What Belongs to God

 Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  So, this is the Gospel passage where we start talking about politics and religion, church and state, and how the two intersect, how they should or shouldn’t intersect, what’s right in politics, what’s wrong in politics, etc.  Politics, though now considered a dirty word in some arenas, is a good thing, as it is the science of running the polis, the city (in Greek).  But I don’t know about you, but it seems like politics is all we talk about any more, even as a church.
    Don’t get me wrong: the Gospel has political implications.  If we truly believe in Jesus and follow Him, there are some things we cannot support, and some things that we must support.  But our Lord’s point is much greater than what we owe to government, and what we owe to God.
    Let’s start with the fact that, although the Herodians had tried to trap our Lord in a trap, He set one of His own.  And though Christ didn’t fall into the trap, the Herodians were quite easily ensnared.  What was that trap?  Well, to begin with, you have to go back one chapter to realize where our Lord is.  He was in the Temple.  He had entered into Jerusalem, had left for Bethany, and then had returned.  And the traps that the Pharisees are laying for Him are everywhere!  But the Savior ducks and weaves, and lands a few punches (metaphorically speaking) of His own.  

Denarius with the image of Marcus Aurelius

    So, in the temple, the Herodians are asked to pull out a Roman coin.  We don’t think much of it, because we carry money around with us everywhere.  But, because there was a commandment about not having a graven images, a good Jew would have never brought a Roman coin into the Temple, because that was bringing the image of a pagan god (the emperor) into the house of the true God.  That’s why there were money changers in the Temple: you had to exchange your pagan coins–that, outside the Temple were necessary for daily business–for Jewish coins that did not break the Law.  So the Herodians are actually shown to be breaking the law by having those Roman coins with them.  
    But further, there’s this point about giving God what belongs to God.  A good Jew, going back to Genesis 1 and 2, would ascribe everything as a good creation of God.  Certainly, we wouldn’t talk this way about artifacts (like coins) that were man-made.  But break the coin down to its constitutive parts, and you get metals, which are fancy rocks, which are part of the earth, which God created.  And the skill of mining those fancy rocks was given by God by the creation of a rational brain in humans.  And the strength needed to flatten out the fancy rocks and shape them in such a way was also given, at least indirectly, by God.  Everything came from God.  God loaned, as it were, everything to mankind, making man and woman the stewards of creation.  So everything really belongs to God.
    So are we to give God everything?  In a word, yes!  When God asks for something, He’s not asking for a gift from us, or asking us to be benevolent and generous.  He is asking for what is rightfully His.  A steward was never the owner of the property of the household, though he could buy and sell.  A steward always did business realizing that the goods which he bought and sold truly belonged to the Master, for which he would have to account.  So nothing is, strictly speaking, ours.  This is where St. Thomas Aquinas gets the idea, repeated throughout the ages and dating back to the church fathers, that while we can own private property–we can possess things for ourselves–there is a universal destination of goods.  As St. Basil the Great says, “The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.”  He can only say that if everything, ultimately, belongs to God.  
    Consecrated men and women live this out radically (at the root) by not owning private property.  I was recently at dinner with a family whose son is a religious brother.  This topic came up about owning all things in common, and, as happens, the question of common underwear came up.  Of course, people use their own underwear (at least in most congregations).  But, this brother was quick to point out that the underwear was not, technically, his; it belongs to the community.  For we seculars, whether priests or married, we can’t simply say that the universal destination of goods are only for consecrated men and women.  According to our vocation, we also are called to make sure that others, especially in the household of faith, are not in need while we are in excess.
    But offering God everything does not stop at what is tangible.  God desires and deserves everything, and that means everything.  The joy that we have when we are praised for a job well done should be given back to God.  The sorrow we have when we don’t do as well as a job as we wanted should also be given back to God.  And everything in-between.  
    God desires our all.  Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, states: 

For all [the laity’s] works, prayers and apostolic endeavors, their ordinary married and family life, their daily occupations, their physical and mental relaxation, if carried out in the Spirit, and even the hardships of life, if patiently borne–all these become "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”  Together with the offering of the Lord’s body, they are most fittingly offered in the celebration of the Eucharist.

Everything you do as laity, and everything I do as a priest, is meant to be offered to God, because, in the end, everything comes from God; it is His.  The only thing we do on our own is sin, and even that God wants, so that He can, by His grace, heal us and transform us.  
    As with any Scripture, there are many ways to apply today’s Gospel.  But today the Lord invites us to truly give Him our all, united with the bread and wine which I offer on your behalf to the Eternal Father, through Christ the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Offer to God your everything, and you will find that you have lost nothing, but gained everything, because God, as our loving Father, withholds nothing of what we need.  So give to God what belongs to God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

How Is Our Sight?

 Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    As I do every year, I got my eyes checked recently.  Amazingly enough, my prescription is actually getting better as I get older, which is nice to hear.  I took the opportunity of my check-up to also get new sunglasses.  I had some Ray-Ban wayfarers for a while, so I wanted to go with something a little different.  I had seen cool sunglasses with colored, reflective lenses, so I decided to go with a pair of those this time.  
    After a couple of weeks my new sunglasses came in.  My last pair just made the entire world darker (as all the sunglasses I have had do).  My new sunglasses slightly dimmed the world, but more so changed the colors as I looked through them.  It was a bit strange at first, but I have gotten used to it, and I think I can even see better with these new sunglasses.  
    When we hear today’s Gospel, we probably focus in on physical sight.  Jesus healed the blind man, Bartimaeus, so that his eyes could function again and he could see.  But the Bartimaeus’s faith, his eyes of faith, we might say, were functioning fine.  After all, Jesus tells him that his faith has saved him.  So the Bartimaeus must have been able to metaphorically see clearly with his eyes of faith that Jesus could do what the man wanted him to do.  And the Bartimaeus’s faith was rewarded with the restoration of his physical sight.  
    Through Jesus’ eyes, He could see that Bartimaeus had faith.  Probably everyone else, or at least most others, though that Bartimaeus was cursed by God, or that he must have done something wrong.  That’s what is assumed in John’s Gospel with the account of the man born blind whom Jesus heals.  But Jesus saw that Bartimaeus had faith, and was not cursed.  Jesus saw the world with different eyes than everyone else.
    Do we see with the eyes of God, or the eyes of the world?  How do we look at what is happening in our parish, our city, our State, and our world?  Do we see it only from an earthly point of view, or from a heavenly point of view?  In our first reading, the prophet Jeremiah, who had foretold the exile of the people from their land, now prophesies that God will make things better.  In the eyes of the world, the Jews were simply a weaker nation that was being conquered by a stronger nation.  But through God’s eyes, the Jews were reaping the consequences of not being faithful to Him and worshipping false gods, of not protecting the poor, the widows, and the orphans, and of putting too much trust in physical buildings.  God allowed them to go into exile so that they could understand that their false gods would not help them, and that caring for each other, especially the most vulnerable, was part and parcel of being God’s Chosen People.  
    But God wouldn’t allow their downfall forever.  Jeremiah prophesies that God will restore His people, heal the lame and the blind, and console the Chosen People as their loving Father.  Probably most nations thought that Israel would be gone forever, but God promises to bring them back and heal their wounds, which is what happened.
    In order to keep some sense of sanity, I stopped watching the TV news last year in November.  I would get so worked up by all the things that the news wanted to focus on, and I was losing my interior peace.  I still skim stories on the internet to see what is going on in the world, but I no longer tune to watch news programs.  Even with just the internet news, the world can seem like a fairly rotten place.  Our country and world seem more divided than ever; there are real struggles going on in the day-to-day life of everyday people.  Some goods are in short supply.  I recently read that the cost to heat homes could be higher than it has been in some time, and I know I’m paying more to fill up my car’s gas tank than I have paid in some time.
    That’s looking at reality with the eyes of the world.  I can see all of the external realities.  But I have to try my best to also see the world as God sees it.  What is God trying to do through all of this.  Is there a lesson that I need to learn from all that is happening now?  Maybe what seems like the end is simply the consequence of previous choices, but is also the opportunity for something new.

   I think about St. Augustine on his death bed in the year 430, and the changes he saw in his lifetime.  The Church in North Africa had been one of the gems of the universal Church.  Alexandria in Egypt was an intellectual center for the Christian world, and the name of the city was used like we use Oxford or Cambridge now.  Cyprian, an earlier bishop of Carthage, was a great martyr and theologian.  Monastic life had thrived, and all had gone well for around a century.  
    But the Vandals started to enter Roman Africa early in the 400s, and by 430 they had basically conquered it all.  In fact, though they had besieged Hippo in 430, they left after Augustine died, only to return again and burn most of the books, except those that Augustine had reserved.  After the Vandals came the Muslims, sweeping across northern Africa and taking over.  And the Church in North Africa was never the same (in fact, Christianity is still illegal in Egypt today).  
    Augustine likely wondered what God was doing.  He had been quite faithful, and yet things still fell apart.  But, Augustine trusted in the plan of God, and knew that things would be alright.  They would not be the same, and still are not, but they would be as God would allow them to be.  The key for Augustine was remaining faithful to God, and praying to God for guidance and for mercy as much as he could.  Ironically (for this homily, anyway), St. Augustine is the patron saint of those with sore eyes.  He can be prayed to when our eyes (especially the eyes of faith) are not working as well as they should.
    Our parish, city, State, and country are not the same as they were ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years ago.  We have new challenges now.  But God has a plan, and our call is to remain faithful to God, continue to turn to prayer, and ask God to see, not only with the eyes in our head, but with the eyes of faith.  St. Augustine, pray for us!

A Second Look at God's Mercy

 Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the great things about Sacred Scripture is that it is a treasure that can never be fully mined, a spring that never runs out.  I was reminded about that as I was reading over this very familiar parable about the unforgiving servant.  It’s funny how you sort of skim over the parts that you think you know: a servant has a huge debt, he can’t pay it back, so the master decides to sell him and his family to pay the debt.  But the man pleads, and the master gives him more time to pay it back.  But when faced with the same situation where the servant is like the master, and someone else owes him a little bit of money, the servant is not as merciful.  That’s what I thought I had heard all these years.

    But then I looked closer at the Gospel, and noticed that the master didn’t give him more time to pay back the debt.  The servant offered to pay it back, if he could have more time, but the master forgave the entire debt.  That changes the tone of the parable a bit.  I don’t know why I never noticed it (I’m sure a psychologist could have a field day with that), but I always presumed that the servant was expected to pay the money back.  
    It doesn’t take a great Scripture scholar and knowledge of Greek to know that the master represents our heavenly Father in the parable.  Our Lord reveals someone of who the Father is as He shows that, faced with the pleading of His children, He does not give more time; He eliminates the debt.  And isn’t that what we see with salvation?  
    We can sometimes have this idea that if humanity in general, or we in particular, just had more time, we could pay back the debt of sin.  But that’s wrong.  We, whether in general or in particular, could never pay back the debt that was incurred because of sin.  By true justice we should have been handed over to the jailers (Hell) to pay the price of our sins.  But as we pleaded for the mercy of God, God did not give us more time, but forgave us our sins as Jesus paid the price for it on the cross.
    What generosity!!  How prodigal (wasteful) God is with His mercy!  Just thinking about that should make us fall to our knees, not in pleading, but in gratitude for what God has done for us!  No matter what our sins, when we plead with our heavenly Father in the Sacrament of Penance, He forgives us, wipes away our debt, so that nothing stands against us.  As the hymn states, “What wondrous love is this!”  
    But then, the Lord says and the parable clearly teaches, we are to imitate the Father in His mercy.  Just as we receive mercy, so should we give it.  When others offend us, they offend merely another human.  When we sin, we offend God and our fellow man, so the debt is much greater than being offended by another person.  And yet, how often are we quick to plead for God’s mercy, but not show it ourselves?  Oh the irony that sometimes the angriest drivers are the ones who are leaving the church parking lot on a Sunday!
    We are invited to emulate the mercy of God the Father, and, in doing so, fight the fallen powers of the devil.  To do that, we have to wear the armor of God: the breastplate of justice, the shoes of peace, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.  St. Paul also mentions girding our loins with truth, so I guess we could also add the compression shorts of truth to that list.  In any case, we should be surrounding ourselves with prayer and the mercy of God as we go to interact with people.  Yes, people may sometimes be nasty, but the devil can use other’s nastiness to tempt us to fall into sin by being nasty right back.  Earlier in the month on 2 October we celebrated our Holy Guardian Angels.  We can ask for their assistance in helping protect ourselves from the attacks of the enemy.  We can ask them to clear away any temptations to sin, especially if we have to prepare for a difficult conversation.  
    And as we do so, we should keep a clear head that the measure with which we forge, is the measure that we will be forgiven.  Again, a sobering reality.  As we go to confession, it should not only forgive us our sins (which it does), but also allow us to demonstrate the mercy of the Father more readily.  If that’s not happening; if we are not (however slowly) finding it easier to forgive others and be patient with them, then we’re not allowing the sacrament to be as fruitful as God wants it to be.  God intends His mercy to change us, to convert us, to change our hearts.  May we leave the confessional each time feeling well-armored from the darts of the enemy, and ready to enter the battlefield of the world and extend the mercy of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Seeing or Believing

 Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I remember what a big deal it was when I was finally old enough to ride the Space Mountain roller coaster at Disney World.  I was nervous and excited, all at once.  I didn’t realize it was in the dark, and while I survived, that whole experience freaked me out!!  I like to see where I’m going, because I’ll know what to expect and how to adjust appropriate.
    The man in the Gospel whose son our Lord heals at first also wanted to see.  He asked Christ to come and heal his son, who was at the point of death.  Jesus bemoans that it must be seen in order to believe.  But that observation leads to the man having faith that the Savior could heal the man’s son, whether he was present or not.  And this faith led to the healing of the son.  Not only that, but the entire household believed in our Lord.  
    Do we have to see?  My desire to see everything that is coming up is sometimes virtuous, because it helps me to adjust for upcoming realities and plan.  But in other ways, it is pride, because I feel like I have to be in control.  Maybe some of you know that feeling, too.  If we see what is happening, we feel like we are in control of the situation.  When we feel like we cannot see, we don’t feel like we have control over what is going on, and when something else comes to us, we may not be as prepared for it.
    But over how much are we really in control?  During the pandemic, we have seen so many things change in a moment’s notice.  I remember 13 March, Thursday, hearing reports about schools closing down due to COVID, and then Friday, 14 March, the principal at St. Pius X school let me know that we were closed, and we didn’t reopen for the rest of that school year.  As a parish school, we laid off a number of employees eventually, because they were aids and there were no kids to watch over in the building.  I had plans to celebrate my tenth anniversary as a priest in June 2020, and even in March I was sure that it would still happen.  But by May I made the decision to cancel, and celebrated only with my immediate family who could attend a small dinner I held in my house.
    In our life, we control very little.  But God is control of all things.  He directs or allows things to happen for our good, but they don’t always seem that way.  But, through it all, God is in control, and we are not.  And because we are not in control, we are invited to have faith, to put our trust in God.  God invites us to loosen our grip on things we think we control, but we don’t.  He wants us to have confidence in Him as He cares for us.  
    Again, this can be hard for us, because our timing is not always God’s timing.  There are families who go through extreme illnesses; friends or family who are killed in an unforeseen accident; an unexpected child is conceived, or a couple wants to conceive and cannot; an employee loses a job.  In all these circumstances we so often presume that we know better.  We think that if God had simply left the decision up to us, then everything would be ok.  
    But how much really goes ok if we are left in charge?  We may be the best or one of the best in our particular field, but how many small examples of Divine Providence, which we had not organized or even considered, had to happen in our for our success to come about?  How many people had to get up at just the right time and leave the house in order for us to avoid a traffic crash?  If we think about all that happens for a single second to go right, it should make us fall on our knees in thanksgiving for that one second and all that had to occur just for that one second to go the way we want it to.  
    But even when we life doesn’t go as we want it to, St. Paul still reminds us to give thanks “for all things.”  We could write Paul off if his life had been easy.  Instead, the man who tells us to give thanks for all things was himself beaten, whipped, stoned, left for dead, abandoned by co-workers, and was held suspect by some believers.  St. Paul talks about being comfortable in having nothing, in going hungry.  And still, he says, give thanks.  
    It is easy to put our confidence in God when things are going the way we want it to, when we can see the healing taking place.  But the virtue of faith is truly exercised when we can’t see things going right, when nothing seems to be going right, and yet we trust in God anyway.  Faith is witnessed when we cannot see what God is doing, but we trust that He’s doing the best thing for our salvation, just as Jesus healed the man’s son even without the man being able to see that healing take place.
    Our days are evil.  Around us swirls hatred, confusion, division, immorality, idolatry, and a host of other evils too many to number here.  But God called us to live in this time, to be a witness of His love and truth in this time, when so many don’t want true love, don’t want truth.  We may sometimes say, with Frodo, that we wish that “none of this had ever happened.”  But God wanted us to be alive in this time, and He is accomplishing some good.  Further, we know it must be some great good, because it is opposed so much by the enemy.  We cannot decide the times in which we live, but we can decide “what to do with the time that is given to us.”  We cannot always see what God is doing, and the miracles He is accomplishing, but today, and everyday, the Lord invites us: have faith!

Going Deeper

 Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    We, as Americans are very pragmatic.  “Just tell me what I have to do,” could easily be an American mantra.  When we see a goal, we want to know how to achieve it.  The rich young man had this same sort of mentality.  He asked Jesus, “‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  What do I have to do?

    Jesus gives him a fairly straightforward answer: follow the Commandments.  And we should take this to heart.  If we live a life that follows what God revealed as part and parcel of being a member of His Chosen People, then we can have some assurance that we’re on the right path.  But the rich young man already follows the Commandments, and he still feels like there’s more to it than that.  So he asks if there’s anything else, and Jesus responds that the man should sell what he has, give it to the poor, and the follow Jesus more closely.  But the man cannot, because he loved his possessions more than eternal life.
    There is no sense in this Gospel that the man was trying to trick Jesus, or that Jesus was trying to trick the man.  What we heard was an honest exchange between a person who wants to go to heaven, and the one who could reveal how to do that.  In fact, in giving the rich young man the extended call of following Jesus, Mark is clear that Jesus loved the rich young man, and the call that followed was a result of Jesus’ love.  The tragedy of it all is that the man cannot bring himself to follow through with the call beyond the call: what do to when the Ten Commandments are being obeyed.
     When it comes to the spiritual life, there is never “I’ve done enough.”  Yes, the Ten Commandments are the basics of living a God-centered life: love God above all else, keep His Name holy, honor God on the Sabbath, and do not harm your neighbor through murder, adultery, lying, stealing, or envy.  Perhaps some of you have achieved that goal, and you don’t find yourselves breaking the face-value sense of the Commandments.  Praise God!
    But if you have mastered the Decalogue, then Christ invites you to something deeper.  It may not mean giving up all your possessions, but it always means following Christ more closely in your particular vocation.  Even when it comes to the Commandments, Jesus, in teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, goes beyond the face value.  No longer can one simply say, “I haven’t murdered anyone,” but one must consider whether or not one holds a grudge against a neighbor, or insults a neighbor.  No longer is it sufficient to not have sex with someone else’s spouse, one is not to look at another with lust.  And so, for all the Ten Commandments, there are deeper considerations, deeper ways of following Jesus.  
    For the rich young man, it meant giving up money, and that was hard because the man loved his money.  But for us it can mean giving up a grudge, or stopping the practice of keeping up with the Joneses, or working on how we talk about others or think about others, or spending more time in prayer.  For all of us, there are ways that we can go deeper in our spiritual life, but we have to make it a priority.
    Doing this by ourselves is very difficult.  Almost from the beginning, everyday Christians looked towards spiritual guides to help them live that deeper life beyond the Commandments.  Very quickly those guides were given titles of respect, Abba or Amma, Father or Mother, as in Abba Anthony (St. Anthony of the Desert) or Amma Mary (St. Mary of Egypt).  Throughout the centuries saints have guided everyday people to go deeper.  For this reason we talk about Benedictine, or Dominican, or Franciscan, or Ignatian spirituality.  
    But sometimes it also helps to have another person alongside us, on this earth, urging us on as we urge them on.  A few months back I started working out with weights 4 or 5 times per week (can’t you tell?!?).  I had tried to work on physical strength before as an adult, but never really got into it.  A few years back I made a New Year’s resolution to do push-ups and sit-ups 3 times a week.  I was successful for about six weeks, until life got busy, and I found excuses not to do it (plus, it wasn’t really that much fun).  So what made the difference this time around?  What has kept me on track since around June?  A good friend taught me how to start working out.  At first we started with only a few exercises, and we would meet at least once per week.  Both of our schedules have filled up since then, and now we might work out together once or twice a month, if that.  But I still keep at it because we challenge each other to work out when we can, and we hold each other accountable.  
    I would suggest having someone to help you in your spiritual life.  Don’t try to tackle it by yourself.  When you are ready to go deeper, involve a friend or two who can hold you accountable and urge you on.  If it’s reading more Scripture, have another friend read with you (physically, or at least reading the same amount each day or week).  If it’s working on a virtue or a penitential practice, check in with each other.  Notice that Jesus calls the rich young man to follow Him, which meant being in the group of disciples who worked together on being more closely conformed to Jesus.  We tend to do better, and Jesus knows this, with others when we try to grow in our relationship with Him.  
    If you’re struggling to still keep the Commandments, have someone help you with that.  If you’ve mastered the Ten, then find a friend who will not let you settle, but will work out those spiritual muscles with you each week.  Hear and accept the invitation that Jesus is offering you today to follow Him.

"To Thee Do We Turn"

 Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  As a Third Order Dominican, the Rosary is something near and dear to my heart.  It is part of my daily prayer habit.  But it wasn’t always.  As a child, I dreaded praying the Rosary.  Even though it only takes around 15-20 minutes, that was like an eternity for me!  My family had a practice that, whenever we went on long trips, we would pray the Rosary at the beginning of our travels.  That was not my idea of fun!
    Ironically, it is in my car most of the time that I pray the Rosary these days.  And it is a beautiful means of meditation, both for individuals and for families (even if the kids don’t always appreciate it).  And also, ironically, while we are often chastened by our Protestant brothers and sisters for worshipping Mary, as they think is demonstrated by the Rosary, it is actually very much a Scriptural prayer.  Obviously, the Our Father is scriptural, and the Glory Be, while not explicitly found in Scripture, is common to most, if not all, Christians.  But even the Hail Mary finds most of its roots in Scripture.  The first part, “Hail…full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” is the greeting of the Archangel Gabriel to Mary at the Annunciation.  The next part, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” is the greeting Elizabeth speaks to the Blessed Mother at the Visitation.  And the majority of the mysteries of the Rosary are explicitly found in Scripture, while others are implicitly found there.

   But the Rosary also grew out of a practice for illiterate people to be able to pray with priests, brothers, and monks the Divine Office, the Breviary, the other official prayer of the Church (in addition to the Mass).  In the original iteration of the Rosary, given, by tradition, by our Lady to the Order of Preachers, there were 3 sets of mysteries (joyful, sorrowful, and glorious), which each had 50 Hail Marys, just as there are 150 Psalms (50 times 3 equals 150).  I also pray with the Luminous Mysteries, and find no problem doing so (though we did not add another 50 Psalms).  The Rosary was a way for all people whether able to read or not, to join in prayer together throughout the day and week, following St. Paul’s admonition to pray constantly.

    It also helps ingrain in us these three basic prayers of Catholicism.  I have had priests tell me that they have visited patients who are dying of Alzheimers, who cannot even remember the name of their own spouse or children.  And yet, when the Rosary starts, they join in.  My own sister, Amanda, found the Hail Mary, the staple prayer of the Rosary, as a comfort for her.  When she was in the summer between junior and senior year, she was hit by another car (driven by a young man I had sponsored for confirmation) while traveling at the posted speed of 55 mph.  Her Chevy Astro (van) rolled into the corn field, and landed on her arm (she had gotten moved around a bit as the vehicle rolled).  When the car stopped rolling, she was conscious, but could not call 911.  So she prayed Hail Marys until the ambulance came, which helped keep her calm.
    Those prayers that we memorize, especially the ones in the Rosary, are made for times when we cannot think of our own words to pray.  We all know times in life when we’re just too scared, anxious, or excited for our own words to come to our minds.  At those times, we can turn to our favorite prayers, especially the Hail Mary, to ask our Blessed Mother to intercede for us.

    This feast day also commemorates the victory of the Christian fleet over the Ottoman Turk fleet at Lepanto, and so is a great example of turning to Mary when we need assistance.  The Turks had been “knocking on the door of Europe” for years and had sought a foothold in Europe so that they could take Europe for the Muslim faith.  This was a great victory that signaled the fading of Ottoman military power in the Mediterranean.  
    Where do we turn to, or to whom do we turn, when things look most bleak and dire?  It can be so easy to turn to our own machinations and wisdom, and feel that if we do not take control, then all will be lost.  Instead, as shown to us by Pope St. Pius V, who invited all Europe to pray the Rosary for the success of the Catholic fleet, we should turn to prayer, even while making necessary plans and preparations, entrusting ourselves and the situation to the providence of God.  We should, like Mary, say to the Lord, “Be it done unto me according to [God’s] word.”  It is that confidence in God’s plan that should be one of the hallmarks of our life as Catholics, knowing that God is in charge and He will work all things toward His plan of salvation, even when others, or even we, do not follow His will.  Using the metaphor of a naval battle, the waves may roll around us, and the fire around us may seem like the very gates of Hell, but if we are under our Lady’s banner, then we will not, in the end be sunk or destroyed, but will come out victorious.
    Still, that victory can take a while to develop.  We don’t simply pray the Joyful and Glorious Mysteries.  Sandwiched between them are the Luminous Mysteries which tell of some success and some struggles in preaching the Gospel, and even the Sorrowful Mysteries where it looked like all was lost.  In our life we can expect to have joy, light, sorrow, and glory, each in their own times.  But if we stay close to Mary, and view all of it in the light of Divine Providence, then nothing will shake us, no matter what happens.  
    May Mary, Mother of God and Our Lady of the Rosary, help us to ponder the life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.  May our life also mirror her abandonment to God’s will, and may Mary be the one we turn to as we go to Christ in our joys, sorrows, and glory of life.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

"Mawwiadge"

 Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
 

The "Impressive Clergyman"

   As a child of the ‘80s, every time I hear the word marriage, I think of the scene from “The Princess Bride” where the “Impressive Clergyman” (that’s the name given him in the credits) is uniting Princess Buttercup to Prince Humperdinck in marriage.  It’s one of the great scenes in a movie that is filled with them.
    But marriage is quite a serious business.  It’s serious business because it’s so beautiful, and we take extra care with those things that are so precious.  I may not care about the paper plate, or even the usual dinner plate that I use for eating, but I take really good care of the fine china that I use.  
    At an Orthodox wedding that I attended at the end of August in Traverse City, the Orthodox priest said that God was creating something new at the wedding, as the couple began their married life together.  Our Catholic understanding of marriage and the Orthodox understanding of marriage are slightly different, but I thought that was a beautiful image of what happens at a wedding: the two become one; something new, a family is created that never existed before.  God, in His love, creates, just as He created in the Garden of Eden.  
    This new creation is meant to be an unbreakable bond, as were Adam and Eve.  They were the perfect helpers for each other.  No other could be a perfect helper: only the woman for the man, and the man for the woman.  And that is part of why Catholic cannot accept homosexual so-called marriage, as Pope Francis recently reaffirmed.  In Adam and Eve we see the original plan for marriage, which is itself a creation by God.  And since God created it, no other, not even a government, can change what God created.  
    This also goes to the indissolubility of the marriage, that was noted even in the Book of Genesis, and reaffirmed by Jesus Himself in our Gospel today.  Because God has created something that is new, because the two are no longer two, but one flesh, no human being can separate that which God has joined.  And so Jesus teaches that if a man were to divorce his wife, or the wife to divorce her husband, and either of them were to remarry, they would be committing adultery.  
    This seems harsh.  I am willing to bet that we all, in our families, have couples who have divorced.  Sometimes we see that the marriage is very unhappy, and sometimes one or both spouses can even be abusive towards each other, in words and, sadly, sometimes even with physical violence.  Certainly, we would say, God does not want the couple to remain together and risk emotional and physical pain, and sometimes even death.
    In those circumstances where a couple cannot (and sometimes should not) remain together, the Church offers the option of separation, where the couple remains married, but has no common life together.  Or, the Church offers the possibility, where appropriate, of a Declaration of Invalidity, and annulment, that looks at the marriage to see if one of the necessary parts of marriage was absent from the beginning, even if it looked like it was there at the time.
    But this also reminds us of the importance of preparing for marriage.  When a society, as a basic part of its culture, helps men and women understand how to love for each other, care for each other, support each other, and promote each other’s dignity, marriage prep is, we might say, something in the water.  But in our current times, that’s not the case.  The scourge of pornography affects men and women across the board, and instills in those who use it the idea that the other simply exists for use and sexual gratification.  Our digital age, too, does not help people develop true friendships, but makes each person easily jettisoned the minute they challenge an opinion we have as we unfriend and unfollow that person.  And even our consumerist mentality creeps into marriage, as we throw away things that don’t work, rather than working on fixing them.
    All this makes a proper understanding and catechesis in marriage all the more necessary for Catholics.  Our diocese is trying to do more with marriage prep, in order to make sure that people understand what they are getting into when they say, “I do.”  We can no longer take it for granted that Catholics understand the Catholic view of marriage.
    But, we also need to support marriages after the wedding.  Weddings have become like baptisms: a big ceremony and celebration, and then you don’t see the person again in church.  Part of that is our (the church’s) fault for not providing more for couples after the wedding.  I know Deacon Mark wants to be active in marriage enrichment, and I would also like to be able to offer times when couples can come together for a date night which also gives them tools to improve their marriage, even if there’s nothing wrong with it.
    Marriage is so important, because it’s the bedrock of any society.  Marriage is so important for Catholics because it is meant to be an icon of the love between Christ and His Church.  It is a new creation of God that needs to be cared for and nurtured, just like the rest of God’s creation.  Let’s commit ourselves today to praying for married couples, and assisting them, to the best of our ability, to live that beautiful vocation as Christ desires.