Joy and Sorrow

Nativity of the Lord: At the Vigil Mass
    This is certainly a unique Christmas Mass.  On the one hand tonight is a time of great rejoicing as we celebrate the birth of our God and Redeemer in the flesh.  On the other hand, this will be the last Christmas this church building will experience as a Catholic church.  For decades, families have gathered on the evening of 24 December to begin their celebration of Christmas by worshiping God.  Bittersweet does not begin to describe what so many of you, and I, are feeling tonight.  I’m not sure there is a word that can quite communicate all the emotions of this final St. Pius X Christmas Mass.

    But while we may vividly understand the prophet Isaiah talking about Israel seeming forsaken, or the land desolate, notice that those terms do not define Israel.  Instead, Isaiah prophecies that Israel shall be called “‘My Delight’” and the land “‘Espoused.’  For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse.”  And, as the Psalmist says, forever God will maintain his kindness toward David and his descendants, and his covenant stands firm.  God has not abandoned us, nor can His covenant with us ever fade away.
    Indeed, even the Nativity itself had a tinge of struggle and sorrow.  What mother would want to give birth to her child, especially a child she knew to be the Son of God, in a cave?  Mary and Joseph were forced to go to Bethlehem to register for the Roman census.  A census was against what God had commanded, and it was being done by a foreign, occupying army.  Forty days after Christmas, when Mary and Joseph presented the Christ child in the temple, Simeon would tell Mary that her heart would be pierced.  And by the time Jesus was two, King Herod would try to kill Him, and kill many other baby boys, as a way to try to get rid of this newborn king. 
    And we also know that God’s ultimate plan, a plan that Jesus fully accepted in His human will, was to die on the cross so that sin and death would be defeated.  So while the Incarnation brought such great joy, it also made possible the worst offense to God that we could have ever committed: killing Him. 
    Still, even with being born in a cave; even with the sorrow that Mary would experience; even with the slaughter of the Holy Innocents; even with the rejection of His own people; even with the crucifixion; God did not abandon us, and brought joy to take the place of all that sorrow because He rose from the dead and defeated sin and death so that we could go to heaven and be perfectly happy with Him for eternity.  No matter how bad things got, God always brought joy and new life. 
    And He does that today.  God gives us the joy as celebrating, one last time, as a parish family, along with the yearly visitors we get for this solemn evening.  He is today, as much as He was some two thousand years ago, Emmanuel, God with us, who will not abandon us.  God will help us to continue to practice our faith in the coming months, just as He helped us practice our faith in this parish for almost seventy years.  God will bring joy and new life out of sorrow and death every time, as long as we remain close to Him and stay faithful to Him. 
    That joy and new life most often come in unexpected times and places.  Remember that no one cared about Mary when she conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.  She wasn’t a powerful earthly queen; she wasn’t a well-known personality or religious figure.  She was a humble young woman, dedicated to doing God’s will.  Bethlehem, as the prophet Micah says, was the “least among the clans of Judah.”  The Roman province of Judea was not a metropolitan center of activity, but a backwater part of the Empire.  And while Mary and Joseph were both of the house of David, their kingly family had long since lost any political power or prestige.  But from these small, unnoticed, unspectacular circumstances, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah would be born and would begin to do what no one else could do: save the human race. 
    And so God will do with us, if we cooperate with His will.  He will raise up the humble, strengthen the weak, and continue His salvation through those who continue to cooperate with Jesus.  He doesn’t need prosperity or clout; all He needs is our willingness to follow His plan. 
    I will end tonight with the words that Pope St. Leo the Great.  Pope St. Leo the Great was supreme pontiff from 440 until 461, a time of great decline in the Roman Empire.  Barbarians were sacking and taking control of lands that had one been ruled by Rome.  False teachings persisted.  Disease and death were everywhere.  His time, like our own, was not easy.  And yet, for the celebration of Christmas, he writes:
 

Dearly beloved, today our Savior is born; let us rejoice.  Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life.  The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.  No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing.  Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all.  […] When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvelous work of God’s goodness, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men?

Despite any darkness that comes our way, Jesus, the Light of the World, dispels it all and enlightens us so that we can live in the joy of His radiance.  We are the delight of the Lord, and His spouse.  As long as we stay with Him, no sadness can ruin the joy that belongs to us as sons and daughters in the Son of God, who tomorrow was born for us, Christ the Lord.

As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us

 Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When we think about participating in the divine, what occasions first come to mind?  I know for me, the sacraments are the most obvious answer.  The mysteries of our Lord’s life, Pope St. Leo the Great says, have passed into the sacraments.  Specifically, I think about the Mass, the joining of heaven and earth that takes place here in our church.  Not only do we hear God’s Divine Word, proclaimed for us in the Scriptures, we also receive God into us through the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, which is the very Flesh and Blood of Christ.  The Eucharist best exemplifies the way in which we can become like God, as St. Augustine reminds us that the intent of the Eucharist is to make us more like the one whom we receive.
    But another way to participate in the divine is through the act of forgiveness.  We heard this very familiar story about the paralytic being brought to our Lord.  He forgives the man’s sins, at which the Pharisees become indignant because only God can forgive sins.  But, to demonstrate His authority to forgive sins, Christ then heals the paralytic as well.
    The Pharisees were not mistaken in their estimation that only God can forgive sins.  In fact, our Lord demonstrated His divinity to them by this miracle.  So any time you hear someone say that Jesus never asserted He was God, point them to Matthew, chapter 9.  There are other times that our Lord reveals His divinity also, but this is certainly one of those times.
    So, if only God can forgive sins, then how can we say, “sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris”; “as we forgive those who trespass against us”?  How can we forgive if forgiveness belongs to God?
    As a good Thomist, we can consider forgiveness in two ways.  The first way, which is reserved to God alone, is the remission of sins.  When God deals with sin, He eliminates it, wipes it away, and makes it so it ceases to exist.  Only the consequences of that sin remain (and even those can be dealt with through pious acts).  When we examine who forgives our sins in the Sacrament of Penance, it is God.  Yes, God uses the ministry of the priest to convey that forgiveness, but it is God who forgives, which is why the priest is bound to secrecy (we call it the seal of confession).  Those sins have been absolved by Christ through the ministry of the priest, but their use belongs only to Christ, not even to the minister, who then does not divulge or act on those sins in the future.  It is the sacrifice of Christ which washed away the sins of the world, the sacrifice of the unblemished Lamb of God.  We cannot add to that, but we can participate in it.
    But, as with so many aspects of life, God allows us to participate in His work.  We see this in the garden of Eden, as God calls Adam and Eve, not only to continue to care for the garden of Eden, but to create with Him and order with Him, and even to create new life (procreation).  God, further, calls humans to speak for Him when He calls prophets to proclaim His Word, both of comfort and of conversion.  We see that especially with Moses, Samuel, and the prophets that follow them.  God also allows men to exercise governance over His people, as seen through Kings David and Solomon, and the kings of their line.  God shepherds His people through kings who cooperate with His will.  
    But God also allows us to participate in His forgiveness.  He gives us the gift of saying “I forgive you” to a person, and not having it be empty words, detached from reality.  When we forgive someone, something in that person changes, and something in us changes.  We participate in the mercy of God.  It may not eliminate that sin (because a person has offended not only us, but also God), but it does eliminate the attachment of that sin that exists between the two  or more people.  God’s mercy flows through us, and the burden of sin can be lifted from hearts.
    To be Catholic is to be a person of forgiveness, because Christ tells us that the measure we measure out to others, will in turn be measured out to us.  He calls those who show mercy blessed because they will be shown mercy.  And He condemns the servant who was forgiven a great debt, but who could not forgive others their smaller debts.  We are merciful because God was first merciful with us, just as we love God because He first loved us.

    And He showed that love for us by sending His Son to die on the cross so that we could be forgiven.  God’s forgiveness wasn’t an ethereal reality.  God demonstrated His forgiveness by the spit that was hurled upon the face of Christ; by the skin viciously torn out from his back and side at the scourging; by the bruises and scrapes and split skin that came from falling under the weight of the cross as He carried it to Golgotha; by the holes in His hands and feet from the nails that pierced them; by the gall put to His lips; by the thorns pressed into His Sacred Head; by the gash in His side to prove He was dead, whence came Blood and Water that are the streams of Divine Mercy.  God forgave through the crucifixion.  Though He doesn’t ask us to be nailed to the cross in the same way, He does ask us to forgive in the same way.
    And the easiest way to forgive others is to first recognize that we need to be forgiven, not only directly by God, but also by our neighbor.  I wish that I could tell you that I’m a perfect priest, that I always make good decisions, that all my words are the words that our Blessed Savior would speak.  But that would be a lie.  I myself am beset by weakness, and sometimes I act out of my pride; or choose a hurtful word when a loving one works much better; or I choose the easier path instead of the virtuous one; and so many other ways that I fall short of the image of the Good Shepherd, to whom I am configured by sacred orders.  I am a sinner; sometimes it is hard to admit that I am wrong and have followed the wrong path.  And so I ask your forgiveness, as your brother and your father.  For any ways I have hurt you, or not demonstrated the love of Christ the Good Shepherd, I seek your mercy.  And perhaps, to those in your life who have hurt you, you can also show mercy.  
    One of my favorite quotes from saints is from St. Maximus of Turin, who preached, “Sinner he may indeed be, but he must not despair of pardon on this day which is so highly privileged; for if a thief could receive the grace of paradise, how could a Christian be refused forgiveness?”  If our Lord could shower His mercy on St. Dismas, the good thief, in the moments before He died, how could he not have mercy on us whenever we come to Him as He reigns in glory?  And, having received that mercy, our Lord also instructs us: “Go, and do likewise” to the praise and glory of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Now in the Sacraments

 Sunday after the Ascension
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In Pope St. Leo the Great’s second Sermon on the Ascension, the saintly pontiff preached: 

such is the light of truly believing souls, that they put unhesitating faith in what is not seen with the bodily eye; they fix their desires on what is beyond sight.  Such fidelity could never be born in our hearts, nor could anyone be justified by faith, if our salvation lay only in what was visible.  And so our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments.

It may seem odd that Christ ascended into heaven.  Why not remain on earth to be with us, to govern His Church directly, and to continue preaching so that we would know exactly what He would have preached in new circumstances and situations, because He Himself instructed us?

St. John Henry Newman

    Pope St. Leo the Great says it has to do with faith. St. John Henry Cardinal Newman affirms this as well in his Parochial and Plain Sermons.  He writes:

Now consider what would have been the probable effect of a public exhibition of his Resurrection.  Let us suppose that our Savior had shown himself as openly as before he suffered; preaching in the temple and in the streets of the city; traversing the land with his Apostles, and with multitudes following to see the miracles which he did.  What would have been the effect of this?  Of course, what it had already been.  His former miracles had not effectually moved the body of the people; and doubtless, this miracle too would have left them as it found them, or worse than before.  They might have been more startled at the time; but why should this amazement last?

Remaining on earth instead of ascending may not have had any different effect than our Lord’s time on earth before He suffered and died.  Many saw Christ and still doubted.  St. Mark states that even the apostles doubted after the Resurrection.  Many would have likely done the same.  
    Instead, our Lord ascended, but is still present to us through the sacraments.  Indeed, the sacramental life is not only the work of those on earth; its efficacy is based upon Christ.  In one of his letters, St. Augustine says, “When Peter baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes.”  Christ continues His work through His Church, especially through the sacraments which are meant to transform us into the disciples we are called to be.  That work is made possible by the Holy Spirit, who gives power and efficacy to each of the sacraments when administered with the matter, words, intention, and minister that the Church requires.  
    This, of course, takes faith.  It takes faith to have confidence that, when water is poured over a person’s head, and the Blessed Trinity is invoked as the Church requires, that person’s sins are washed away, and he or she becomes an adopted child of God and a member of the Church that Christ instituted for salvation.  It takes faith to trust that, when we go to a priest and confess our sins (mortal sins in kind and number), that those sins are no more; they are forgiven.  It takes faith kneel before that which looks like a round piece of unleaded bread, but which truly is the Body of Christ, the flesh without which our Lord said we do not have life within us.  
    But faith is precisely who we are as a people.  Our father in faith, Abraham, had faith in a God he had never seen, but who called him to travel from modern-day Iraq to the Promised Land, a land which God promised, but which Abraham himself never fully possessed.  He also trusted in God to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, even though Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were well past the child-bearing age.  And then, when God did give them a son, Isaac, the son of the promise, Abraham trusted that God would restore Isaac to life, after God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah.

    So, too, with the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Hers was a life of faith in God.  She had faith when the Archangel Gabriel appeared that, though she did not know man, she would conceive and bear the Son of God.  She trusted God would keep her, Joseph, and the Christ Child safe as they journeyed to Egypt, and then to Nazareth.  She trusted even when her Son was nailed to the cross, and as He ascended into heaven.      Do we trust in what God wants to accomplish with us?  Are we open to the graces that flow through the sacraments, graces that are meant to transform us to be who God desires us to be?  The sacraments always “work,” that is to say, they do what we believe they do when we celebrate them as the Church requires (we use the phrase ex opere operato-from the work having been worked).  But the effect that they have in our lives, what we call “fruitfulness,” is based upon our openness to them and our disposition to receive those graces (we use the phrase ex opere operantis-from the work of the one working).
    Just as Christ said to people while on earth, “Your sins are forgiven,” so through the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance, Christ says to us, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Just as Christ told the Apostles in the Upper Room, “Take and eat; this is my Body; take and drink; this is my Blood,” so He changes bread and wine into His Body and Blood through the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.  Just as Christ breathed on the Apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” so through the Sacrament of Confirmation, Christ gives us the Holy Spirit.  Just as Christ blessed the wedding at Cana by changing water into wine, so Christ changes natural marriage into a supernatural marriage between two baptized persons in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.  Just as Christ healed the sick and cured their illnesses, so Christ heals us, especially of our spiritual maladies, but even of our physical illness at times, through the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.  And just as Christ commissioned the Apostles and disciples to go and preach the Gospel, to heal, and to expel demons; and just as He said, “Whoever listens to you, listens to me,” so Christ ordains men to act in His person (Christ the Servant in the case of a deacon, and Christ the Priest in the case of a priest or bishop) and with His power.  
    Christ did ascend into heaven.  But He has not abandoned us.  He has not left us.  He still remains with us and acts in our world, allowing His visible presence to pass especially into the sacraments.  May we acknowledge Christ and His activity in the world, and be open to it, so that the grace of the sacraments may be fruitful in us, and transform us to be more like the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Joy to the World–Even in 2020

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–Mass at Night and During the Day

    Our Savior, dearly Beloved, was born this day.  Let us rejoice.  Sadness is not becoming on the Birth Day of Life Itself, which, now that the fear of death is ended, fills us with gladness, because of our own promised immortality.  No one is excluded from sharing in this cheerfulness, for the reason of our joy is common to all men.  Our Lord, the Conqueror of sin and death, since there was no one free from servitude, came that He might bring deliverance to all.
    …Let the sinner rejoice, since he is invited to grace.  Let the Gentile exult, for they are called to life.  For the Son of God, in the fulness of time, has taken upon Himself the nature of our humanity, as the unsearchable depths of the divine counsel hath decreed, in order that the inventor of death, the devil, by that very nature which he defeated, would be himself overcome.

These words are not mine, but those of Pope St. Leo the Great.  He invites us to rejoice at Christmas.  But, you may say, Pope Leo the Great didn’t have to deal with COVID-19.  He didn’t have to cancel family celebrations.  He didn’t have to miss seeing children and grandchildren whom he hadn’t seen in the better part of a year, if not a year or more (though, as a pope, it’s good that he didn’t have children or grandchildren).  He wasn’t a waitress who had her job taken away, given back, and then taken away again, just in time for the holidays.  He didn’t have to quarantine because a student in his child’s class was diagnosed with the virus.  
    And that’s all true.  Pope St. Leo the Great had his own difficulties–Attila the Hun sacking most of central Europe, into Italy; barbarians sacking Rome; heretics seeking to divide the Church with their errors; emperors being murdered; the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire in the west.  But Leo’s happiness wasn’t based upon something transitory or temporary, and certainly not simply on the twenty-fifth day of December.  Leo could encourage the people of Rome, to whom he preached this homily, to rejoice because of what we celebrate on the twenty-fifth day of December: the birth in the flesh of our Incarnate Lord. 
    What we celebrate on Christmas is that God loved us so much that His Eternal Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was born for us in Bethlehem.  And that birth is, in itself, great enough news that there is no room for sorrow, because God has become like us so that we can become like Him.  How much love does it take for someone in a distant land, not needing anything, perfect in himself, to travel to a far away land in enemy territory, subject himself to all kinds of humiliations, just to be close to us?  And yet, that is what God did for us! 
    And if that wasn’t enough, that little baby, whose birth we celebrate today, would grow and would show even greater love, as He chose not only to become like us in all things but sin, but to die for us, so that we could live forever.  Matthew Kelly describes it this way in his Sacrament of Confirmation program called “Decision Point”: there is a virus that is infecting and killing everyone, and try as they might, scientists cannot find a cure.  As they try to work out how the virus works, more and more people keep dying.  And then, one day, they discover this one person, whose blood contains the antidote to the virus.  From his blood, a vaccine can be made that will eventually save everyone on earth from this virus.  The only problem is that, in order to make the vaccine, every drop of blood is needed; the person will have to give up his life.  That person, not thinking only of himself and how he will be fine, but all the people he can save, agrees to die so that others could live.  That Confirmation program was developed years ago, but it hits home even more so now, in the midst of this pandemic.
    Jesus’ Nativity is a reason to rejoice, no matter what is happening in our lives and in the world.  Jesus’ Nativity is the hope that gives us the strength to keep going, these 9 months after “14 Days to Flatten the Curve.”  As Catholics, we don’t live for this world.  While we treasure and care for the creation that God has entrusted to us, we have our minds on the world to come.  And this “momentary, light affliction,” as St. Paul says, is as nothing compared to the glory to be revealed in heaven.  We care for ourselves, and make prudent choices about our health, but we don’t obsess and fret about death because Jesus has freed us from the fear of death.  Death is not the end, but for those who follow Jesus, a transition to new life, glorified life, joy-filled life. 
    This is not to make light of the many sacrifices that have been made and are being made by people each day.  This is not to brush off the real hardships that many find themselves in during the pandemic.  But Jesus’ Nativity is a great reminder that these experiences are not all there is to life.  If anything, this pandemic has revealed to us how much we have lived like this life is all there is, and have not focused on heaven enough. 
    No government official nor any created thing can stop our joy that comes from this day and the hope the newborn Jesus brings to us.  Though our celebrations may be smaller, and maybe not happen with family and friends at all, and though we rightly find some level of happiness from our time spent with loved ones, the true joy of today comes the fact that God’s love for us has been revealed in Jesus being born for us to save us from sin and death, and open for us the way to eternal salvation.  So “let us rejoice.  Sadness is not becoming on the Birth Day of Life Itself.”  “Joy to the world!  The Lord is come!”

Doh!

Fifth Sunday of Easter

    When I was growing up, my parents did not let me watch “The Simpsons” because, I suppose, they thought it too crude and disrespectful.  So, of course, when I was in college seminary, and “The Simpsons” came on TV, I was definitely going to sit down and watch it.  And if you’ve watched “The Simpsons,” or even if you haven’t, you’re probably familiar with the character Homer Simpson, the lazy, glutinous, well-meaning, and sometimes philosophizing dad.  Homer has a quintessential word, or maybe grunt is a more appropriate word, that is associated with him: doh!  You might imagine Homer hitting his head while he says it, which gives it the proper context, a grunt and action of futility and frustration.
    If Jesus was Homer (and that comparison, obviously, is an absurd one), when St. Philip said, “‘Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us’”, Jesus would have said, “Doh!”  For three years Philip had been following Jesus each day, seeing the miracles, hearing the teaching, and now, at the Last Supper, Jesus is giving His farewell address before He dies on the cross.  Jesus comes to His great unveiling to the Apostles of His unity with the Father and says,  “‘If you know me, then you will also know my Father.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.’”  And what does Philip say?  “Jesus, just show us the Father and we’ll be good.”  It’s like the teacher saying, “2 x 3 = 6,” and then the student saying, “So wait: what’s 2 x 3?” 
    Jesus reveals the Father in everything He does.  Jesus is not the Father, but He is the revelation of the Father, so that we no longer have to wonder what the Father is like.  We see it in Jesus.  Jesus only heals at the will of the Father.  Jesus only teaches what the Father wants taught.    Jesus loves with the love of the Father.  Jesus only suffers because that is the will of the Father.  No one can truly come to the Father without the Son.  This is the basis of our claim, that, if not true, would be pure arrogance: Jesus is the only means of salvation.  He is, as St. Peter said the second reading, the “cornerstone,” upon which the entire heavenly kingdom is built.  Without the cornerstone, the whole building collapses.  Without Jesus, there is no heaven for us.  With Jesus, we have a place in the heavenly temple.
    But that revelation of the Father through Jesus continues in our day.  Bishop Barron is coming out with a new series on the sacraments, and I was able to get a sneak peak at episode one, about the sacraments in general and baptism in particular.  Bishop Barron quotes Pope St. Leo the Great: “What was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries.”  That last part of the sentence in the original Latin is: “in sacramenta transivit.”  Mysteries was another way of saying sacraments, and, in fact, in the Christian East, they still refer to the sacraments as mysteries.  But the point is that we see the Father through Jesus, and we see Jesus especially through the sacraments.  The sacraments are our opportunities to encounter Jesus in a powerful way.
    And yet, how often do we think: I wish I could just talk with Jesus?  I wish I could see Jesus?  I wish I could hear Jesus?  As Homer would say, “Doh!”  Through the sacraments of baptism, penance, the Eucharist, confirmation, holy matrimony, holy order, and anointing of the sick, we encounter Christ in a way that He gave us, and through our encounter with Christ, we encounter the Father.  The sacraments are not “church graduations” after we pass a class.  They are opportunities that we can encounter God, a new beginning of, and the fruit of, a relationship that we have with God.
    Why did Philip miss what Jesus was saying at the Last Supper?  Why was Philip confused after Jesus said, “‘If you know me, then you will also know my Father’”?  How Philip was expecting to experience the Father was not the way the Father was revealing Himself.  And maybe, more often than we’d like to admit, we miss it, too, because we want to experience the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit on our terms. 
    How often do we come to Mass expecting to be entertained, or to feel something, or to “get something out of it”?  We can equate those with encountering God, and sometimes we do encounter God in that way.  But we can want the Father to reveal Himself on our terms, in our ways rather than His ways.  I know watching Mass on live-stream, as great of a blessing as it is, brings with it even more challenges to paying attention, participating, and really offering ourselves to the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  But right now, this is how Jesus is revealing the Father.
    Like St. Philip, we all want to encounter the Father.  Like St. Philip, that happens through Jesus, and therefore especially through the seven sacraments which flow from Jesus’ Mystical Body, the Church.  May both you and I, no matter what, cling to Jesus and the ways that He reveals to us the love of the Father in heaven. 

Participating in the Events of our Redemption

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

We are blest in our parish with a number of talented actors and actresses who perform in their school plays and musicals, and even in the productions at the Croswell.  Their talent to bring to life a character from a certain time period in the past, or even in an imaginary world, helps tell a story, and remind us of those past events, or help us to dream of fantastic stories.

In many ways we can see these liturgies that we celebrate during Holy Week like the performances on the stage.  Today and on Good Friday the Gospel of the Passion of the Lord will be read by many readers, not just the priest or deacon.  We began today by, in a sense, re-enacting Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem.  Thursday I will wash the feet of six people as a reminder that we are to serve.

But if we think that we are simply remembering a past event, from which we are removed by almost 2,000 years, then we do not understand the Church’s liturgy.  Because we are not actors in a performance in the Mass.  We are participants in the actual events of our redemption.  We do not put on a show that remind us of what Jesus did for us.  We are invited to engage in the very events and experience them in sacramental signs.  Pope St. Leo the Great said, “What was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries.”  Another word for mysteries in the sense that Pope Leo used it was Sacraments, rites that connect us to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  

As we gathered before Mass, we joined the crowd at Bethphage and waved our palms, welcoming our Messiah into Jerusalem as we walked into an icon of the heavenly Jerusalem, this church building.  As we see others’ feet being washed, Jesus our Lord and Master humbles Himself for us and reminds us that to follow Him means to serve others.  As we enter into the Eucharistic Prayer, we go to Calvary, at the foot of the cross, and see the sacrifice of the spotless Lamb of God, who shed His Precious Blood out of love for us.  And as we receive the Eucharist worthily, we participate in that very sacrifice by which we are saved.  These events are not something that are far removed, but, by the power of the Holy Spirit, enter into our time and are supposed to have a real effect on our lives.

Many of us struggle with our Lenten promises.  Some of us have fallen, or never really began as we wanted.  In this last week of Lent, let us walk with Jesus on his pilgrimage to the crucifixion.  Let us not simply remember what Jesus did for us, but partake in the mysteries, the rites, which bring His life, death, and resurrection to us.  Because the beauty of our Catholic faith is that we not only remember what Jesus did for us, but we have the opportunity to be joined to our salvation and experience first-hand to what extent God would go to prove His love for us.

Sensing God's Presence

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Today we come to the end of the Season of Christmas.  It’s the shortest season of the year, usually only lasting 20 or so days.  This year it was only 17 days.  And yet, what we celebrate at Christmas changes everything.  It is more monumental to human history than the discovery of fire; than Aeneas traveling to Italy from Troy or Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon; than the Battles of Lepanto and Vienna stopping the Muslim invasion into Europe; than the storming of Normandy on 6 June; than the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the resignation of Richard Nixon; than the terrorist attacks on 9/11.  

The Incarnation was bigger than all those world-changing events.  God Himself was able to be seen in His Son, Jesus.  When you looked at Jesus, you saw God.  When you heard Jesus, you heard God.  When you touched Jesus, as so many people did for healing, as Mary did in holding her baby, you touched God.  This was a radical change from what had come before.  And it changed radically what would come after.

Because of the Incarnation, God communicated Himself through physical reality.  This includes the Sacraments.  Through the Sacraments, we experience God.  And this is an effect of the Incarnation.  Water remains H₂0, but by the power of the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the priest, it also gives God's grace and makes a person a child of God and a member of the Church for all eternity.  Olive oil remains what it is, but becomes a vehicle of God’s grace to strengthen, console, and anoint a person for a mission in the Church.  A promise between one man and one woman remains a valid agreement between two free people, but is strengthened by God’s grace to allow the married couple to share God’s grace with others just by living their married life with God.  The Sacraments are possible because of the Incarnation.  In the Sacraments we encounter God and share in the events of the life of Jesus Christ.  As Pope St. Leo the Great said, “Our Redeemers’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments.”  Every time we celebrate a Sacrament, we are coming into contact with the Risen Lord.

God uses material things to make Himself known.  That is the great news of the Incarnation.  He made us to come to know reality by our senses.  There is nothing that we know that we did not learn, at least at its heart, by our senses.  Numbers, which are immaterial, are learned through physical things: if we add one orange to one orange, we get two oranges.  We learn about history through hearing.  We learn to do so much by experiencing it.  God knows that we learn through our senses because He created us this way.  And so He continues to come to us through our senses.  

Look at today’s celebration, the Baptism of the Lord.  When Jesus is baptized, the Holy Spirit, like a dove, descends, and God the Father’s voice is heard.  God makes Himself known.  St. John talks about this in our second reading, when he says that, “there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood.”  Even the blood of Jesus, a blood that was seen poured out, and the water the flowed from the side of Jesus, and the Spirit who rent in two the veil of the temple, make known God’s presence.  God does not leave us simply to imagine that He exists, imagine that He comes to us, imagine that he loves us.  God shows us that love by physical signs.  God’s presence is effective.  His Word, another way God communicates through our senses, changes us, just as Isaiah prophesied in the first reading: “just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth…so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me void.”

In the Sacraments, we are meant to have an encounter with Christ, no less than when John the Baptist and the people at the Jordan River saw Jesus rising from the waters, saw the Spirit descending like a dove, and heard the voice from the heavens.  In the Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we are meant to experience Jesus who helps us to know if we are called to be a priest, a consecrated man or woman, or married.  In the Sacraments, Christ wants to strengthen our priesthood, our consecration, and our marriages.  But we have to be open.  God wants to reveal Himself to you in the Sacraments.  Today, as we prepare to receive the Eucharist, ask God to reveal Himself to you.  If you are open to His presence in the Sacraments, you will know of His presence.  

God Sees His Son

Nativity of the Lord, Mass during the Day

            Have you ever noticed how everyone seems to soften in the presence of a baby?  It makes sense that mothers are very soft and tender in the presence of a child because of their motherly instincts.  But it even happens with the gruffest, toughest men.  In the presence of a baby even the sternest face can be softened by a smile, and the epitome of a man’s man starts talking gibberish, trying to communicate with the child and get it to smile back.

            Today we rejoice in the fact that, in the fullness of time, right when God wanted it, when all the conditions were as God knew in His Divine Wisdom they needed to be, the invisible God who could not be seen, the Word through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing came to be, became visible in the flesh.  God was made known to the world as a baby.  While we have grown used to this fact over 2,000 years of Christian activity, this was unthinkable, truly awesome, and even somewhat scandalous to Jews and Gentiles alike.

            In the past, as we heard in the second reading, “God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets.”  From the very beginning, when God created Adam and Eve in His own likeness and walked among them in the Garden of Eden, God had wanted to be close to the crown of His creation.  He wanted to be with us in all things.  And even when, through Adam, sin entered the world, He continued to reveal Himself partially to the Chosen People: to Abram, telling him to leave Ur of Chaldea and go to the land of Canaan, where he would become Abraham, the father of many nations, and in the form of three visitors to announce the conception of Isaac, the son of the promise; to Moses in the Burning Bush and on Mount Sinai; to all the Chosen People in the form of a pillar of cloud and fire, leading them through the desert; through the prophets, those chosen by God to speak for Him to a people who constantly preferred to wander away from God, rather than be close, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Ezekiel, and others. 

But this was always a partial revelation of God.  In Bethlehem, when Jesus was born, we had the chance to see that God had fulfilled the prophecies that a Virgin would bear a Son and would name Him Emmanuel, God-with-us.  In the Nativity of Jesus according to the flesh a marvelous exchange took place, what the Church Fathers called admirabile commercium.  In this great exchange, God took our sinful nature to Himself, though He was free from sin, and united it fully to His divinity, so that we could live forever in heaven united to the Son.  In the words of St. Athanasius: God became man so that man could become God.

This is what St. John is speaking of when, in the Gospel passage we heard today, he writes, “But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision by of God.”  In Baptism we were made members of the Mystical Body of Christ, and our nature was joined to Christ, just as Christ joined His nature to ours at the Annunciation, which we celebrated 9 months ago. 

The Gospel, the Good News that this truly is should astound us!  Because if we have been baptized and united to the Mystical Body of Christ, then when God looks down on us, he no longer sees a child born of natural generation, but His only-begotten, beloved Son, just as when Mary and Joseph looked down at the Christ child, they did not just see a baby, but the eternal God in flesh.  In baptism, where we are born again by water and the Spirit, we become a son or a daughter in Christ the Son. 

This participation in the Sonship of Christ is no small thing!  “To which of the angels did God ever say: You are my son; this day I have begotten you?  Or again: I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me?”  Because Jesus joined our nature to His, humbling Himself to take on all that it means to be human: hunger, thirst, pain, temptation, we have a higher dignity than the angels of God.  You are a higher creation than an angel, because Christ was not an angel, nor did He become one of them.  He chose to join our nature to His, and so we join in the dignity of Christ who is “as far superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

Do not cheapen, then, the great gift you have been given this Christmas, the gift of knowing that we can be united to Christ.  Do not count as worthless the great gift of being a part of His Body, the Church, with all the great gifts and duties that come along with membership in the People God has claimed for His own.  As Pope St. Leo the Great wrote in his Christmas sermon:

Acknowledge, O Christian, the dignity that is yours!  Being made a partaker in the divine nature, do not by an unworthy manner of living fall back into your former abjectness of life.  Be mindful of Whose Head, and of Whose Body, you are a member.  Remember, that wrested from the powers of darkness, you are now translated into the Light and the Kingdom of God.  By the sacrament of baptism you have become the temple of the Holy Spirit.  Do not, by evil deeds, drive out from you such a One dwelling with you, and submit yourself again to the bondage of the devil.  Because your price was the Blood of Christ; because in strictness He shall judge you Who in mercy has redeemed you, Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, world without end.  Amen.