30 May 2017

We're Already in Heaven

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
One of the priests at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, who is now a bishop, once said about homilies, “If it’s not worth stealing, it’s not worth using.”  So allow me to steal a little material later on in today’s homily that will help us enter in to today’s celebration of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ.  After all, we can be tempted to remain at a superficial level about today’s solemnity.  We know that Jesus ascended, body and soul into heaven.  But, the next question easily becomes: so what? or who cares?  In all reality, what difference does it make if Jesus is in heaven?  Those are fair questions.
The difference that it makes is that we are, in one sense, already in heaven.  No, this isn’t heaven right here in Flint.  You probably don’t doubt that.  But here’s the thing: St. Paul reminds us that Christ is the head of the Body, the Church.  Our human nature is united to the one Person of Jesus.  Jesus even says at the end of today’s Gospel: “Behold, I am with you always,” and He can say that because we are united to Him through Baptism.  In that sense, all of us who have been united to Christ in Baptism by being united to His Mystical Body, the Church, are already in heaven, at least potentially speaking.  The Ascension celebrates the fact that in Christ, human nature has been given an even better place than the Garden of Eden; we have been given heaven.  That’s a big deal.

Heaven is our inheritance because it’s the inheritance of Jesus, the Son of God, for his obedience to God.  Christ, as St. Paul says, was obedient, even to the point of death, death on a cross, and His obedience was what allowed Him to pass from death to life, and open that new life for us.  Heaven is the one million dollar inheritance that our rich ancestor leaves us.
But, we have to receive that gift.  Jesus does not force that inheritance upon us.  He reigns as King at the right hand of the Father, but does not force us to be a part of His kingdom.  We have to be open to that gift, and the way that we show that we are open to the gift is by the way we live our life.  Our obedience to Christ on earth does not earn us heaven.  We cannot earn it, any more than any other human could have earned it.  Only Christ could gain heaven for us.  And yet, we show that we want to receive our inheritance by the way we show that we’re disciples of Jesus in our words and deeds.
And this is where the stolen parts come in.  There is an ancient document from some time after Christ called the Letter to Diognetus.  Diognetus is one of those names that has fallen on hard times.  I don’t think you’ll find it in the top 500 of baby names.  But, the author of this letter beautifully writes:

[Christians] live in their own countries as though they were only passing through.  They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens.  Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign county.  […] They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh.  They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven.

The author of this letter reminds us that our homeland is not here.  We are only passing through this world.  It can be so tempting to live as if this is all there is.  We try to make our decisions to have as good as a life as we can on earth.  But do we pay attention to having a good life after we die?  Do we live so as to receive our inheritance?
And we should live this way because we try to live as if we’re in heaven.  It’s not easy, but if we want to live in heaven for ever, it helps to practice for it.  It’s like sports: to be ready for the game, we have to practice.  The more we live on earth like we’re in heaven, the more familiar heaven will hopefully be for us.  And the more familiar heaven is for us, the more that we show that heaven is what we want.
That’s why our way of life is (or should be) different as Catholics.  We may drink, but we don’t get drunk; we date and marry and have kids (well you do; I don’t), but our understanding of dating and marriage and children is not the world’s understanding; we work hard to make a living, but we don’t work as if making money is all there is to life.  We live differently because heaven is different.
And coming to Mass on Sundays is part of our practice.  Mass is a foretaste of heaven.  The Book of Revelation says that there is a fair amount of singing praise to the Lamb in heaven.  In heaven we spend our time worshipping God and being surrounded by His love.  We get a foretaste of that worship in the Mass, and we receive Love Himself in the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Mass helps to prepare us for heaven.  The less we come, the less we are prepared.  The less we are prepared, the less likely we are to actually be ready to go there.  

In Christ, our human nature is already in heaven.  That’s the joy of today’s celebration.  Our response is to try to be as ready as we can to be there with Jesus, not only in potential, but in actuality.  Prepare yourself for heaven.  Prepare yourself for the home Jesus has prepared for you.

22 May 2017

Catholic Super Powers

Sixth Sunday of Easter
It is likely not a surprise to anyone who attends St. Pius X Catholic School, that the principal, Mr. Kaplan, has a favorite superhero, and that superhero is Batman.  That’s a fine superhero, though, as I believe the TV show “The Big Bang Theory” pointed out, he’s a rich guy who works out a lot and has a lot of cool tech-toys.  So, as superheroes go, he’s not number one in my book.
Probably my favorite superhero would be Captain America.  I probably like him the best because I’m Captain America before he received the Super-Serum which gave him amazing strength, stamina, and intelligence.  He also has that special shield that is bullet proof and always seems to spin back to him like a boomerang.  For me, I’m just too lazy to do the work to give me a chiseled body like Captain America. 

I think most kids dream about being a super hero.  We all want to have a special ability that sets us apart from the rest.  Whether it’s Batman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Storm, or any one else, we want to have special gifts that allow us to do special things.
What we hear in our readings today is that those who are baptized have received a special gift.  This gift doesn’t give you superhuman strength, a magical lasso, or the ability to control the weather.  The special gift, the special power we might say, is the gift of the Holy Spirit.  
Philip, in our first reading, went down to Samaria.  Philip is likely the Deacon who was appointed by the apostles as one of the first seven deacons.  Filled with the Holy Spirit from his baptism and his ordination, he does great signs, including curing those who were paralyzed or crippled.  After Philip baptizes people in Samaria, Peter and John, the apostles, give them a full outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which is the precursor to our celebration of the Sacrament of Confirmation.  
In the Gospel, Jesus also promises to send the Holy Spirit to the Apostles.  He will be another Advocate, another Person to plead their cause.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, who will remain with the Apostles even after Jesus leaves earth.  The Holy Spirit will teach the Apostles all that they need to know.
The Holy Spirit, the Sprit of truth, continues to remain with the successors of the apostles.  The Holy Spirit protects the pope, the prince of the apostles, and the college or group of bishops, the other successors of the apostles, from teaching the Church anything that is false when it comes to what we should believe, or how we should live.  That is one exercise of special powers from the reception of the Holy Spirit.
Another exercise of special powers from the Holy Spirit is given to priests and bishops, and allows them to act in Persona Christi capitis, in the Person of Christ the Head, and allows them to exercise Jesus’ authority and power when it comes to the sacraments.  It is not by my own holiness, but only by the power of the Holy Spirit that I am able to perform the miracle of changing bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus.
But the special power of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the ordained.  It is not only deacons, priests, and bishops who receive special powers from the Holy Spirit, but every person who is baptized and confirmed.  What are those powers that all the baptized and confirmed receive?
We all have the ability to offer our lives as a priestly people (as Deacon Joe preached last week) to God the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  That is no small power.  All the baptized and confirmed have access to God and to give Him the acceptable sacrifice of their lives, united with the bread and wine at Mass, and throughout the week.  
All the baptized and confirmed have the ability to avoid mortal sins, and to continue an unbroken relationship with God.  Mortal sin destroys in us the theological virtue of charity, and severs us from a saving a relationship with God, which can only normally be repaired through sacramental confession.  But because of our reception of the Holy Spirit, we are not doomed to fall into mortal sins.  We can reject Satan and his lies and temptations, and be faithful to God throughout our lives.  Fidelity to God is possible by the power of the Holy Spirit, and we all have the ability.
And those are just two exercises of the power of the Holy Spirit.  Everyone who is confirmed has received the sevenfold gift of the Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.  Some have the gift of healing, the gift of prophecy, the gift of speaking in tongues, and others, which are all given for the building up of the Church.  

We don’t have to be Captain America or Storm to have superpowers and to fight evil.  If we are baptized and confirmed, we have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us to fight evil and live as God called us to live.  

08 May 2017

It's Not What We Know, It's Who We Know

Fourth Sunday of Easter
We’ve probably all heard the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  I experienced that saying firsthand when I studied in Rome for 5 months as an undergraduate.  During  my time I met a monsignor who worked for the Roman Rota, the Supreme Court, as it were for the Catholic Church (though that analogy is not 100% accurate, as the pope is really the supreme judge).  He was also a chaplain for the local chapter of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta, a chivalrous religious order that provides medical help in the name of the Church.  He  took me to different churches that I would have never known about, and certainly would not have been able to enter.  To be honest, it was pretty cool.
Msgr. (now-Bishop) Giuseppe Sciacca, me, and some of
my classmates from my semester in Rome
It may sound surprising, but when it comes to eternal salvation, it is also not what you know, but who you know.  No, not in the sense that if you’re best friends with this priest, or this religious sister, or this bishop, then you can do anything you want.  But it is true when it comes to Jesus.  Salvation is intimately connected with knowing who Jesus is, and having a relationship with Him.  We can know all sorts of facts about Jesus, we can even be able to repeat the Catechism word for word.  But that knowledge does not equate to salvation.  Even Satan knows about Jesus; in fact, Satan probably knows more about Jesus than we do.  But Satan does not know Jesus as it pertains to having friendship with Jesus.
Jesus Himself asserts that it’s all about knowing Him.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks about Himself as the “gate for the sheep.”  He is the one by whom the sheep (that is, we) enter into the verdant pastures that Psalm 23 spoke of in today’s Responsorial Psalm.  No one else is the gate: not Moses, not Mohammed, not Buddha, no one else.  If we wish to enter into heaven, we have to go through Jesus.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking: what about all the people who didn’t or don’t believe in Jesus, who don’t truly know Jesus?  We can talk about people who came before Jesus, who had no way of knowing about Him, and those who have come after Jesus, who maybe do or maybe don’t have access to knowing about Jesus.  What Scripture makes clear, both in today’s Gospel, as well as in Peter’s speech in another place in the Acts of the Apostles, is that there is no other name on earth by when people are saved other than the Most Holy Name of Jesus.  So anyone who is in heaven, and only God decides who is in heaven, is there only because of the one saving act of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection.  Jews are not saved by the Law of Moses (St. Paul makes that very clear); Muslims are not saved by following the Qur’an; Buddhists are not saved because they followed the path of enlightenment.  If they are in heaven, it is only through Jesus.
The Church also taught in Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Vatican II, and I will quote the section: “Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.”  So the Church teaches that is possible that those who are ignorant of Christ through no fault of their own, and who are seeking God and following, to the best of the ability, their conscience, that they be saved.  We don’t know if they’re saved, because the only way we know to receive the gift of salvation is to know Jesus and be in a relationship with Him, begun in Baptism.  But the key is that if any person is in heaven, they are only there because of Jesus.
This should be a catalyst for us not simply to know about Jesus, but to truly know Him.  It should move us to say, ‘Do I really know Jesus?’  Simply being baptized, or even receiving other sacraments, does not necessarily mean that we know Jesus.  We might know about Jesus, but do we know Him as well as we know our friends or our spouse?
It should also be a catalyst to tell others about Jesus.  Your co-worker’s salvation could depend on how well you help them to understand who Jesus is.  Your spouse’s salvation could depend on how well you have made the life of Jesus your own and live it in your marriage.  Your classmate or friend’s salvation could be aided by the fact that you help them to know Jesus and reflect that relational knowledge through what you say and do.  Is that easy?  No.  The cost of discipleship, of knowing Jesus, is very expensive.  But God is pulling for us and giving us what we need to know Jesus and to share that knowledge with others through His divine grace, which is given to us through the Sacraments.
This weekend our First Communicants will receive Jesus, the Gate to Heaven, in the Eucharist.  In this new way, they are receiving the help to have union with Jesus, to truly know Him, and not simply to know about Him.  They asked for His mercy on Saturday, which He readily grants to those who are sorry and who seek to make the life of Jesus their own in their own way.  And on Sunday, having been purified of the obstacles to His life, they then/now receive that life and love in Jesus’ Body and Blood.  What a beautiful gift for Jesus to spread the table of the Eucharist, the altar of life, before us as we gather in the house of the Lord, which anticipates the eternal temple of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, where God wants us to dwell for years to come!  And each week we are invited back to Mass, to get to know Jesus better, and then to make His life our own by the power of His grace.  

When it comes to eternal salvation, to being welcomed into heaven, it’s not what we know, it’s who we know.  Do we know the Good Shepherd, the One who is the Gate for the sheep, who came that we “might have life and have it more abundantly”?

04 May 2017

Pope of Carman Hills

Third Sunday of Easter
Sometimes people don’t quite get it.  This past Thursday I decided to go to the Powers Boys Lacrosse game.  They were playing at Davison.  While the first half wasn’t so great, Powers managed to get their offense going, and really did well on defense, and ended up winning 12-6.  At the end of the game, we all lined up to shake hands and say good game.  As I passed one of the Davison players and shook his hand, I heard him say as they passed me, “Dude, they brought their pope!”  Now, to be clear, I have no aspirations of being anything other than a parish priest.  But maybe if Fr. Tom Firestone can be the Pope of Flint, then I could be the Pope of Carman Hills!
The disciples in today’s Gospel were the ones who didn’t quite get it.  We’ve heard this Gospel passage before, and we’re probably quite familiar with it.  On Easter Sunday, the very day Jesus rose from the dead, two disciples, one of who was named Cleopas are walking away from Jerusalem.  They had heard Mary Magdalen tell the apostles that Jesus was risen from the dead, but they don’t believe her.  They figure all their hope that Jesus truly was the Messiah is hopeless.  And then this guy comes up to walk beside them, though they don’t recognize Him.  
As they walk, this guy talks about how the suffering of the Messiah was prophesied by the entire Old Testament, and He gives them the different passages that refer to the Messiah and how they were fulfilled.  As the two approach Emmaus, the guy acts like He’s going farther.  But they invite Him to stay with them, because it’s dark, and there would likely be robbers along the road.  So the guy stays with them, and says the blessing of the bread, breaks it, and gives it to them.  At that, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.”  They then run back to tell the others that they, too, have seen the risen Lord.
Even though these two disciples had been with Jesus for some time, maybe even all three years, spending days and nights with Jesus, only rarely leaving His side, they didn’t quite get it.  They didn’t understand why the Messiah had to suffer and die, and they didn’t believe He rose from the dead.  It takes Jesus being present with them, opening up the Word of God, and especially the breaking of bread for them to recognize Him.
Do we quite get it?  Or do we walk through this world downcast, as if our hope in Jesus wasn’t worth much?  Do we live as if Jesus has not been raised from the dead?
In essence, the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus is a paradigm for the Mass.  Think about it: there’s a walk, we might call it a procession; the Lord is with them; the Word of God is opened up by Jesus; and then Jesus blesses bread, breaks it, and gives it to the disciples.  This should sound familiar, because it’s what happens at every Mass.  The priest, acting in the Person of Christ the Head, processes into the sanctuary; he says, “The Lord be with you;”  the Word of God is proclaimed from the Old Testament, New Testament, and is applied in the homily; then the priest, still acting in the Person of Christ the Head, changes the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Eucharist is then given to those who follow Jesus in the one Church He established.  The Second Vatican Council says it this way: 

“[Christ] is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister, ‘the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross’, but especially under the Eucharistic species.  […] He is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church.  He is presently, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for He promised: ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them’.”  

Each Mass, and especially on Sunday, the first day of the week, the very day of the Resurrection, we might say we relive the road to Emmaus.  
But there is another part to the story which I didn’t mention.  After the encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, the disciples run back to tell the others about Jesus being risen from the dead.  This encounter with Jesus changes them and they can’t help but talk about seeing Jesus.  Do we relive this part of Emmaus?  Does our encounter with Jesus so affect us that we want to tell others about Jesus, risen from the dead?
There has been a lot of ink spilled recently about encountering Jesus.  There are many programs and retreats that encourage such an encounter with Jesus, and many of them are good!  But the Mass is the pre-eminent place to encounter Jesus.  It is the place where we, most often, get to spend time with Jesus.  Yes, it’s the same basic format every week.  But this unchanging format allows us the opportunity to enter more deeply into the Mass, rather than remaining at a superficial level at all the stuff that is different.  

If we’re not encountering Jesus in the Mass, then why are we not?  Is Jesus holding Himself back?  Certainly not.  It isn’t all about feelings; we can encounter Jesus without having a gushy, emotional response.  But we should have some sense that we have spent time with Jesus.  And if we don’t, then maybe we haven’t brought our full attention to the Mass, or having been holding something back from Jesus.  Today we have the opportunity, as we do every Sunday and every time we come to Mass, to encounter Jesus walking with us, opening the Word of God for us, and giving Himself to us in the Eucharist.  Hopefully we are open so that the Mass will transform us as it transformed the disciples on the road to Emmaus.