Union With God

 Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Fr. Zach Mabee, who used to serve here in Flint (and who is probably best known as the tallest priest in the Diocese of Lansing), likes to share funny memes on Facebook.  His full time job is teaching at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, but some days he posts so many memes that you would think that posting memes is his job.  Anyway, he recently posted one meme that said, “Why would you say ‘half a dozen’ when you can literally say ‘six’?”  It is interesting to think about how we use a phrase when we can use just one word.

    The same could be said about the Eucharist.  Sometimes we refer to the Body and Blood of Christ as the Eucharist, but we often refer to the Eucharist as Holy Communion.  Perhaps not as long as “half a dozen,” but still it’s another term for the same reality.
    The word Eucharist comes from two Greek words, 𝜀𝜐 and 𝜒𝛼𝜌𝜄𝜍, which, when put together, means “give thanks well,”  The Eucharist is the way that we give thanks to God well, because it is Jesus’ perfect sacrifice that unites us to the Father and opens heaven for us.  The Mass, where we celebrate the Eucharist, is our prayer of thanksgiving that Jesus gave us.
    But we do also rightfully call the Eucharist “Holy Communion.”  We all know what holy means: set aside for God or belonging to God.  Communion is also a common word, which comes from the Latin word comunio, or union with.  When we receive Holy Communion, we have union with Christ, and, therefore, union with the entire Trinity.  How often do we think about this reality: that when we worthily receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we are becoming one with God?
    St. Paul affirms this teaching in the sixth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians.  He writes, “whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”  Certainly, receiving Jesus into our bodies in the Eucharist is joining ourselves to the Lord.  Later, in that same letter, in chapter eleven, he encourages people to think about (he uses the word discern) whether or not they should join themselves to Christ through Holy Communion, because those who partake of the Eucharist unworthily “will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord…[and bring] judgment on himself.”  He even goes on to say that the reason that “many” are ill and dying, and some are even dying, is because they are joining themselves to Christ when they shouldn’t be.  
    The Eucharist isn’t something that we should receive only out of habit, without considering the state of our soul.  We do not want to join a life that is objectively and gravely contrary to the same Person that we are receiving.  Communion means that we are, in the major ways, one with the other.  Think about it in terms of marriage.  Married couples sometimes have disagreements, but they are not necessarily major.  But if, hypothetically speaking, a husband were to forget his wife’s birthday, or their anniversary, that union might be damaged in a major way, and the man may find himself sleeping on the couch; hypothetically speaking, of course.  Because of the major offense, they do not engage in union with each other in the marital act, because that spousal embrace means that they are one, while forgetting such important dates denotes a lack of union or care for the other.
    So for us as Catholics, following what St. Paul says, we are to discern whether or not we should have Eucharistic union with Christ, or if we need to be reconciled to Him first.  Again, going to the marriage analogy, forgetting an important date is bad, but it does not mean that reconciliation cannot take place.  There should be an apology, and then possibly roses, or chocolates, or some gesture of contrition.  So with God, when we have failed to live according to His teachings in major ways, we first need to reconcile before we can have that great and Holy Communion that God gives us in the Eucharist.  We cannot ignore that wound that we caused without causing a greater wound.  Go back to the marriage analogy: telling your wife she has a birthday every year or that you’re always married when you forget those important dates does not help.  Just so, we cannot receive Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin without making a sacrilegious union with God, seeking to unite our sinfulness to His holiness.
    We shouldn’t approach Holy Communion and receive the Eucharist if we have any unforgiven mortal sin on our soul.  Recall that mortal sins are sins that are grave, that we know are wrong, and that we freely choose to do anyway.  Neither should we receive Holy Communion if our life is, in a public way, contrary to what Jesus (whether in Scripture or through the official teaching of the Church) teaches us is part of following Him.  
    What are some major ways of rejecting God?  The Ten Commandments are a good rule of thumb.  Yes, that includes taking God’s Name in vain, or unnecessarily skipping Mass on Sundays.  It also includes the offenses against our neighbor, like murder (including abortion), adultery or sexual sins, stealing when it involves a larger value, and lying under oath or to legitimate authority.  Living in a public way contrary to Christ is not only working publicly against Church teaching, but includes not being married in a way that is recognized by the Church (whether it’s a first marriage outside the church, or a second marriage without an annulment).
    Union with Christ means that we are in union with all that Jesus teaches us as necessary for salvation, whether in what we believe or in how we live.  That is also why non-Catholics cannot receive Holy Communion: they often reject one or more of the official teachings of the Church in faith and morals.  But if they do believe everything that we do, not only about the Eucharist, but about the pope, the sacraments, the Bible, the moral life, etc., then they should become Catholic, at which point they can receive Holy Communion.

    The point of all of this is that God wants communion with us through Holy Communion.  But in order to receive Holy Communion worthily, our lives need to be conformed (at least in major ways) to His way of life.  When we are conformed to Christ in major ways, Holy Communion, the Eucharist, becomes our strength to continue to following Christ day-by-day.

Jesus in Hicksville

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sometimes the name of a place is used, but then no one really knows where it is.  For example, people will still sometimes say, “She lives to Timbuktu,” to express that the woman lives very far away.  But if you ask people where Timbuktu is, most people don’t know, other than the fact that it’s far away.  Other people might think it’s a made-up city.  In fact, Timbuktu is a real city in the West African country of Mali.  Now, as Americans aren’t always the best at geography, even saying it’s in Mali in West Africa might not help.  So, hopefully to make it clearer, Mali is north of the countries of Ivory Coast and Ghana.  If you’re still not clear where Timbuktu is, you can google it when you get home.

For Jews hearing about the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali, they would have understood where that was.  We, as 21st century Americans, probably just glossed over those names, and figured that they are some weird names from a time long past.  Zebulun and Naphtali were two of the 12 sons of Jacob, also known as Israel.  Long after they died, the tribes that bore their names received land in the Promised Land.  They were not the strongest tribes or the most distinguished for anything, and they became the part of Israel that broke away after King Solomon died.  They were later conquered by the Assyrians, and mixed Judaism with the pagan religions.  For observant Jews, those lands were backward, not faithful, and not a destination.  We might use the term “Hicksville” to describe it.

But the Prophet Isaiah promised that God, after degrading those lands, would give it a great light, to bring it out of darkness.  God would give them great joy, as at a harvest festival, and would end their slavery.  God promises good things for those who, for centuries, were not seen as entitled to good things.

That promise was fulfilled in Jesus.  Jesus goes to Capernaum, “in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali,” to preach the Gospel, saying, “‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”  Jesus is the one who is the Light of the World, and gives them light by revealing the good news of salvation in Him.  Jesus cures the sick and expels demons, something that would cause anyone to rejoice.  And Jesus would eventually destroy the slavery of sin by His death on the cross.  Jesus was the perfect fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy to “Hicksville.”  While Jerusalem was the place to be because of the temple, and was the center of religious life for any Jew, God, in the Person of Jesus, goes to places that other religious leaders had long since abandoned.  

And while in “Hicksville,” Jesus begins to form His new Church.  He choses Twelve Apostles, some of whose names we begin to hear at the end of today’s Gospel: Simon, later called Peter, and his brother, Andrew, as well as James and John, the sons of Zebedee.  These four are fisherman.  They are not well educated, and while they practiced Judaism, they were not scholars of it.  None of them were rabbis or scribes.  

In one sense, as people who live in the greater-Flint area, we should be able to relate to the land of Zebulun and Naphtali.  Flint may not be “Hicksville,” but it’s not exactly the top destination of Michigan.  Generally, people are not climbing over each other to move into Flint, as we all well know.  But that does not mean that God has abandoned us.  To the contrary, God still brings light to people who walk in darkness, and still wants to crush the slavery of sin in our lives.  

We see that through the care of Bishop Boyea, a successor to the apostles, for Flint.  Besides the entire Faith in Flint initiative, which seeks to gather the resources of the Diocese of Lansing to assist the Catholic and even non-Catholic population of Flint, no other region in the Diocese has so many young, dynamic priests like Fr. Zach Mabee, Fr. Paul Donnelly, Fr. James Mangan, and Fr. Dan Kogut.  Just as God has a special love for what Biblical scholars refer to as the anawim, the poor and outcast, so Bishop Boyea has shown his special love for Flint by sending all-star priests to build-up the faithful and spread the Gospel.

But God is also calling you to build up the Church.  While we priests do our best to support the faithful with the graces which flow from the sacramental life of the Church, it is the faithful who are called in particular to spread the Gospel and build up the Church.  It is by encountering Christ, even here in Flint, which strengthens us to live our faith, not just for an hour on Sundays, but seven days a week in our homes and workplaces.  Faith sharing groups like ARISE are meant to strengthen our faith and give us the courage to be sent out, which in Greek comes from the word 𝛂𝛑𝛐𝛔𝛕𝛐𝛌𝛐𝛊, which means those who are sent out.

The strength of this parish comes from your response to God’s grace.  If you engage your faith, and make it something that is not only about Sundays, we will be a strong parish.  If we are willing to be challenged to conform our lives more closely to Jesus, and then to be sent out to show and tell others about that transformation in our lives, then Flint will become a place of blessing, a place Jesus is at work.  God calls us to repent and spread the good news of the kingdom of heaven.  Will we respond to God’s call?