New Life

Easter Sunday

           

New life.  The phrase has become so common that we often forget the power of those two, short words.  But those words have power, because everything changed from that point in time for all eternity, both all time that had come before, and all time that would follow after.  People had dreamed about life that would never end, but it was always something that could not be seen, could not be experienced.  Now, new life was not just a theory or a pious idea, but a reality that we saw in Jesus.  He was the same Jesus, but He was different.  He still bore the marks of His crucifixion, but His body was not the same type of body as before; it was filled with the glory of God.

            New life.  What an effect it had on those first disciples: Mary Magdalene, the first to see the risen Christ; Peter and John who ran to the tomb in today’s Gospel; the Blessed Virgin Mary, who received back the Son that she had watched die on the cross.  What a shock it was for them first to find the empty tomb, and then to see Jesus appear in their midst, though the doors were locked. 

            New life.  It gave Peter the courage, after the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, to proclaim to the Jews who were gathered for Passover that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, the fulfillment of the prophecies of Moses and all the other prophets.  It gave Peter the courage to preach that Jesus is “‘the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead…[and] that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.’”  It gave countless numbers of people the courage to be put to death rather than deny Jesus as their Savior.

            New life.  It caused the first believers, most of who were Jewish, to not only observe the Sabbath, the Saturday rest, but also to observe the 8^th day, the first day of the week, when Jesus rose from the dead, and gather together each Sunday to remind themselves of what seemed to good to be true, but was true; to hear the prophecies that referred to Jesus; and to fulfill the commandment of the Lord made at the Last Supper and celebrate the Eucharist in His memory.  It caused the first believers, especially Gentiles, non-Jews, to change the entire way they lived their lives.  No longer would they worship idols or the emperor; no longer would they participate in the sexual immorality of their neighbors; no longer would they base their life on pleasure and worldly wisdom, but on the Word of God, both through what was in Scriptures and the Teachings of the Apostles, as what ruled their lives.  They did as St. Paul wrote to the Colossians, and as we heard in our second reading today: “seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.”  They put on a heavenly mindset, even while living their earthly pilgrimage.

            Brothers and sisters, the power of the resurrection, the power of new life is not only in the past.  It is a power still as potent today as it was in the first century when Peter and John ran to the tomb.  It is still as potent as in the third century when Sts. Perpetua and Felicity died in the arena rather than deny Christ.  It is still as potent as in  the thirteenth century when St. Francis divested himself of all that his earthly father had given him in order to follow in poverty his Heavenly Father. It is still as potent as in the nineteenth century when St. Marianne Cope dedicated her life to serving those in Molokai who had Hansen’s disease.  It is still as potent as in the twentieth century when St. Maximilian Kolbe put himself in the place of another prisoner at Auschwitz.  You can grab on to that power, and you can have new life.  You can be transformed, first on the inside, and then, after the resurrection of body at the end of time, on the outside.

            If you know Jesus, then everything is different.  Sure, we may look the same as we did before, but the way we live our lives will testify to the fact that we have new life in Jesus.  It changes the way we treat each other.  It changes the way we make decisions.  It changes the way we spend our time.  We base our lives not on our own ideas, but on the logic of God found in the Scriptures and in the Teachings of the Apostles and their successors.  We gather together each Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and to remind ourselves of the power that new life can have in our lives.

            “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad.”  Jesus said to his disciples how He came to set this world on fire, and how He wishes it were already burning.  New life, and the power it has, can set this world afire with God’s love.  I invite you today, paraphrasing the words of St. Paul: Arise, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you new life.

Mount Moriah

Celebration of the Passion of the Lord

Around 2,000 years before Christ, Abraham placed wood upon his the shoulders of the son of the promise, his beloved son, Isaac, and started up the mountain.  Isaac quickly realized that, while they had the wood, and they had the knife to kill the sacrifice, they had no lamb to place upon the altar.  Isaac, “like a lamb led to the slaughter,” did not know what was happening, and so asked his father where the offering was.  “‘My son,’ Abraham answered, ‘God will provide the sheep for the burnt offering.’  Then the two walked on together.”  When they reach the top of the mountain, Abraham, an old man at this point, binds his son to the wood.  Isaac must have willingly let himself be bound, because Abraham was more than 100 years old.  And then Abraham took out his knife, ready to sacrifice the son of the promise: the promise that God would make of Abraham through Isaac father of many nations.  But, as we know, an angel of the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand, and did not allow him to sacrifice his own beloved son, but provided a ram in place of Isaac.  Abraham was rewarded for his faith in God, even to the point of letting his son die, and truly became the Father of Many Nations.  Isaac, who was as good as dead, was given new life as he was unbound from the wood.

Fast-forward about 1,000 years, and a temple is built, according to tradition, over the spot where Abraham had been willing to sacrifice Isaac.  It was there, at the place of an example of faith in God such that it put Abraham in right relationship with God, or justified him as St. Paul says, that the sacrifices of the Mosaic covenant would be offered, to remind God of the faithfulness of the Father of the Israelites.  Just outside of that place, almost 1,000 years later, another Son, a beloved Son, would be fastened to wood once more, and offered up by His Father as a sacrifice.

Isaac had asked where the animal was to sacrifice, perhaps his voice starting to crack as he began to realize what could lie ahead of him.  Jesus cried out, “Eli, eli, lema sabachtani?  My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” as the full weight of sin and the punishment that it deserves came crashing upon Him.

But where was the voice of the angel?  Where was the heavenly messenger telling the Father to stay His hand and not touch a hair on the boy’s head, and to replace the sacrifice of a Son with the sacrifice of a ram?  As the Roman soldier raised his arm, ready to hammer the nail into the exhausted flesh of Jesus, which had been scourged to a bloody mess and weakened on the Via Dolorosa, the sorrowful way, no angel stopped that hand, and the only sound was the pounding of the hammer.

Abraham proved his love for God by being willing to sacrifice his own beloved son.  God proved his love for Abraham and his posterity, not just by generation but by faith, not only by being willing to sacrifice His Only Beloved Son, but also allowing it to happen to save us from our sins.  All of the sins that came before that dark Friday, and all of the sins that would follow after it, were washed away as the crimson blood flowed from the mangled body of Jesus. 

What are our sacrifices since last Easter?  What are we willing to sacrifice in the year to come?  In the past year I have buried a father of a family who left behind a wife and 5 kids, as well as my own uncle; I have had friends discover they had cancer; today I bring my frustrations, my joys, my sins, all of who I am.  Many of you have lost loved ones, have found out family or friends are sick and suffering; some of you have lost jobs, or have children who have wandered away from the Church; you have your own frustrations, your joys, your sins, and all that makes you who you are.  Today, bring them here to our own Mount Moriah, and offer sacrifice to God; not the sacrifice of your progeny, but sacrifice of your life united to Jesus on the cross.  Offer to God not only the evil you want to get rid of, but even the things you want to hold on to with your whole heart.  Bring them to the wood which is prepared for this altar. 

Jesus says to us, from just outside Mount Moriah, “‘I thirst.’”  He thirsts for you, He thirsts for me.  Not just part of you or part of me, but all of you and all of me.  Have the faith of Abraham.  Be willing to offer your all to God.  “Take courage and be stouthearted, all you who hope in the Lord.”

"Poder es servir, porque Dios es Amor"

Mass of the Lord’s Supper

“Poder es servir, porque Dios es amor.”  “Power is serving, because God is love.”  These are the words of the hymn, “Pan de Vida,” a hymn that many of us have likely sung at some point in our lives because of its popularity.  Power is serving, because God is love.

Often times we have a backwards view of power.  We consider power to be the ability to rule over others, to make others do things, to make changes.  But this is not the reality of power.  Like so many things in our lives, Jesus reminds us that the reality is backwards from the way we see it.  It is the poor in spirit who are blessed, the meek who inherit the earth, the pure of heart who see God, the peacemakers who are the children of God.  The last is the first.  The Master is the Servant.  This is not just another view from a wise sage.  It is the way the world really works.  Granted, on this side of eternity it doesn’t seem to go that way.  The blessed ones seem to be the rich, the greedy inherit the earth, those who have darkness and filth in their hearts seem to have “divine” moments of ecstasy, the warmongers who are favored.  The last is the loser.  The Master rules.  But what is more real?  Heaven, which is eternal, or earth, which even now is passing away?  Who is more real?  The Creator, who brought all things into existence out of nothing, or the creature, who without the Creator doesn’t even exist?

Power is serving, because God is love.  One of the major events that we celebrate tonight is the institution of the priesthood.  Jesus, unfettered by social construct (as we see so many times in the Gospels), utterly free in the choices He made, chose twelve uneducated men to follow Him more closely than all others, even than His Immaculate Mother.  He chose one of them, Peter, to lead the others, to speak for the others.  Jesus gave to Peter, and then, after His resurrection, to the others, power to bind things on earth that would be bound in heaven, and to loose things on earth that would be loosed in heaven.  Jesus gave them the authority to teach in His Name, such that, as Jesus said, “He who hears you, hears me.”  Jesus gave them power.  But this power was not to rule over, but to serve under.

At the heart of priestly service is the ministry of the Sacraments, especially another Sacrament that was instituted tonight, the Sacrament of Sacraments, the Eucharist.  At the heart of the power that priests receive is the ability to act in Jesus’ Name and to feed His sheep with the “bread from heaven, having all sweetness within it.”  Along with the other Sacraments, priests are to convey God’s grace, His presence, His love, to the People that God has made His own by the new and eternal covenant, the shedding of the blood of the truly unblemished Lamb. 

Jesus also gave His apostles, his first priests, the power to continue His teaching.  This, too, is a power which is serving, as Jesus knew that questions would remain about what Jesus would actually do and say given new circumstances and situations.  Did Jesus really mean “eat my flesh and drink my blood” literally?  Was Jesus serious when he said that sins don’t begin with our actions, but with the desires of our hearts?  Jesus knew that people would struggle with this, and would even disagree, and that there would need to be a way of sorting out the true from the false, the divine wisdom from the wisdom of the world, and so He gave His apostles authority to teach authoritatively, from the Author, what He Himself would teach.

Jesus called his apostles, his first priests, to wash each other’s feet, to serve them, by communicating God’s grace, God’s word, and God’s love.  But there has been, throughout the millennia, a confusion about the power.  Some have neglected the words of the Letter to the Hebrews which says that no one takes the honor of the priesthood upon himself, and have instead demanded that, as a matter of equality, they be given the right to be priests so that they can have more power.  But the Church does not have that power, but can only do what Jesus did.  Some priests have forgotten throughout the history of the Church that the power of the priesthood is not a power to rule over and control, but a power to serve.

In my own priesthood, I have tried to use the power the Christ has entrusted to me to serve you by being available to celebrate the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, as well as by preaching the truth.  But I also admit that there have been times when I have fallen into the view of power which simply seeks to rule, and when I have not been truly a servant to you because my own sinfulness has gotten in the way.  For these times when I forgot that “power is serving because God is love,” I sincerely apologize and ask your forgiveness. 

Tonight, as we walk to St. Thomas in Eucharistic procession, we will be a powerful group.  Our numbers will not be simply a band of twelve moving to the Garden of Gethsemane, but will be much larger, moving with our Lord to the Garden of Adoration.  May our procession witness to the power of Christ over our own lives, and provide the power of service to others to know the God who is Love, and draw them in to a deeper relationship with Him.  “Power is serving because God is love.”

The Path

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

            There has been much talk recently about the humility of Pope Francis.  Some of the people I know have been a bit offended, taking the emphasis on Pope Francis’ humility as a comment on an alleged lack of humility by Benedict XVI, our Pope Emeritus.  Personally, I don’t see it as an attack on Pope Emeritus Benedict, who was himself very humble (and I can say that as a personal witness of his humility when I met him in Rome).  Others have rightly seen the humility of Francis as a means of evangelization.  There is something about Pope Francis which preaches the Gospel even in the way he acts, which is very reminiscent of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic.

            I have preached on humility before, but this time I want to focus on humility as the acceptance of wherever God leads us.  True humility means accepting the path that God has chosen for us, even when that path runs through suffering and death.  St. Paul talks about the humility of Jesus, “taking the form of a slave…and found human in appearance,…becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Jesus, as we heard in our Gospel, was open to accepting the Father’s will.

            He accepted the Father’s will when he entered in triumph in His city, Jerusalem, to the shouts of joy from the crowd.  He accepted the Father’s will when it meant being betrayed by one friend, denied by another, and abandoned by most of his other friends.  He accepted the Father’s will when he was led to the cross to die a most horrible death, hanging naked in utter shame before a crowd who mostly mocked him, next to two criminals.

            It is hard to accept suffering.  It is hard to accept dying to ourselves and our wills.  But it is true humility when we know that God the Father is in charge, and we are not, and when we go where He leads us.  It is hard to embrace the cross as the means of our salvation.  But all Jesus’ life, and this entire week of liturgy, points to Friday, which itself points to Sunday.  Today’s celebration begins with joy and shouts of “Hosanna,” but quickly changes to the somber recalling of the passion.  The Last Supper, which we will celebrate on Thursday, is the liturgical anticipation of the sacrifice of the true Lamb of God on Calvary, and the way that Jesus institutes among His apostles so that all of his disciples, ordained and lay alike, can connect to the power of Jesus’ kenosis, his emptying of Himself entirely.

            Each time I celebrate Mass, I kiss the altar.  The cross is the altar where Jesus was sacrificed, and so the altar is the cross, which I kiss.  As I walk up these steps in the sanctuary, I am walking towards Golgotha, to kiss the cross on which Jesus is sacrificed.  I bring my own sufferings, my own trials which the Lord has given to me.  I bring your sufferings, your trials which the Lord has given you, the ones that I am aware of, and the ones I have not even begun to imagine, but which the Lord has placed on my shoulders just as He placed the cross on Jesus’ shoulders.  And I kiss that altar, that cross, because my offering of myself, my offering of you, will become the means of my glory and yours, as the Father takes our pain and suffering and death, and gives back to us new life in the Eucharist.  As I kiss that altar I kiss the demands on my time, my failures, my weaknesses, my sins.  As I kiss that altar I kiss the economic struggles, the children who are away from the Church, the sick and the suffering, the troubled marriages, the hurt, the loss of family through death, and the sins that you bring to Mass and which I carry for you. 

            But just as it was only through Jesus’ cross that the resurrection was possible, so for me it is only through being sacrificed on that altar in the bread and the wine that I rise to new life, and so for you it is only through being sacrificed on that altar in the bread and the wine that you rise to new life.  Do not run from the crosses in your life; embrace them, kiss them!  Because it is through those crosses, born with love, united to Jesus, that new life is possible.  Humbly accept the path God has chosen for you, even when it leads to Golgotha, even when it means “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross,” because God will greatly exalt you, and bring you to new life in Jesus Christ our Lord, “to the glory of God the Father.”  Amen.

From Death to Life

Fifth Sunday of Lent-Third Scrutiny

            For the past two weeks we have heard from the Gospel according to John at this Mass.  We step aside from the usual hearing from the Gospel according to Luke to meditate and reflect upon what St. John calls the main signs of Jesus’ ministry.  We do this to assist our Elect to prepare for baptism, confirmation, and the reception of Holy Communion for the first time, as we accompany them through the Scrutinies.

            These three signs that we hear about all have to do with life, and are fitting for the Elect who are preparing for new life in baptism.  Two weeks ago we heard about the Samaritan woman at the well, and how Jesus was going to give her living water.  As we all know, we can’t live without water.  Last week we heard of the man born blind and how Jesus is the light of the world.  Light is an important part of life.  Without sunlight, the plants don’t produce, which means we, and the animals we eat, don’t survive.  Today, we don’t deal with an image or a metaphor for life, but with life itself in the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

            The first important aspect is that faith is involved.  The Samaritan woman comes to believe in Jesus, and so she is given the life-giving water in her soul which will never run dry.  The man born blind has faith, and Jesus opens His eyes.  Martha has faith that Jesus will raise Lazarus.  In none of these cases is the faith complete, as if one knows it all.  In fact, if one truly knows it all, faith, the knowledge of things unseen, is not necessary.  But faith makes new life possible.

            It is faith, at least in its seminal form, which led you, Elect of God, to ask questions about the Catholic Church.  It is faith which led you to continue searching and opening the Word of God to see if this Jesus should be followed.  It is faith which you will profess before you are baptized.  This will not be the end of the journey, but only the beginning of new life in Christ, just as for those of us who were baptized as infants, when our parents and godparents professed faith for us so that we could receive the precious gift of new life in Christ, that moment of baptism was not the end of our pilgrimage, but the beginning.  And likewise confirmation is not the end of our development of faith, but another important step in the pilgrimage, not the destination.

            God’s love is shown for us in giving us new life.  God promises through the prophet Ezekiel that the way we know that God is God is by receiving new life from Him.  Jesus fulfills that prophecy in our Gospel passage from today.

            But new life is meant to be new, not old.  You don’t pour new wine into old wineskins.  Lazarus had been dead for four days.  His decomposing body was rank with the odor of death.  It looked like a body, in some regards, but was not (we use the word corpse for a body that is no longer animated by a soul).  That is how it is with us before we come to Christ.  Yes, we are made in the image and likeness of God, we have human dignity because we are rational and have an immortal soul, but we do not have new life in us.  That comes through baptism, at least ordinarily.  Before baptism, we are plagued by original sin which puts us at enmity with God.  That is why we pray for you, dear Elect, that, because you have already been chosen—elected—for baptism, the power of Satan may have no sway over you.  After baptism, original sin is washed away—death is washed away—and you are filled with new life.

            But our outsides need to match our insides.  There needs to be a certain consonance, a certainly harmony between the new life we have in our souls, and the way we act with our bodies.  Beauty comes from when the image matches the idea, and if we truly want to be beautiful, then we should try with all our might to make sure that the way we live matches what we believe.  That goes for all of us, not just you Elect.  How many times did Jesus decry the lack of consonance in the Pharisees: “‘You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.’”  The same could be said when what we have inside does not match what we do on the outside.  The temptations are great to keep our faith to ourselves and not let it impact the way we live our lives.  That is where scandal arises, when what we profess with our lips does not match the other actions of our life; when we have new life in us, but we still act like a rotting corpse; when we are members of the Body of Christ, but we act no differently than those who do not know Jesus.

            Dear Elect of God, we pray for you, that as you draw nearer to the life-giving waters of baptism, to the Light of Christ, to new life in Jesus, that you will grow in faith and be kept safe from the Evil One so that you are prepared to put to death the old man, and put on Christ, the new Man.  And we thank you, because your consonance of life between what you believe and how you live reminds us who were baptized before to live up to that call ourselves, so that more and more will be drawn to new life in Christ that not only changes our souls, but changes how we live each day.

Don't Look Back!

Fifth Sunday of Lent

            One of the hardest things to do when you’re running a sprint in track is not to look back to see who is coming up behind you.  No matter whether you’re first and you want to see if anyone is gaining on you, or you just don’t want to be last, as you’re running those last meters, you want to know if you’re going to win, or if you need to push it harder.  Ironically, for most people who look back, they seal their fate and the other person often passes them, because looking back slows us down.

            Isaiah talks about it in our first reading.  He says for the Lord, “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!”  God tells the Israelites not to dwell on what led them into exile (their idolatry, their trust in foreign nations), but to look ahead and see the good that God wants them to accomplish.

St. Paul talks about that in our second reading today: “forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”  St. Paul certainly had stuff that he could have dwelt on in his past.  He was a zealous Pharisee; he arrested men, women, and children for following Jesus; he condoned the stoning of Stephen.  But, while he did not forget his past, he didn’t keep looking back to it to weigh him down.  He recognized he was the least of the apostles because he had persecuted the Church of God, but he used that to propel his missionary activity, and is still the greatest missionary the world has ever known.

            We see it in our Gospel passage today.  Jesus doesn’t ignore the woman’s past.  He doesn’t condone the fact that she was caught in adultery.  But He forgives her, and tells her to move on, to “‘Go, and…do not sin any more.’”  He does not want her past to determine her future, unlike the scribes and Pharisees, who want to end her future because of her past. 

            When we focus too much on our past, we lose our future, just like the sprinter who can lose the race because he looks behind him.  We all have a past, we all have things that we wish we would not have done: not just mistakes or accidents, but choices that we have made that we should not have.  It’s called being human.  Look at St. Peter: he denied that he even knew Jesus.  But he didn’t stay there.  He repented, he wept for his sins, and he reaffirmed his love for Jesus.  Look at St. Mary Magdalene: she had seven demons that Jesus had to cast out of her.  We don’t know exactly how they got there, but it wasn’t a pleasant past.  But she didn’t stay stuck on the fact that she had seven demons, she followed Jesus, even to the cross when all but one of the other apostles abandoned Jesus, and was able to be the first to see the risen Christ.  And that’s just the beginning!  Through the millennia, there have been saints who had serious sins in their past.  But they, like St. Paul, forgot what was behind them, and continued their pursuit towards the goal of union with God forever in heaven.

            “But Fr. Anthony, you don’t know what I’ve done!”  Or, “Maybe I haven’t done any one thing that was really bad, but I’ve got a whole lifetime of little bad things that sure add up!”  Please!  Don’t give your sins that power.  None of them are so heinous as to be unforgiveable.  Bring them to the Lord and let Him nail those sins to the wood of the cross so that new life can come from our death to sin and life in Christ.  What happens when we do give our sins that power, when we remain stuck in the past, is what happened to Judas: despair and death.  Judas could not turn away from his past and turn towards the Lord, and so could not receive the forgiveness that he wanted and needed.

            Now, in not looking back, it certainly does not mean that we do not learn from our past sins.  God wanted Israel to look ahead to the future, to see the blessings of fidelity to God, but He certainly didn’t want them to slip back into their old sins.  St. Paul continued to run the race and look ahead to the prize of salvation, but he didn’t think that he could just go back to being a Pharisee and persecutor of the Church because he had been forgiven.  And Jesus exhorted the woman not to be adulterous in the future.  Not looking back doesn’t mean that we forgo true conversion and treat our sins as if they do not offend God.  They do offend God, and harm whom we are called to be.  But they are not more powerful than God, and God can write straight even with crooked lines. 

            The same happens in reconciliation.  We don’t pretend we haven’t done anything wrong.  Rather, we confess our sins, acknowledging how we have turned away from the Lord, and then He forgives us and urges us to press on towards Him and the road to salvation, that straight and narrow road that Jesus spoke of in the Gospel.  But just as we don’t pretend we haven’t sinned, we also don’t let our sins bog us down afterwards, because God has forgiven them.

            Don’t be the sprinter who loses the race because you looked back and were overtaken by the past.  Win the race by learning from past sins and pressing onwards toward God, keeping Him always before your eyes.

My Favorite Sacrament

Fourth Sunday of Lent

            When people ask me what my favorite sacrament is, I don’t think they’re generally surprised to hear me say the Eucharist.  Vatican II teaches us that the Eucharist is meant to be the source and summit of Christian life, the beginning of our life in Christ, whence we get the strength to live as disciples, and the goal of the Christian life, that we have intimate communion with God.  For priests even more so, the Eucharist is the key to the priesthood, as the priest acts in the person of Christ the Head, offering himself to the Father represented by the bread and the wine which become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

            I think they are more surprised when I say that there is another sacrament that is tied for first with the Eucharist, and that sacrament is Reconciliation.  But it’s true.  While I was, in some ways, prepared for the joy of celebrating the Mass and bringing about, in an unbloody manner, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross through the Eucharist, I have to say I was not prepared for what a gift celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation would be.

            At this point I have to make a disclaimer: I don’t love to celebrate Reconciliation as a confessor because I get to hear all your dirty little secrets of the things you’ve done wrong.  What I love is the fact that I get to take part in an intimate moment between the penitent and God and get to grant that penitent the forgiveness of their sins in the name of Christ, and bring them back to the road to heaven.  It is an experience of humility (because it takes true humility to tell God, not that we have made a mistake, but that we freely chose to go against His will) and an experience of love.  I treasure the “ministry of reconciliation” as St. Paul says in our second reading, that God has entrusted to me.  I am in awe of the fact that, though I continue to need to confess my sins (being a priest doesn’t mean that I suddenly stop sinning), God has chosen me to grant that forgiveness to His beloved sons and daughters so that they can, once more, be prepared for heaven.

            Our Gospel passage is all too familiar to us today.  We likely hear it every year, at least once.  But it is so powerful, if we let it speak to us!  We can put ourselves in the place of the prodigal son, the son who wastes his inheritance on dissipate living, and then who goes broke, and has to work as a swineherd (one of the worst jobs that a Jew could have), and would love just to eat the pigs’ food.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son who recognizes that he needs to return to the Father, if for no other reason than just to work as a slave so that he can eat.  And we can put ourselves in the place of the son who is embraced by the Father who has run out to meet him.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son, because that is what happens in reconciliation.

            “All men have sinned,” says St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, “and are deprived of the glory of God.”  We all tell God that we know better, that we’d rather control our own lives and do our own thing.  It’s the ancient sin of pride, which leads to so many other sins.  We squander the inheritance of grace that we received in baptism, when we were made sons and daughters in the Son of God.  And when we do that, we squander it quickly, and we find that we are living a trashy life, amidst slops that are meant for the pigs.  But God does not abandon us.  He gives us grace, we use the term prevenient grace, to lead us back to Him, to consider that the “threshold of the house of God” is better than the “tents of the wicked,” as Psalm 84 says.  Even just being close to union is God is better than living with evil.  And so we start on our way back.  But before we can even get out the words of our apology, to try to argue our case for being a slave rather than the heir that we were, the Father embraces us and says to us

“Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.  Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.”

God doesn’t rub in our face the wrong we have done, but celebrates that we have returned to our Father’s house, and that we are back to life in grace.

            There is nothing quite like the experience of welcoming someone back to the love of God in reconciliation.  Often, those who have been away from the Church for some time or those who feel the heavy weight of sin are brought to tears.  I am not ashamed to say that from time to time I am brought to tears as the love of God flows through me and I rejoice in the fact that the penitent was lost and now is found, was dead and is now alive by the grace of God.

            I want to invite each of you today, whether it’s been a week or a lifetime, to come experience this great sacrament of God’s mercy, and to start a habit of making regular confessions.  There’s no sin that can permanently keep you from the love of God, unless you give that sin that power.  God will forgive all sins, if we come to Him in sorrow, sincerely at least wanting to stop.  Whether it’s lying; impatience; stealing; adultery; viewing pornography and the sin that often accompanies it; sex outside of marriage; contracepting; murder; abortion; missing Mass; pride; or whatever other sins we may struggle with, God wants to put a robe of love around you and put the ring that signifies your place in God’s household on your finger.  Maybe it’s only been a few days since you last went to confession.  Maybe it’s been forty years since you last went to confession.  In either case, we priests are glad to give you the assurance of God’s mercy.  We have a great confession schedule between St. Thomas and St. John, and we even have a communal penance service with individual confession & absolution next Sunday, 17 March at 2 p.m. at St. Thomas in case you want to go to a priest from out of town (though recall that we can’t tell anyone else your sins, nor can we treat you any differently based upon your confession).  Don’t stay stuck in the pigs’ slop.  Come back to the Father’s house.  Let God love you and forgive you.  “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”

Patience is a Virtue

Third Sunday of Lent

            I recall a time when I was at Lansing Catholic high school, and there was a dance coming up that I was planning to attend.  And there was a particular girl I really wanted to take to the dance.  I sort of had a crush on this girl, without the sort of part.  And I remember really wanting to ask her to the dance.  But, being the analytical guy that I am, I also did not want to appear desperate and ask too early.  So I made myself a deal: I would ask this girl to the dance no more than a certain number of  days before the dance.  I day before, and I’m ready to ask.  There’s a part of me that just wants to ask on that day.  But the rational side of me reminds me that I don’t want to look desperate, and that I can wait just one more day.  I go through the final day, waiting for my opportunity to ask her to the dance when I have class with her after lunch.  I see her in class and say, “So, you got plans for the dance in a few weeks?”  “Yeah,” she says, “so-and-so (I don’t want to use real names, since some of you knew me in high school) just asked me yesterday.”  “Great!”  I said, trying to play off the fact that I felt stupid for waiting that extra day.  “I’m sure you’ll have a great time together.”

            Now, if this were a modern-day fable, we would probably guess that the moral of the story is not to be patient, because you can miss out on opportunities that you might otherwise have.  And there are certainly times when being pro-active is key. 

            But even though I didn’t get what I wanted, and it seemed to be because “he who hesitates is lost,” as the saying goes, I ended up having a great time at the dance with a different girl, and my patience (which I’m still not really known for) paid off.

            Patience is a virtue with which I think most people struggle.  It’s hard to be patient, whether with family members, co-workers, people on the road, etc.  Whenever I fly I don’t want to have to wait between my flights; I would rather just land, make it to my gate, and then take off as soon as I’m ready.  Technology hasn’t made patience any easier.  Anytime I want to know something, I just type in the question to Google on my iPhone, and get an answer.  Or, if I’m really impatient, I just ask Siri to find me the answer so I don’t have to waste time typing.

            And yet, our readings today focus us precisely on patience.  In our first reading, we hear about Moses being called by God to lead the Chosen People from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.  What does that have to do with patience?  Well, by the time the Israelites left Egypt, it had been 430 years since Joseph and his family had fled the famine in Canaan and set up residence in Egypt.  That’s a long time!  And what does God say?  “‘I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering.’”  Now, our modern, impatient tendencies would probably lead us to say wonder what in the world took so long to find someone.  Why wait over four centuries to free the People that God had made His own?  To be honest, we don’t know why.  But God was patient, knowing that He would send Moses at just the right time to command that the Israelites go free, and that, when Pharaoh refused, God would manifest His power over all creation to convince the Egyptians to let the Israelites go.

            Or take the fig tree from the end of today’s Gospel.  Our modern, impatient tendencies would be to cut down the tree.  It’s had enough time to produce fruit, and it’s not, so don’t give it another chance to continue to waste precious water and nutrients in the ground.  Cut it down, and plant a new tree.  But the gardener asks for some patience, to give the tree one more year to produce fruit before it is cut down, and the orchard owner agrees.

            God is patient.  He is never in a rush to act.  And while we may complain about that, we should also give thanks for God’s patience, because it’s His patience that has allowed us time to repent.  Imagine if God were as impatient as us: how many times would he give us before He stopped allowing us to repent and turn back to Him?  And yet, each Lent, and even each time we come to Mass, we tell God that we are sorry for our lack of love for Him, and ask Him to give us another chance and more time.  God knows the fullness of time, and He knows when certain things need to happen.  Whether it was freeing the Israelites, sending us a Savior, the call of St. Paul, or any of the other aspects of Salvation History, God is patient and gives His People a chance to turn back to Him and choose life and holiness, not death and sin.

            If we are going to be like God, then we, too, need patience.  We need to be patient with others and not condemn or judge others so quickly.  We need to be patient with ourselves and realize that, while some conversions happen quickly, many happen slowly, over time, but are longer lasting.  We need to be patient with God and realize that His time is always the right time, even when we think something needs to happen sooner, or immediately.  God is not our Siri that we can make tell us the answers immediately.  God’s time is according to His own plan that often is above our understanding, and is always for the best. 

            God calls us today to pray for patience.  But, realize that, when we pray for it, God will give us opportunities to be patient, times and people that try our patience, so that we can grow in that virtue.  Don’t worry; be patient.