Properly Dressed

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of my first funerals as a priest was for a man named Marshall Reid, who was the founder and co-owner of the men’s clothing store, Holden-Reid.  As I often do in my homilies, I try to relate something spiritual to something common, which in this case talking about the phrase, “clothes make the man.”  As the funeral liturgy so often draws us back to baptism, I was able to talk about the baptismal garment and how baptism makes us who we are.
    Today in the Gospel we hear about a man who came to a wedding but without the proper clothes.  The servants cast him out from the wedding, to which all were invited, because the man didn’t come prepared for a wedding with proper vesture.  The master welcomes all to his banquet, and yet there are still expectations.  It reminds me of what the late-Francis Cardinal George said about the horrible hymn, “All Are Welcome,”: all are welcome, but on Christ’s terms, not their own.
    At each Mass we come to the wedding banquet of the Lamb, to use terminology from the Book of Revelation.  The Mass is a sacrifice, first and foremost, but is also a meal that celebrates the full union and reconciliation of God and man.  But we have to wear the proper clothes.

    I’ll begin with me.  You’ll notice I don’t wear street clothes to celebrate Mass.  I don’t even wear an academic robe to show that I have the qualifications to preach.  In addition to my priestly cassock, I put on all sorts of vestments, each with a different meaning: the amice, the helmet of salvation; the alb, a reminder of our white baptismal garment; the maniple, a reminder of the labor in the mission field of the world; the stole, the sign of my authority as a priest; and the chasuble, which represents love, a love that covers all other vestments.  Some churches, not our Latin church, but others even give those who serve in the sanctuary special shoes, so that they are entirely covered with symbolic vestments to make clear that Christ is present, not just the minister.
    What should you wear?  Our severs also have special vestments–a cassock and surplice–which remind us of poverty (the black cassock) and the baptismal gown (the surplice).  But what about the laity in the pews?  I think we owe God our best, or at least better than what we give our daily life.  I think less of a specific dress code, and more of an external way to show that we are giving God more than we give our work or our recreation.  And that varies for every person.  For the poor person it may mean simply trying to have clean clothes for Sunday Mass.  For a college student it may mean jeans or slacks, rather than sweatpants, shorts, or pajama pants, and a nicer shirt our blouse.  For others it may mean a button up shirt and tie, along with dress pants.  For others it may mean a full suit.  But I think the point is that God wants, and deserves from us, that we would give Him our first fruits, our best, not just our leftovers.
    But Christ also reminds us that the externals have to match the internals, otherwise we’re just like the hypocritical pharisees who washed in the outside of their cup but were filled with filth on the inside.  God wants our baptismal garments to be clean, not just in what we wear but at the level of our soul.  Many of you try to go to confession regularly, and oftentimes will try to have it on Saturday before Sunday Mass.  We also offer a short time of around 45 minutes after the 8 am Mass until 9:30, when I start getting ready for the 10 a.m. Mass.  Others will come after Mass, which is also good to do.  Regular confession helps us stay “dressed” properly for the wedding banquet of the Lamb.
    I would also challenge us to see how we welcome people to Mass each Sunday.  No, I’m not going to have us start greeting our neighbor before Mass.  The Mass is not about us and or pretending that we gave God the gift of our presence.  But how do we make others, who may be strangers to St. Matthew, or even strangers to this beautiful form of the Mass, feel like they belong?  Recently we welcomed a number of families from Lapeer who no longer have access to the Extraordinary Form at Immaculate Conception.  Have you made them feel welcome and a part of our parish community?  Do you keep your eyes out for people who don’t look familiar, not as threats, but as opportunities to help them to understand how we pray in this form?  I studied the Mass and its history in seminary and in post-graduate work, so I didn’t find this form of the Mass too strange or complex.  But others, even Catholics who attend the Ordinary Form each week, can sometimes feel lost.  Do we give them a hand missal, or maybe even sit next to them so they can follow along with us and know when to kneel, sit, stand, and what prayers to say?  People are much more likely to stay at this form of the Mass if they know how to join in the prayer, rather than seeming like a stranger in a Mass which is part of their patrimony as Catholics.
    God wants us to dress properly for the wedding banquet of His Son.  That applies to me as a priest with my vestments, and to you as far as giving God your best.  But it doesn’t only mean externally.  God wants our entire person, body and soul, to be dressed appropriately to join in His great celebration of sacrifice and love.  May we not be thrown out of the banquet, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth, but dress our lives in a way that shows that we are grateful for our invitation and attendance at the wedding banquet of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Getting the Right Message

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Perchik from "Fiddler on the Roof"

    Sometimes you can get the wrong message from a story.  In the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” which I just mentioned two weeks ago, there is a scene where a student, Perchik, from the university in Kyiv, is teaching Tevye’s daughters how to read from Biblical stories.  One day he says, “Now after Jacob had worked for Laban for seven years, do you know what happened?  Laban fooled him and gave him his ugly daughter, Leah.  So to marry Rachel, Jacob was forced to work another seven years.  So you see, children, the Bible clearly teaches us you can never trust an employer.”  Not perhaps the message God tries to convey through the account of the patriarch Jacob in the Book of Genesis.
    I feel like the first reading and Gospel passage that we heard today can also be misinterpreted if we don’t approach it well.  From the first reading we might think that we just have to do the right thing and keep the right action up in order to win, as the Israelites win whenever Moses’ hands are raised.  From the Gospel we might think that if we pester God enough by asking him again and again, like the widow from the parable, then God will give us whatever we want.  But I don’t think either of those are what God wants to communicate to us.
    Because the first approach is basically magic.  Magic seeks to control the physical and/or spiritual world by our own efforts.  If I say the right words or do the right things, certain actions have to follow, as if they’re in causal relationship like adding baking soda to vinegar.  I can manipulate the results if I do the prescribed actions.  Magic is an offense against the first commandment, because we seek to take control rather than let God be in control.  
    The second approach is arrogance and pride.  If we ask God for something and we don’t get it, clearly God must have a different plan.  To presume that we know better than God is the ancient vice of price, seeking to elevate us over and against God, rather than submitting to His will and Divine Providence.  God is not a parent that we, like a toddler, can wear down if we just keep pestering Him, so that we eventually get what we want.

    Instead, the message, or at least a message, that God wants to communicate is a phrase my spiritual director says to me almost every time we meet: patient perseverance.  In our relationship with God, we need to approach God with confidence that He hears our prayers, even if they’re not answered immediately, and as long as they are truly what God wants.  St. Monica had to pray around 30 years before her son, Augustine, received the Sacrament of Holy Baptism from St. Ambrose.  God certainly wanted St. Augustine to become an adopted son of God in Jesus Christ and a member of the Church and have original sin washed away, but Monica had to persevere in asking God for that gift.  St. Augustine also had to be open to that gift, as conversion requires the free response to God’s grace that is given for conversion.
    We put forward our best work according to what we believe is God’s will.  We ask God to bless our work, whether it be an earthly or a spiritual endeavor.  But then we have to wait for God to grant it, all the while asking for it to happen, if it is God’s will.  It’s like the distiller who puts together what he thinks is a good mash bill, based upon what he thinks people want to drink.  He ferments the grains with the yeast, purifies the distillate to remove any harmful impurities, then puts it in a barrel to age in a good location in the rick house.  He waits for years, maybe four, eight, ten, twelve, or even twenty or twenty-three, praying that his hard work pays off and produces a tasty bourbon that people will enjoy.  But there is a certain freedom in patience, commending the endeavor to God’s providence.
    All too often, though we don’t begin by asking for God’s input as to whether we should even start something.  I know in my own life I can struggle because I have something I want to do, and I don’t ask God if it’s part of His plans, and then sometimes get frustrated when it turns out they’re not part of His plans, and I don’t find the success I wanted.  Before we begin any action, especially any new undertaking, we should ask God if this is part of His will.
    If we sense that God wants something to happen, that’s when we patiently persevere.  We continue to pray to God to give success to the work of our hands, to paraphrase Psalm 90.  And we wait until God answers that prayer in some way, shape, or form.  We don’t meddle, as if somehow our work can outdo the plan of God.  We don’t act like a toddler and keep asking, “Can I have it?  Please?  Please?  Please?  Please?”, hoping to wear God down.  We patiently, persistently bring our request before the throne of grace and lay it before the feet of God for Him to decide how and when to grant our prayers.  And we do it as a child who trusts his or her father.      Don’t misunderstand the readings we had today, as Perchik did with the story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel.  Don’t pretend that we are in control and God has to do what we want if we just say the right words or do the right thing.  Let God be God, submit to His will and Divine Providence, and trust that what needs to happen will happen, according to the plan of our loving Father.  

A Better-Than-Anticipated Gift

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  There are numerous movies where the protagonist goes out searching for one thing, only to find something different, and usually more fulfilling.  One movie that comes to mind is “The Wizard of Oz.”  Dorothy, having found herself trapped in Oz, as colorful as it is, seeks the Wizard of Oz to send her back home to her family in Kansas.  But, spoiler alert, after the Wizard goofs up and flies away in a hot air balloon, seemingly trapping her in Oz, in the end she finds out that she’s always had the power to return to Kansas in herself, and that home is where she really desires to be (even if that home is in black and white).
    In today’s Gospel, a sick man is brought to the Lord, and while the people who brought the man to Christ presumed that a physical healing would take place, the Savior tells the man that his sins are forgiven.  Everyone is shocked, for one reason or another.  The man was probably shocked, because he was hoping to be healed.  The pharisees were shocked because the Lord was claiming for Himself powers that properly belonged to God.  And they weren’t wrong that only God can forgive sins.  But our Lord was demonstrating His divinity and His unity with the Father.  And as proof of His divinity, beyond forgiving the man’s sins, the Savior also heals the man.

Frodo, Gollum, and Samwise

    I can imagine that, as I mentioned, our Lord surprised the man by saying his sins were forgiven.  If I go to Texas Roadhouse and ask for a bone-in ribeye, and then bring out a slice of deli roast beef, I’m going to be surprised.  It’s like Samwise Gamgee receiving a rope from Galadriel, while Perrin and Merry get elven daggers.  Samwise says, “Have you run out of those nice, shiny daggers?”
    But, in fact, the gift that our Lord gave was much better than what was asked, though it likely didn’t seem that way at the time.  Going back to the Texas Roadhouse analogy, what happened in the Gospel is more like me asking for a New York strip, and getting the finest cut of filet mignon, that is so tender it barely requires a butter knife to cut.
    But we can all too often miss the gifts that the Lord wants to give us because we want something else.  Still, the gifts that the Lord wants to give us far outweigh the physical treasures that our minds often think would be better.  The sick man did receive a physical healing, but eventually his body would break down, as all bodies do, and become dust after death.  But the gift of forgiveness of sins allowed the man to enter heaven and enjoy enteral happiness in a life that knows no end.
    God does still heal people physically today.  And those are amazing and can help increase our faith.  But all too often He wants to achieve a spiritual end that will have a much longer lasting effect.  He wants to heal our soul, not just heal our body.  The Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, which used to be called Extreme Unction, or Last Anointing, demonstrates this.  The purpose of the sacrament is to grant spiritual healing to one who is both seriously ill and spiritually troubled.  Serious illness can often give us anxiety, or increase doubts in our hearts about the care and providence of God.  But God doesn’t want anything to stand in the way of our relationship to Him, and so, through that sacrament, grants us a spiritual healing, both to comfort our fears but also to forgive venial sins (if we are conscious) and even mortal sins (if we are unconscious and do not have the opportunity to confess).  A secondary effect of the sacrament can be physical healing, but that is not the primary effect of the sacrament.
    Still, what do we tend to focus on more?  We wonder, ‘did I get physically healed?’  Praise God when that does happen, but eventually physical healings will come to an end.  To paraphrase Christ: what does it profit a man to regain his health but lose his soul?
    To understand the gifts that the Lord wants to give to us, we need conversion of heart.  If we are not configured to the mind of Christ, all we will think of is whether our body got healed and what sort of physical or visible miracle took place.  As we put on the mind of Christ and think of the things that are above, we recognize how God’s invisible grace can transform our souls and help us be more like Him and be more prepared for heaven, which is the goal of every human life.  To return to the image of “The Wizard of Oz,” we often prefer the color of Oz, even though we’re lost, we’re not near our loved ones, and there are witches trying to kill us, to the black and white of home where we are loved, we are familiar, and others will protect us.  
    God desires every good gift for us.  God wants to give us what we truly need, even when our attention is drawn to other things that do not last as long and are not as powerful.  May our worthy reception of Holy Communion help us to see the world with the eyes of God, and recognize the great miracles He works in our life every time He forgives our sins, or helps us avoid temptations, or reminds us of His love and protection.  May we better appreciate the miracles God wants to work in our lives, even when they are not flashy or what we expect.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Repaying God

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    For many young people, what got them through the COVID pandemic and the isolation that came with it was the sitcom “The Office.”  In one episode, Dwight, the Assistant to the Regional Manager, decides that he wants people to owe him, so that he can get his office frenemy, Jim, fired.  In the ubiquitous one-on-one interview with the camera crew, Dwight says, “Can’t a guy just buy some bagels for his friends so they’ll owe him a favor which he can use to get someone fired who stole a co-manager position from him anymore?”  Unfortunately another salesman, Andy, hates to be in debt to anyone.  So he starts finding ways to return the favor, thus not owing Dwight and thwarting his plans.  In Andy’s interview, he says, “You give me a gift, BAM! thank you note…You do me a favor, WHAM! favor returned.  Do not test my politeness.”  They both then go back and forth trying to give and return favors in pretty comical ways.
    In our first reading and Gospel we hear about people giving thanks for what God has given them.  Naaman receives healing from God for his leprosy, and one of the ten lepers whom Jesus healed returns to Jesus to thank Him.  Naaman even goes so far as to take with him “two mule-loads of earth” so that he can offer sacrifice to God on holy ground, even back in his home country of Assyria.
    While we’re not quite at the Thanksgiving holiday, God reminds us today that we owe Him thanks.  He reminds us, not as a Catholic guilt trip, but because He made us and He knows that we have a built-in desire to thank those who have given us gifts, and most especially the one who has given us everything.  Gratitude helps us live up to our potential as humans.
    But so often we pretend as if what we have comes from our own doing.  Yes, we do cooperate in our own excellence, but all that we have comes as a gift from God.  It starts with our life, which we do not arrange.  Even if a couple seeks to conceive a child at a time when they suspect conception could happen, it only happens by God’s will.  Then our family forms us, but they are also a gift from God.  And we naturally have some gifts and talents, which are also from God.  Some of those we choose to develop, but our ability to develop them is also a gift from God.  And we often take advantage of certain opportunities that come our way, but that also is a gift from God.  The only thing that God does not give us is sin; that is only from our making.  Everything else is either given to or allowed for us from God.  But do we thank God for those things?  Do we thank God not only for the big events and opportunities in our lives, but also for the things that we so often take for granted?
    Our attendance at Mass on Sunday is one way that we give back to God.  The word Eucharist, the sacrament which Mass makes possible, comes from two Greek words meaning “to give thanks well.”  In the Mass we give thanks to God for all the natural things He gives us, but especially for the supernatural gifts He gives us, like the possibility of salvation, and the grace to say yes to His will and live in a way that make us truly happy and prepares us for heaven.  God, strictly speaking, owes us nothing, and yet gives us all we need for eternal happiness.  Certainly that deserves some means of thanks.  
    The virtue of religion, the virtue by which we offer service to the Divine (to use the definition from the Roman writer, Tully), is the acquired habit, the repeated purposeful good act, of giving back to God for all He has given to us.  St. Thomas Aquinas notes different etymologies of the word religion, but connects it to the Latin word religare, to bind together (think of ligaments which bind bone to bone), and quotes St. Augustine who writes, “May religion bind us to the one Almighty God.”  God binds us to Himself, not because of any need, but because of His great love and generosity.
    And yet, how our sinfulness and ingratitude manifests itself when it comes to attending even just weekly Mass, which is part of the way that we fulfill the third commandment to keep holy the sabbath.  Obviously, you are all here.  And yet the numbers are pretty atrocious in the general Catholic population counting those who attend Mass each Sunday and Holyday.  How sad that so many cannot give one hour to the God who has given them everything, and even gives them the Body and Blood of His Son (presuming they’re in a state of grace) to sustain their spiritual life!
    But let’s go deeper so that we’re not just pointing out the splinter in our neighbor’s eye or casting stones at others when we ourselves are not innocent.  How do we treat the Mass?  With young children this can be difficult, but do we try to arrive five or ten minutes early for silent prayer with God?  Do we look forward to Mass as my opportunity to spend time with God, or do we begrudgingly go so we don’t go to Hell (and yes, you can go to Hell simply from skipping Mass on Sundays and Holydays)?  Do we do our best to pay attention and participate interiorly and exteriorly through silent prayer and responding when appropriate?  Are we upset if Mass is one second longer than the usual Sunday 60 minutes?  Do we leave Mass, having just received the Sacred Body and the Precious Blood of our Lord, and think to ourselves, ‘I didn’t get anything out of that Mass’?  Living the virtue of religion goes beyond simple attendance.  God deserves our best each Sunday, which, granted, is slightly different for everyone.  But there are probably ways that we can all grow deeper in gratitude to God.
    God has given us everything, even those things that we cooperate with God’s grace and the talents He gave us to earn.  Are we like Naaman and the Samaritan leper who insist on thanking God?  Or are we like the nine lepers who walk away without any acknowledgement of the one who gives us gifts?  God grant that we thank Him, not only with our voice on Thanksgiving Day, but with our voice, mind, and heart each day of our lives and especially every time we come to Mass.

Stopping the Cycle

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time/Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  Most Sundays I preach on the word of God in the Scriptures or a particular season or feast day.  But last week, during the 10 a.m. Mass, our country experienced yet another act of violence.  But this time it hit closer to home, as this mass shooting occurred in Grand Blanc, where many of you live.  I will admit that, before this past Sunday, it was always somewhere else, some other State, some other community.  
    Perhaps we can identify with the Prophet Habakkuk, who wrote, “How long, O LORD?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene.  Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?  Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.”  In the wake of these tragedies, we seek to understand how this could happen, and what we could do to bring these tragedies to an end.  
    I’m not going to suggest any political solutions today.  And that’s not because political solutions cannot do anything.  We need to examine causes and do whatever we can to stop the natural causes of these acts of violence and terrorism.  

    But it’s all too easy to get stuck on arguing about external causes and political solutions to problems which go deeper than what we see on the outside and what government can do to solve our problems, though government certainly does have a role in preventing these evils in some ways.  Whenever these evils manifest, we seem to go through the same cycle every time: sympathy for those who died or were injured; moral outrage that this should happen; divergent views on how to prevent these acts of terror from happening in the future, be it gun control, mental health funding, violent video game restrictions, or other solutions upon which we divide into two major camps: liberal and conservative.  Then, because there is no consensus between liberals and conservatives, we do almost nothing, and basically wait for the next act of terrorism, where we go through the same steps again, and achieve nothing.
    Again, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do anything in the political arena.  Government’s first responsibility is to protect life.  But government cannot solve the problem, because the problem is not, at its heart, political.  The problem is not liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans.  The problem is here, in our hearts, in our souls.  The problem that we don’t want to admit is that evil exists, and we are all too comfortable with evil, only to be surprised when it reaches its natural conclusion in horrible acts of violence.
    To be clear, I composed this homily before I learned much of anything about the shooter, whose name I will not share, and who has now stood before the just and merciful judgement of God.  So I can’t and won’t talk in any cogent matter about this particular person and what could have motivated him to cooperate in grave evil.
    But the reason what we continue to go through this cycle of violence is because our society has rejected God, at least at a wholesale level.  We are unwilling to acknowledge our sins, both as individuals and as a society.  We cooperate with evil, and then act surprised when evil does what it always does, seek destruction and chaos, whereas God is the source of creation and order.
    It doesn’t start with horrible evil, of course,  It starts when we say that something else is more important than God; when parents decide that the traveling sports team is more important than Sunday Mass; when a man or a woman decides that lust on a screen seems more enjoyable than following God’s plan for our ability to create new life; when prayer is too much of a burden each day; when we try to pretend that a loving father and loving mother are not key to stable and mentally healthy children; when we treat life only as valuable as it can serve some purpose for us and our utilitarian ends; when we accept the lie that our life has no relationship to God and how he has created us; when we live in an ungodly way; when we turn away from God and exalt our will and our egos; when we do these and other smaller acts of evil, we decide that we want these evils to continue again and again, until it strikes closer to home than we wanted or ever thought possible.  
    God has plans for us to thrive.  God can bring  this cycle of violence to an end, if we follow Him.  But we have to follow Him.  External policies can help, but they cannot solve the problem, any more than a band-aid can heal a severed artery.  The solution to our national problem with violence requires us to live Godly lives.  It is that simple and that complicated.  We have to love the Lord our God with all of who we are, and love our neighbor as ourselves, even when they are difficult to love.  Men and women need to truly love each other and commit to marriage before they have children.  We have to stop demonizing those who disagree with us, but rather use logic and God’s revelation to form them to understand the truth, not simply an opinion that seems easier to follow.  We need to go to Mass each Sunday and Holyday and recognize our dependence on God, rather than pretending that we are gods and the masters of the universe.  Until this happens, there will be more examples of Columbine; Sandy Hook; Nashville; Oxford; Minneapolis; Grand Blanc.  Until this happens, we’re just spending more money on better security, which others will try to beat with better guns and weapons and tactics, which will lead to more money being spent on security, in a vicious cycle.  
    If we want this unending violence to come to an end, then we need to submit ourselves to God and His law.  It may seem like this won’t do much.  But God promises: “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”  If we wish to live in a safe society, then do not join the diabolical forces that seek to exult the self over God and do whatever we want and whatever feels good.  God’s vision, subjection to Him and His rule, will not disappoint.  It will transform it into the world that we want at our deepest core, the desire that God has put into our hearts for order and peace, a desire that comes only when we conform our wills to His[: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen].