Conscience: Gut or Cricket?

Sunday after the Ascension

Leroy Jethro Gibbs

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  While, in my opinion, the TV show “NCIS” is not as good as it was when Mark Harmon’s character Leroy Jethro Gibbs led the team of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, it still was one of my favorite shows to watch.  Gibbs, as most call him, is known primarily for two things: his rules and his gut.  But in this case, the gut doesn’t refer to the paunch or beer belly, but to his instinct, his intuition when it comes to cases and finding the suspect who did the crime.  
    When most people use the word conscience, what they really mean is intuition, instinct, or gut.  It’s a feeling, a sense for what to do.  But this can all too easily change into desire or want, having its base in our will and our passions, rather than in anything objective.  Or some may think of it like Jiminy Cricket from the Disney animated classic, “Pinocchio.”  And perhaps this gets closer to the truth, as conscience is meant to have a connection to something outside of ourselves.
    The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 1776, states:
 

Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey.  Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment….For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.

This text is actually taken verbatim from the Vatican II document, Gaudium et spes, n. 16.  It addresses both the reality of being something interior, like intuition, instinct, or a gut, but also something exterior, like the fictional conscience of Pinocchio.  While some would make conscience a law unto itself, and cite church teaching that we must follow our consciences, and even an erring conscience binds, conscience is rather our understanding of the objective moral law, given to us by God, applied to the particular situation in which we will find, we are finding, or we have found ourselves.

St. John Henry Newman

    And this voice that speaks to us from within is really the Holy Spirit, who gives testimony to Christ and His teachings within our soul.  St. John Henry Newman describes conscience this way: “[Conscience] is a messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by his representatives.  Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”  By our conscience, Christ continues to speak to us each day through the Holy Spirit who helps us to know right from wrong, and how to choose the good and avoid the bad.  The Holy Spirit gives us the power to be prudent and loving, as St. Peter instructed us in the epistle, so that “in all things God may be honored through Jesus Christ, our Lord.”  
    Christ teaches us in the Gospel that the Holy Spirit will give testimony to Christ.  Practically, this means that the Holy Spirit will never encourage us to do that which Christ would condemn or teach as wrong.  Again, modern man wants to make the conscience a law unto itself, that is, something which is untethered to any profession of faith or church teaching.  But the Holy Spirit always testifies to Christ, and so they can never contradict.  The Holy Spirit will never encourage us to do evil things, even with the best of intentions.  The Holy Spirit will never contradict what He has said earlier in a privileged and infallible way.  Right now there are some (perhaps even many) in Germany who want to rewrite the Church’s teaching on the reservation of the Sacrament of Holy Orders to men, or the Church’s teaching on the proper use and meaning of sexuality.  They use the word (wrongly, I would suggest) synodality to promote merely human and political evaluations of what we call wrong and right.  And perhaps some even appeal to conscience.
    And while they may have voices within them telling them that trying to change Church teaching is right, I can assure you that those voices are the voices of a holy spirit, but of a fallen one.  Because the Church has, always and everywhere taught, and this was confirmed as a matter of faith by Pope St. John Paul II, that the Sacrament of Holy Orders is reserved to men: not because of a greater holiness of men or because of a cowardice of rejecting sinful patriarchy, but because Christ willed it this way for His Church, and it is, after all, His Church, His Mystical Body, not ours.  Sacred Scripture, affirmed in both Old and New Testaments, and affirmed by doctors of the church and pontiffs, teaches clearly that marital relations are meant only for a man and woman within the context of a loving marriage and as an expression of true love and the full gift of self in an act that could, under the right circumstances, conceive a child; and that marriage is for life, and he who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.  The Holy Spirit cannot teach us anything different without undermining everything of what came before and leaving all teachings open to shifting mentalities and proclivities of human activity.  
    We often don’t naturally remember what Christ told us, because those teachings call us to reject our fallen passions and intellect, and live in a way that does not always come most easily to us.  But our conscience, the voice of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, tells us what God has affirmed as true, which will not change, even if the rest of the world declared it to be changed.  
    Our duty is to form ourselves to be able to distinguish the voice of the Holy Spirit from the voice of other spirits or even simply our human so-called wisdom.  We do this through reading the Scriptures, reading the Catechism, and studying our faith through sounds guides like the saints.  The more we do that, the more we will recognize that even when we want to do something wrong, we know that we should not.  If we try, we can hear that voice, and if we hear that voice, we can follow it, even when it means true challenge to what comes most easily to us.
    Our conscience does come to us from within, like Gibbs’s gut.  But it also references that which is outside of us, the inerrant and unchanging teachings of Christ through the Scriptures and through the Church.  May the Holy Spirit strengthen us to readily hear His voice and follow what He teaches us, that is, what Christ tells us.  Who with the Father and the same Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Waiting

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  When it comes to difficult times for most people, any time a person has to wait probably ranks towards the top.  Maybe it’s a child waiting for summer break to begin in the last days of May and the first days of June (or maybe a teacher!).  Maybe it’s a mother, waiting for her child to be born.  Maybe it’s waiting in a doctor’s office or in the lobby of a dealership to get the oil changed.  Maybe it’s waiting on the phone for a customer service representative to try to resolve whatever issue you may be having.  For me, one of the frustrating things is that there is nothing I can do to speed up the time when I’m waiting.  I have no control.

    So as we celebrate the Ascension of our Lord, we’re now in a long waiting game.  And if you think you were on hold for a long time with that customer service representative, we’ve been waiting almost 2,000 years for Christ to return, as the angels promised He would.  We know that God keeps His promises, but we also know that He chooses the right time to accomplish His will.  After all, He waited unknown centuries from the fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, to fulfill His promise to send a redeemer to restore them to friendship with God.  But that waiting wasn’t just sitting on their hands, doing nothing.  He prepared His People so that they could be ready to welcome the long-awaited Messiah, who was also His Only-Begotten Son.  They waited through the Great Flood; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; slavery in Egypt and their return and conquest of the Promised Land; the judges and kings; the prophets who corrected them when they went astray; and even through foreign occupation of their land, first by the Babylonians, then by the Greeks, and then eventually by Romans.
    So, in this time, we also wait, as we have from the year AD 33.  And our waiting is really twofold: waiting to celebrate the promised gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and waiting for the Parousia, the return of Christ in glory.  
    While we wait to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we should be asking the Holy Spirit to dwell within us more deeply, especially through the Novena to the Holy Spirit.  These days between the Ascension and Pentecost was the first novena, the first nine-days of prayer for a particular petition.  Granted, in most dioceses that’s now shortened to seven days, but that’s another story.  Still, even though we have received the Holy Spirit, especially through the holy sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, we can never have too much of the Third Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity, the one who is our Advocate, who strengthens us with gifts like wisdom and courage, and who gives us the fruits of love, joy, and peace, among others.  While waiting at a doctor’s office or waiting on the phone can seem very passive, where you can’t do anything else, waiting for the Holy Spirit is more like waiting for summer break, or even giving birth to a child, where there are preparations and things to be done so that, when the day comes, we’re ready.  It would be very sad to go into labor, knowing that we hadn’t started or completed the baby’s room or crib, or bought the necessary supplies to help the child thrive and grow outside the womb.  But, when it comes to Pentecost, how often does this happen, that we are not quite ready to receive the Holy Spirit?
    But beyond Pentecost, we wait for Christ to return in glory.  And this, too, is not a passive waiting.  This wait should be active.  Because at the end of time, Christ will put all things “beneath his feet,” as St. Paul says in his epistle to the Ephesians.  What is not of Christ will be cast down; what is of Christ will be raised up.  In this waiting time, we have the opportunity to participate in that reign of Christ already, even though it’s not yet fully known.  We have the opportunity to cast down all that is not of God, and focus on making sure we devote all of our words, actions, and thoughts to God so that God will raise us up, and will not have to cast us down, whether in totality to Hell, or even just parts of us in Purgatory, the parts that have to be burned up like chaff, or like the dross that is burned off to purify gold.  
    We know that Christ will return, but we don’t know when that will happen.  So, the best plan of action is to make ourselves ready at all times, or at least as ready as we can be.  And it’s not just a matter of looking the part (I remember a sign that said, “God is coming back; look busy.”).  Making ourselves ready is only possible by cooperating with God’s grace, and letting that grace transform us from the inside out.  We are not promised more time.  We are only promised today; God only gives us “now” to turn away from sin and turn back to Him.  If we passively wait, presuming we have more time, the day of Christ’s return, or the day of our death, could catch us off guard, and then perhaps we will be cast down because we had not allowed Christ to configure us to Himself.
    Waiting is difficult.  And it’s especially difficult when we see evil grow and be celebrated and good struggle to survive and be persecuted.  We might feel tempted at times just to give up, like our wait will never end.  But, like summer break for children; like the day of birth for a pregnant woman; even like when we’re waiting in a doctor’s room: the time will come when our hope will be fulfilled and our joy, which no one will be able to take from us, will be complete in Christ [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen]

Truth: Proposition and Person

Fourth Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Math is not my thing.  Math is good, but it’s not something I focus on or am drawn to in my life.  There were many days in high school that I wondered whether I would ever use what I learned in Algebra I, Geometry, or Algebra II later in life.  But today, at even if just in this homily, it seems like math is once again useful.
    The math that came to mind when reading over the Gospel was the Transitive Property of Equality.  This law states that if A is equal to B, and B is equal to C, then A is equal to C.  What does that have to do with the Gospel?  Well, our Lord states that when the Spirit of truth comes, He will teach us all truth.  But the Christ Himself also says, “‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’”  So the Spirit of truth will lead us to truth, but Christ is truth, so the Spirit will lead us to Christ.
    Pope Francis, may he rest in peace, emphasized this point in his weekly audience in May 2013, when he said:
 

Jesus himself told his disciples: the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all the truth”, since he himself is “the Spirit of Truth”.  We are living in an age in which people are rather sceptical [sic] of truth.  Benedict xvi [sic] has frequently spoken of relativism, that is, of the tendency to consider nothing definitive….And yet Jesus is exactly this: the Truth that, in the fullness of time, “became flesh”, and came to dwell among us so that we might know it.  The truth is not grasped as a thing, the truth is encountered.  It is not a possession, it is an encounter with a Person.

We often think of truths like we think of mathematical laws: propositions that explain reality.  But truth cannot be limited to propositions, but desires to be encountered in the Divine Person of our Lord.
    We can try to limit truth to mere propositions.  We might say: you must believe this fact; or you must live in that way.  But for Catholics, these propositions do not exist simply as Platonic ideas in a far away heaven.  For Catholics, our beliefs and our morality reveal to us who Christ is, which is important because Christ reveals who we can be to us.  Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council puts it this way: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light….Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”

    And the Church Fathers from the earliest times recognized this revelation of who God desires us to be so clearly.  At the end of this month, we will celebrate in this church, with our Orthodox brothers and sisters in Genesee County, the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.  At this first ecumenical council in the life of the Church, the 318 bishops affirmed that Christ is consubstantial with the Father (‘𝜊𝜇𝜊𝜊𝜐𝜎𝜄𝜊𝜍 is the Greek term; we say consubstantialem in Latin), rather than what the heretic Arius taught, which was that Christ was an exalted part of God’s creation, but merely a created being.  But the fathers recognized that if Christ was not co-equal God, then He could not save us.  As St. Athanasius said, “God became man so that man might become God.”     So Christ reveals to us, in this proposition of truth, that we are those saved by God Incarnate.  We encounter the mystery of God-made-man, which allows us to understand that we are worth saving, that God would come to us and take on our human nature so that our human nature could be united to God.  While there are propositions that are true, we can more easily reject cold axioms.  But if Truth is a Person, then our connection to that axiom becomes a relationship with a brother, an opportunity to love and be loved and become the fullest version of ourselves, revealed by the one who created us.
    And Truth in flesh calls us to go deeper than merely the recitation of facts or axioms.  This becomes clearer when you think about your spouse or your best friend.  I could tell you that my best friend has brown hair, is six-foot-something tall, is muscular, works for the State Police, is married with children, likes to joke around and poke fun at me for mediocre homilies.  You might know those facts, but if you haven’t met Anthony, you wouldn’t fully appreciate who he is and how he is.  I could list all the facts in the world, but the encounter with him gives a reality that stating facts never could.  The same is truth for our faith: we could give all the facts about our Lord, but until you encounter Him, you cannot truly love Him, and only in encountering Him can that love blossom so that it gives us the fullness of joy that God desires for us.

    Yes, the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Father and the Son to the Church, leads us to understand propositions and axioms of how God made the world and how we are to live in it to find happiness.  But the Holy Spirit leads us to so much more than that!  The Holy Spirit leads us to encounter the Truth that surpasses propositions, because the Truth is not an “it” but a “He,” a Person that loves us, has shown us how to be truly happy, and that desires our love in return, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  

Two-fold Evangelization Approach

Fifth Sunday of Easter
    How do we help others recognize the important of joining the Catholic Church and living as a disciple?  Does a secret recipe or formula exist?  What program do we need to buy?  Our readings give us a hint of how we can evangelize effectively.
    Really, it comes down to two phrases from our first reading and Gospel, with the second reading an affirmation of what we heard in the first reading.  The two approaches that God gives us through His Sacred Word today are: report what God has done; and love one another.

Statue of St. Paul from St. Peter's Basilica

    The entire Bible lays out what God has done for us, which is why we read it week after week in the Church.  We’re following the pattern set down for us in the Acts of the Apostles where Paul and Barnabas, “called the church together and reported what God had done with them.”  The story of our Church, the one founded by Jesus Christ, stretches back to Judaism and the Book of Genesis, and goes all the way through the Book of Revelation.  This inerrant, privileged communication of God demonstrates what God has done.  He rescued us from the sin and death of the fall of our first parents through the Resurrection of Jesus, and then accompanied that proclamation of new life by signs and wonders.  Whether it’s the first patriarchs from the Book of Genesis, Moses and Joshua, the Judges, the good and bad kings, or the prophets, we hear how God interacts with us and calls us to the life that brings us happiness.  We then hear the life of Christ and how God worked through the second Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity.  And then we hear how the Holy Spirit continued the work of Christ through the early Church and the activity of the Apostles Paul, Peter, James, Jude, and John.  And we close Divine Revelation in the Scriptures with the culmination of how God will make everything right through the Book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse of St. John.  
    The Bible tells a very objective side of how God has worked, but we also make up the larger story of salvation history, that did not end after the death of the last apostle.  And so, part of effective evangelization also entails communicating what God has done in our own life.  No matter who we are, God works in our day-to-day life.  He’s not the God that many of the founding fathers of our country posited, who created the world, but then stands afar off, like a distant clockmaker who put together the clock and watches it wind down.  No, He’s intimately involved in every part of our life, or wants to be, and wants to guide us to live in a way that prepares us for heaven.  
    As the Book of Revelation tells us, God dwells with us as our God, and we are His people.  He works to help us stay on the narrow path to get to the place where tears are wiped away, where death, mourning, wailing, and pain no longer exist, because He has cast away the old life of sin and death, and made all things new.
    But, being a disciple goes beyond simply telling others about God.  To live as a disciple means loving others as God has loved us.  Jesus gave us this command in the Gospel today, and connected the living of this commandment to the glorification of God.  When we love others as God loves us, we glorify God, and God is glorified in us.  
    But love is not some amorphous idea.  Love means willing the good of the other in individual circumstances.  Whether we work in the home, raising children, or work outside the home; whether we are in school or on vacation; whether we try to find the right job or enjoy retirement from our job; God calls us to will the good of the other.  This can seem vague, but think about individual choices we make: if I hit my sibling because he or she annoys me, can I really say that I am willing my sibling’s good?  If I look at another person, whether live or online, with lust and use them for my own gratification, am I really willing that person’s good?  If I drive in a way that endangers my own or another’s life, am I willing the good of my fellow drivers?  If I treat people based on what they can do for me, or how productive they are for society, am I truly willing the good of those people?  The vague becomes pretty concrete when we think about it that way.
    The early Church seemed pretty good at sharing what God had done for His People (generally) and them (individually).  They were convinced that others needed to hear the hope and joy that God does not dwell in some far-off heaven, removed from our everyday experiences, but loves us and wants us to involve Him in our day-to-day life, to increase our joys and bear our sorrows with us.  They did not treat people based upon their social status or economic bracket, but loved even those whom society had cast away or who seemed dispensable.  And in this way, whether in Judea, or Egypt, or Persia, or India, or Rome, or wherever, the Gospel spread.  
    So while there are best practices in evangelization, there is no secret recipe or formula.  There is no program that we can buy that can replace these two essential factors: sharing what God has done for us, and loving others.  Not just to grow our parish, but to help people get on the road to heaven, God calls us to these two aspects of evangelization.  Will we share the Gospel and help others get to heaven?  Will we share what God has done for us, and love them as God has loved us?

The Peace of the Risen Christ

Third Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I’m going to apologize up front here, because this will probably not be my best homily.  Between vacation (which wasn’t that restful) and trainings for the Michigan State Police I needed to attend, I feel like I’ve been playing catch-up and simply dealing with things as they pop up, like an arcade game of whack a mole.  In addition, a friend of mine who is a Trooper was shot early on Monday morning in Detroit, and I have been trying to help him and his fiancee, whose wedding I will celebrate in October, deal with his serious injury (he’s going to be fine, but he will certainly need some time before he gets back to work).
    So I’m giving this the best I have.  I haven’t had my usual times to think and pray over the readings like I normally do.  I don’t have any funny or deep connections to make at the beginning to draw you in.  I have to preach, and I’m relying on the Holy Spirit to hopefully help draw you ever more deeply into the sacred mysteries and how the Word of God applies to our daily lives (the Holy Spirit is always the one who gives any good message, I just feel like I usually have more time and energy to cooperate with Him than I have had this week).
    The Catholic life is always simply giving our best and allowing God to work out what has to happen.  We don’t see Christ in the Body in the same way that the Apostles did.  That should give us a certain sadness.  We fight through struggles; we can seem overwhelmed by our family situations, by work, by the fears of the world which seeks to silence the Gospel and which so often drives toward violence and division.  Sometimes all of this weighs heavy on our heart.  We are like our Lord described, a woman in labor, who struggles through intense pain, giving all she has.  

    In the midst of this; in the midst of the chaos and busyness of my own life and the reality that I cannot be everywhere to help everyone, nor can I be all things to all people, the first words of Pope Leo XIV rang in my ears: “Peace be with you.”  He continued, “this was the first greeting of the risen Christ, the good shepherd who gave His life for the flock of God.”  
    And this is the only greeting I can share with you today.  The Risen Christ gives you His peace.  He assures as, us His Vicar, the Supreme Pontiff, assured us, “evil will not prevail.”  You are struggling.  You are fighting for truth.  You are working hard to protect and serve your family, your community, your parish, your country.  Sometimes things go well, but so often things break down or go contrary to what you think is best.  Christ did not promise us a world without sorrow, without struggle.  Indeed, He promised us we would have it.  But He also promised that He would see us again and our hearts would rejoice in seeing Him again.  And He promised that the joy of seeing Him again would be a joy no one could take from us.
    The peace and joy that Christ desires to give us can only come when we make room for Him.  When we try to do everything ourselves, without His grace, it all collapses like a house of cards.  We cannot have the peace and joy of Christ if we do not make room in our hearts for Christ Himself.  Sometimes we act like atheists, who do not believe in God and so do not turn to God for help in the midst of our struggles.  But God does not want us to struggle alone.  He wants us to make room for Him in our hearts and in our days, even if it’s simply a few minutes or seconds here and there.  Those stolen moments while the kids nap, or during a snack break in the office, or driving somewhere in the midst of running what seems like a free Uber service, make all the difference in the world, because they invite the peace and joy of Christ back into our minds, hearts, and souls to strengthen us.

Our Lady, Queen of Peace

    And on this Mother’s Day, let us not forget to invoke our heavenly mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, in whatever struggles we may have.  She is the woman who labors in heaven for our safe deliverance to the Father’s house, who feels the pain of our sorrows and fatigue, who wraps us in her loving embrace when we feel overwhelmed, who shows us that the pains we go through, if united to Christ, can lead to a joy that words cannot fully describe.  Never be afraid to call on her when all seems lost, or like we can’t make it one more day, because she will help us to be open to receive the peace and joy that the risen Christ desires to share with us always.  I will end this homily in the same way our new Holy Father ended his first words at the loggia of St. Peter’s basilica: Hail Mary…. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Obvious to Some, Not to All

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Country star Randy Travis

    Country music is the best non-liturgical music there is.  Others may think differently, and they’re entitled to their opinions, but they’re wrong.  That’s not to say that there aren’t other good songs.  I grew up on lite rock (with bands and singers like Chicago, REO Speedwagon, Rod Stewart, Cher, etc.), and also listened to the great songs of the 50s and 60s, so I enjoy other types of music, too.  But, as a whole, country music is the best.  Now, what amazes me is that not everyone shares my opinion.  Even good people sometimes don’t appreciate fully (or at all) how wonderful country music is.  While country music is just three chords and the truth (which is part of what makes it great), others will joke that when you play a country song backwards you get your dog back, your truck back, and your wife back.      Of course, I jest…somewhat.  But sometimes things can seem so obvious to one person, but others do not appreciate the same things.  And we hear that reality in our first reading, which regards the people’s appreciation for something even greater than country music: the faith.  We skip what Paul said to the synagogue, but we get the reaction of those who heard: they start arguing with Paul and telling him that he’s wrong, all because the Gentiles, non-Jews, started to believe Paul and Barnabas and began following Christ.  
    But this makes no sense!  Paul was so learned in Judaism because he had been a Pharisee and had studied his faith deeply.  He understood how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, and could explain that to the Jews, who would understand those prophecies.  So how could they reject Paul’s preaching?
    Following Jesus is not just a matter of understanding facts.  St. James reminds us in his letter that the demons know who God is.  But they do not follow him.  They have all the facts in the world, but they do not love Him.  Catholicism is not just a matter of the head (though we certainly have things we need to believe).  Living the Catholic life means loving Jesus and conforming our lives to His.  So if we wish to be disciples, we do not only need to form our minds, but also form our hearts so that we love what God loves, and will what God wills.
    And this is where people struggle, because their hearts are not always totally given over to God, and their wills desire things on their own, contrary to what God wants.  We call this concupiscence.  We may know what is right, but because of some other factor, we reject what is right for what is convenient or less challenging.  God wants us to be His sheep, to belong to His sheepfold, but we wander away, because we would rather listen to a voice that does not lead us towards happiness, but leads us to temporary pleasure.

    Knowing the disconnect that can happen between the head and the heart is not only important in our own lives and helping us to follow Christ, but also when we seek to share the Gospel, like Sts. Paul and Barnabas did.  We might be able to give people facts about Jesus, but can we help them love Him?  Cardinal Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, recalled a time when he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  His Jewish classmates would ask him questions about the faith and he would respond, but without much success.  He said, “I answered as the catechism answers and I realized from her face that she had not understood anything.  I was unable to make myself understood. It took some time for me to understand that the Resurrection is not explained.”  He wrote that what makes the difference is helping people understand that “there is nothing better in life than to encounter Jesus Christ.”  Again, that goes beyond just head knowledge, and goes to the heart, to loving Christ.
    If, in times past, we erred on the side of the head, that we know what God teaches us, today we err on the side of the heart, which then seems to ignore sinful activity because a person is good in other areas.  In reality, we need to affirm both head and heart.  Simply hitting others over the head with the teachings of Christ often does not work, but neither is it helpful to ignore the teachings of Christ so that we pretend what is evil is, in fact, good.  Of course our actions, living the connection of head and heart out, needs the virtue of prudence and has to be motivated by true love for the other person and their eternal salvation.
    What can seem obvious to some is not obvious to all.  We should always be looking for new ways to share the Gospel, and finding ways to make the proclamation more effective.  This is the heart of the New Evangelization: the teachings of the Church are the same, but we find new ways to proclaim them in convincing ways to new generations of people who have new struggles and new needs.  We connect head and heart in sharing the Good News about Jesus and His teachings.  May the Holy Spirit fill us with wisdom, courage, and prudence to share the joy of the Resurrection, and all that Christ has revealed to us as necessary for salvation.  

A Tradition Unlike Any Other

Third Sunday of Easter

    A few weeks back, during a few, rare downtimes on Palm Sunday weekend, I was able to tune in to the Masters Tournament at Augusta National coverage on TV.  I don’t golf, but there is something about the Masters which draws even non-golfers in.  While I was primarily rooting for Jordan Spieth, who ended up with a decent set of scores, I was also very happy to see Rory McElroy not only win his first green jacket, but also complete the career Grand Slam of winning all four major championships: the PGA Championship, US Open, Open Championship, and the Masters.  There’s something about the Masters that signals spring is finally here.  It’s not just the game itself; it goes beyond a simple few days in Georgia.
    The same could be said for our Gospel passage today.  But I want to focus more on the second part of the Gospel passage, Peter’s interaction with Jesus, which also goes beyond a simple apologetic conversation, though it is that.  Part of the beyond is Jesus again supporting Peter’s special role as pope and head of the Apostolic College, the group of apostles.  But it also demonstrates for us what confession is mean to be like.
    The Gospel writers are clear that Peter denied Jesus on Holy Thursday evening and into Good Friday.  They are clear that he wasn’t at the cross, but that, once the cock crowed after Peter had denied Christ, he went away weeping, knowing that he had betrayed the Lord.  But we never hear anything else, until this passage, about the reconciliation.  Peter had been going all this time after seeing the Risen Christ on Easter Sunday without dealing with his sin.  But now the Lord invites Him to reconcile.
    How many times do we carry sins with us, perhaps even avoiding confession because we are ashamed?  We, in our own way, have denied and betrayed the Lord.  And while we have later seen His goodness and His new life, we’re afraid to confront our sin.  But if we don’t reconcile, we can’t receive healing.  And if the wound is mortal, deadly, then we could perish forever.
    So the Lord invites us to speak with Him in confession, and the priest acts in His name, in persona Christi capitis, in the person of Christ the Head, we say in theological language.  And He asks us, “‘do you love me more than these?’”  Now, in the Gospel, perhaps Jesus meant more than the other apostles, or more than fishing.  But with us, the Lord asks us if we love Him more than we love our sins.  The act of confessing makes us confront what or who we love more.  
    In the Greek (and Venerable Fulton Sheen makes a whole homily about this), the type of love Jesus asks Peter is not the type of love that Peter responds to Jesus.  Jesus asks, <<𝛼𝛾𝛼𝜋𝛼𝜍 𝜇𝜀;>> or, “Do you love me with the love of God?”  Peter responds, <<𝜙𝜄𝜆𝜔 𝜎𝜀>> or “I love you with brotherly love.”  The second time Jesus asks the same question, and Peter responds the same way.  But the third time, Jesus asks, <<𝜙𝜄𝜆𝜀𝜄𝜍 𝜇𝜀;>> or “Do you love me with brotherly love?”  Hence, Peter gets upset that Jesus asked, not only a third time, but changed the type of love (though that was the love Peter could muster in response).  But he still responds in the same way.  
    Jesus desires us to have 𝛼𝛾𝛼𝜋𝜀, or caritas, or selfless, Godlike love.  But He knows we are weak, and He accepts that we can’t always affirm that.  So he takes what we can give.  When we sin, especially mortal sins, we should have perfect contrition: the sorrow that comes, “not because of the loss of heaven or the pains of hell, but most of all because they have offended thee, my God.”  Still, through the sacrament, God raises our imperfect contrition, the fear of punishment, and makes it perfect by His grace so that we can be forgiven.  

    Through the Sacrament of Penance, which we often call confession, God reconciles us to Himself, even when we’re not fully ready to be reconciled.  We need to be sorry in some sense, confess our mortal sins in kind and number, have a firm purpose to not commit sin again, and be ready to accept penance, but God knows that sometimes we cannot honestly say that we love Him the way He loves us.  Still, He doesn’t want anything to stand in the way of His relationship with us, so He forgives us.  He asks us to love Him and let that love be manifest in our actions.
    The Gospels tell us what Jesus truly did and taught for eternal salvation, as Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from the Second Vatican Council taught.  But the Gospels go beyond the telling of true stories.  They also help us continue our life in Christ.  May our hearing and reading of the exchange between Jesus and Peter draw us closer to our Lord as we confess our sins, receive forgiveness and healing, and help us to live with the mission Christ gave us: to be saints.

Seeing the Risen Jesus

Solemnity of Easter

The entrance to the aediculum

   [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  One of the most memorable things that I experienced when I went to the Holy Land for the first time in 2007 as a seminarian was attending Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus died and rose from the dead.  At the place where the tomb was, there is a small building inside the church called the aediculum, and inside that aediculum is where a slab of stone rests that held the dead body of our Lord.  The Franciscans gave us permission to have Mass there one day.  The way Mass works in that space is that the Liturgy of the Word/Mass of Catechumens happens outside the aediculum.  For the Liturgy of the Eucharist/Mass of the Faithful, the priest enters the aediculum and says the Eucharist Prayer inside there, which you can hear, but not see, because of how small it is inside.
    The great moment is when the priest gets to the point where he says, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” because the priest leaves the aediculum, and, holding the Body of the Lord above the chalice says, while showing the Eucharist to the people.  Part of the power is that this is the same risen Lord, coming from His tomb, alive for us to see, though of course under sacramental signs.
    As we celebrate Easter today, we remember the event that changed the course of human history.  While the Prophet Elisha had raised a person from the dead in the Old Testament, and our Lord had raised the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus from the dead, the resurrection was altogether different.  Our Lord’s Body no longer suffered under the restrictions of the physical world, as we will hear next Sunday when we hear about Him entering a locked room through the door.  While the Body was certainly His, and bore the marks of His crucifixion, in a glorified state there was something different about it.  I often imagine it as having a slight glow to it, though maybe that was not the case.  It was different enough that the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize Christ as He walked with them, until He broke bread in a room with them.  
    But that event that changed everything, starting really with Good Friday and culminating with Easter Sunday, we celebrate and enter into each Sunday in particular, and each time we come to Mass more generally.  At the Mass, we begin by acknowledging that we are sinners and that Christ suffered for us and because of us.  We stand at the foot of the Cross and nail our sins there with Christ so that they can be forgiven.  We offer our lives–the joys and sorrows, pain and comforts, work and leisure–since the last time we attended Mass united to the perfect offering of Christ to His heavenly Father on Calvary.  We stand there at Calvary and hear God’s word proclaimed to help us understand what work God does in our lives.  And then, during the Eucharist Prayer/Canon of the Mass, we enter into Christ’s offering of Himself on the cross, and His burial in the tomb.  In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church references how the altar, besides being symbol of Christ Himself and the Cross, also symbolizes the tomb.
    And that is perhaps a bit clearer as we celebrate Mass facing the Lord together, or ad Dominum.  During the three days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Christ’s Body laid in the tomb, unseen by all others.  After the elevations which follow the words of institution, the words that Christ Himself spoke (“This is my Body”; “This is my Blood), Christ is not seen by the faithful in the pews until the priest shows the Body of Christ while saying, “Behold the Lamb of God.”  This is, as it were, Christ breaking forth from the tomb, and appearing before His disciples after the Resurrection.  The same experience I had in Jerusalem, of seeing Christ in the Eucharist come forth from His tomb you can experience as I remove the Body of Christ from the tomb of the altar and He rises so that you all can see Him and His glorified Body, which is not limited in the way our bodies are limited.
    And the Lord does not just show Himself from afar as I show Him to you.  At the time for the reception of Holy Communion, He comes near to you, as He came near to Mary Magdalene at the tomb or as He came near the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples in the Upper Room.  He stands right before you, and then even enters in to you to bring that power of the Resurrection into your individual lives.
    And what is our response, then?  The same as the disciples who realized that Christ was risen: they had to tell other disciples, and, after Pentecost, everyone.  Knowing that Christ had died, but that He was truly risen, they could not remain silent, but shared that joy and the transformation of their lives that the Resurrection made.  Death no longer had the last say.  Sin no longer could hold them in slavery.  They could not contain the joy of that revelation, but had to tell others.  And so should we.  The joy of this day should cast away all sorrow and fear and lead us to greater holiness of life.

Inside the aediculum

    Christ has risen from the dead.  It is not just a past event, but a reality that we get to join every Sunday, which the Church calls a “little Easter.”  May we recognize the Risen Christ as we see and receive Him in the Eucharist, the Lamb of God, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, live and reign for ever and ever.

Getting the Bigger Picture

Easter Vigil
    I know someone well who is very smart.  His mind is a well-oiled machine.  When faced with different data points, he can put it together to make sense, and anticipate challenges and/or opportunities, and adjust expectations or actions as necessary.  Because of this, he is very gifted at administration.  When it comes to friendships: he struggles a bit more.  Because his mind tries to get to why a friend didn’t tell him something, or why did a friend use the words he did, and is that friend trying to communicate something subtly that he doesn’t want to say directly.  And then anxiety kicks in and his brain goes into overdrive trying to make sense of it all, and often reading into things that are much more innocent.
    I try to help him by reminding him to consider other facts that he knows to be true that will put his mind at ease.  I encourage him to expand the amount of data that his mind is analyzing to include more positive facts and input, and not just the negative ones to which his brain so easily goes.  While it takes work, seeing the bigger picture can help calm his fears of rejection and realize that he really does have good friends who aren’t looking to get rid of him.
    Maybe you don’t have an analytical mind, but with what has happened over the past few days, starting on Holy Thursday, there’s a lot to process.  In this one grand liturgy that began with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we entered into the model of service in the washing of feet; the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist at the Last Supper; and the agony in the garden at the altar of repose.  On Good Friday we joined with Christ in the fruits of the betrayal by Judas and our God, Savior, and hope dying in the most horrible way possible.  Earlier today we just waited, joining with the apostles who had all likely lost hope and were wondering what they should do now that their Master was in a tomb.  And now, tonight, we celebrate that hope did not die, but that God raised His Son from the dead and conquered sin and death forever.  If we take these events seriously, they should make us wonder what God did and what it all means.  We may not get anxiety, but it calls for a deeper reflection on more facts, more data to understand God’s plan.
    And that’s why we had all these readings tonight.  We heard about how God created life to be good and an expression of His love.  We heard about Abraham almost sacrificing his beloved son, but God providing a ram to take Isaac’s place.  We heard about the Egyptians being put to death in water, which was also the way that God’s chosen people were saved: through water.  We heard the Prophet Isaiah talk about how God would take us back, though we had abandoned Him, and how God would give us the good things of life and renew His covenant with us.  The Prophet Baruch encouraged us to follow the ways of the Lord and so receive light and favor.  And we heard God tell the Prophet Ezekiel that God would give new life to His people, cleanse them from their sins, and lead them back to their promised inheritance.  
    These are all realities we all need to hear tonight, to better understand God’s plan.  But especially you, Dylan and Isaiah, need to hear these as you prepare to become Catholic through your baptism, confirmation, and reception of the Holy Eucharist.  You will go through water which will destroy all that is fallen in you, but will give you new life in Christ.  God will send His Spirit upon you to help you live the new law of grace.  And God will prepare for you the “rich fare” of the Eucharist, the food which is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, which will help join you to Christ in the closest union you can have with anyone while on earth.  Your stories–what brought you to this holy night, your path of conversion–now becomes a small part of the larger story of salvation, by which God gives us a greater gift even than the Garden of Eden, which He created for us, the people He has made in His image.  God made Eden for Adam and Eve, who lost it by their disobedience.  God opens heaven to you, greater than any earthly paradise, and you can receive it by your life of obedience to God.  

    The price of this great gift of heaven was costly indeed: the death of the Son of God.  But Christ accepted it lovingly as the will of the Father and because it meant you could go to heaven and be united with Him for all eternity, which is exactly why God created humanity in the first place: for union with Him.
    So do not only consider the drama of the past few days.  Do not fix your minds on what causes anxiety.  Consider all of salvation history, and how God, who created you in love, has redeemed you in love, and now welcomes you into His family of love, the Catholic Church, and now shows you the straight and narrow way to enter into eternal love in heaven.  

Being Carried to Mount Doom

Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

    One of the many moving scenes in the third movie, “Return of the King,” of  the trilogy “The Lord of the Rings,” is when Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee are on the slopes of Mount Doom, the mountain in which the One Ring has to be destroyed in order to end the growing strength and power of the evil Sauron.  Frodo has almost no strength left from the weight of the ring on a chain around his neck, as it grows heavier the closer it gets to destruction.  Sam, too, is tired, but is doing all he can to help his friend complete the quest, without which all of Middle Earth will fall into darkness and despair.
    Even though Sam has offered to carry the ring to help, Frodo has made very clear (to put it lightly) that the ring can only be borne by Frodo.  It is his burden to bear.  So, as Frodo is exhausted on Mount Doom, full of despair and darkness, and cannot take another step, Sam says, “‘I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”  And Sam carries Frodo up the slopes towards a small door that grants passage to the fires that will destroy the One Ring.  You can watch the rest of the movie, or, better yet, read the book, to learn how it all turns out.

    J.R.R. Tolkien demonstrates his genius and masterful Catholic storytelling by not having any one character always correspond to one person in salvation and the Scriptures.  Many often compare Frodo to Christ, because he carries the ring like Christ carries the cross and our sin.  And in this sense, we are called to be like Sam, a friend who never leaves the side of the one he loves.  We are to be like the Blessed Mother, John the Apostle, St. Mary Magdalen and the other holy women, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus, who stayed with Christ through His entire Passion, His entire agony on the cross.  And we are here today to do precisely that.  Through this long, ancient liturgy, begun last night at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we show our love for Christ, who showed His love for us by dying on the cross.
    And it’s not much.  We’re not fighting against the soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross.  We’re not arguing with the Pharisees and the Sadducees who convinced Pilate to crucify the Lord of Glory.  We’re just here, with Jesus, in the liturgical presentation of His last hours before He dies.  We remain here, mourning, recognizing that our sins led Jesus here and made this day necessary.  
    But, Samwise Gamgee also represents Christ.  We are like Frodo, with the weight of sin around us.  We know that sin has to be destroyed, and we have done all we can to destroy it, but without any success.  The weight is too heavy for us to bear.  Sin clouds our vision so that we can no longer remember our home of heaven, union with God.  Sin gives the devil clear sight of us, a gaze which burns our souls and causes us to lose hope.  But Christ does not abandon us, though we have no strength to carry on.  He lifts us up on His shoulders and carries us so that sin can be destroyed and hope can be restored.  
    So today, we stand at the foot of the cross, remaining here with our Lord so that He does not have to be alone.  We see the cost that our sins have created.  But, let us make our own the words of Samwise Gamgee, the words Christ encourages us with as He suffers for our salvation: “Then let us be rid of it, once and for all.”  As Christ destroys sin and death: come, let us worship.