Captain America vs. Iron Man

 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

    It is a natural phenomenon that we tend to have favorites when there is a group of people.  Not long after starting at St. Matthew I got into a good and holy discussion with some young men while eating dinner at a family’s house about who was better: Iron Man or Captain America (the correct answer is Captain America, in case you’re wondering).  We, of course, discussed why we each thought the way we did, and I tried to help the young man understand why he was wrong in asserting that Iron Man was the better super hero.  Luckily the discussion did not resort to physical attacks, though some verbal jabs were exchanged here and there.
    St. Paul, in our second reading, talks about such rivalries, not concerning super heroes, but about leaders in the early Church.  Some were on “Team Paul,” others on “Team Apollos” (an early preacher who didn’t have the full Gospel at first, but then came to learn about it from other disciples), or “Team Cephas,” (St. Peter’s Aramaic name).  You can just imagine the smarty-pants who, after hearing discussions about belonging to Paul or Apollos or Peter, said, “Well, I belong to Christ.”  
    The draw to individuals is likely based in natural affinities to certain personality types.  Others can draw us by their charisma, or the way they present themselves, and we end up liking what they like, and feeling a sort of belonging to them.
    And when it stays at a surface level, then that draw to particular personalities does not need to be problematic.  But, when that draw to a church personality starts to divide us against each other and make us exclusive, then it becomes a problem.  Because, as St. Paul said, Christ is not divided, and no one else saves us except Christ, not even the greatest leaders of the faith.
    To have the mind of Christ, we would do well to remember that Christ called diverse apostles and disciples.  We heard about Jesus calling the a few of the Apostles today as Simon Peter and Andrew were called, and then James and John.  While Jesus called two sets of brothers, anyone who has raised two or more boys can tell you that, while there are similarities, there are also numerous differences between brothers.  I’m sure Peter and Andrew were, in some ways, very different people, just like James and John were, in some ways, very different people.  And yet, Christ called them all.  He called them to conversion, to be the best that they could be, but He called different types of personalities to follow Him.  
    It is so easy in the Church, even today, to pledge our allegiance to this or that group, to this or that ecclesiastic personality.  Again, to the extent that this priest or bishop draws us to Christ: praise God.  To the extent that we seek to divide and exclude those who don’t follow this or that priest or bishop, then we need to repent.  Sometimes priests and bishops don’t help things.  I don’t know a priest or bishop who begins by seeking fame and celebrity, but once attained, those things can draw one away from the humility that is required if one wants to serve Jesus, rather than one’s self.  How do you know someone has become too concerned with his celebrity?  How does that person react when a superior starts poking holes in that status, or curtails speaking gigs and event?  That says a lot.
    But it’s not just about priests and bishops.  The lay faithful, that is, you, sometimes also make it difficult for a unified Body of Christ approach, rather than a tribal approach to living the Gospel.  How often do people attend a parish because of this or that priest, or pass by a parish because of this or that priest.  Now, certainly, you have a right to hear the Gospel proclaimed, and not some dribble that is a priest’s personal soapbox or agenda.  You have a right to the celebration of the liturgy as the Church gives it, not as some priest decides that he wants to add words, or dancing, or his own form of celebration.  
    But how often is the refrain, “I don’t like that priest,” heard among Christ’s faithful?  When one of my uncles, as a child, complained to my grandfather (God rest his soul) that he didn’t like his teacher, my grandfather told my uncle he didn’t have to marry her, but he did have to respect her and behave in class, and do his best to learn.  You may not like a particular priest.  But as long as that priest preaches the Gospel (not his gospel), then we shouldn’t seek to divide the Body of Christ by putting this or that priest down, or giving our allegiance to a priest or bishop, rather than to God.  
    I would also say that a good priest, while preaching the Gospel, should make us take serious stock of our souls, at least from time to time.  If a priest is only preaching the things we want to hear, then he’s not really preaching the Gospel.  Jesus called all to conversion.  It was the Pharisees who only wanted to hear how good they were.  And that is not a good group with which to be associated.  
    Affinities naturally arise.  We rely on others to help bring us to Christ, because faith is never a purely private affair.  But we are part of Christ’s Church, and we have been called to be faithful to Him, not to any apostle or disciple.  Stay in that Church, no matter what priest comes or what happens to a parish, and so be a part of the diverse crowd that Jesus calls to become fishers of men.

Saints Like Us

 Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
 

St. Teresa of Calcutta

   In 2006 when I was studying in Rome on a study abroad, I was required to work with the Missionaries of Charity, the order that St. Teresa of Calcutta founded, each month at a shelter where they fed the hungry and housed the homeless.  Before we started to work with them, though, a priest from Minnesota, who was our chaplain for the study abroad program, who had worked with Mother Teresa, told us about her.  Most of what I heard was not surprising: her love for the poor, her encounter with Jesus who told her, “I thirst,” and how she was to quench Jesus’ thirst through her care for the poorest of the poor.  But he also mentioned that, for most of her adult life, she didn’t receive any good feelings in prayer, what we call consolations.  This was a huge shock for me!  How could someone so holy not feel good about praying!  Not long after my study abroad, a book came out called Come, Be My Light, which detailed how Mother Teresa, after her encounter with Jesus to found the Missionaries of Charity, rarely had any experience that God was even present, let alone good feelings in prayer.
    When we think of the saints, we often think of the finished product.  We think of the incredible stories that are told of the saints doing marvelous things.  We often gloss over the struggles and the ups and downs that they had in their life, even while trying to be a saint.  But throughout the Scriptures, and throughout the stories of the saints, we see people who were very much like we are, prone to the same temptations, who, the vast majority of the time, chose God over self, but who, nonetheless, sometimes struggled.
    Our Gospel today is the perfect example of the similarity of the saints to us.  We hear St. Mark’s version of the commission of St. Peter to be the first pope.  We have heard the story before: Jesus asks His Apostles who others say that He is, and they give the common understanding at the time.  Some say that Jesus is John the Baptist back from the dead.  Others say that Jesus is Elijah, or another one of the prophets.  But then Jesus puts the question to them, and St. Peter, not on his own, but by the grace of God, proclaims that Jesus is the Christ, in Aramaic he would have said something like messhichah, in English we say Messiah.  Matthew’s account is the one with which we are more familiar, and fills out that, after that proclamation, Jesus tells Peter that Jesus will build His Church on Peter, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, and gives Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.  This is the great moment that we are used to encountering with the saints!  
    But then, Jesus tells the Apostles that He will suffer, be rejected, and be killed, but then rise on the third day.  St. Peter takes Jesus aside to tell him that this is not what should happen.  Jesus gathers all the Apostles, and rebukes Peter in the midst of them, and calls Peter, the one upon whom Jesus had just said He will build His Church, Satan.  This is not the image of our first pope upon which we like to dwell, or that we are used to sharing with others.  But St. Mark (like St. Matthew) does not hide it, or make Peter seem better than he is.  In fact, by ancient tradition, St. Peter helped St. Mark compose this account of the Gospel, so St. Peter doesn’t even hide his failure.
    The saints were people just like ourselves.  It would be easy to think of them as people who had superpowers, like the Avengers, because we do hear many amazing stories of how they witnessed their faith in word and deed.  But superheroes are easy to honor, but easy to write-off, because they are not like us.  I can excuse myself for not doing the things Captain America does because I didn’t get an injection that increased my muscle mass (despite my hopes that the COVID vaccine would do exactly that!).  I don’t worry about not doing what Captain America does because he and I are so different.
    But the saints are not different than we are.  They are exactly the same, except they end up responding to God’s grace, whereas we often reject those same graces.  But still, they don’t have any super-human advantages that we don’t have.  They are exactly like us.  They, though, did what Jesus said: they denied themselves, took up their crosses, and followed Jesus, in a myriad of different ways.  Some, like St. Boniface, were great missionaries.  Some, like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, taught in schools and founded religious orders.  Some, like Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, quietly helped the poor.  Some, like Sts. Louis and Zelie, the parents of St. Thérèse, became saints as parents.  And the list goes on and on.  They had some different challenges, based upon the times in which they lived, but they had the same kinds of temptations that we have.

Sts. Louis & Zelie

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati

    

Living as a saint always takes work; it doesn’t happen through osmosis or simply by letting each day pass by as normal.  To be a saint means that we “set [our] face like flint” to the challenges that approach us each day, “knowing that we shall not be put to shame,” as we heard in our first reading.  When we choose to follow God, we choose to take up our cross, our death, but God sustains us, and will always raise us up to new life; He will never abandon us, even if the whole world does.  But it’s possible, and the saints show us, through their ups and downs. that if we follow Christ, even if we do not do it perfectly (as St. Peter didn’t do it perfectly), if we remain faithful to God and do everything we can to follow Him, then we can be the saints that we are all called to be, just like St. Peter and St. Teresa of Calcutta. 

Catholic Super Powers

Sixth Sunday of Easter

It is likely not a surprise to anyone who attends St. Pius X Catholic School, that the principal, Mr. Kaplan, has a favorite superhero, and that superhero is Batman.  That’s a fine superhero, though, as I believe the TV show “The Big Bang Theory” pointed out, he’s a rich guy who works out a lot and has a lot of cool tech-toys.  So, as superheroes go, he’s not number one in my book.

Probably my favorite superhero would be Captain America.  I probably like him the best because I’m Captain America before he received the Super-Serum which gave him amazing strength, stamina, and intelligence.  He also has that special shield that is bullet proof and always seems to spin back to him like a boomerang.  For me, I’m just too lazy to do the work to give me a chiseled body like Captain America. 

I think most kids dream about being a super hero.  We all want to have a special ability that sets us apart from the rest.  Whether it’s Batman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Storm, or any one else, we want to have special gifts that allow us to do special things.

What we hear in our readings today is that those who are baptized have received a special gift.  This gift doesn’t give you superhuman strength, a magical lasso, or the ability to control the weather.  The special gift, the special power we might say, is the gift of the Holy Spirit.  

Philip, in our first reading, went down to Samaria.  Philip is likely the Deacon who was appointed by the apostles as one of the first seven deacons.  Filled with the Holy Spirit from his baptism and his ordination, he does great signs, including curing those who were paralyzed or crippled.  After Philip baptizes people in Samaria, Peter and John, the apostles, give them a full outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which is the precursor to our celebration of the Sacrament of Confirmation.  

In the Gospel, Jesus also promises to send the Holy Spirit to the Apostles.  He will be another Advocate, another Person to plead their cause.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, who will remain with the Apostles even after Jesus leaves earth.  The Holy Spirit will teach the Apostles all that they need to know.

The Holy Spirit, the Sprit of truth, continues to remain with the successors of the apostles.  The Holy Spirit protects the pope, the prince of the apostles, and the college or group of bishops, the other successors of the apostles, from teaching the Church anything that is false when it comes to what we should believe, or how we should live.  That is one exercise of special powers from the reception of the Holy Spirit.

Another exercise of special powers from the Holy Spirit is given to priests and bishops, and allows them to act in Persona Christi capitis, in the Person of Christ the Head, and allows them to exercise Jesus’ authority and power when it comes to the sacraments.  It is not by my own holiness, but only by the power of the Holy Spirit that I am able to perform the miracle of changing bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus.

But the special power of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the ordained.  It is not only deacons, priests, and bishops who receive special powers from the Holy Spirit, but every person who is baptized and confirmed.  What are those powers that all the baptized and confirmed receive?

We all have the ability to offer our lives as a priestly people (as Deacon Joe preached last week) to God the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  That is no small power.  All the baptized and confirmed have access to God and to give Him the acceptable sacrifice of their lives, united with the bread and wine at Mass, and throughout the week.  

All the baptized and confirmed have the ability to avoid mortal sins, and to continue an unbroken relationship with God.  Mortal sin destroys in us the theological virtue of charity, and severs us from a saving a relationship with God, which can only normally be repaired through sacramental confession.  But because of our reception of the Holy Spirit, we are not doomed to fall into mortal sins.  We can reject Satan and his lies and temptations, and be faithful to God throughout our lives.  Fidelity to God is possible by the power of the Holy Spirit, and we all have the ability.

And those are just two exercises of the power of the Holy Spirit.  Everyone who is confirmed has received the sevenfold gift of the Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.  Some have the gift of healing, the gift of prophecy, the gift of speaking in tongues, and others, which are all given for the building up of the Church.  

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

Seeing with the Eyes of our Souls

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The home that I grew up in was in the country, north of Williamston.  We had a two-story log cabin that my parents had someone build, with 5 acres of land.  Some of the land was developed, some was undeveloped and allowed to go wild.  My parents didn’t like the idea of video games, and, believe it or not, very few people had cell phones at that time (right now some of you who are kids are wondering how that is even possible and how we survived).  So my sisters and I were forced to use our imaginations, and we often played outside (I think that was partially because mom wanted time to herself in the house).  We imagined being super heroes, riding our bikes in our driveway as our super hero cars, or sometimes pretended that we were living in the wild, making forts and shelters from some of the trees that naturally grew in the undeveloped parts of the property.  Our imagination allowed us to see things that were not there.

Faith is not imagination.  Faith is not making something up that will never happen.  I am not Captain America (well, maybe I’m Captain America before he was strong).  I don’t have a super hero car (though I do love my Chevy Malibu).  But faith does allow us to see things that are not there.  

We hear about faith in all three readings, but especially in our first and second readings.  The sacred author of the Book of Wisdom talks about how the Jews had faith that God would deliver them from their bondage in Egypt, and would even the score against Israel’s oppressors.  And the sacred author of the Letter to the Hebrews speaks especially about the faith that Abraham, our father in faith, had when he left Ur for Palestine, when he trusted that Sarah would conceive Isaac, and when God asked Abraham to offer up that same son, Isaac, though God had promised descendants through Isaac.  Abraham had faith and saw a future for himself with God, though it was not the one he originally had planned for, or even seemed contrary to the future that God had promised.

Faith allows us to see, not only with the eyes in our head, but also with the eyes of our soul.  Faith invites us to change a part of our life that we think we need, trusting that God will supply for whatever we think we will lack.  Faith allows us to know things that are not apparent to our senses.  In some older holy cards that depict the Mass, it shows the priest, elevating the host and the chalice, with the angels and saints coming down from heaven in adoration.  That is not simply a pious image; that happens at every Mass, as we participate in a halfway point between heaven and earth.  Faith in God led the Sisters of Loretto in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to ask God to send the someone to complete their chapel, which lacked a staircase to the choir loft.  Sadly, there was little room for a regular staircase, and they had very little money.  After praying a novena to St. Joseph for nine days, a man came who promised to build the staircase for the sisters, but they had to give him total privacy.  He locked himself inside for three months, and only had primitive tools.  He disappeared as soon as the staircase was finished, without accolades or payment.  Experts still don’t know how it was done.  The sisters knew it was St. Joseph himself who had built it for them.

Faith leads us to do what we think is impossible, because we are not the main agents of the impossible, but God is.  We are so often limited by our vision, that we fail to see things with the vision of God.  After all, the Jews were looking for an earthly king like King David to be their Messiah.  God sent them Jesus, who was not whom the Jews expected, but freed them in a more powerful way than an earthly ruler ever could have–He saved them from sin and death.

What do we think is impossible?  What are those things that our eyes in our head tell us can never happen?  Jesus tells us in the Gospel not to grow complacent.  He reminds us that He will return, but it will be on His time.  If we lose our vision with the eyes of our souls, and only live with the eyes in our head, then we will forget about the Master who will return and will reward or punish us according to our service.  But, if we keep watch with the eyes of our souls, trusting that God can accomplish what is impossible–even the salvation and restoration of this fallen world–then God will reward us, making Himself our servant.  

We don’t simply have to imagine a world that is better than the one we have now: a world without violence, without hatred, without racism, without drugs, without war, without greed, without the fallen realities that continue to plague us.  God can make that world a reality.  Do we have faith to see how God wants to use us to help make the world that the eyes of the soul see the world that the eyes in our head see?