The Work of the Spirit

Pentecost

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  When it comes to bourbon distilleries, most people have the mentality that the older a distillery is, the better bourbon they produce.  I guess the thinking goes that if you’ve been distilling America’s native spirit for a long time, you must have learned something along the way about how to make good bourbon.  For example, my beloved Buffalo Trace claims that they are the oldest continuously operating distillery in America, as there are records that distilling began on the site we now know as Buffalo Trace in 1775, one year before the US gained its independence, and continued to sell bourbon with a special medicinal license during Prohibition.  Evan Williams claims that it is the first commercial distillery in Kentucky, beginning commercial distilling along the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville in 1783.  Old Forester claims the title of oldest continuously sold bourbon and family-owned distillery in the US, going back to the first bottled bourbon in 1870 by George Garvin Brown.  And even if you don’t have longevity, you try to latch on to the “old” mystique.  Bulleit Bourbon brands itself as “Frontier” bourbon, evoking images of the wild west in the 1800s.  But Thomas E. Bulleit, Jr. founded the company in 1987.  

    As we celebrate Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we see a similar trend in the Church.  Everyone wants to claim that the Holy Spirit, God, is on their side.  And usually that means that they want divine support for something new that they create.  After all, the Holy Spirit, as we heard in the Acts of the Apostles, so excited the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples in the Upper Room to spread the Gospel, that as the Jews heard the Gospel proclaimed in numerous languages, they thought those proclaiming it were drunk.  When the Pharisees drag in the Apostles for proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and tell them to stop saying that salvation comes from Christ, Peter says, “We must obey God rather than men,” a line that Jan Hus, a Bohemian heretic, would use to justify his teaching that no one had to listen to the Church or the pope, only what their interpretation of Scripture was.  Other later protesters like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and others who founded breakaway ecclesial communities would claim that the Holy Spirit was the impetus behind their rejection of Catholicism.
    In our own days, we see the unity of the Church and its commitment to fidelity to Christ’s teaching stretched.  On the one hand, some, including members of the Church hierarchy seek to make Church teaching subject to current cultural norms and majority rule (even if the majority is only a vocal minority).  Even while the Holy See said that marriages not recognized by the Church cannot formally be blessed and that ordination is reserved to men, some want simply to change those teachings, and those upon which they are founded, and they appeal to it being a work of the Holy Spirit.  On the other hand is the Society of St. Pius X, which Pope Benedict XVI tried to to reconcile by lifting the excommunications issued by Pope St. John Paul II; and even Pope Francis tried to bring them more into the fold by granting them authority to celebrate Catholic weddings.  The Society now seeks to consecrate their own bishops without a papal mandate, which Rome has clarified would be an act of schism and those who participate and even those who obstinately hold fast to their errors, would be excommunicated.  The Society appeals to the work of the Holy Spirit throughout the ages, to which they believe they are holding firm, while denying that the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council was truly a work of the Holy Spirit.  
    But how do we know what the Holy Spirit does?  Can we have any surety?  Our surety comes from the fact that the Holy Spirit continues the work of Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church, which Christ set up in a particular way, with certain members having authority to speak in Christ’s name, as we hear in John, chapter 20 and elsewhere.  If Church teaching was determined by majority rule, none of us would believe that Christ is consubstantial with the Father, as that heresy, Arianism, was much more popular than true or orthodox Catholicism, which followed the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea.  But, the same authority that grants Nicea I validity, also means that when Pope St. John XXIII convoked Vatican II, and all the bishops gathered in union with him; and when Pope St. Paul VI continued the council after Pope St. John’s death, and confirmed its decrees, we also hold fast to what it teaches dogmatically.  Theology and liturgy cannot be frozen in time, nor can theology and liturgy simply blow in the winds of the spirit of the age.  
    So how do we know that we have the Holy Spirit, given to the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples at Pentecost, and given to all followers for two millennia afterwards?  We hold fast to the one Church that Christ founded, which has the Holy Spirit as its catalyst and protector.  Has the Catholic Church always implemented its teachings well?  Has she always been clear in particular statements by the popes or even the holiness of every pope?  No.  In many ways, the implementation of Vatican II, or maybe better said, the hijacking of the implementation of Vatican II, has led to much confusion, even among those who have the charism of helping to lead the Church.  But Vatican II did not teach error or heresy.  If she did, then we ought to leave the Catholic Church, because Christ’s promise to St. Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church has been broken, and a God who claims to be the truth but breaks a promise is not worth following.  Likewise, Church teaching is not a political program that can change when a “new party” gains power.  What has been revealed as dogmatically true is true for all the ages, no matter how unpopular or how difficult following Christ becomes in a particular age.  If Church teaching can change with cultures, then it would be better not to be a part of the Church and just do whatever we felt right moment by moment.  
    But neither of those positions are the work of the Holy Spirit.  How do I know?  Because the Catholic Church has clarified both of those positions as outside what it means to be Catholic.  If the Society of St. Pius X goes forward with its illicit, albeit valid, consecrations of new bishops, to join with them is to participate in schism and jeopardize your immortal soul.  If priests or even bishops encourage ordination of women and/or blessings of unions which the Church does not recognize as marriage, and you join with them, you jeopardize your immortal soul.  The Holy Spirit pushes the Church, and the work of God sometimes does surprise us, just like Pentecost surprised the followers of Christ and the Jews in Jerusalem.  But the Holy Spirit does not work against the Church.  We must obey God rather than men.  But make sure it’s God you’re following, and not just your own will, or the will of other men.  [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]

Can I Get a Witness?

Sunday after the Ascension
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  While the official version of the Bible for Catholics is the Nova Vulgata, the New Vulgate, which is Latin, the Gospels themselves were written in Greek.  I took one year of Biblical Greek in Major Seminary, which has helped me with clues as to the meanings of words.  While I can’t really read Greek, certain words still stick out.  Today’s Gospel is a great example.  The Latin, which we heard, talks about testimonium, which in English we translate as “witness.”  But in the Greek, our Lord says that the Apostles (to whom He is speaking in the Upper Room) 𝜇𝛼𝜌𝜏𝜐𝜌𝜀𝜄𝜏𝜀.  Now, some of you are joking that this is Greek to you (in fact, it’s Greek to everyone; it’s Greek).  But that word is connected to the Greek word, whence we get the English word “martyr.”  To be a witness, in Greek, was to be a martyr.  We now associate martyr with the shedding of blood, but the original meaning simply connected to telling the truth as a witness.
    But Christ does not only call the Apostles to be martyrs.  He calls us, all of us, to be martyrs.  Certainly, most of the Apostles, with the exception of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, did shed their blood it witness to the truth of Jesus Christ and His Gospel.  But dying for the faith was the consequence of their earlier martyrdom, their earlier witness by the spreading of the Gospel by word and by deed.  And God calls us, too, to witness to the Gospel, whether it means the red martyrdom of shedding our blood, or the white martyrdom of dying to our own wills to live for God and bring others into the truth that Christ revealed.  
    We cannot, however, live (or die) as martyrs on our own power.  We need the Holy Spirit to strengthen us to witness to our faith in the Lord.  Without the Holy Spirit, weakness could easily take over, and we could walk away from Christ rather than stay strong in the face of adversity.  And Christ clearly says we will experience adversity.  He tells His Apostles that others will kick them out of synagogues, and even will kill them.  And those who kill them will think they are doing God’s will.  We take for granted that Catholicism separated from Judaism.  But at this point, at the Last Supper in the Upper Room, the Apostles knew nothing other than Judaism, and did not realize fully that Christ would call them to be the foundation of His Church, His new assembly (the Greek word is 𝜀𝜅𝜅𝜆𝜀𝜎𝜄𝛼), the fulfillment of what God had promised the Chosen People.  

    So do we pray to the Holy Spirit?  I’m not only talking about these nine days between the Ascension of the Lord and Pentecost, the first novena which the Apostles and Blessed Mother and other disciples prayed.  But outside these days, do we ask for the strength, wisdom, and other gifts of the Holy Spirit?  There was a heresy in the Church in the fourth century called the pneumatomachianism.  Pneumatomachians did not believe that the Holy Spirit is truly God.  This teaching was condemned by the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in AD 381.  But are we closet pneumatomachians?  
    How often do we pray to the Holy Spirit?  Do we treat Him as God, or simply an extra add on that we don’t really need?  Each Sunday we profess in the Creed that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life (Dominum et Vivificantem).  Those are divine titles, as “Lord” is the acceptable way for the Jews to say God rather than saying His sacred Name, revealed to Moses in the tetragrammaton.  We profess that with the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit is adored and glorified (Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur).  But I think that sometimes we fear reaching out to the Holy Spirit.  We see charismatics, both those in and outside the visible Church, and we become uneasy, because we’re not used to speaking in tongues, or having words of prophecy, or raising our hands when we pray.  And while the Holy Spirit can still move people to speak in tongues, or reveal prophetic words, or even have us raise our hands in prayer at time, those are special gifts which are meant to build up the body of Christ, not the usual gifts that the Holy Spirit always gives: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
    We do need the Holy Spirit to help us to explain to others the truths of our faith, especially in ways that will convince them, which can vary from person to person.  And just because someone knows the truth, does not mean that they will accept it.  The Holy Spirit helps us go beyond head knowledge to having people accept in their heart as well that Jesus is Lord and that His life leads to happiness and heaven.  The Holy Spirit gives us the courage or fortitude not to cheat our boss or our employees, to use words that befit our Christian dignity, and to love others as Christ loves us, to the best of our ability.  Those are the ways that we live as martyrs, as witnesses.
    You don’t have to know Greek to be a martyr.  You don’t even have to shed your blood to be a martyr.  To be a martyr is to be a witness, and it is a vocation for all those who follow Christ.  But martyrdom, of the red or white variety, is only possible with the strength of the Holy Spirit, given to us in Baptism, and strengthened through Confirmation.  Make it your goal, not only this week, but especially this week, to ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, so that you can be a martyr, a witness, to Christ.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Already There

Solemnity of the Ascension
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  Country music has its fair share of sad songs.  After all, the joke is that when you play a country music record backwards, you get your wife back, your truck back, and your dog back.  But one song came to mind recently that, if you’re feeling some kinda way, you might get some tears.  
    That song is “I’m Already There” by the group Lonestar.  The verse begins with the current situation.  The man is on the road and calls his wife from his hotel.  He hears his kids laughing in the background, which makes him tear up a little.  Then one of his kids gets on the phone and asks him when he’s coming home.  His response is the refrain:
 

I’m already there /
Take a look around /
I’m the sunshine in your hair /
I’m the shadow on the ground. / 
I’m the whisper in the wind /
I’m your imaginary friend /
And I know I’m in your prayers / 
Oh I’m already there. //

Certainly, the musical rendition is every better than my simple recitation.

    This song came to my mind for the feast we celebrate today, the Ascension of the Lord.  And I didn’t recall it so much because of the Lord remaining with us in a variety of ways even if we don’t see Him, though it also works that way.  It came to mind because the joy of today’s feast is that, in some way, we’re already with Christ in heaven.  We’re already there.
    Now, I’m not saying that this life that we live equates to heaven.  Sure, there are some nice days here in Michigan, but it doesn’t take much to realize that we still walk through this valley of tears.  But mystically, we already are in heaven, because we have become a part of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, through Holy Baptism.  We don’t often talk about that effect of baptism, but it’s no small thing.  Not only does heaven break into earth in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but we also share in heaven, in anticipation, because Christ has joined us to Himself through the Incarnation and through Holy Baptism.  When Christ ascended into heaven, He didn’t leave our human nature behind.  He elevated our human nature and brought it to the right hand of the Father in heaven, higher than the angels.  As a side note, this is one theory on Satan’s rebellion: God showed the angels the Incarnation, and Satan couldn’t stand that humans, though lower than the angels, would receive a higher place than the angels through Christ.
    This time after baptism, then, strengthens or weakens our connection to Christ, or sometimes even severs it, if we choose to reject God through mortal sin.  If we think about our connection to Christ through Holy Baptism, it’s like we’re grafted on to Christ’s Body.  But we need good blood flow to strengthen that connection.  And so we have to stay, to switch analogies, connected to the vine in order to bear fruit.  God’s grace is like blood vivifying an attached limb, or sap flowing through a tree branch that keeps that branch strong.  The ways that we open ourselves up to that grace–reading Scripture, daily prayer, ascetic practices, service of the poor, etc.–keep that life force flowing from Christ, our Head, into us and keep us strongly in heaven, while still here on earth.
    But, while Baptism is once-for-all, because Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross was once-for-all, our eternal destiny cannot be taken for granted, and can be weakened or even lost.  When we sin, we’re lessening the flow of grace in our lives that weakens our connection to Christ our head.  And when we sin mortally–through a grave rejection of God’s law, which we know is wrong, but freely choose to do anyway–we cut ourselves off from Christ, like a limb that falls off due to lack of blood, or a branch that breaks off because of a lack of connection to the vine.  Holy Mother Church reminds us that we cannot go to heaven if we die in a state of mortal sin not so much because our Mother wants to scare us, but more as reminding us of the consequences of choosing that which is antithetical to Christ.  In heaven there is no sin, so we if we choose sin over Christ, we choose to separate ourselves from Christ and where He wants us to be, that is, in heaven.  
    Right now in our earthly life, we live in what we say in Italian as già, ma non ancora: already, but not yet.  Because Christ, in both His divine and human natures is in heaven, and because we have to been joined to Christ through Holy Baptism, we are, in some sense, already in heaven.  But our pilgrimage here on earth determines if we stay there and strengthen our connection to Christ, or if we decide that we don’t want Christ and the heavenly life and cut ourself off from Him.  Just like in the song, even though we’re not there, we’re already there.  May God help us to continue to choose connection to Him so that, at the end of our life, we can receive the inheritance God offered us when we received the Sacrament of Holy Baptism: eternal life in heaven [with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen].

Beginning and Return

Fifth Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  For whatever reason, certain phrases sound more elegant and intelligent in foreign languages.  Instead of saying, “this for that,” it sounds much better to say quid pro quo.  Or instead of saying, “exactly,” one can say per se.  If you said, “a certain something that I can’t describe,” people would understand you, but you could also throw in a little French and say je ne sais quoi.  Perhaps, due to the popularity of mafia movies, we find ourselves used to asking in poorly-pronounced Italian, capisci? when we might otherwise say, “Get it?” 
    Likewise, when we speak about the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, we use a phrase from St. Thomas Aquinas which is exitus-reditus.  That certainly sounds much more erudite than beginning-return.  But no matter how we say it, we recognize its veracity.  Christ came to us from the Father (in the Incarnation at the Annunciation which we celebrated on 25 March) and then returned to the Father (at the Ascension, which we will celebrate on Thursday).  Christ existed before all time, but the Father sent Him to us, and then Christ returned to the Father.  The Lord tells the Apostles in John, chapter 14 that He goes to prepare a place for them, “‘so that where I am you also may be.’” And our Gospel also points to this coming and going, as Christ speaks to His Apostles in the Upper Room at the Last Supper.  He tells them that He has come from the Father and into the world, and is now leaving the world and returning to the Father.   
    But exitus-reditus doesn’t only apply to God the Son.  It also applies to us.  We, too, though not consubstantial with the Father, come from Him, and our goal is to return to Him.  Even with all our advances in science, the gift of new life still comes from the Father.  And once our parents conceive us, our goal, our end, is to return to the Father so as to be one with Him in heaven.  It’s back to the Baltimore Catechism answer that says it so poetically and succinctly: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life so to be with Him in the next.  

    So this middle time, the time between our exitus, our beginning, and our reditus, our return, determines how our return ends up.  To paraphrase Denethor from the movie version of The Return of the King, our experience at our return will depend on the manner of our return.  Because, as Christ affirmed in the Gospel of John, He is the only way to the Father.  We cannot return to the place the Father has prepared for us, unless we follow the pattern that the Father set out for us, made visible in Christ.  We are, as St. Peter affirmed in his first epistle, “‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own,’” but our lives have to reflect that chosen status in order to receive the inheritance promised to us at our beginning.
    So do we recognize how to live like Christ in our day-to-day lives?  Do we give attention to the needs of others, rather than focusing only on ourselves.  We’re familiar with Catholic Charities, the North End Soup Kitchen, the St. Luke NEW Life Center.  Do we assist them?  Do we donate what we can, be it food, clothing, or other goods?  Sometimes I get new “secular” clothes.  When I do so, I try to make sure and donate older clothes that are in a similar style or that I know I don’t use that often, if they are in reasonably good condition, to Catholic Charities through the Hope in a Box box that is by the drinking fountain at the Beach Street doors.  When was the last time that you looked in your closet for clothes that you no longer wear?  Sometimes we have formal wear that we only use once or twice, but are there things that we never use, or don’t need to have, that others could?  St. Basil the Great once said in a sermon, “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 in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.”  Our attention to those in need makes up part of the way that we show where we want to return to: heaven or hell.  
    Whether we use the fancy Latin phrase or not, we all came from the Father and will return to judgment by Him, when we will learn our eternal destination: heaven (likely after some time in Purgatory) or hell.  If we wish to return to the dwelling place the Father has prepared for us, that Christ promised us in the Gospel, then we have to follow the example of the great exitus-reditus of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  We have to follow the Way that He is: the one who gave up His life for our good.  It may not be in the red martyrdom of shedding our blood in imitation of Christ’s perfect sacrifice of His Body and Blood, but it may be in the white martyrdom of dying to our own wills and living according to the will of the Father.  No matter in which language we say it, living the life of Christ in our day-to-day lives will help us embrace the inheritance Christ won for us, whom the Father has adopted through Holy Baptism as His adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Clarifying Confirmation

Sixth Sunday of Easter
    When it came to my own reception of the Sacrament of Confirmation in 1998 as an eighth grader, I think I had a fairly faulty understanding of what the sacrament really meant.  I remember reading facts about the gifts of the Holy Spirit (not a bad start) and a book that had examples of the saints who lived out the faith in more modern times (also, not a bad thing).  But I seem to remember some sense that Confirmation meant that I was choosing to still be Catholic and become an adult in the faith.  
    In my experience as a priest, I know that this mentality continues to this day.  Not as much here at St. Matthew, but in previous parishes young men and women would tell me, when asked what Confirmation meant, that they were choosing to be Catholic for themselves, since their parents had made the decision for them when they were baptized, and they were becoming adults in the faith.  But the choice to be Catholic happens when one is baptized.  Certainly, one can choose (sadly) to walk away from the faith after baptism, but that person will always be Catholic.  And an eighth grader, or a young high school student is far from being an adult, though they certainly can make more adult decisions than a younger child.

    So what does Confirmation mean?  Is it, as some have said, a sacrament in search of a theology?  We hear about a kind of confirmation today in the first reading, when the Apostles Peter and John go to Samaria and lay hands on those who had previously been baptized so that they could receive the Holy Spirit.  We do receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, but Confirmation gives us a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  And, in the Latin Rite, it is most often bishops, the successors of the Apostles, who still confer the Sacrament of Confirmation.
    But what is that sacrament about?  Why have it?  All sacraments draw us ever closer into the inner life of the Blessed Trinity.  They bring us closer into the love that is shared between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  All sacraments make the Blessed Trinity present to us to remind us that God has not left us orphans, but dwells within us.  Through Confirmation, we grow in our union with Christ, who gives us union with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  
    But, even while we grow in the life of the entire Blessed Trinity through the Sacrament of Confirmation, we receive a seal, a character, an indelible mark that gives us access to the Holy Spirit as our Advocate.  While we don’t use the term advocate as much anymore, the understanding of an advocate, or a Paraclete (the Greek word) is a defense attorney who pleads our cause.  The Holy Spirit pleads our cause before the Father, and defends us against the accuser, the devil, who seeks to separate us from the Father.  
    But the advocate also gives us strength and defends us as we encounter other humans who either are curious about the Gospel or antithetical to it.  The Holy Spirit gives us words to explain our faith.  He helps us to “be ready to give an explanation…for a reason for your hope,” as St. Peter said in our second reading.  The Holy Spirit strengthens us to share why following Christ makes a difference.  That is why, in the old rite, Confirmation was described as making young men and women “soldiers of Christ.”  They were to win the world for Christ by word and deed, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
    But St. Peter also helps us understand that the Holy Spirit gives us the grace to suffer for the Gospel.  Sometimes following Christ means that we will suffer.  We might lose out on promotions, or not be able to engage in certain social events, or maybe not play on all the sports teams we want to, or maybe even lose friends or family because they don’t accept our Christianity in general or our Catholicism in particular.  In addition to physical suffering, those situation are also suffering for the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit gives us courage “to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God.”  
    God gives us the sacraments to give us more of His life, His grace, to observe the commandments which Christ gave us, as the sign that we truly love God.  In particular, God gives us the Sacrament of Confirmation to strengthen what we received in Holy Baptism.  May God stir up the flames of the Holy Spirit in our hearts to witness, by word and deed, to the joy of the Gospel, and the true love of the Trinity, into which God drew us first through Holy Baptism, and into which we are called to delve more deeply each day of our life.   

Exitus-Reditus

Fifth Sunday of Easter

    For whatever reason, certain phrases sound more elegant and intelligent in foreign languages.  Instead of saying, “this for that,” it sounds much better to say quid pro quo.  Or instead of saying, “exactly,” one can say per se.  If you said, “a certain something that I can’t describe,” people would understand you, but you could also throw in a little French and say je ne sais quoi.  Perhaps, due to the popularity of mafia movies, we find ourselves used to asking in poorly-pronounced Italian, capisci? when we might otherwise say, “Get it?” 
    Likewise, when we speak about the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, we use a phrase from St. Thomas Aquinas which is exitus-reditus.  That certainly sounds much more erudite than beginning-return.  But no matter how we say it, we recognize its veracity.  Christ came to us from the Father (in the Incarnation at the Annunciation which we celebrated on 25 March) and then returned to the Father (at the Ascension, which we will celebrate in a few short weeks).  Christ existed before all time, but the Father sent Him to us, and then Christ returned to the Father.  And our Gospel points to the return, as Christ speaks to His Apostles in the Upper Room at the Last Supper.  He tells them that He goes to prepare a place for them, “‘so that where I am you also may be.’”  
    We come to know God the Father through God the Son.  St. Philip the Apostle, puts his foot in his mouth as he tells Jesus, “‘Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.’”  Probably the other apostles may have thought the same thing, but I’m sure they were glad they didn’t verbalize their desire.  Because Christ reiterates for them that He is the revelation of the Father.  The unity between Father and Son, even though they are different Divine Persons, is so strong that when one encounters one Divine Person, you encounter the entire Triune God.
    But exitus-reditus doesn’t only apply to God the Son.  It also applies to us.  We, too, though not consubstantial with the Father, come from Him, and our goal is to return to Him.  Even with all our advances in science, the gift of new life still comes from the Father.  And once our parents conceive us, our goal, our end, is to return to the Father so as to be one with Him in heaven.  It’s back to the Baltimore Catechism answer that says it so poetically and succinctly: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life so to be with Him in the next.  
    So this middle time, the time between our exitus, our beginning, and our reditus, our return, determines how our return ends up.  To paraphrase Denethor from the movie version of The Return of the King, our experience at our return will depend on the manner of our return.  Because, as Christ affirmed in our Gospel, He is the only way to the Father.  We cannot return to the place the Father has prepared for us, unless we follow the pattern that the Father set out for us, made visible in Christ.  We are, as St. Peter affirmed in our second reading, “‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own,’” but our lives have to reflect that chosen status in order to receive the inheritance promised to us at our beginning.
    So do we recognize how to live like Christ in our day-to-day lives?  Do we give attention to the needs of others, rather than focusing only on ourselves.  As soon as the Apostles learned that the Greek-speaking or Hellenist widows lacked in care, they responded, in this case by creating the Sacred Order of the Diaconate, the first deacons.  God doesn’t necessarily ask us to create new groups, but to cooperate with those that already exist.  We’re familiar with Catholic Charities, the North End Soup Kitchen, the St. Luke NEW Life Center.  Do we assist them?  Do we donate what we can, be it food, clothing, or other goods?  Sometimes I get new “secular” clothes.  When I do so, I try to make sure and donate older clothes, if they are in reasonably good condition, to Catholic Charities through the Hope in a Box box that is by the drinking fountain at the Beach Street doors.  When was the last time that you looked in your closet for clothes that you no longer wear?  Sometimes we have formal wear that we only use once or twice, but are there things that we never use, or don’t need to have, that others could?  St. Basil the Great once said in a sermon, “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 in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.”  Our attention to those in need makes up part of the way that we show where we want to return to: heaven or hell.  
    Whether we use the fancy Latin phrase or not, we all came from the Father and will return to judgment by Him, when we will learn our eternal destination: heaven (likely after some time in Purgatory) or hell.  If we wish to return to the dwelling place the Father has prepared for us, that Christ promised us in the Gospel, then we have to follow the example of the great exitus-reditus of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  We have to follow the Way that He is: the one who gave up His life for our good.  It may not be in the red martyrdom of shedding our blood in imitation of Christ’s perfect sacrifice of His Body and Blood, but it may be in the white martyrdom of dying to our own wills and living according to the will of the Father.  No matter in which language we say it, living the life of Christ in our day-to-day lives will help us embrace the inheritance Christ won for us, whom the Father has adopted through Holy Baptism as His adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

People of Constant Sorrow and Joy

Third Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I first heard the song, “Man of Constant Sorrow” while watching the 2000 Cohen brothers movie, “O Brother Where Art Thou?”  And while it didn’t strike me as religious, the lyrics mirror what the Lord says in today’s Gospel: that we will have sorrow here, but joy after.  
    The song talks about the sorrow of leaving Kentucky (a sorrow I can relate to, though I was neither born nor raised there), the sorrow of rambling through the world without any friends, of leaving a true love, and that true love loving another after the singer is dead and buried.  “But,” as the song continues, “there is one promise that is given / I’ll meet you on God’s golden shore.”  
    While, in my own experience, leaving Kentucky is truly sorrowful, the sorrow our Lord talks about in the Gospel consists in the reality that the world does not conform to God’s plan.  Our Lord shares these words in the context of the Last Supper, as He prepares to be judged in a sham trial and be put to death by a strange alliance of Pharisees and Pontius Pilate and Roman soldiers.  We can think of no greater sorrow, no greater demonstration that the world is not as it should be, than putting God’s own Son to death in such a gruesome way.
    But the messed-up state of the world did not end there.  It continues because of sin: our own personal sins, and the sins of cultures, societies, and governments.  Even we, who have received the saving washing of Holy Baptism, still suffer under concupiscence, the inordinate desires of our lives not in accord with the will of God, and fall short of the august call that God has given us to be His adopted children in Christ.  Our sins, and the sins that we experience, should cause us sorrow.  Wars, even if necessary, should cause us sorrow at the destruction of life and property.  Illness and disease, things that are not necessarily due to anyone’s choices, should cause us sorrow because God has made us for health and integrity.  
    But, even as we pass through this vale of tears, in hac lacrimarum valle, as we say in the Salve Regina, we should also have joy.  Our joy comes not from a human solution to wars, illness, and personal evil, but from Christ who has conquered sin and all its effects, death, and even natural evils.  Our joy comes from the knowledge that we threw everything evil at Christ that we could think of, all our hate, all our dysfunction, all our sin and death, and while it looked for a while like He had been conquered, He rose victorious on the third day and proved that nothing has more power than God, and that God can turn into life and light even the worst death and darkness that we give Him.

    Our joy should come from the understanding that God did not simply raise our Lord for His own benefit, but also for ours, and that God has given us a way to be joined to the Risen Christ through Holy Baptism, a once-for-all event in our life that we have to choose to ratify each day if we wish to share in its full benefits.  Our joy comes from knowing that, if we cling to Christ, turn away from our sins, and do all that we can to reject Satan and sin, then we, too, will find victory over death and darkness.  And that can keep us going.
    It is the joy that mothers keep in mind as they suffer through pregnancy.  All the morning sickness, all the stretch marks, all the back pain, all the swollen feet and ankles, all the pain of delivery (which, all joking aside, I do believe exceeds even a man-cold), is worth it because of a new child and the joy that comes from holding that child in her arms, a result of the love shared between her and her husband.  
    But we have to keep that in mind, otherwise it just seems like trials.  And when we only consider our trials, they can wear us down, depress us, lead us into despair.  When we forget about heaven and the perfect happiness that comes from union with Christ, the sufferings we endure and the sufferings we choose to endure in order to follow Christ don’t seem to make any sense.  If heaven doesn’t exist, then why would I curtail the desires of my body?  If heaven doesn’t exist, then when would I give up meat on Fridays?  If heaven doesn’t exist, then why wouldn’t I do whatever I needed to be the most powerful, the most famous, the most rich?  If Christ is not raised from the dead, as St. Paul says, then we are the most pitiable of people because all the ways we die to ourselves seem foolish.  But if there is life after death, a life that can be filled with happiness if we live like Christ (or a life that can be filled with suffering if we only seek out pleasure on earth), then no matter what pain or sorrow we go through on our way, the destination is worth it.  To use an analogy, driving through Ohio is worth it only if Kentucky is on the other side of Cincinnati.  
    We are, in some sense, men and women of constant sorrow, because Christ has not yet returned to usher in the fullness of His Kingdom.  We leave Kentucky, we ramble through life, we lose friends and loved ones, we go each day towards the grave.  “But there is one promise that is given”: that through living the life of Christ, the life of the Easter, the life of resurrection, we can meet Him and all the saints on God’s golden shore, where He reigns–the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit–for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Praying for a Good Shepherd

Fourth Sunday of Easter
    On 10 April, Bishop Boyea, as required by canon law, submitted his letter of resignation to Pope Leo XIV.  As of my composing of this homily, it has not been accepted, and my guess is that it will be at least eight months until we get a new bishop, maybe even twelve or more months.  Bishop Boyea has noted that there are something like twenty-two dioceses who do not have a bishop ahead of him.

    In my own humble estimation, Bishop Boyea has been a good bishop.  He has been a good shepherd after the Most Sacred Heart of the one Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd, a title that was also referenced in the second reading by St. Peter, our first pope.  In this time where we wait for a new bishop, I would encourage us all to pray to God for another good bishop, and pray to the Holy Spirit to guide all involved in the process, all the way up to Pope Leo, to choose for us the bishop who will help us continue to grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ.
    But what makes a good bishop?  What makes a good shepherd?  We each might have our own ideas, and not only would there be differences between your ideas and mine in some cases (as I relate to our diocesan bishop a bit differently than the lay faithful), but there are probably even some differences if I asked each of you, though there would also be some similarities.
    In some ways, our own desires for a good bishop would likely follow our own wisdom, which may or may not be connected to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.  In humility, we all need to acknowledge that just because we see some charism or trait as important, does not mean that God considers it equally important.  We are sheep, and sheep are not the wisest of animals.  For example, sheep, if not moved around, will pull up the roots of the plants on which they graze, eliminating future food sources in their short-sightedness.  They also so rely on the herd, that they have been known to put themselves into danger, simply because a few other sheep are leading them that way.  So when our Lord calls us sheep, He’s not exactly giving us a compliment.  Sometimes we can take things to far like sheep pulling up roots.  Or sometimes we can go along with an idea because one or a few people that we like or we respect lead us that way.

    But Christ tells us that a good shepherd is one who lays down his life for his sheep.  A good shepherd, from today’s passage, also looks for other sheep that would benefit from being part of the fold, even if they are not part of the fold yet.  So as we pray for a good new bishop, we should pray for a holy man who is willing to die for us to protect us from spiritual dangers, as well as a man who seeks out lost sheep, or sheep that belong to another fold, and one who will welcome them in to the pastures of the Catholic Church.
    As I think of Bishop Boyea, and why I think he has been a good shepherd, he truly has a love for the Lord and seeks to have others follow the Lord.  Liturgically he has been very faithful to the way the Church wants to see the Mass and the sacraments celebrated: in a beautiful, transcendent way.  He tries to reach people where they’re at, including by his weekly videos that teach us about different aspects of the faith.  He has done his best to strengthen the weak, but to fight the arrogance of the proud.  And, he has challenged me to go beyond my own first opinions and ideas, to make sure that what I suggest to him makes sense.  And he has told me that I was wrong, when I needed to hear it, even if I didn’t always want to hear it.  
    We probably consider correction more when it comes to others that we see are wrong, rather than ourselves.  But a good shepherd doesn’t let his sheep wander away, but calls them back.  In the Letter to the Hebrews, we read: “all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.”  And we hear in different Gospel passages how the Lord has to correct the Apostles, including even St. Peter right after our Lord made Peter the Chief Shepherd of His Church, and Peter told the Lord that He should not have to suffer.  So, when praying for a new good bishop, we should also pray for one that will hold our feet to the fire when we do not live up to our call to follow the Lord, but are following our own designs.
    Trevor, today you will become the newest sheep in the Lord’s flock.  Through prayer and study you have come to the point where you want to enter into full communion with the one Church Jesus Christ founded.  The Lord, the Good Shepherd, has been with you all throughout your life, calling you to this moment, to enter these pastures.  And with great love He will seal your entrance into the Catholic Church with a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit through the Sacrament of Confirmation, and the gift of Jesus’ own Body and Blood through the Eucharist.  We, your fellow sheep, promise to help you continue to grow in your faith in and love of Christ, until hopefully we are all ready to enter the eternal pastures of heaven.
    I know a lot of people have expressed anxiety about who our new bishop will be.  Perhaps other recent episcopal appointments have added to that concern, though I would caution that just because we read something in a particular blog or periodical, even Catholic, does not mean that we have the whole story.  But if we make our desires for a good bishop known to the one Good Shepherd and Bishop of our souls (as St. Peter said at the end of today’s second reading, though our translation uses the word guardian), I have no doubt that God will give us the bishop that we need, who will help us to grow as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What Makes a Good Shepherd?

Second Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Nine days ago Bishop Boyea, as required by canon law, submitted his letter of resignation to Pope Leo XIV.  As of my composing of this homily, it has not been accepted, and my guess is that it will be at least eight months until we get a new bishop, maybe even twelve or more months.  Bishop Boyea has noted that there are something like twenty-two dioceses who do not have a bishop ahead of him.

    In my own humble estimation, Bishop Boyea has been a good bishop.  He has been a good shepherd after the Most Sacred Heart of the one Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who today in our Gospel referred to Himself as the Good Shepherd, a title that was also referenced in the epistle by St. Peter, our first pope.  In this time where we wait for a new bishop, I would encourage us all to pray to God for another good bishop, and pray to the Holy Spirit to guide all involved in the process, all the way up to Pope Leo, to choose for us the bishop who will help us continue to grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ.
    But what makes a good bishop?  What makes a good shepherd?  We each might have our own ideas, and not only would there be differences between your ideas and mine in some cases (as I relate to our diocesan bishop a bit differently than the lay faithful), but there are probably even some differences if I asked each of you, though there would also be some similarities.
    In some ways, our own desires for a good bishop would likely follow our own wisdom, which may or may not be connected to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.  In humility, we all need to acknowledge that just because we see some charism or trait as important, does not mean that God considers it equally important.  We are sheep, and sheep are not the wisest of animals.  For example, sheep, if not moved around, will pull up the roots of the plants on which they graze, eliminating future food sources in their short-sightedness.  They also so rely on the herd, that they have been known to put themselves into danger, simply because a few other sheep are leading them that way.  So when our Lord calls us sheep, He’s not exactly giving us a compliment.  Sometimes we can take things to far like sheep pulling up roots.  Or sometimes we can go along with an idea because one or a few people that we like or we respect lead us that way.
    But Christ tells us that a good shepherd is one who lays down his life for his sheep.  A good shepherd, from today’s passage, also looks for other sheep that would benefit from being part of the fold, even if they are not part of the fold yet.  So as we pray for a good new bishop, we should pray for a holy man who is willing to die for us to protect us from spiritual dangers, as well as a man who seeks out lost sheep, or sheep that belong to another fold, and one who will welcome them in to the pastures of the Catholic Church.
    As I think of Bishop Boyea, and why I think he has been a good shepherd, he truly has a love for the Lord and seeks to have others follow the Lord.  Liturgically he has been very faithful to the way the Church wants to see the Mass and the sacraments celebrated: in a beautiful, transcendent way.  He tries to reach people where they’re at, including by his weekly videos that teach us about different aspects of the faith.  He has done his best to strengthen the weak, but to fight the arrogance of the proud.  And he has challenged me to go beyond my own first opinions and ideas, to make sure that what I suggest to him makes sense.  And he has told me that I was wrong when I needed to hear it, even if I didn’t always want to hear it.  
    We probably consider correction more when it comes to others that we see are wrong, rather than ourselves.  But a good shepherd doesn’t let his sheep wander away, but calls them back.  In the epistle the Hebrews, we read: “all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.”  And we hear in different Gospel passages how the Lord has to correct the Apostles, including even St. Peter right after our Lord made Peter the Chief Shepherd of His Church, and Peter told the Lord that He should not have to suffer.  So, when praying for a new good bishop, we should also pray for one that will hold our feet to the fire when we do not live up to our call to follow the Lord, but are following our own designs.
    I know a lot of people have expressed anxiety about who our new bishop will be.  Perhaps other recent episcopal appointments have added to that concern, though I would caution that just because we read something in a particular blog or periodical, even Catholic, does not mean that we have the whole story.  But if we make our desires for a good bishop known to the one Good Shepherd and Bishop of our souls (as St. Peter said at the end of today’s epistle), I have no doubt that God will give us the bishop that we need, who will help us to grow as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.   

Our Surpassing God

Third Sunday of Easter

Grand Tetons National Park

    About halfway through 2020, and about 5 months into “14 days to flatten the curve,” I decided to travel to a national park.  I was sick of being cooped up in Flint, and needed to get away to destress from all the new stress of COVID that we pastors had to deal with as we learned how to shepherd people during a pandemic.  While I knew a flight was not going to be great, I did look forward to going somewhere far away where I could enjoy the outdoors and not have to wear a mask.  So I looked to our national park system, and decided to visit Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks.  I had looked forward to being less encumbered by COVID protocols, but the views I had from the two national parks out west were spectacular and far surpassed any expectations I had for parks I had heard about, but never visited.
    In both our first reading and our Gospel, we hear about expectations that God far surpassed.  In the first reading, St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, tells the Jews that Jesus has fulfilled the prophecy of David, but did so in a very unexpected way.  And in the Gospel, Jesus Himself enlightens the disciples on the road to Emmaus about the ways that God had foretold the Messiah.
    For David, God had made a promise that his descendants would always sit upon the throne of Israel.  And I’m sure David considered this promise as a guarantee that his sons would always rule over Israel as earthly kings.  That was exciting enough.  But David, too, prophesied in the psalms that God would not abandon David to the netherworld, nor let his holy one (perhaps David used this title to refer to himself) undergo corruption.  But God far surpassed what David expected.  God made one of David’s children, Jesus, an eternal king in heaven whose reign would never end because Jesus has a kingdom which lasts forever.  And God did not let the truly Holy One, Jesus, undergo corruption, nor let Jesus remain in the abode of the dead, but raised Him to new life.  David thought that what God would do was glorious enough from an earthly standpoint.  But what God really was going to do would have blown David’s mind.
    Likewise, for the disciples on the road to Emmaus, they knew the prophecies about the Messiah, David’s son.  They knew that Moses prophesied about a future prophet to whom the Chosen People must listen.  They knew that God would provide a Davidic king who would trample Israel’s enemies and restore glory to the Chosen People from their oppressors.  But again, they thought of the Messiah in earthly ways.  They wanted a king who would throw out the Romans and restore an earthly kingdom to Israel.  But God did better: He destroyed the true enemy of Israel, sin and death, and established a heavenly kingdom that could never be conquered by any power in heaven or on earth.  And in that kingdom swords would be changed into plows, and spears into pruning hooks, and the lion and the lamb would lie down together and dwell in peace.  Those who heard these prophecies of Isaiah probably thought them to be hyperbole, but God intended it much more realistically, where, in God’s reign, there would be no more war, death, sorrow, or disease, and harmony would be the hallmark of God’s kingdom.
    When we think about what we think God wants, our earthly vantage point often limits us.  We have something good in mind, but perhaps it’s not all that great.  It may have a certain excellence from an earthly point of view, but God wants much more than our limited minds could ever hope for or anticipate.  His plan excels ours as much as diamonds excel fools gold.  But we get stuck in our ways and our views and so do not see, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, what God really can do and has done for us.  When our measly projects don’t come to fruition the way we wanted, we, too, can become downcast.
    In the midst of our dashed earthly hopes, we should turn to the Lord and ask Him to enlighten us with His plans and what He has done, which is far greater than our own plans and expectations.  We do this through reading the Word of God, through daily prayer, and through our worthy reception of Holy Communion.  We come to Christ, like the disciples, and let Him know that we don’t understand what God is doing, and ask Him to show us the way, to show us the great things that He has done, so that we can appreciate them.  And God–the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit–will open our eyes to His plan and His great deeds in our lives and the lives of others, which accomplish far more than we could ever hope for or imagine.
    In August, 2020, I wanted to get away and live a freer life, without social distancing, without masks, without living like a prisoner in my own home.  I went out west, thinking that at least it would allow me to accomplish those goals.  But as I toured through Grand Tetons National Park and Yellowstone National Park, I experienced such natural beauty and grandeur, that it not only refreshed my body, but even lifted up my mind and my soul as I stood in wonder and awe of what God had made, and what He allowed me to experience as part of my inheritance as a citizen of our great country and an adopted child of the God who made such magnificent mountains and grand geysers.  God surpassed my hopes, and He wants to surpass yours.  Do not let your hearts droop down when our limited goals and desires do not come to fruition.  Bring them to God, and see the great things He wants to do for us, things that surpass our hopes and dreams.

Inconceivable Mercy

Second Sunday of Easter/Divine Mercy Sunday 

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  In the movie, “The Princess Bride,” one of the antagonists, Vizzini, uses the word “inconceivable!” every time something happens that he can’t believe, which makes Iñigo Montoya, his erstwhile henchman, say, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”
    The same could be said for the word mercy, which is a focus of today, since Pope St. John Paul II declared the Second Sunday of Easter (aka Sunday in the Octave of Easter or Low Sunday or Quasi Modo Sunday) to be Divine Mercy Sunday.  Since then, countless numbers of people have sought out the Lord’s mercy for past offenses, and have grown in their appreciation of God’s merciful love.  Indeed, our Lord promised St. Faustina: “The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion [on Divine Mercy Sunday] will obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment.”  This is part of the reason Fr. Daniel LaCroix from St. John Vianney parish will be helping me hear confessions at 1:30 today.
    But to understand such a generous gift, we have to understand what mercy truly is and what it is not.  Mercy is the transforming love of God accepted by a person who knows that he has sinned.  Mercy is not license, which is the abuse of God’s mercy that presumes we can keep on sinning.  Nor does mercy ignore faults or pretend they’re not real.  A person who doesn’t think he sins has no need for mercy, because mercy is the remedy for sin, and for a person who has no sin, no mercy is necessary.
    As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 1847, “To receive [God’s] mercy, we must admit our faults.”  It goes on to cite the first epistle of St. John, where the Beloved Disciples writes, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  In order for us to receive the great gift of God’s mercy, which is truly the Good News at its heart, we also have to be honest and recognize that we do not always live as God calls us to live.  
    Sin is death.  Sin is slavery.  Sin turns us in on ourselves.  God does not want that for any of us.  But He created us with free will that can be used well and choose Him and His way of life that leads to eternal happiness, or our free will can be used poorly and choose ourselves and Satan and eternal misery.  Because of original sin and personal sins, we worked against God and became His enemies.  But, “while we were still sinners Christ died for us,” as the Apostle says in his epistle to the Romans.  He continues, “Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life.”  The Good News is that, while we chose death, and could not get out of its webs, again, quoting St. Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians, “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in [Christ].”  God took upon Himself in Christ the punishment that we deserved, not only so that we didn’t have to face that punishment, but so that we could enjoy what God initially created us for: eternal happiness with Him in heaven.  That is mercy.  That is inconceivable!
    And God’s mercy is meant to change us, to transform us.  When we recognize just how serious sin is, and just what God went through to free us from sin, it can change our hearts, our minds, and our actions.  God’s mercy desires to give us life in place of the death of sin; give us freedom in place of the slavery of sin; and turn us towards the Father, rather than the inward-facing nature of sin.  License rejoices that sin won’t be held against me, but looks for a new opportunity to return to sin, like a clean pig returning to the mud or a dog returning to its own vomit.  
    But, struggling to accept that change is not license.  Many people get caught in sins, especially sexual sins, and while they truly repent for what they have done, and confess their sins, and open themselves up to God’s mercy, they find themselves returning to the same sinful actions, thoughts, and habits again and again.  The difference between presuming on God’s mercy and struggling to cooperate with the transformation that mercy points to is our intention and our desire: do we wish to be free and holy, or do we wish to remain slaves to sin, so long as we don’t have to suffer the consequences?

    Today we rightly celebrate God’s mercy, which is infinitely more powerful than any sin we could ever commit.  Today as St. Thomas sees and touches Christ, he is transformed from a doubter to a believer, just as when we truly encounter the mercy of God we are transformed from a sinner to a saint.  But we have to make sure we know the meaning of the word mercy in order for it to benefit us.  We cannot mistake mercy for license to sin.  God’s mercy draws us out, even if it takes some time, from the filth of sin into the purity of holiness.  Allow God’s mercy to transform you, a mercy that came at the price of the death of the Son of God, a gift of mercy that truly was “inconceivable!”  [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]

Why Are We Running?

Easter Sunday

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  Forrest Gump, after returning home from the Vietnam War, and after he sold his shrimping company, and after he had tried to figure out what to do with his life, got off his porch and, as he said, “That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run.  So, I ran to the end of the road, and when I got there, I thought maybe I’d run to the end of town.”  He ends up running through his county, through Alabama, and across the United States.  In reflecting on his super marathon, Forrest says, “For no particular reason, I just kept on going.”
    While I have run the CRIM once, and sometimes run as part of my cardio workouts, I’m more in the camp of those who run solely because they’re being chased or chasing after someone.  And as for being chased, as long as you’re not the slowest, generally you’re ok.  
    But John’s account of the first Easter Sunday talks about Sts. Peter and John running to the tomb.  They run there to see if what St. Mary Magdalene said was true: that someone had taken the Lord.  John, who wrote the Gospel, adds what I like to think was a little fun jab at Peter: “They both ran, but the other disciple [that is, John] ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first.”  Peter would have been in trouble if they were running from a bear.
    But they both ran with a purpose: to see the empty tomb.  They saw the burial cloths, and the cloth that had covered the head in a separate area.  They believed Mary Magdalene, that someone had taken the body somewhere else, as St. John makes clear, “they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”  It would not be until the Risen Lord appeared in the Upper Room that evening that they would know that He had risen from the dead.  
    Do we, like Peter and John, run towards the resurrection?  Or do we, like Forrest Gump, run for no particular reason?  As followers of Christ, we should run towards a goal, not aimlessly.  Our life should be a run towards the risen Christ in heaven.  If we’re just running, with no goal in mind, we never know where we might end up, and it might not be in heaven.  
    As we go through each day and the different activities of life, we can treat the parts of the day like smaller races: waking up and getting myself and/or the kids ready–100 meter dash; working in or out of the home–3200 meter run; making dinner and cleaning up the house–400 meter dash.  And as we begin each race, we should do so with a prayer.  Maybe it’s a simple prayer as you wake up, like a morning offering, of even the short pious phrase, “My Mother, My Confidence!”, entrusting our day to the intercession of the Blessed Mother.  Maybe it’s the sign of the cross as you enter your car to drive to work, or as you begin a load of laundry at home.  Maybe it’s the Angelus on your lunch break.  Maybe it’s Grace Before and/or After Meals.  Maybe it’s a pray of thanksgiving as you put your kids to bed or go to bed yourself.  But praying throughout the day makes sure that we’re running towards a goal, and not just running like a chicken with its head cut off.  
    If we don’t focus our energy, we run towards other goals than heaven–earthly prosperity, power, fame–which do not endure and will not save us.  Or, it’s more like running on a treadmill, which expends the same amount of energy, but without actually going anywhere.  To share in Christ’s Resurrection, we have to want to get there.  Simply making our legs go back and forth won’t necessarily get us closer to the new life that Christ wants for us and that fulfills our human nature.  How sad would it be to find out, at the end of our life, that we ran the wrong way, or even didn’t run any distance, but only ran in place.  

The empty tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

    Today, let us join Sts. Peter and John, running toward an empty tomb, because Christ has risen from the dead.  Let us run the race that God has put before us, not aimlessly, but with our eyes fixed on our goal: heaven.  Each day we can run the small and long races, which hopefully push us closer to eternal life.  We use prayer to make sure we’re on the right track, the path that leads to heaven.  
    Forrest Gump later in the movie says, “I had run for three years, two months, fourteen days and sixteen hours….I’m pretty tired.  Think I’ll go home now.”  He had run for years, but without a purpose, without reaching a goal.  May our race of life have purpose, like Peter and John, and, spurred on by the grace and mercy of God, lead us to heaven.  [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]

New Life

Easter Vigil
    It is a special moment in a family’s life when a child first learns to walk.  The child usually takes the first steps a bit gingerly and awkwardly, but as the child’s leg muscles and core develop, and as the child learns balance, he or she gains more independence concomitant with more mobility.  While there is a period where the child will go back and forth between crawling and walking, with the mastery of the skill of walking, the child gains a new form of life, and parents have to exercise increased vigilance over the child in his or her new life.
    Tonight as we celebrate the beginning of Easter at this Vigil Mass, we celebrate new life.  All of our readings told of some form of new life.  We heard about the beginning and new life of literally everything in the first reading as we heard God create the heavens and the earth and all that is in them.  We heard about Isaac’s new life after his father, Abraham, was willing to sacrifice Isaac, though God stopped Abraham at the last minute.  In the third readings we heard about the new life that Israel received after passing through the waters of the Red Sea, with their oppressors, the Egyptians, being destroyed in the same waters after the Israelites made it through safely.  Isaiah prophesies about new life, as he spoke for God in the fourth reading: “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back.”  Israel receives new life from its renewed covenant with God.  Likewise, in the fifth reading, Isaiah talks about the new life that comes when one receives the word of God, just like the fields receive new life from the snow and rain and the seed sown in the ground.  The prophet Baruch reminds the people that life comes from following the commandments of God, and abandoning their sinful ways.  And the prophet Ezekiel in the seventh reading speaks for God and tells the people that, while they turned away from God, and God let them feel the consequences of their sins, He will give them new life and prove His holiness and fidelity, so that the nations may know that He is the true God.  St. Paul talks about the new life that comes from baptism and dying with the Lord so that we can “live in newness of life” by rising with Christ.  And the Gospel is the climax of the focus on new life as we heard the angels proclaim that Christ had been raised, and Jesus Himself met the holy women on their way back to the Upper Room.

    My dear brothers and sisters, tonight is all about new life.  We enter into the new life that Christ won by His Death and Resurrection.  We renew our covenant with the Lord, the covenant began at Holy Baptism when we died with Christ so to rise with Him to newness of life.  And for some of our brothers and sisters, tonight will be the beginning of new life for them.
    Our Elect will receive newness of life through Holy Baptism, as God washes away all their sins, adopts them as His own children, and makes them members of His Holy Church.  Our candidates, those who were baptized in other Christian ecclesial communities, will join with our Elect in receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation, after they profess full faith with us, and they and even adults baptized as Catholics earlier who never completed the rest of the Sacraments of Initiation, will be given the new life that comes from the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  And then all those who have not yet made their first Holy Communion will receive new life into them by sharing for the first time in the Body and Blood of Christ, the truly unblemished Lamb who saves us from death, just as the blood of the unblemished lamb over the lintels saved the Chosen People in Egypt from the Angel of Death, which wiped out the first born.  
    Whether we are receiving new life through the Sacraments for the first time, or renewing our covenant of new life with God tonight, God calls us to continue to live in new life, not in death.  It would be odd for a 5-year-old to return to crawling on the ground all the time, rather than walking.  We should approach our old, sinful way of life in the same way: it would be odd to go back to that.  Sin holds us down.  The new life of Christ gives us the freedom to run to God with the dignity of our heads held high on our own two feet.  The temptation will be to treat tonight as a beautiful ceremony, but only a ceremony that doesn’t change how we live.  Instead, God calls all of us to recommit to putting behind us our old habits of sin, and live in the new life of grace that Christ won for us.
    Tonight, Christ has risen from the dead.  Tonight, Christ takes your hand and invites you to walk with Him in the new life of holiness.  Tonight God reminds us that we should be dead to sin, and alive in the new life of Christ.  Alleluia!!

God's God-Forsakenness

Good Friday of the Passion of the Lord

    Most people, when they first learned it, were astonished to hear that a saintly woman like St. Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa, suffered great spiritual desolation as she worked to build her Missionaries of Charity. She once said to her spiritual director, “The place of God in my soul is blank.  There is no God in me.”  For someone who loved others so much, in such dramatic ways, I think most struggle to understand how a person could love so generously without a daily experience of God who is love.  And yet, she did.
    As we hear the Passion Narrative–we get John’s version today and we heard Matthew’s version on Palm Sunday–we hear about how Christ took upon Himself the weight of sin.  Not just the sin of His contemporaries, or even the sin that had taken place from Adam and Eve to Him, but the sin of all time.  And since sin is the separation from God, in some mysterious way, the Father allowed the Son, in His human nature, to experience the full weight of sin, which is why, as we heard Sunday, Christ cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Christ goes to the limit of what Bishop Barron calls “God-forsakenness” for our salvation.

    When we think about the pain of Good Friday, we often think of the physical pain that the Lord endured.  We might think about the pain from the nails piercing His Sacred Flesh, or the crown of thorns, puncturing the skin around his head, his hair matting with dried blood.  Or the blood on His back from the scourgings, dried and attached to his tunic, which was then taken from His Body, re-opening those wounds.  We might consider how He struggled to breathe as His Body hung upon the cross, His lungs filling with fluid as He slowly asphyxiated.  Christ redeemed all human pain united to Him by taking it upon Himself.
    But Christ also redeemed all spiritual pain through his own spiritual suffering.  Again, it seems odd to think of co-eternal Son of God going through desolation.  How could God not experience God’s presence?  And yet, in some mysterious way, Christ was allowed to taste the full effect of sin, which separates the person from God and His sanctifying grace and love. 
    Perhaps we have not had such a strong and drawn-out experience like St. Teresa of Calcutta.  Maybe we have never had a moment where we felt like God abandoned us or left us.  But I’m willing to bet many of us have had at least a few moments where we wondered where He was when we needed Him the most.  I bet many of us have had times when we go to pray and we have no desire to be there, and we feel like no one is listening.  God through Christ redeemed even those experiences where we feel the farthest from God, so that, even though maybe we don’t feel anything, we can know that He is there, because He went there already through His own Passion and Death.  
    The temptation in times where we feel like God does not care or is not present is to give up.  We don’t feel like praying so we skip our prayers.  We pray, but we don’t get the response we want or get the response when we want it, so we stop praying.  We pray, but it doesn’t even have the feeling of satisfaction of rest, and there is a tangible lack of the presence of God, so we run away from that experience and change our prayer habits to pray less so we don’t have to feel that lack of presence.  This would be equivalent to Christ coming down from the cross, as the Pharisees jeered at Him to do, because of the pain of His Passion.  
    Instead, God invites us to know that He is present, even when He feels absent, because He has gone to the utter limit of God-forsakenness on the cross to prove His love for us, and to prove that we cannot go anywhere that He has not already been.  And not only that, but He’ll stay on that cross with us, even if we don’t feel Him there, to redeem the experience of desolation for us.
    As you come forward to venerate the cross today, bring any of those times when you haven’t felt good in prayer, or you haven’t received the response you wanted, or maybe you have even felt like God wasn’t there or didn’t care.  Because when we bring those experiences, and any other suffering, to the cross of Christ, we know that, in due time, God will raise us up and give us new life from what we suffered.  Come, let us adore.

Sacramentum Unitatis

Mass of the Lord’s Supper

    In 1971, the Hillside Singers released their version of a British popular song by Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway.  In the “Hilltop” version, as it was called, the producers of a Coca-Cola commercial used the song to promote their own pop, and suggested that if everyone would sing this song and buy each other a Coke the world could live in perfect harmony.  This commercial stood in the context of the on-going cold war with Communist Russia and the Vietnam War.
    Some 55 years later, wars still rage and the world and our country desire unity.  It seems like every election comes down to a slim majority determining the track of the country for the following years.  We equate compromise with cowardice.  Citizens in our country operate on very different philosophies about the human person and how society should operate, even including how to define men and women (if a person even admits that such a definition is possible).  We are a divided nation, perhaps not this divided since the Civil War.
    Our church, too, seems ever divided.  Some, even those who hold sacred office, seem to want to change unchangeable Church teaching.  Bishops and Cardinals sling verbal attacks at each other.  It seems we fight our own ecclesial war between progressivism and traditionalism, even if most of the soldiers are keyboard warriors.
    But singing a jingle and buying Coke (the drink, not the drug) will not bring unity.  The unity that we seek cannot come from our own making, though we do have to cooperate with it.  The unity we seek finds its source in Christ, not in us.  And as God assembles us tonight to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate the Sacramentum unitatis, the Sacrament of unity, and the one priesthood that our Lord established.

    The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity because it unites us with the one head of the Church, Jesus Christ.  When we receive worthily Holy Communion, unlike other food that becomes part of us, we become part of the Body of Christ, which we have just received.  Through the Eucharist, Christ brings together all those who believe in Him to be one with Him and one with each other.  The Didache, a second-century Greek ecclesial text talks about how many grains are gathered together to make the bread that becomes the Eucharist.  The many grains, ground into one batch of flour, join to each other through the water of baptism, and then bake in the fire of the Holy Spirit to become bread, which becomes the Body of Christ.  Likewise, many individual grapes are pressed through suffering to become juice which ferments over time to become wine, used to become the Blood of Christ.  Unity comes from diverse individuals, but all united through Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit, and suffering, which joins us to Christ.  
    But unity with Christ can only come when we submit ourselves to Christ.  The reason why the non-baptized, and even the baptized who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church, cannot receive Holy Communion is because Christ is the ruler for unity, not us.  And Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  We cannot reject parts of the truth that Christ has revealed, and then claim unity with Truth Incarnate.  That would be a lie.  Unity does not come from rejecting what we know to be true until we get to a lowest common denominator of truth, but from embracing the truth has Christ Himself has revealed it through His teachings in the Scriptures and in the Church.  
    Both the Eucharist and the priesthood bring about unity because they find their source and power in the one Jesus Christ.  When we conform our lives to Him, we find the true unity because we can join ourselves, diverse as we are, to Him.  He brings us together as different parts of His Mystical Body to cooperate with each other and do what we cannot do on our own.  I do some things well, but other things not as well, or even poorly.  You do other things well, but not maybe the same things I do well.  When we bring our gifts to Christ, He allows them to work together so that we support each other, rather than combatting each other or each trying to do everything on his or her own.  
    Coca-Cola won’t bring us unity, catchy jingle or not.  Politics will not bring us unity, no matter who has the executive and legislative branches and how many laws they pass.  True unity, the unity that we desire, can only come from Christ, who both instituted the priesthood and the Eucharist tonight.  May our worthy reception of Holy Communion, made possible by my consecrated hands, but through no worthiness of my own, unify us so that we can find the peace and harmony we all desire.