Judith and Mary

Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “‘Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all the women on earth.’”  “‘You are the glory of Jerusalem!  You are the great pride of Israel.’”  The gradual today echoes these words as we celebrate Mary’s immaculate conception in the womb of her mother, St. Anne.  Yet these words were not originally written or spoken about the Blessed Mother.  These words come from the Book of Judith, which tells of the widow, after whom the book takes its name, using her beauty and charm to kill Holophernes, the Assyrian general who laid siege to her city.  Along with our Gospel, they help form the first part of the prayer we all know and love, the Hail Mary: “Hail [Mary], full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou amongst women…”  
    This prayer, then, connects the Old and the New Testaments.  Certainly, St. Elizabeth also echoes the words of Judith, but in Judith we see prefigured Mary, the beautiful one who attacks, not the general of a foreign army, but the leader of the ancient rebellion, the devil.  Judith kills Holofernes by cutting off his head.  This connects to the Blessed Mother, the new Eve, through the words God speaks in Genesis, chapter 3: “‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They will strike at your head.”  Our Blessed Mother in her immaculate conception is depicted as a woman standing with a snake under her feet.  How do you kill a snake?  You cut off its head.  
    God, from all eternity, prepared the world and His People for this great gift that He gave to the Blessed Mother.  He began in Genesis, as I just mentioned, and then continued through the Book of Judith to tell us of a woman who would strike at the head of our enemy.  This woman would be blessed by God above all the women on the earth, the woman who is the glory of Jerusalem and the pride of Israel.  No other woman can claim such a high honor, and in the church, while we don’t worship the Mother of God, we give her more honor than any of the other saints.  We give the saints dulia or honor (the English word “adulation,” is connected to dulia).  We give to the Blessed Mother hyperdulia, or above-ordinary honor.
    Some would claim that our celebration of her immaculate conception removes the Blessed Mother from humanity, and therefore makes her not truly human.  And at first glance, one can understand the confusion.  After all, if the Blessed Virgin Mary was not conceived with sin, how can she truly by the highest honor of our race, since all of us are born with original sin?  How can she be a model for us when her beginning was so unlike ours?

    Yes, our Blessed Mother received a gift whereby she was more like Eve at her creation from the side of Adam than like Judith.  God created Eve (and Adam before her) without original sin.  And yet, Eve, though she had no sin, still disobeyed God (and Adam after her).  Eve had the power to choose good or choose evil, a power she used poorly when tempted by the devil.  The Theotokos also had the power to choose good or choose evil, but she used this power well, never disobeying God, never giving in to Satan’s wiles.  The first Eve’s disobedience found healing in the second Eve’s lifelong obedience.  But both the first Eve and the new Eve were fully human, though both entered the world without any sin on their soul.  And just as we call Adam and Eve our first parents, though they did not originally have sin at their creation, so we rightly affirm that the Blessed Virgin Mary, even with the prevenient grace of the immaculate conception, was one of us, not a tertium quid, a third thing between God and man.
    And this great gift makes sense for the one who would agree to be the Mother of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God.  God is pure holiness, and no sin can exist in His presence, any more than darkness can exist in the direct light of the sun.  So if our Blessed Mother had even just original sin, when our Lord took flesh in her womb at the Annunciation, it would have destroyed the Blessed Mother.  It is as St. Paul wrote in his second epistle to the Corinthians: “what fellowship does light have with darkness?  …What agreement as the temple of God with idols?”  The Mother of God had to be pure because light has no fellowship with darkness, and the temple of the incarnate God could not exist in the same place as idolatry, the worship of the false god of pride.  And in this sense, we return to the Gospel, in which the Archangel Gabriel refers to Mary as “full of grace.”  How could the messenger of salvation refer to her as full of grace if there were any sin in her at all?  
    Our Blessed Mother is truly a warrior queen who, united to her Divine Son, conquers the ancient enemy, the devil.  She strikes at the head of the ancient serpent to kill it, by being obedient to God and cooperating in the work of our salvation.  May we honor with lives lived in obedience to God, as best as we can, the highest honor of our race, the glory of Jerusalem, the woman blessed above all the women of the earth, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the eternal redeemer, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Living the Paschal Mystery

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  Sometimes we use words in the Church that are very important, but whose meaning is not always clear.  For example, in December we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  But many Catholics think that it refers to the Annunciation, when Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Blessed Mother, while it really refers to our Blessed Mother’s conception without original sin.  Another phrase that is especially important today is Paschal Mystery. 

The place from which Jesus ascended in Jerusalem

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the Paschal Mystery as, “Christ’s work of redemption accomplished primarily by his Passion, death, Resurrection, and glorious Ascension.”  Today, as we celebrate the Ascension of our Lord, we celebrate the closing out of the Paschal Mystery.  Paschal means related to the Passover, and Mystery, in this sense, means the great work of God that is invisible, but which was manifested in visible ways (the suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord).  Christ’s Passover saved us from death and brought us from slavery in sin to freedom in the heaven, just as the Jewish Passover saved them from the angel of death wiping out the first born in Egypt by the blood of the unblemished lamb, and inaugurated their flight from Egypt, that place of slavery, into the Promised Land.
    But while the Jewish Passover happened some 3,450 years ago, and the fulfillment of that Passover in Christ happened some 2,000 years ago, God does not relegate the Paschal Mystery to the past.  No, we celebrate it each time we come to Mass, and especially each Sunday, the Lord’s Day, as we enter into the moments of our redemption in a mystical way, and participate, as it were, in our own redemption because we join ourselves to Christ’s Passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension at each Mass.  We do not simply remember what Christ did for us; God through visible signs, allows us to join in what Christ did for us so that we can share the fruits of that Paschal Mystery, which is resurrection and glorification. 
    But as disciples of Christ, God calls us to live that Paschal Mystery each day of our life, and not just in the church building.  Each day we have the opportunity of living out in ourselves what Christ did once for all some 2,000 years ago.  This is what St. Paul means when he says in the first chapter of Colossians: “in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.”  So how do we live each day in the Paschal Mystery?  How do we participate in Christ’s Passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension?
    We participate in the Passion and death of the Lord in our daily lives through the sufferings that come to us.  We don’t have to seek out suffering.  It readily makes itself available to us.  Suffering, by itself, is a lack.  But suffering united to Christ’s becomes redemptive by participating in His Paschal Mystery.  We all have various sufferings each day.  Maybe we hate our job; maybe our family drives us up a wall; maybe our sports team lost; maybe gas is more expensive than we would like it to be; maybe we lack trust in our political leadership.  However we experience it, we suffer daily.  But when we unite it to Christ, when we suffer in obedience to the will of the Father and seek not to do our own will, but “the will of the one who sent me,” we participate in redemption, both of ourselves and of the whole world.  This is what the sisters meant when they would say, “Offer it up.”  Now, I know we can use that phrase to basically mean, “stop whining,” but in its truest sense, that phrase reminds us to live out the Paschal Mystery, to suffer (the passion) and die (the crucifixion) to what we want and offer that pain to the Father, who receives it as an offering of love. 
    We participate in the Resurrection when we see God change our suffering that we have offered to Him into new life.  This is when we offer up that bad driver and find that our heart actually grows in love and mercy for whoever he or she may be.  This is when someone at work commends us and maybe even gives us a raise when we think they don’t notice the work we do.  This is when the child who has brought you to the brink of insanity and tested your patience to its last limit runs up to you, smiles, and gives you a hug saying, “I love you, mommy.”  When we offer our sufferings to the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, God transforms them into something which gives new life, just as the Father transforms ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of His Son through the power of the Holy Spirit when we offer them to Him. 
    Our participation in the Ascension is something finds its fulfillment when the end of our earthly ministry is over, just as it did the same for Christ at the end of His earthly ministry.  Christ’s Ascension is His glorification, because the Father raises Christ up into glory at His right hand.  For us, the fullness of the ascension happens when we have done everything we can to offer our lives to the Father, when He has given us new life through those sufferings united to Him, and when He welcomes us into glory in heaven.  Christ led the way for us, but He wants us to follow Him–in His suffering and death; in His resurrection; and lastly, in His Ascension.  God does not keep glory for Himself, but shares it with us, according to our nature.  What a joy to allow God to raise us up to the fullness of who we are meant to be, a reality which can only be completed in heaven. 
    But that’s our hope, a hope based in following Christ, not just in His teaching (but certainly those), but also in His Paschal Mystery.  May we rejoice in this Paschal Mystery each time we assemble for Mass, and especially on the Lord’s Day, but may we also live out that Paschal Mystery every day of our lives, suffering and dying with God, allowing God to raise us to new life, and waiting for God the Father to glorify us with His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Made for More

Passion Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  This is the time of year that new assignments start coming out.  Just last Monday we received the notice of the movement of a number of pastors and parochial vicars to new assignments.  I was subsequently speaking with a brother priest and telling him how I received an email a couple of months ago from a parishioner at Immaculate Conception parish in Milan, Michigan (not to be confused with Milan, Italy) who asked me to apply for that parish because I am a young priest with lots of energy.  I joked with my classmate that I am not as young as I used to be.  And, besides that, I really feel that St. Matthew is the perfect fit for me (and I hope you feel that way, too, at least most of the time).  That’s not to say that we don’t have any challenges here and ways that we can continue to grow, not only in population but in our relationship with Christ.  But I really feel like I belong here, that we compliment each other well, and that we challenge each other to grow as a parish family.  As many of you live outside of the territorial boundaries of this parish, I know that you, too, feel like St. Matthew is a perfect place, and you witness to that by driving past other parishes that are geographically closer to you.

My installation as pastor of St. Matthew

    But while St. Matthew seems like the most perfect assignment I’ve had so far as a priest, and hopefully the most perfect parish for you, our epistle today is a good reminder that this is not all there is.  Christ is the High Priest, the Supreme Pontiff, of a greater and more perfect temple, not made with hands, in heaven.  As St. Paul says, we have here no lasting city.  We are made for heaven, and that is the temple into which we should all strive to enter.
    It is so easy to focus on what is here below.  Our church building can rightly be called beautiful as it reflects the truth of what this place proposes to be: a house of God, who is utterly transcendent and awesome.  The precious materials like marble and gold leaf offer to God the best of what we have for His glory.  The images of the saints throughout this church, like in our stained-glass windows, the medallions near the ceiling, and the statues (which are now covered) remind us that what we participate in is not just an earthly affair, but is the meeting point between heaven and earth, where saints and angels worship God together with us.  In this place we not only remember but participate in the offering of Christ in the Holy of Holies, no longer with the blood of a dumb animal, but with the precious blood of the Son of God, the blood which speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.  We join ourselves to the one Mediator between God and men, the God-Man Jesus Christ, who invites us into a covenant not carved on stone by the hand of God, but carved into our hearts; a covenant not marked by the cutting away of flesh in circumcision, but the cutting away of that which separates us from God, original sin; a covenant which brought not temporary purification, but opened up for us the possibility of eternal life in heaven if we keep our wedding garments clean in the Blood of the true Unblemished Lamb in which they were washed.
    But God reminds us today through the readings that His covenant surpasses anything that came before, and, in fact, fulfills them all.  Even that great covenant with Abraham, wherein God made Abraham and his descendants the People of God, looked forward to the covenant with Christ, as Christ Himself noted in the Gospel that Abraham looked forward to the day when God would take union with man and redeem man once and for all.  The Jews picked up stones to kill our Lord because they recognized that Christ was not claiming to be another prophet or religious leader like so many that had come before Him.  The Savior claimed that Abraham rejoiced in Him, which made Himself equal to God.  He also used in some way, that sacred name of God that God Himself revealed to Moses: I AM.  Christ is a prophet, but also greater than the prophets, and the God who inspired the prophets.
    For us, then, the Lord invites us not only to keep in mind His Divinity, but that, while we exercise good stewardship of this earth and all that lives in it, we also keep our minds fixed on what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father.  As good as this earth is, our time on it will end, either by death or by Christ’s return in glory at the parousia.  At the end of time, what is good will be perfected and what is bad will be cast away.  Even the sacraments will end in heaven, because we will no longer need material reality to mediate God’s presence.  We will be able to behold God face to face, no longer dimly, as in a mirror.  The indelible marks of the sacraments will still remain–baptism and confirmation, and for those in holy order, the mark of ordination–but no longer will we baptize, confirm, or ordain, because Christ will be all in all.
    So while we remain on this earth, we also do what so many advise against: keep our heads in the clouds.  Not in the sense that we are absent minded or distracted, but that our attention is ever-split between earth and heaven, keeping before us always the destination for which God created us.  As good as life can be here, something even greater awaits those who remain faithful to the covenant sealed in the Precious Blood of Christ our God.
    So yes, let’s continue to build up St. Matthew parish.  Let’s draw others to this beautiful House of God.  It truly feels like where I belong, and I hope you feel like it’s where you belong as well.  But, even so, may we also remember the tabernacle not built with hands, greater and more perfect than our tabernacle here, where Christ, our High Priest, eternally intercedes for us, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Don't Forget the Holy Spirit!

Sixth Sunday of Easter

No one likes to be ignored.  But if there’s one Person of the Blessed Trinity that we often ignore, it’s the Holy Spirit.  We tend to always remember the Father in our prayers, especially the Our Father, or sometimes we’ll just refer to Him as God.  Jesus, as the one who took flesh and was our means of being reconnected to the Father is usually at the front of our minds as well.  But the Holy Spirit tends to get left out.  How many prayers do we being with some form of: Dear Holy Spirit…?  Probably not many, if any, while we are very comfortable with beginning prayers with: Dear God… or Heavenly Father… or Lord Jesus.  

It’s important, then, that in these last few Sundays of our Easter Season, the Church really focuses in on the Holy Spirit.  Of course, every Mass we begin with the Holy Spirit, and He’s mentioned in the Gloria, and our opening prayers always say “in the unity of the Holy Spirit.”  But the readings in these weeks also remind us that the Holy Spirit is God and guides the Church in a special way since the Ascension of Jesus.

Our first reading reminds us of the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding what we are to believe as Catholics and how we are to live as Catholics.  Having discussed whether or not the Gentiles (the non-Jews) had to be circumcised and follow Judaic laws, and with the testimony of St. Peter, St. James sends a message to the Jews who had become Christians about what is required for Gentiles to become Christians.  And he writes specifically, that it was “‘“the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities, namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals, and from unlawful marriage.”’”  It was not simply a group of old men getting together and thinking of the most pragmatic thing to do.  It was the Holy Spirit, the love shared between the Father and the Son, who guided the apostles to decide that Gentiles did not have to become Jewish and follow those laws to become Christians.  In other words, every time you eat a cheese burger or bacon (which Jews cannot do because it’s contrary to kosher laws), you should thank the Holy Spirit.

But the Holy Spirit did not stop guiding the Church with this decision.  Throughout the 2,000 year history of the Church, the Holy Spirit has continued to guide the successor of St. Peter, the Pope, and the successors of the apostles, the bishops, in making decisions about what we are to believe and how we are to live.  Some of those teachings are crystallized in the Creed.  But also in all the 21 Ecumenical Councils, from Nicaea I in AD 325 to Vatican II in the 1960s, and even in Papal pronouncements in between, the Holy Spirit has continued to teach the Church everything and remind the Church of what Jesus told us.  He has guided us on how many books to have in the Bible; who Jesus is; how many Sacraments were instituted by Jesus; Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Assumption; that only men can be ordained priests; that marriage is between one man and one woman for life; all these are part of Jesus’ words, which the Holy Spirit has helped us to understand and which the Holy Spirit has guided the Pope and the bishops to proclaim as being what is necessary to be believed if we wish to truly call ourselves Catholic.  The Holy Spirit and the successors of the apostles, the foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem, work together to continue Jesus’ teachings into new times and new cultures.

But the work of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the Pope and bishops.  The Holy Spirit wants to give us life.  He helps us to understand what is right and wrong in our conscience.  We receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, and a new gift in the Sacrament of Confirmation, to help us as individuals know what is God’s will in our daily actions and in the major decisions of life: what vocation we should choose, how to use our gifts and talents in a job, how to educate and raise our family.  Of course, the Holy Spirit would never contradict Himself, and we as individuals do not have the gift of infallibility, as the bishops in union with the Pope, and even the Pope by himself on matters of faith and morals has.  So if our conscience is ever telling us to do something that is contrary to what the Church officially teaches as to what we need to believe or how we need to live, we should do some major research on what the Church teaches and why, because it is more likely to be right than what we think our conscience is saying.  But the Holy Spirit is in us, too, and wants to make our living of the Gospel a joy-filled experience.  The Holy Spirit wants to give us the power to say yes to God and no to our fallen nature and to evil.  And by virtue of our Baptism, all we need to do is ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen us.  

It may not come as naturally, but may we also pray to the Holy Spirit, especially when we are making choices.  We can pray in our own words, in conversation with the Holy Spirit, or we can also use that wonderful prayer to the Holy Spirit that we said as a Diocese a few years ago, and which I will lead today.  Please join in if you remember: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faith, and enkindle in them the fire of your love.  Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.  O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that, by the same Holy Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations.  Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Where No Christian Man Has Gone Before

Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

            I sometimes hear from people that the Catholic Church is a “men only” club.  Sure women attend (and are often more faithful than their male counterparts!) but only men can be deacons, priests, and bishops, many of the major saints are men, etc., etc.  This solemnity stands in direct contradiction to that vision of the Church.  It is a denial of that point of view at its root.  No other Christian man in the history of the Church has received so great an honor as the one we celebrate tonight.  And what we celebrate is that Mary, at the end of her life, was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.  She is the only Christian person to receive that honor. 

Painting of the Assumption from the
Orthodox Church of the Dormition

            What makes the Blessed Mother worthy of this unique privilege?  Was it simply the fact that Mary carried Jesus in her womb and nursed him?  In our Gospel, Jesus takes the usual Jewish thought of blessing being connected with the generation of children, and modifies it so that the truly blessed ones are those “‘who hear the word of God and observe it.’”  And who has done this better than the Blessed Virgin Mary?  Mary heard the word of God through the Archangel Gabriel telling her that she would be the Mother of God.  But, while she wondered how this could happen, since she did not know man, she did not doubt the angel, but said with that great act of faith, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  Because Christ is the Incarnate Word of God, every time Mary, along with St. Joseph, cared for Jesus: feeding him, teaching Him to walk, teaching Him to talk, and all the work of raising a child, she was being attentive to the Word of God in a way no other person could. 

            But the fact that Mary carried Jesus in her womb was also a special privilege that prepared her for the privilege of the Assumption.  In our first reading we heard about the preparation of the Ark of the Covenant made by David.  The Ark of God was the place where God dwelt with humanity in a special way, and so it was treated with great honor and joy.  At the moment of the Incarnation, when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Mother by the power of the Holy Spirit, she became the new Ark of God, the Ark of the New and Everlasting Covenant because she carried within herself God Himself.  Because of this previous honor, she who carried within her he Whom the universe cannot contain, the Source of Life Himself, it was most fitting that she should not taste death, but be preserved from it by her Son who gained for her the blessing of the Resurrection, not only of the soul, but also of the body. 

            But there the other mysteries of Mary’s life are also connected to this great privilege.  On November 1, 1950, in the Papal Bull Munificentissimus Deus, the document which solemnly defined the Assumption as belonging to the Deposit of the Faith, and therefore which must be believed by all the faithful, Pope Pius XII recalled how all the mysteries of Mary’s life are connected to this celebration.  He cites the Byzantine Divine Liturgy which, when celebrating this day, states, “‘God, the King of the universe, has granted you favors that surpass nature.  As he kept you a virgin in childbirth, thus he has kept your body incorrupt in the tomb and has glorified it by his divine act of transferring it from the tomb.’”  The privilege of Mary’s Virginal Motherhood is connected to this day.  So, too, is Mary’s Immaculate Conception, that she was conceived in the womb of St. Anne, without the taint of original sin touching her soul.  Pope Pius XII writes, “[Mary], by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.”  Even Mary’s Immaculate Conception prepares her for this day that we celebrate, when she did not undergo corruption, but already enjoys the full joys of heaven, body and soul.

            There is no male human person who shares the same honors that we give to a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary.  There is no male person celebrated as much as we celebrate Mary, not even St. Peter or St. Paul.  Because of her Immaculate Conception, Virginal Motherhood, unique care for and adherence to Jesus as a perfect disciple, and her Assumption, no other human person can claim such honors.  We are a Church who celebrates only one human person who on earth lived perfectly, and that human person is a woman.  Mary is the glory of Jerusalem.  Mary is the fairest honor of our race.

            While women have often been the most faithful members of the Church, by the will of God only men can become deacons, priests, and bishops and share in the ordained ministry of Jesus Christ.  But, this is certainly not because men are better than women, smarter than women, or holier than women.  This celebration of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary reminds all of us, men and women, that our salvation was made possible by a woman, and that the holiest human person we have is a woman.  But she is for all of us, men and women, an example to strive to follow in her obedience and love of Christ, so that one day, after our deaths and the resurrection of our bodies, we, too might be able to share in the joys of heaven, body and soul, and Mary currently does.