that we want it (which sometimes is a bit of challenge because of our fallen nature).  But God also gives us the Eucharist, the true Flesh and Blood of our Risen Lord, to help conform us to Christ and to strengthen us so that we can choose salvation and reject damnation.  May our worthy reception of the Body and Blood of Christ today and each time we go to Mass help us to choose the freedom that is ours in Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen. 

04 March 2024

The Strong Man and the Stronger Man

Third Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  For many men, especially as they’re in adolescence or a young adulthood, one of the worst things you can say is, “You look like your mother.”  I can’t be sure if this applies to daughters being told they look like their dad, but I can’t imagine a young girl wanting to hear she looks like a guy.  The physical comparisons, whether between mother and son or father and daughter might be somewhat true, but, at least for guys, it’s not the sort of thing you want to hear. 
    In a different vein entirely, but still something that shouldn’t be compared is our Lord and the powers of evil.  Christ was not afraid to use physical force with objects (as in the cleansing of the Temple) or sharp words with people (as in his rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees) to get his point across.  So the fact that He used neither of these in today’s Gospel demonstrates just how patient Christ could be.  There He is, working to free people from the dominion of the evil one, and people start surmising that He must be doing the work of the evil one.  I can’t say that I’d be as patient as our Lord in such a situation.

St. Irenaeus
    Instead, the Savior asks them how Satan is supposed to survive if he’s undermining his own work?  He says the words that Abraham Lincoln would paraphrase some eighteen hundred years later: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  And then Christ speaks about His own work.  The strong man in this explanation is Satan, but the stronger man is Christ.  St. Irenaeus the early second century bishop of Lyons and martyr, writes in his magnum opus Adversus Haereses:
 

For as in the beginning [Satan] enticed man to transgress his Maker’s law, and thereby got him into his power; yet his power consists in transgression and apostasy, and with these he bound man [to himself]; so again, on the other hand, it was necessary that through man himself he should, when conquered, be bound with the same chains with which he had bound man, in order that man, being set free, might return to his Lord, leaving to [Satan] those bonds by which he himself had been fettered, that is, sin.  For when Satan is bound, man is set free; since none can enter a strong man’s house and spoil his goods, unless he first bind the strong man himself.

We are the spoils, the ones that Satan first duped, but that Christ freed from slavery to Satan, while Christ bound up Satan and put an end to his dominion over us.
    But, Christ also notes in this Gospel that even with His work of freeing us from Satan, it’s not as if Satan just gives up.  Christ does His work of freeing us, but we have to continue to cooperate in that work by standing guard against falling into that slavery again.  Because, as Christ noted, demons may be cast out, but he may return, and may bring his friends to try to wrest us back to the power of the enemy, so that we are more under Satan’s control the second time than the first.  As St. Peter warns us in his first epistle, the devil is prowling like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.  If we knew a lion was outside, we would be very careful about watching where it was, and making sure we were protected from an attack. 
    How do protect ourselves?  The works of Lent are a good starting point.  Prayer is a great way to guard against the enemy.  A daily habit of prayer is not only good to strengthen our relationship with our Beloved, a strong relationship with our Beloved keeps us from looking for other lovers.  Some people find that in the moment of strong temptations, prayer can help greatly.  Others find that, in the midst of strong temptations, it is very hard to pray.  But daily prayer, especially the Rosary, can assist in keeping watch against attacks of the enemy.
    Fasting also helps us to fight off temptation.  It may not always seem obvious how fasting helps, but we are a union of body and soul, and so when we discipline one, we discipline the other.  Fasting is intended to raise our mind to heavenly things, since we are not focusing as much on satisfying the body.  It reminds the body, which is so often the way that Satan tries to get us to follow him instead of God, that just because the body wants something does not mean that it gets it.  Bodily desires have to be subordinated to the soul, which has to be subordinated to the will of God.  And fasting helps to put that divinely established order back into line.
    Lastly, confession is an important part of regaining freedom and remaining free from the grasp of the enemy.  Of course, if we have fallen into mortal sin, confession restores us to sanctifying grace, the grace that allows us to be received into heaven.  It removes the obstacles to God’s grace that we have put up, and unshackles us from attachment to the enemy.  But even if we only have venial sins, confession strengthens us to work on avoiding those sins, and helps us to avoid falling into other sins, which can be more grave.  Confession not only treats the disease, but also helps prevent us from getting the disease in the first place.  Many exorcists have said that the best way to make sure that we are not susceptible to demonic oppression or possession is to make frequent confessions, since confession means that we want Jesus to be Lord in our life and we wish to serve Him, not the enemy. 
    In the end, resisting the devil means doing the will of God.  God does not want us to be slaves of Satan, but wants us to be God’s children, united with Christ.  Christ always works to free all those created in the image and likeness of God from enslavement to sin so that they can live in the freedom and joy of the children of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

26 February 2024

More Than Rules

Second Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  The Church Fathers have consistently taught that the Gospel we heard today, that of the Transfiguration, allowed Christ to assuage the distress of the announcement of His Passion, so that the Apostles could know that, after the Passion, the glory of the Resurrection would follow. 

    The Transfiguration also demonstrates what Christ desires to happen to us if He joins us to Himself through Holy Baptism.  The glorification of the head also means the glorification of the body.  God does not keep His glory to Himself, but shares it with those whom Holy Baptism joins to Himself and those who, through a holy life, keep that union strong. 
    And during our Lenten observances, as we discipline ourselves and “waste away” from fasting and abstaining, it is good to keep our eyes on the prize and realize for what God made us.  Because God did not solely destine us for this earth and all of its fallenness.  God made us so that we could live with Him eternally in heaven, and the glory that He has by nature He would share with us by grace.  We, too, are meant to be transfigured.
    So often Catholicism is simply presented as rules to follow.  St. Paul today tells us not to give in to fornication and not to give in to lust, as do the pagans.  And in this way, St. Paul tells us, God will make us holy.  Certainly, many people think about the Church’s teaching on sex as “don’t do [fill in the blank].” 
    But the Gospel reminds us that Catholicism is not, at its heart, about rules.  Catholicism is about letting God transfigure us to be more like Himself, which is how He made us.  Rules can often seem very external, but God desires that His grace not only affect our actions, the externals, but also affect our entire being, both externals and internals.  The chief complaint from the Lord about the Pharisees was that they only cared about the externals, so He calls them cups where only the outside is washed, while the inside remains dirty, or white-washed sepulchers, finely decorated on the outside, but full of death on the inside.  The catch-word for Lent, repent, comes from the Greek πœ‡πœ€πœπ›ΌπœˆπœŠπœ€πœ„πœπœ€, meaning a change of mind or a change of being. 
    And as we hear St. Peter say that it is good that they are at Mt. Tabor, and should stay there in three tents, even he, in a sense, thinks only about the externals.  Christ allows His divinity to shine through, and Peter is awe-filled.  But it doesn’t require any change of his own life.  He can simply watch the Lord and bask in His brilliance.  But a disciple is not just about “me and Jesus,” to use a common Christian phrase.  Following the Lord means that we allow God to transform our life, which pushes us out to share that new life with others.  When we conform our lives to God, we conform them to love, which is diffusive; it wants to be shared with others, not kept to ourselves. 
    This transformation cannot only be on the outside.  St. Paul, elsewhere, talks about the glory of the law, which pales in comparison to the glory of righteousness.  Moses, the Apostle writes, had this glory, but the glory faded, which is why Moses covered his face: so the Israelites didn’t see the slow fade of the glory.  The Law had some transfiguring effect, but not a total transfiguration.  Moses could give the law, but grace and truth came through Christ, as we hear in St. John’s prologue at each Mass. 
    It is all too easy to “do the right things.”  It is easier to simply do the external things that we are told that we need to do than to allow those things that we are supposed to do change us, both outside and inside.  But the point of the externals is to change the internals.  God does not only want us to look good, He wants us to be good.  And so those things that we do should change our interior dispositions to be more like Christ.
    So as we engage in our Lenten disciplines, ask yourselves: is this discipline opening me up to the grace of God so that I can be transformed?  Or is it only an outward action that does nothing to my interior spiritual life?  And if we’re not being transformed, it’s not that we stop our penances.  We can’t simply eat meat on Fridays because we don’t experience how abstaining from meat on Fridays transforms us to be more like Christ.  What it does mean is that we have to examine how that practice, or any others that we undertake, can make us more receptive to God’s grace.  Maybe by not eating meat by choice, I ponder those who cannot choose what they want to eat because they have no money.  My heart grows in love for the poor, and I am led to consider how I can help them according to my own state in life.  I no longer see them as “others” who annoy me, but as beloved of Christ, and even Christ Himself, as He says in Matthew 25, for whom I have a responsibility to care. 
    I know I preached about externals and internals on Ash Wednesday, but the Gospel of the Transfiguration reminds us that Christ did not come only to change religious practices.  Christ came to make us more like God, not on our own terms, like what Adam and Eve tried to do when they disobeyed God, but on God’s terms, with a transformation that shines more brightly.  May our Lenten practices not only discipline our bodies, but also help us to be more like Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

19 February 2024

Are You Saved?

First Sunday of Lent
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  Are you saved?  This is a question that we can get from some of our Protestant brothers and sisters when we encounter them.  Or we might hear them talking about how they were saved on a particular date or at a particular age.  A week ago yesterday I attended the funeral of the mother of the Flint Post Administrator for the Michigan State Police.  She was baptist, and the preacher asked that very question to us, and talked about how Nadine was saved at a particular age when she accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior.
    We as Catholics don’t use that language.  And so when we’re asked, perhaps we don’t know how to answer.  But as we begin Lent, it’s a good thing to explore.  St. Peter in his first letter [today] talks about being saved by baptism, which was prefigured by Noah being saved in the ark from the great Flood.  In terms of baptism, we can point to a day in which we were saved from original sin and became a child of God in the Son of God and, therefore, a member of the Church.  Baptism is a one-time event because it forever claims us for God and washes away, not only original sin, but any other sins that we have committed up to that point (if we’re not baptized as an infant, who wouldn’t have any personal sins that would need to be wiped away).  When it comes to baptism, we can rightly say that we were saved on that day.
    However, baptism isn’t only about a day.  Baptism begins a life of following Christ.  It’s not as if that one day means that we never have to worry about salvation after that.  Even though original sin is washed away, we still retain concupiscence, a desire for lesser goods.  While many Christians reject the idea of concupiscence after baptism, it seems quite obvious from human existence.  We probably can’t count the number of times even in just one day that we are tempted to do things that we know we shouldn’t do.  It doesn’t mean we have to give in to those temptations.  Through baptism, we have all the graces we need to avoid all mortal sins throughout our life.  But we still want what we shouldn’t want, as St. Paul himself describes.  Adam and Eve, who had no sin at first, were still tempted to reject God, and their choice to reject God affected all of us.  And Satan even tempted our Lord in the desert, as the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent describes.  Our Lord had no sin whatsoever, and yet, due to His human nature, Satan thought he could get Christ to give in to lesser goods, just as Satan had tempted our first parents. 
    So, in this sense, we can say that we are being saved, in as much as we are choosing each day, more or less, to follow Christ.  To the extent that we follow Him, we are participating more in the salvation that God first offered to us in Holy Baptism.  To the extent that we choose lesser goods, things that we shouldn’t do, we are participating less in the salvation that God first offered us in Holy Baptism.
    And that leads to the last aspect of salvation for us as Catholics: we hope to be saved.  Life is our time of accepting or rejecting God and the promises of Holy Baptism to live as a disciple.  Each day we move closer to or farther away from eternal life in heaven.  There is no staying put or coasting.  But at some point, we will have cemented our decision because we won’t have any more decisions to make because we’re dead.  At that point, our life will witness to whether or not we accepted the salvation that God offered us in Holy Baptism and we will receive our eternal reward in Heaven (or the time preparing for Heaven in Purgatory) or our enteral punishment in Hell.  Once we die, there are no more second chances.  And so we hope that the decisions we make throughout our life show that we have accepted the salvation that Christ won for us by His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  Only then will we know for sure if we are saved, though we have hope, because of baptism and because of being in a state of grace, that is, without mortal sin, at the time of our death. 

Powers Catholic Varsity Hockey Team
    While all analogies limp, think of it like being a hockey player.  When you first were able to skate on your own and hold a stick, you were, in a very beginning sense, a hockey player.  Sure, you didn’t have the ability to skate all that well, or the power from your muscles to push the puck far, but you were at the beginning.  Later, you developed more skills, and grew in your ability as a hockey player.  You also had times where you could decide to follow your desire to be a hockey player, or you could have chosen something else to do and abandon hockey.  Even for those of you who won the State Championship last year, you would each probably acknowledge ways that you can still grow as a hockey player.  Maybe we could, using this analogy, say that making to the NHL means that you are truly a hockey player, something some of you may hope to achieve someday.  So you were a hockey player when you just started out; you are still working on being a hockey player now; and you hope to truly be a hockey player in the NHL someday. 
    But for all of us, hockey players and non-hockey players alike, our goal is to continue to accept the gift of salvation that God offers us each day.  And our Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are meant to train us in a special way during this time of year to be able to choose the higher goods of following God’s will, and say no to the lesser goods of following only our will.  May those things that we have given up and the extra things we’re doing during Lent; may the extra prayers we say as we talk more and listen more to God; and may the generosity that we show to those in need during our Lenten season continue us on the path of salvation that God has set out for us [the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen].

12 February 2024

How We Build

Anniversary of the Dedication of St. Matthew Church

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  When we think about this building, we think of the many parts that came together to make this such a beautiful church.  We have the brickwork, the plaster, the doorframes, the marble, the paint, and everything that fits together in just a particular way so as to make up this church building.  Those different materials and items had to be shaped and placed together particularly so that we could have a temple in which we worship God.  They didn’t simply exist and magically come together.  It took work.  But with the work accomplished, we can rightfully say that we are the most beautiful church in Genesee County, and one of the most beautiful in the Diocese of Lansing.
    St. Peter tells us in his first epistle that we are living stones, being built up into a spiritual house to offer acceptable sacrifice to God through Jesus Christ.  This building is important because it reminds us of what we are called to be.  We each have our different gifts and talents.  But when we are shaped and placed together, united in a single purpose, we form something beautiful that aids in the worship of God. 
    As we celebrate the Anniversary of the Dedication of this church, I wanted to share with you what the leadership team (me, Amanda Williams, Mike Wilson, and Jason Tower) discerned for how we will continue into the future as a parish; how we exist as the invisible temple that this visible temple makes present.  We, with the help of the Catholic Leadership Institute, worked hard over three one-day sessions in the fall, to make sure that we clearly understood and could articulate what makes St. Matthew Parish St. Matthew Parish, as well as how God calls us, not only statically, but dynamically, to continue His work of spreading the Gospel.  And I want to communicate with you our parish purpose, vision, values, and priorities, with the hope that we can each find ways to work together to be purposeful, guided by our vision and values, and working towards the priorities that we believe God has given to St. Matthew.
    The parish purpose and vision give us the “why” of St. Matthew.  Why do we exist as a parish?  What motivates us and moves us?  Our purpose, as discerned by my leadership team, “is to use beauty and truth to inspire and develop disciples to transform the secular order by the grace of God, for His glorification and the edification of man.”  That’s a mouthful, I know.  But basically, we focused on two of the transcendentals, beauty and truth, as a way that we form disciples.  And why are we trying to form disciples?  Because the world is not as it should be.  The world is not as God created it.  But we can work together, by His grace, to make it more like it should be, more according to the plan of God.  And this not only glorifies God, but also builds us up into the people God wants us to be.  You can see this purpose each week on the front page of our bulletin.  It’s meant to be a reminder to each of us of why we exist.
    As to our vision, the big view of what we want to be and accomplish, “We are a Roman Catholic parish in the heart of Flint that worships God with reverence, forms disciples, and serves the physical and spiritual needs of our neighbors in communion with the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.”  Our purpose could be applied to any parish.  Our vision puts our purpose in our particular context of where we are (“in the heart of Flint”) and what we do (“worships God…forms disciples…serves the…needs of our neighbors”).  But what we do is not by our own imagining, as if we create the Church.  Our vision happens within the context of the one Church that Christ established, which, as Lumen gentium states, “subsists in the Catholic Church.” 
    That vision is made manifest in our values as a parish.  The leadership team discerned three values of St. Matthew Parish that are important to everything we do: reverence; faithfulness; and family/community.  By reverence, we mean that we “strive to promote the awe and respect that is owed to God.”  How do we do this?  By following the rubrics the Church sets out for the celebration of the sacred liturgy; by allowing time for sacred silence so that God can speak in our hearts; and by appropriate posture and dress, so that the way we carry ourselves and present ourselves in parish life manifests how we live in wonder and awe in God’s presence.
    By faithfulness, we mean that we “support fidelity to the Magisterium and the 2,000 year history of the Church.”  So many love to be only what is happening now.  We stay faithful to what the Church officially teaches, and how that has been revealed to us by God over the entire history of the Church, not just before or after the Second Vatican Council.  How do we do this?  By incorporating legitimate liturgical traditions; by promoting orthodoxy and refuting heresy; and by striving to imitate Christ in all that we do.  In this way we show that we are truly Catholic: welcoming all that is good, while preserving the world as salt from all that is bad.
    Lastly, by family/community, we mean the value we place on every human life from natural conception to natural death.  How do we do this?  By supporting families of all ages; by welcoming families into our parish by what we say, but also by what we do; and by helping families create a strong domestic church, a strong place in their homes where God is present. 
    Based on these values, then, we are currently prioritizing the support of the Domestic Church, the family; evangelization and apologetics so that we can share the faith with others; and community outreach, so that we may serve Christ in the least of his brothers, as He says in Matthew 25. 
    So what?  A lot of ink was spilled, but does it make a difference?  Again, if we are going to continue to be built into the spiritual temple of God, then we have to have an organizing plan.  We cannot simply exist and hope that we’ll all come together, anymore than the bricks, plaster, paint, marble, etc. just existed and then came together without any effort.  All that we do as a parish should fit within these paradigms, paradigms that we did not create so much as discern that God wants us to use.  When you’re donating your money; when you’re volunteering; when you’re asking for this or that activity or program; all of it should fit into one of these categories that I have outlined for you today.  And if we do that, we will continue to grow as a parish, and form a new generation of disciples who will carry out the Great Commission which was given to us by Jesus Christ [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen].

05 February 2024

The Generosity of the Sower

Sexagesima
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Conservation of energy: in the world of physics and chemistry, this law states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant and is conserved over time.  In my world it means that I want the least amount of work for the greatest amount of results.  I don’t want to work any harder than I have to work.  Whatever effort I put in should yield some positive result. 

    God does not seem to operate that way, as Christ tells us in the parable.  We have a farmer who has seeds, from which he expects some sort of yield of crops.  But he’s sowing seed on the road, and on rocky soil, and among thorns, and finally, among good soil.  What a waste!  Any simple person trying to plant grass would know that if you throw seed on the road, it will get trampled upon or eaten by birds; if you throw seed on rocks it won’t have enough place to expand its roots and gain nutrients; if you throw seed among thorns it won’t grow above the thorns.  Here is the farmer putting all this work in when it, most likely, will not yield any results.  And remember that, in our Lord’s day, you couldn’t simply go to Home Depot and pick up a pack of seeds.  The seeds you had were likely from the harvest the year before.  You were working with a limited quantity.
    Most often when I’m preaching about this Gospel, I focus on the type of soil that our souls are.  And it can yield real spiritual fruit to meditate on how open we are to receiving the word of God and letting it take root in our lives.  But today I want to focus on the farmer, and how it reveals to us how God operates and, therefore, how God wants us to operate.
    God is wasteful when it comes to His Word.  He does not scrimp and save.  He shares His Word in ways that otherwise would make no sense.  And why?  Because, as St. Paul tells us in his epistle to St. Timothy, God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  God shares His Word with those who probably will not receive it, but just in case they can, He sows those seeds anyway.  And, unlike soil, people can change.  Roads and rocks and thorns can become good soil.  So God thinks nothing of scarcity of resources, but shares His life with everyone, in the hopes that something will bear fruit.
    And we see this in other parables, too.  In the parable of the lost sheep, the shepherd leaves behind the 99 sheep who are doing just fine in order to find the 1 who is lost.  No shepherd in his right mind would do this.  The math doesn’t make sense, unless, of course, you are the lost sheep whom the Good Shepherd finds.  In the parable about the lost coin, the woman tears her house apart looking for that one coin, and on finding it throws a party, which probably would cost more than that coin.  In the parable about the lost son, more commonly known as the Prodigal, or Wasteful, Son, no father with any sense would have welcomed back a son who told him to drop dead and give him his share of the inheritance now, then wasted it on loose living, and then returns to live as a servant.  But the father runs out to meet his son, and throws a party at his return.  In all these parables, God does what in earthly calculations seems inconceivable.  He is generous to the point of absurdity. 
    This would be too good to be true, if not for the fact that the description of the Father, the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, comes to us from the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  When Truth Incarnate tells you something, you can take it to the bank.
    But the parables are not meant only to give us the warm fuzzies about how God acts.  If we are truly disciples of the Lord, and the Lord reveals to us the Father, then we are called to act as Christ depicts the Father in each of these parables.  We are called to be pazzo d’amore, as St. Catherine of Siena says, crazy in love.  When a person is in love, a new logic takes over, and the love of the beloved becomes the most important. 
    So with our faith and work at evangelization: how do we spread God’s word and God’s grace?  Are we penny-pinchers, very careful with whom we share the Word?  Or are we generous, even to the point of wastefulness, with trying to gain others for Christ?
Fr. Gerard Timoner, OP
    I saw a talk from the Master of the Order of Preachers, Fr. Gerard Timoner, and I can’t even give you the exact context or date, but it fits well here.  He is addressing Dominicans, and especially their charism to preach.  But he uses two examples of those who have care for others in the Gospel: shepherds and fishermen.  To paraphrase and summarize, he talks about how shepherds are those who care for what is already there.  Their responsibility is to make sure that the sheep are safe from the wolves, and even to go after lost sheep when they wander away.  A shepherd has to make sure the sheep are led to good pastures.  It is, in some sense, more static.  A fisherman, instead, has nothing to guard.  He has to go fishing.  His role is going out to catch the fish and bring them into the nets; he cannot stand along the shoreline and wait for the fish to come to him.  In reality, the Dominican Master says, the vocation of a Dominican is both shepherd and fisherman: both to guard what is already there, as well as to go out and catch what is not there yet.  I would argue that our vocation as disciples mimics that of the Dominicans: we have a duty to guard the truth in our lives–family, friends, etc.  But we cannot simply hope that other people will simply come to us because we guard the truth so well.  We also have to go out and catch others and bring them into our nets.  In a sense, we are called to catch fish, and then turn them into sheep.  We invite people to follow Christ, and then help them stay in His one Church. 
    When it comes to our secular life, I’m all about doing the least to get the most results.  But when it comes to our life of faith, when it comes to sharing the Gospel, Christ invites us to mimic our extravagant Father, who shares His grace and His Word even when it doesn’t seem to make sense, and who lives and reigns with the Son and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen.  

All Things to All People

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fr. Anthony and his sisters, (l-r) Amanda and Allison
    As any good parent knows, you can’t treat each child the same and expect the same results.  Each child is unique and has different personalities and means of motivation, even if there are similarities.  In my own family, all three of us children generally wanted to excel in what we did.  We generally all behaved, but we also all got into trouble in different ways.  For me, the oldest (the one whose perfection the parents kept trying to duplicate by having other children), usually simply setting out the expectation was good enough to keep me in line.  If not, a little punishment went a long way.  For the middle child, all my dad had to do was look at her the wrong way and she would start crying in penitence.  For the youngest child, telling her what to do usually led to some defiance, and then harsher punishments (she was the only one who had her mouth washed out with soap after mom told her not to say the word “punk” and she argued that it wasn't a bad word). 
    So as St. Paul says today, “I have become all things to all, to save at least some,” he is exercising good spiritual fatherhood.  He knows that each person responds to the Gospel differently, and so he had to tailor the tone and delivery of the Gospel, as well as his witness to it, to each person as best he could, so that some might convert to living as Christ has shown us.  Elsewhere in his letters he talks about using the power of the Gospel, and one can think of the miracles that God did through St. Paul (like raising a man from the dead who fell out of a window after falling asleep because St. Paul was preaching so long).  Or in another place we hear how he earned a living while preaching the Gospel (St. Paul was a tent-maker), so that they wouldn’t think he was trying to mooch off of them and get rich by preaching the Gospel. 
 
St. John Vianney
   This is still true today with my own spiritual fatherhood.  Some in this parish need strong words and the threat of divine retribution in order to change their lives.  Others are scrupulous, and don’t think that they can do anything right, that everything is a sin.  Some fall in between those two extremes.  St. John Vianney said that priests should be “a lion at the pulpit and a lamb in the confessional,” that is, strong words of preaching to bring about conversion, but gentle when a person comes to admit his or her faults to God in the Sacrament of Penance.  I may not always hit that goal, but I admit that, in my own estimation, that is the standard to which I apply myself.
    But being all things to all people in evangelization concerns not only priests.  It also applies to the lay faithful, you, in your work of sharing the Gospel in everyday life and transforming the secular world, the city of man, to be more like the heavenly world, the City of God.  Probably we all get this in principle, but do we apply it?
    When I was a seminarian I sure didn’t understand this principle.  It always perplexed me why people didn’t immediately convert after giving them a logical argument for the Catholic Church being the Church started by Jesus.  Or how self-styled Catholics could do things or promote things which were so antithetical to the Catholic faith.  To me, all a person needs is a good, rational argument, and they should convert.  And that works for some people.
    But for others, the truths of the faith are important, but only convince when they are lived out in practice.  You can give them every good argument from the Summa Theologiae, and still they would not be convinced.  But if they see a Catholic caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, comforting the sorrowful and afflicted, they are convinced that the faith must be real, because people actually do what they say Christ calls us to do.
    This can even go for the devotional life.  Some people love the warm, touchy-feely stuff.  They love the emotive nature of praise and worship music and need those emotional highs and lows to really move them in their relationship with God.  Others find the steady, metered pace of Gregorian chant more helpful to their prayer life.  Some just want to be still in silence and put the world outside.  Others need to use their imaginations and put themselves in the Gospel passages to envision how they would have responded and how they are responding to Jesus.  While the liturgical life has set standards that may come more easily or more difficult to us, based on our temperaments, the devotional life admits of a variety of expressions, based upon the individual desires and needs of each person or each type of person.  To pretend that Catholicism is monolithic in personal and devotional prayer, or that everyone should simply convert based upon intellectual arguments does not reflect the reality of the diversity of individuals. 
    So, our goal is the same as St. Paul’s: to be all things to all so that we can save at least some.  Again, this doesn’t mean that the Church changes her teachings to fit the times, or even that our common prayer, the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, should have wide variations.  But it does mean that the way we present the Gospel, and the way that we help people to personally connect to Jesus through personal and devotional prayer will vary based upon the person.  May our diverse approaches, unified in the one faith given to us from God the Father through Jesus the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit transform our world to be more configured to Christ, and therefore a better place to be.
    

29 January 2024

Race Prepping

Septuagesima

2010 Lansing Catholic Soccer Team
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In my first assignment as a priest in East Lansing, I also worked closely with Lansing Catholic High School.  And, having formerly played soccer, I was fairly active with the boys’ soccer team.  Jokingly, one of the athletes, Joey, challenged me to a race, and I eventually accepted at the end of a later school day.  Students came out to the soccer field to watch me race Joey.  I think we even had the athletic director tell us when to start.  
    When we started, I was surprised at Joey’s speed, a speed he didn’t show that often on the soccer field.  But I tried to keep it close, hoping that I could pull ahead.  At about three-quarters of the field, Joey still had a small lead, but I felt funny, and my legs were feeling like jello.  Before I knew it I had fallen flat on my face, and Joey had won the race.  I was taken aback a bit, and it occurred to me just how out of shape I was, even at the young age of 27 or so.  It turns out 27 is different than 18, and when you don’t really do physical exercise, and you have a few adult beverages the night before, and don’t eat so well or hydrate the next morning, you can’t just race a seventeen-year-old and expect to win.  
    St. Paul in the epistle today talks about training, something I did not do in my race with Joey.  He talks about training bodies to win a race, but more importantly, training our souls to win an incorruptible crown, the ancient sign of victory.  And as we enter the -gesima Sundays–Septuagesima today, Sexagesima next Sunday, and Quinquagesima the Sunday after that–we are training ourselves for Lent, the time of great asceticism and self-denial.  Because sometimes, if we wait until the last minute and then decide to do these difficult penances, we may fall flat on our faces, hopefully not literally like I did, but spiritually.  
    Today, then, is a good day to start thinking about what you want to give up for Lent, and perhaps what extra prayers or works of charity you could add to your routine.  Do you have time in your schedule for daily Mass?  Or how about joining us for Stations of the Cross on Fridays after the 12:10 p.m. Mass?  Or maybe simply making the first Saturday Masses more regularly.  
    How about restraining the body from what it desires?  Do you give up meat every Friday?  Is fasting a regular part of your life?  Or maybe start pulling back on how often you’re on your phone for social media or games, and use that extra time for prayer, or for more time with your family.  No matter what  we are going to do, we should probably start training for it or at least thinking about it now, so that it doesn’t hit us all at once, and we then fail because we were not prepared.
    We should also not feel bad or despair if we haven’t had the strongest Lent before.  I know that sometimes we can defeat ourselves before we even get started by bemoaning the fact either that we have tried something hard and have not yet succeeded, or perhaps that we have not really tried anything difficult at all.  We may be like those who were standing around, even towards the end of the day.  But if we give our all, even for a small amount of time, the Lord promises in the Gospel today that we will receive a full wage; not because we deserve it, but due to His generosity.  
    And the payment that we receive has much more value than money.  What we receive by disciplining our bodies and restraining our desires is a fuller correspondence to the life of Christ.  Each time we say no when our will wants us to say yes, we are utilizing God’s grace for the proper ordering of ourselves, as happened in the Garden of Eden before the Fall: our bodies and minds were subject to our soul, which was subject to God.  And that was how Christ lived perfectly.  So the more that we allow God’s grace to configure us to Christ, the more we will be prepared for heaven.  And the more that we are prepared for heaven, the more likely it will be that we will inherit that great bequest of beatitude, or inherit it more quickly and have less time in Purgatory.
    But it’s also important to remember that our discipline does not earn us heaven.  It is easy to become like the servants hired at the beginning of the day, and feel like we have “earned” heaven because we have been working hard to follow Christ, and Christ owes us eternal happiness.  Christ owes us nothing.  Everything is a gift.  The ability to respond to God’s grace is itself a grace, and we cannot claim it as our own.  However, when we seek to respond to God’s grace, when we seek to conform our wills to Christ, He deigns to give us rewards as if we had earned it, but always doing so out of His Divine beneficence.  
    So, over these next few weeks before Lent begins on 14 February, start thinking about what you think God would encourage you do to for a Lenten discipline.  Prepare yourselves to enter the desert of Lent.  Don’t just show up and expect to succeed.  Seek God’s grace to mortify the flesh, so that you maybe be transformed by God’s grace to be more like Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever. 

An Evangelical Counsel

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Probably one of the most common questions I get, especially after people gain more ease and confidence in asking a priest questions, is some why I chose the priesthood when it meant that I wouldn’t have a family of my own.  It’s a great question, and given our second reading today, I want to look at virginity, celibacy, and chastity.
    Chastity is the virtue the governs our sexual desires.  A lot of people think chastity means that you don’t have sex.  They confuse it with celibacy.  But chastity is a virtue for every Catholic, and simply means that we’re using our sexuality appropriately: if we’re single, no sexual activity at all or even misusing our sexuality by ourselves; if we’re married (and marriage is only between a man and a woman), only having sexual activity with one’s spouse, and only that which is loving, unitive, and open to life.  So a husband and a wife can be chaste (c-h-a-s-t-e) when they are trying to conceive a child together and engaging in the activity by which children are conceived. 
    Chastity is one of the evangelical counsels (chastity, poverty, and obedience) which can be vowed for one’s personal sanctification.  Vows are for the sanctification of the individual, though they also benefit the Church.  A vow of chastity is usually made when one becomes a member of a religious institution, like the Dominicans, Franciscans, or Benedictines, and means that a person will live as a single person for the rest of his or her life. 
    Chastity is one of the virtues that many people struggle with today, as the misuse of sexual activity, which includes using another person simply for one’s gratification, whether in person or online, runs rampant and society often praises unchastity.  But chastity is for everyone who follows Christ, not just those who make a vow of chastity.
    Celibacy is a promise made to God through the Church to abstain from anything proper to the married state, or even dating, and to practice the virtue of chastity as a single person.  Single people who are not dating, or who are dating but not engaging in sexual activity, are not celibate; they are chaste.  Celibacy, as a promise, is for the benefit of the Church, just like other promises made are for the benefit of the Church (marriage vows are technically marriage promises, since they are for the good of the Church).  During my ordination Mass to the diaconate, I made a promise to God, through Bishop Boyea, to live celibacy as a witness to the kingdom.  That promise can only be dispensed by the pope or his representatives in Rome.
    Virginity is the state where one has not engaged in sexual activity at all.  It can be simply the reality of a person’s life (as in a young person who has never committed the sin of fornication or adultery).  Or it can be made as a vow by someone through consecration.  While one may be able to regain virginity in a spiritual way, physical virginity cannot be regained once lost, whether for males or females.  One does not have to be a virgin to promise celibacy, as some priests have lived an unchaste life before they were ordained, then had a conversion, and then promised celibacy at ordination. 
    So what does all of this mean?  And why did St. Paul say what he did in the second reading, about the unmarried man or woman being anxious about the things of the Lord and so on?  Some see celibacy or virginity simply in a practical light, and our reading might seem to suggest that at first.  St. Paul talks about how a person who is unmarried, whether a celibate or a virgin, concerns him or herself with the things of the Lord.  And I will certainly say that, while there is a part of me that would like to be married and enjoy physical relations with a wife, and conceive children, I can’t imagine having to care for a family and a parish.  There are Catholic priests who are legitimately married and then become priests, mostly Eastern Rite Catholics, and I don’t know how they do it.  I don’t even have enough time for a dog, let alone a wife and kids! 
    But celibacy and virginity is not simply about practicalities.  Celibacy and virginity witness to the heavenly life, where, as Christ says, there is no marrying and giving in marriage.  Why not?  Because in heaven, we are focused most intently on God and worshiping Him.  This is not to say that we’ll have amnesia in heaven about a spouse if a person was married on earth.  But that special relationship of marriage, which is meant to witness the life of the Trinity on earth, is no longer necessary, because in heaven we behold the Trinity face to face in the beatific vision.  There are no sacraments in heaven, because we don’t need physical realities to communicate the spiritual realities of God; we receive the spiritual realities or mysteries of God directly, unmediated. 
    Those who promise or vow themselves to focus directly on God are reminding us that, even though marriage is very good, and not just because it creates children who increase the size of the Church, even family comes second to God, and in heaven we will rely totally on God for our happiness, whether it be in our sexuality (the vow of chastity), our possessions (the vow of poverty), or even our will (the vow of obedience).  This is why consecrated life, those who vow the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, is, in one sense, the highest form of life on earth, because it most perfectly (in an objective sense) imitates the life of heaven while still on earth.  That is why the Church so often praises virgins, especially the Blessed Virgin Mary, because they dedicated themselves entirely to God, which is something we all hope to do in heaven.

    Having said that, a happy married couple can be holier than a grumpy monk, nun, priest, or bishop in a subjective sense.  God calls each of us to different vocations, and we shouldn’t strive for one vocation just because it’s objectively higher.  We should strive for the vocation that is subjectively suited for us, because that is how God wants us to be saints.
    And, for all people, the virtue of chastity still applies, because it properly orders our precious gift of sexuality according to the plan of God, whether that plan for us is marriage, celibacy, or virginity.  All people can be saints, and part of being a saint is integrating our sexual drive into the vocation to which God has called us.  May we all be chaste–whether priest, married couple, or single individual–and seek to follow God through the vocation to which He has called us so that we might enter heaven and enjoy eternal happiness and fulfillment by worshipping God for eternity.