Survey Says

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Imagine a round of “Family Feud” with a survey of 100 people who were asked, “What is the most difficult part of being Catholic?” there would likely be responses like, “sexual morality;” “having to go to church every Sunday and holyday;” “not eating meat on Friday;” “having to listen to bad homilies;” and the like.  And probably any member of the team who responded thus would hear the comment, “Good answer!”
    But for those who take their faith life seriously, in addition to what that survey says, our Lord’s teaching today on forgiveness, which is also the focus of the first reading and the responsorial psalm, should be near the top if not at the top.  Yes, denying our passions requires effort.  Making time to worship God cannot occur without some planning and dedication.  And yes, Catholic priests and deacons are not always known for the best preaching.  But forgiveness!  That’s one of the hardest teachings to implement.  
    Forgiveness strikes us as such a difficulty for two reasons: one, we don’t necessarily understand forgiveness; and two, we have a God-given desire for justice which concupiscence usually taints.  Both of those factors increase the difficulty of forgiving.
    As for the first reason, I think that sometimes we say forgiveness, but we don’t truly understand the meaning of the word.  When some people say forgiveness, they mean that we pretend like the injury, the wrong-doing, never happened.  But pretending that something didn’t happen does not accord with the truth.  This understanding of forgiveness is cheap, because if nothing bad happened, then there’s nothing good about a person forgiving something which didn’t happen.  Plus, we can’t erase or change the past, as Rafiki in “The Lion King” reminds us.

    The further consequence of this understanding of forgiveness also lends itself to enabling others.  The wife who pretends like her husband didn’t do anything, when in fact he put his hands on her, only encourages the husband to continue to use physical violence because no one stops him.  I can’t tell you the number of sad times when I have encountered as a chaplain a woman who obviously receives abuse from her husband but does not wish to press charges because she doesn’t think it’s loving, or thinks that she’s forgiven him, he didn’t mean to do it, and so she just needs to pretend like it didn’t happen.  That is not forgiveness; that’s enabling.  The same principle can be applied to alcoholics.  
    Forgiveness is an act of charity, of willing the good of the other.  And what makes it so laudable is that it acknowledges the offense that has happened, but chooses not to hold that offense against the other.  This may sound like enabling, but the difference is that forgiveness does or can include allowing a person to experience the consequences of his or her actions.  If you steal $20 from me, I can forgive you and not hold that theft against you.  But I may not ever leave you alone near any money of mine.  A Michigan State Police recruit who wants to be Catholic recently asked me how he can be expected to forgive sexual assault perpetrators, especially when they prey on children.  I mentioned to this recruit that forgiving doesn’t mean the person doesn’t go to jail or prison, or doesn’t face the consequences of his or her actions.  But it means we hope for that person’s conversion, change of heart and change of life, so that it never happens again.  And we rejoice if that conversion does happen.
    A beautiful example of rejoicing in the conversion of someone who has harmed us is the relationship in heaven of St. Stephen and St. Paul.  For the celebration of St. Stephen’s feast day (26 December), St. Fulgentius of Ruspe, a bishop, writes:
 

Now at last, Paul rejoices with Stephen, with Stephen he delights in the glory of Christ, with Stephen he exalts, with Stephen he reigns. Stephen went first, slain by the stones thrown by Paul, but Paul followed after, helped by the prayer of Stephen. This, surely, is the true life, my brothers, a life in which Paul feels no shame because of Stephen’s death, and Stephen delights in Paul’s companionship, for love fills them both with joy.
 
Forgiveness is an act of great charity, which wills the good of the other, no matter what the other has done, even in the heroic example of St. Stephen willing St. Paul’s conversion and holiness, though St. Paul, before his conversion, had helped put St. Stephen to death.
    Forgiveness seems difficult to us because we also desire justice, each person receiving his or her due.  And when a person has disrupted the social order and committed a crime, we want a person to suffer the punishment.  In some sense this is good, because we want a society that is ordered to virtue, and we want to make sure that virtue is encouraged and vice is punished, since not everyone lives according to virtue.  But all too often, we go beyond justice, and we also forget mercy, so that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.  Forgiveness recognizes that my sense of justice may not be on the mark, and that God will deal out perfect justice, combined with perfect mercy, to the offender.  As the Gospel relates, we are all too ready to ask for mercy, but struggle to offer that same mercy ourselves.  Still, our Lord warns us here and elsewhere, that the measure of forgiveness that we give to others, is the measure of mercy we can expect to receive from Him.
    [Adam and Jamie, the Lord has shown great mercy to you.  While you were still sinners, Christ died for you, and offered the unmerited gift of baptism in another Christian community.  By doing so, He demonstrated His love for you.  But that love has led you to the fullness of the truth in the Catholic Church, so that you can receive even more love through the other sacraments, like Confirmation and the Eucharist which you will receive today.  You did not earn this gift, but God gives it to you freely so that you can live, as best as you can, as a disciple of Christ in full fidelity to what He has taught us through the Scriptures and the teachings of the Apostles.  You also, then, must be merciful and share that gift of salvation with those you meet, including the difficult way of life as a disciple to forgive those who offend us.]
    I would dare say that all of us struggle with forgiveness.  Whether “survey says” or not, forgiveness remains one of the hardest, or perhaps the hardest teaching of Christ for His disciples, for His Church.  May we, whom God has forgiven, forgive others ourselves, since God has paid the debt for our sins by the Passion and Death of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Sons and Brides

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Today St. Paul reminds us that we are the sons of God and joint heirs with Christ.  While we often speak about the moral life and the requirements of following Christ as His disciples, there is something that comes before morality, and if we miss this, we often see the demands of a relationship with Christ as merely laws imposed on us from without.  What comes before morality is identity.  Or, to put it another way, being precedes doing.  You have to exist before you can act, and any action you take or can take flows from what and who you are.
    Now, we might think that St. Paul should have said that we are sons and daughters of God.  Certainly in the age we live in, we can demonstrate more inclusivity and not simply reference masculine identity.  But the Apostle to the Gentiles carefully chose his words, words that God Himself inspired.  So how can we disciples, both males and females, understand what St. Paul meant when he called us all sons?  

    Our identity, ever since baptism, connects to Christ.  At Holy Baptism, we receive a new identity, and that is of Christ.  In Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit mystically joins us to the Body of Christ, so that we are members of Him.  And in that sense, all of us are sons.  Or, to put it another way, we can speak of ourselves as sons and daughters in the Son of God.  This identity cannot be overstated.  When God looks at us, He doesn’t ignore who we are.  He created us as males and females, different, and yet complimentary.  Even our bodies tell us something about ourselves that is not accidental (this is where those who promote gender dysphoria get it wrong; having a male body or a female body tells us something about ourselves, even if it doesn’t exhaust our identity).  And yet, as soon as we die with Christ in the waters of baptism, the Holy Spirit configures us to Christ so that, already and yet in potential, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, as St. Paul also says.  When God sees us He sees us as individuals, but also sees us as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, as His Beloved Son.
    And because God joins us to His Son, we can also call ourselves heirs of God “and joint heirs with Christ.”  All the riches that God has for His Son belong to us to, not by nature, but by adoption.  In human adoption, the child has no claim to anything from a parent not his own until that parent chooses the child, which opens up the claim to support from the parents to the adopted child.  So with us, as adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God, everything that God has for Christ, God offers to us as well.  As God Himself says in the second psalm: “‘You are my son; today I have begotten you.  Ask it of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and, as your possession, the ends of the earth.’”  God withholds nothings good from us, including eternal life and a seat at His right hand, provided we stay in God’s family and remain connected to Christ.  What good thing could God withhold from Christ?  He will not withhold it from us, either, because we are in His Son and part of Him through Holy Baptism.  Eternal life?  Ours.  Power?  Ours.  Grace to resist all temptations and never commit mortal sin?  Ours.  As St. Paul says in his first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 3: “all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.”
    So often we think only of what we have to do, but we ought to first think of to whom we belong and our identity.  When I know I belong to God, Catholicism no longer consists of rules to follow from without, but a means of fully living according to how God has made me and how He has configured me to Christ, so that I can be ready to receive my full inheritance as a son of God, rather than spending it elsewhere like the prodigal son.

My sister and brother-in-law at the their wedding reception

    But, lest you ladies feel like the struggle is only yours in thinking of yourselves as sons, we, all of us, are also brides.  This is where men have to struggle.  Throughout the Old and New Testament, God uses bridal imagery to describe His People.  In the Book of Hosea, Israel is compared to a wife, though an unfaithful one.  The Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah speak about God as our husband.  And the Song of Songs allegorizes the Chosen People to a bride and God as the husband.  Likewise, in the New Testament, our Lord speaks of Himself as the Bridegroom for whom the virgins must keep watch.  In St. Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, marriage is a mystery which refers back to Christ and the Church.  And in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse of St. John the Apostle, he describes heaven as a wedding feast of the Lamb of God, and the New Jerusalem is a bride adorned for her husband.
    Saints have long described the soul as a bride of Christ.  Not just the souls of women, but the souls of men.  Why?  Because there is meant to be a certain subordination of the wife to the husband, always out of love, and trusting in the husband laying down his life for the wife.  So we, the Church, Christ’s bride, should receive Christ’s law of love and obedience as a wife receives her husband.  That is why the Church has no authority to change the teachings of Christ, as so many of our Protestant brothers and sisters have tried to do, because we are not the masters of revelation, but simply the recipients and stewards of it.  The Church can develop those teachings and understand them more deeply through the centuries, but we cannot reject the ones we don’t like or find uncomfortable or inconvenient.  This is our challenge as men, who like to take charge and be in control: to give control over to the husband of our souls and submit to His rule, rather than to our own.
    Being precedes doing.  Before we do anything, we are sons of God and the Bride of Christ.  Starting with our identity makes actions much more intelligible.  The moral life no longer seems like barriers to our freedom, but ways to fully live out who and whose we are.  God wants to give us every good thing as our inheritance.  But to receive that great gift, we first must recognize that we are sons and daughters in the Son of God and our souls are the Bride of Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  

The Struggle Is Real

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time/Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the Michigan State Police Training Academy to potential recruits who will hopefully join the 151st/152nd Trooper Recruit School or the 29th Motor Carrier Officer Recruit School.  They were doing an overnight stay to get them a little accustomed to how life in Recruit School would be.  A number of them were not following instructions, and the staff was loudly telling them to do better.  As they lined up, I could see the fear in their saucer-sized eyes, wondering if they would make it through all the mental and physical challenges that recruit school entails for them to be a good Trooper or Motor Carrier Officer.

Prophet Jeremiah

    Following Christ can sometimes feel like being a recruit.  No, our Lord isn’t going to yell in our face to do better when we fail (thankfully!).  But following Christ means that we prepare ourselves for struggles and challenges, from within and without.  The Prophet Jeremiah is a great example of this.  God calls Jeremiah to deliver a difficult message, and even though Jeremiah does exactly what God asks of him, he still gets threats (as we heard in our first reading) and is thrown into a muddy well.  Or St. Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans that the sufferings of this age are nothing as compared to the glory that will come.  And St. Paul knew of what he spoke.  In his second epistle to the Corinthians he writes:
Five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes minus one.  Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I passed a night and a day on the deep;…dangers from rivers,…robbers,…from my own race,…from Gentiles,…in the city,…in the wilderness,…at sea,…among false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights, through hunger and thirst, through frequent fasting, through cold and exposure.  And apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches.

The Apostle to the Gentiles didn’t have to imagine suffering for Christ; he did it regularly just for spreading the Gospel.  
    Where do the struggles come from?  They come from within and from without.  From within, they come from our own sinfulness and concupiscence.  St. Paul mentions that all have sinned.  Even after original sin is wiped away through Holy Baptism, we still have a desire to disobey God that remains within us.  And so we suffer from the struggle of dying to our old self, our sinful self, and living according to the new man, Jesus Christ.  Temptations often beset us, but we have all the grace we need to resist those temptations.  Still, the struggle is real.  Often, the struggle comes simply from wanting to do our own will, rather than the will of God, that struggle that comes from pride.  But also we struggle with temptations towards the other deadly sins: sloth; greed; envy; wrath; gluttony; lust.  We may not be tempted toward all of them, but we all experience temptation from at least one of them.  And just like we cannot grow stronger muscles through doing nothing, so we cannot grow spiritually without doing exercises to fight those temptations.  The more we do those spiritual exercises like prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, the easier following God’s will becomes, though there is always a struggle to make the right choice.  
    But the struggles also can come from a world which does not always support Christ and His rule.  When others choose not follow Christ, they advance a kingdom which fights against those who serve the Kingdom of Christ.  Others who choose those seven deadly sins spread dysfunction, conflict, and pain in their wake.  And sometimes, they not only unknowingly spread these, but also sometimes knowingly spread evil in order to make everyone else experience chaos and sin.  These can be in big ways, like the gun violence that plagues our City of Flint, or they can be in small ways, like cheating people from money they deserve, spreading slander, or working to undermine our good deeds.  
    This work of fighting evil requires us to engage, not with the tools of the enemy, but with the weapons of Christ: the sword of the spirit, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, and the sandals of peace.  The best way to fight evil is with good.  Of course, we can always defend ourselves and our families from violence with force when necessary, but violence tends to beget violence, and continue a cycle that never ends.  But still, our work of advancing the kingdom of Christ should come primarily from the good that we do motivated by our love of God and love of neighbor.
    Following Christ does not mean life will go easily.  Sometimes we struggle with others who want to keep us from Christian living around us.  Sometime we struggle with our own fallen desires and temptations.  Usually we struggle with both.  But engage the struggle for goodness, for following Christ.  Because the reward for engaging in the fight will infinitely outweigh any suffering we undergo here, and that reward is eternal life with Christ in heaven [who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen].

Putting God Off

Second Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I struggle with a bad habit.  And it manifests itself in two primary ways.  In one situation, I see some dirty dishes on my counter that can’t be washed in the dishwasher.  I know it will only take me about 5 minutes to clean them, but I don’t feel like it, so they sit on my kitchen counter until I get disgusted enough to actually clean them.  In the other situation, I have folded my clothes and they are in my room, ready to be put in my dresser drawers or hung up in the closet.  It will take me all of 5-10 minutes to do this.  But I’m tired and just want to go to bed, so I put it off as long as I can.  
    When it comes to these bad habits, the weight of inaction doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.  But the Gospel alludes to another way that we can procrastinate, and that is with our faith.  All the invitees to the banquet have reasons to delay attending.  And the reasons make sense as to why one would not go.  But the point of the parable is that the banquet is so important, that even those legitimate reasons make skipping out the wrong choice, because they may be left out for good.
    I can’t find an original source, but there’s a quote floating around the internet about procrastination that bears hearing: “Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what He gave you a chance to do today.”  When it comes to doing the dishes or putting away laundry, maybe it’s not that bad.  But how many times do we think about or talk about truly growing in our faith with God, only to put it off until tomorrow, which God never promises we will have.
    Obviously, there are some ways in which one has to delay certain good spiritual desires.  For example, a stay at home mom may want to go to daily Mass, but with six kids that may not be practical.  She may have to wait at least until the kids can get in and out of the car and their appropriate car seats themselves.  But what is stopping her from taking a little time to look up the readings for the day and thinking about those readings as she cares for her kids and her house.  A dad may want to pray the Rosary each day with his family, but he works nights and the kids are all in bed after he leaves for work and then are up mostly when he is sleeping.  But what is stopping him from saying a decade or two on his way to and from work, and asking the rest of the family to pray while he catches up on his sleep?
    We have to make realistic goals that conform to our vocation.  God does not call married couples to follow all the monastic hours.  But He does want couples to pray together every day in some way.  God does not give every person the ability to go to Mass each day, or even to make a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament each day.  But He does want us to offer up our daily sacrifices in union with the cross of Christ, whose perfect sacrifice is made present in an unbloody way in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  Simply a quick, “God, I offer this to you” is a great way to accept your invitation to the banquet, and not make an excuse, however plausible you think it is, for not attending.  Or maybe, right after you wake up, you pray your morning offering, so that you have the intention of uniting everything you experience with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  

St. Paul

    Making little changes, and capitalizing on little opportunities may not seem like much, but daily little practices add up and can change the entire trajectory of one’s life.  By doing what we can, no matter how great or how small, we open ourselves up to more and more of God’s grace, until the areas of our life that we have not given over to God slowly transform into the actions God would take were He in our shoes.  When St. Paul wrote in his epistle to the Galatians, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,” that didn’t happen all at once.  In fact, even after the Lord appeared to him, and Ananias healed Paul’s blindness, Paul went into Arabia for three years.  I would guess that the Apostle to the Gentiles had to slowly change his mind to more conform with Christ and work out how he could accept the Gospel and then share it with others.  But because he did those daily spiritual practices over three years, he could so identify with Christ that he became an icon of the one whose Gospel he proclaimed.  
    True transformation rarely happens quickly, and never happens if we put it off for tomorrow.  What if, as Garth Brooks sings, tomorrow never comes?  Based upon how we lived today and all the yesterdays that came before, would we be welcomed into the banquet?  Or would God say that we had other priorities, and that we will never taste of His banquet?  “Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what He gave you a chance to do today.”  Don’t put off living your faith more deeply, according to your vocation.  Accept the invitation to the banquet, and prepare for the heavenly life now, with God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

A Polyvalent Prophecy

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    In one scene in the “Star Wars” prequel movie “Revenge of the Sith” (Episode III, for those keeping track), there is an interaction between Obi Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, and Yoda, all Jedi masters as they talk about Anakin’s assignment to spy on Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, due to a concern about how much power he is holding for himself.  Master Windu doesn’t trust Anakin (which turns out to be a good intuition, as Anakin, turned Darth Vader, will kill Master Windu).  Obi Wan asks, “With all due respect, Master, is he not the chosen one?  Is he not to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the force?”  Mace responds, “So the prophecy says.”  Yoda then chimes in, “A prophecy that misread could have been.”  Of course, for Star Wars fans, we know that Anakin’s son, Luke, will turn his father back to the light, and Darth Vader will kill Emperor Palpatine and bring balance to the force.
    We hear the prophecy of Isaiah today in our first reading, and we likely immediately direct that prophecy to Jesus.  And that is a fair reading.  Jesus is the servant who reveals the glory of God, who brings back Israel to her God, and is the light to the nations, as Simeon will say almost verbatim at the Presentation of the Lord, “A light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.”
    But while this prophecy is not misread, when prophecies talk about Christ, they can also refer to us.  And this makes sense, since through Holy Baptism God unites us to Christ and makes us members of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church.  With the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us in Baptism and poured out afresh into us through Confirmation, God calls us to show His glory, and gather all His lost children back to Him.  God makes us a light to the nations to proclaim His salvation, a light that we should not hide under a bushel basket, but let shine so that others may come to know Christ and His salvation.

An icon of St. John the Baptist

    We do this by living like St. John the Baptist.  Yes, God called the Precursor to point out the Lamb of God on the banks of the River Jordan, and to call people to repentance because the Kingdom of God is at hand.  But that is our call, too.  God calls us to prepare the way for the Lord.  God calls us to point out Jesus, the Lamb of God, wherever we see Him.  As disciples of the Lord, we should recognize the way that He works, both from our knowledge of Scripture and the teachings of the Church, but also through our own experiences of how God has worked in and through us.  For someone who is not Catholic or maybe not even Christian, our understanding of Christ and how He works can help others believe in Him.  
    But God does not only call us to be like St. John the Baptist.  He calls us to be like St. Paul the Apostle, called by Christ Jesus by the will of God.  God may not call us to travel around as much as St. Paul, or even to write letters like St. Paul (though sometimes God can call us to communicate what God is saying through writing), but through Confirmation we have all been called to be an apostle.  An apostle in the ancient Greek world was like an emissary or ambassador, one who spoke for a person with authority, from the combination of the Greek words 𝛼𝜋𝜊, meaning off or forth, and 𝜎𝜏𝜀𝜆𝜆𝜀𝜄𝜈, meaning to send.  We should see ourselves as emissaries of the grace and peace of God, bringing it to those we meet by what we say and by what we do.  
    Too often, I think we can fall into the trap of thinking that all those holy things happened a long time ago.  St. John the Baptist was just a particular guy for his particular time.  St. Paul was just a particular guy for his particular time.  Or even that Jesus was so unique that no one can be like Him.  True, God does call people for particular times, and Jesus, as the Son of God, uniquely fulfills God’s prophecies about how He would save His people.  But God has made us for these times.  And God calls us to continue to complete the work of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.  The world is not yet how it should be.  The Kingdom of God has not finished installing in our world.  Can we do it ourselves?  No.  But with the foundation of the power of the Holy Spirit, and armed with the Gospel of Christ and the teachings Christ has made clear through His Mystical Body, the Church, we can cooperate in the work of salvation and bring Christ to full stature, as St. Paul says.
    It is as St. Teresa of Avila says:
 

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
 

Will we continue the mission of Christ?  Will we, also, fulfill the prophecies of old so that the glory of God can be revealed and His salvation can reach the ends of the earth?

Advent: A Time of Conversion

First Sunday of Advent

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  One of the many duties with which I help out for the Michigan State Police, or MSP for short, is working with those who want to join the MSP.  Wednesday nights will generally find me at Grand Blanc High School as I help applicants with water rescue drills (like treading water while passing a 10-pound brick, water pull-ups, and rescuing me or others who pretend to be drowning).  I have also “helped” applicants with physical training (though, they have mostly been in better shape than I am).  There’s a new Trooper Recruit School that will start in January, the 150th since the Department was founded in 1917, and a few of the applicants I have worked with will be in that school.  I want to make sure they are prepared as they can be before it starts, and I’m excited and hopeful for them to make it all the way through the twenty grueling weeks and graduate in May 2026.  I can’t do it for them, but I can assist them before and pray for them during their training.

    In Advent we focus on preparing for Christ: for His first coming some 2,000 years ago; for our celebration of His coming at Christmas; for His return in glory (we often refer to this as His second coming).  But He also comes to us, and not only us, in our day-to-day lives.  Our readings today, especially our Gospel, focus us on remaining watchful for the return of Christ in glory.  But we should also remain on high alert for the ways Christ wants to come to us today, and tomorrow, and the days afterwards.
    I also believe that Advent is also a special time to recognize how Christ comes to those who do not know Him, or do not know Him fully.  Advent is a special time to focus on conversions for those who do not believe in Christ, or for those who believe in Christ but do not have full union with the one Church He founded (the Catholic Church), or for those who have fallen away from the practice of their faith.  Are we attentive to how Christ works in the lives of those who are, in any way, ignorant of Him?
    It might seem odd to think that Christ could work in the heart of someone who is not directly connected to God in one way or another or who has walked away from Him.  But God offers what we call prevenient grace, the grace that comes before a movement of the soul towards God.  If we didn’t acknowledge this, we would say that we do some good work without God, and that God simply affirms the good we work we have begun, or gives us an ‘atta boy for something He hadn’t planned for us.  Instead, we know that any movement toward God is already a grace, because God begins all good work, and our job consists in cooperating with that grace.
    So who are the people in our lives that do not yet know God or do not recognize Christ as the Messiah or do not practice their Catholic faith?  God desires the salvation of every person.  God doesn’t want us to force conversion (as if a true conversion could be forced), but wants us to help others understand that He does exist, and not only that, but He loves us and wants to be in a relationship with us.  How do we do this?  For starters, we pray for that person.  Saul, who later became St. Paul, did not at first believe that our Lord was the Messiah, but I’m sure people prayed that he, a great Jewish scholar, might have the scales fall from his mind that prevented him from acknowledging how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah.  And we know just how powerfully that happened, and how St. Paul became one of the world’s greatest proclaimers of the Gospel.  And all that from the prayers of those who followed Christ and who probably suffered persecution from Saul.
    Secondly, we can be attentive to what’s going on in a friend’s life.  When a person struggles or when an unexpected favor happens, that’s a great time to talk to them about God and His Church.  Christ wants the other to see how faith in Him can conquer any problem, and that He showers His blessings upon every person so that they can believe in Him.  But Christ uses us to help others to see that.  Maybe the conversation about God is not too explicit at first, but helping others to see God’s plan, and the ways we can cooperate with that plan, can help bring a person to faith.
    Thirdly, we can help them see that a full relationship with God and the truth He has revealed happens in the Catholic Church.  Sometimes Catholics get a little queasy about this part, because they may not feel like they know enough about the Church to answer all questions a person might have.  Don’t be afraid of saying, “I don’t know; let’s find out together.”  Or maybe, “I’ve always just trusted that it was true.  I can ask around to make sure this makes sense.”  The truths of the faith will stand up to any inquiry and academic rigor.  We don’t have to be afraid of other people questioning certain teachings.  
    So this Advent, commit yourself to watching for Christ to make himself known in someone who is not Catholic.  Pray for a non-Catholic or fallen away Catholic; help a non-Catholic or fallen away Catholic see how God is working or could work in his or her life; explain why the Catholic Church means so much to you and how her teachings help one live a truly happy life.  Will you always see successful conversions?  No.  But you will fulfill the call of Advent to watch for Christ’s coming in your daily life, and what joy you will have if that person does decide to become Catholic and join us as we all watch and wait for Christ to return in glory [who, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, live and reign for ever.  Amen].

The Catholic Sense of Death

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

    While we, as Catholics, are used to the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, more commonly known as All Souls’ Day, it doesn’t often fall on a Sunday.  Sundays are little Easters, so it might seem odd to focus on those who are dead.  But Purgatory, the abode where the souls who are not ready for heaven, but have not rejected God, precisely stands as a possibility because of the Resurrection of Christ.  And Purgatory gives hope to all those who are not perfected at the time of their death, and therefore are not ready for heaven, where we see God, Holiness Himself, face to face.  
    We cannot deny the pain and sorrow of death.  When someone we love dies, we know that we won’t see that person on earth again.  And in the face of that harsh reality, tears naturally follow.  But as those who know that Jesus rose from the dead, our grief should be eased a bit by the fact that death is not the end.  That’s the power of the Resurrection of Christ: death is not the end.  That’s the power that the martyrs held as they didn’t fear to suffer for Christ, because they knew that the world threw all pain and suffering at Christ in His crucifixion, but Christ came out victorious in the end on Easter Sunday.  
    But it’s also the power that should help us who remain after someone dies, because our faith tells us that they simply have gone on a long journey to a place where we can’t stay connected through a meet-up, phone call, text, FaceTime, or Zoom, but where we can stay connected through prayer.  Just as we are somewhat sad, but still have hope when a family member or friend goes on a cruise and we can’t contact them with earthly technology, so we should have the same hope when someone we love dies, because death is not the end, but a transition to a new form of life.  
    But as Catholics we can often act like non-believers who treat death as the absolute end.  We forget our faith and the central teaching of our religion, the resurrection, and we do what St. Paul tells us not to do: weep as those who have no hope.  I’m not saying we need to celebrate every time someone dies, though some saints have reminded their family and friends that life will be better for them in heaven, since they followed Christ on earth.  Really, we should only mourn when someone was not prepared to die and did not follow Christ, though even then we commend those people to the mercy of God.  
    Purgatory also gives us hope because while we strive for perfection, if you’re anything like me, you sometimes fall short.  God is perfect holiness, and if you ever read through the Old Testament, you’ll notice that no one is really excited to see God.  It’s not because they disliked God, but because they knew, often better than we do, that the holiness of God destroys any sin, like light destroys darkness.  So to be in heaven, in the presence of God’s perfect holiness, means that we have nothing sinful left in us, otherwise we would be destroyed.  Or, if we think about God’s holiness like heat, it’s so hot that our sinfulness would immediately burst into flames.
    So if we die in a state of grace, that is, not aware of any mortal sins or any rejections of God, but we still have sin, we have the opportunity to still make it to heaven after we have been purified in Purgatory.  It’s not perfect holiness (and heaven) or hell.  We have the chance to still make it to heaven even if we have not fully configured our life to Christ.
    Having said that, Christ still calls us to put sin behind us and make His life our own while on earth.  Our goal should always be heaven.  If our goal is Purgatory, then we’re aiming too low, like a sports team that only hopes to make it to the playoffs, not win the National Championship.  Plus, we often don’t achieve the goals we set for ourselves.  If we set our goal as heaven and fall short, we do have Purgatory.  But if we set our goal as Purgatory and fall short, there’s no safety net, and our eternity could be the eternal suffering of hell.  
    What is also worth celebrating on a Sunday is that, because of the Resurrection and death is not the end, just like we can help each other while on earth to get closer to heaven, we can help those who have died and whom God purifies in Purgatory by His grace.  The souls in Purgatory are not just left to be purified until God has perfected them.  We can assist them in a variety of different ways and speed their way into heaven.  
    And this is something that we have also forgotten as Catholics.  Not only are we worse, after COVID, of even going to funerals (and I know that some employers are less willing to allow employees to attend funerals), but we especially drop the ball after the funeral.  We take on the mentality either that the person is dead and there’s nothing else we can do, or that the person has certainly made it to heaven and no longer needs our help.  Both of those approaches are antithetical to our Catholic faith.
    Because death is not the end, we can suffer for the benefit of souls in Purgatory.  Maybe it’s an illness, or pain, or just a frustrating situation, but we can offer it up, as the sisters used to say, and speed someone’s path to heaven.  During these first days of November we focus on special opportunities to gain indulgences for the souls in Purgatory, but there are numerous opportunities throughout the year to gain an indulgence, not only for our own salvation, but to help a soul in Purgatory get to heaven a bit faster.  For example, under the usual conditions, spending 30+ minutes in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a plenary or full indulgence; saying the Canticle of Mary (the Magnificat) is partial indulgence; using an object of religious devotion that has been blessed by a priest is a partial indulgence; the vocal  recitation of the Rosary in a church or as a family, or a partial indulgence anywhere else; reading Sacred Scripture to grow in holiness is a partial indulgence, unless it’s 30 minutes or more, in which case it’s a plenary indulgence.  None of those require going to Rome or a Jubilee Year (though there are also indulgences attached to the Jubilee Year).  
    Lastly, Masses can be said for the soul of a person who died.  When a Mass is said for a deceased person, the merits of Jesus’ salvific work is applied to purify the soul of that person.  The practice of saying Mass for a person enjoyed popularity with older Catholics, but is important for every person.  And the cost to schedule Mass for the intention of a person is only $10.  So it’s not outside the range for even a young family with kids.  But what a powerful way to help a person in Purgatory!
    As we celebrate All Souls’ Day today, it’s good to have reminders about our faith in the Resurrection, and the effect it has upon how we mourn those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.  May our faith in the Resurrection of Christ not only remain in our minds and hearts, but truly affect how we live our lives as Catholics and the choices we make to assist the souls in Purgatory. 

A Multiplication for the Gentiles

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Mosaic of the Multiplication, Tabgha

   In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When I hear about the multiplication of the loaves, the miraculous feeding, my mind immediately turns to John, chapter 6.  And that miracle of multiplying 5 loaves and 3 fish finds itself in all four Gospel accounts: Matthew, chapter 14; Mark, chapter 6; Luke, chapter 9; and John, chapter 6.  But today’s Gospel passage is different.  Our Lord doesn’t feed 5,000; He feeds 4,000 people.  And whereas the larger miracle has twelve baskets of leftovers remaining, today’s miracle has seven baskets left over.  Liberal scripture scholars would first of all dismiss the miracle as an example of Christ calling people to share, and then might simply say that Mark (and Matthew, who also includes this second multiplication story) wanted to demonstrate again how important it is to share.
    But, for us who believe in miracles, who take the text as it is written, not according to our own preconceived notions, is there more?  Why would Sts. Mark and Matthew include two stories about miraculously multiplying food, with different details for each miracle?
    One scholar notes that the location has everything to do with the different miracles and the different amount of leftovers.  In the multiplication story for the 5,000, our Lord performs the miracle in Jewish territory.  In the multiplication of the 4,000, our Lord performs the miracle in Gentile, non-Jewish territory.  With the 5,000, there are twelve wicker baskets leftover, which, when connected to Judaism, reminds one of the twelve tribes of Israel.  With the 4,000, there are seven baskets leftover, which, after some study, connects to the seven Canaanite, or Gentile, kingdoms.  So, as the analysis goes, St. Mark recorded both miracles to show that Christ’s Church was meant to include both Jew and Gentile, as shown by the location of the miracle and the amount of bread left over.
    Ok.  So a pretty neat connection with how Christ did two miracles to demonstrate that His Church was meant to include all peoples, Jews and Gentiles.  It wasn’t just filler that Mark and Matthew added to take up more space.  But how does that affect me?  How is that supposed to change my life?
    I think it’s a good opportunity to think about how we evangelize.  Or maybe better put: with whom do we share the message of salvation: Jews (representing my fellow Catholics) or Gentiles (representing non-Catholics)?  
    Let’s be honest, it’s easier to talk with fellow Catholics (generally speaking) about the faith because we start from the same basic starting point.  We share cultural phrases and celebrations.  We’re generally on the same page, even if there are some teachings that tend to divide some Catholics from other Catholics.  So it can feel comfortable just to stay in the Catholic lane and determine that God has called me to strengthen the faith of fellow Catholics, and maybe even venture out to those who have stopped practicing their faith, what we traditionally called the lapsed.
    And we might even find some Scriptural basis for this, as we read in Galatians, chapter 2, “the one who worked in Peter for an apostolate to the circumcised worked also in me for the Gentiles.”  So we might feel like we don’t really need to go to non-Catholics for evangelization.  That’s for other people.  
    But while it may seem easier, or feel more comfortable, if Christ went both to Jews and Gentiles, then that is our mission, as well.  And even St. Peter went to Gentiles, as he went to the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, and baptized his entire household after he saw that they had accepted the faith and saw the work of the Holy Spirit among them.  And St. Paul, though the Apostle to the Gentiles, would most often start at the local synagogue as he proclaimed Jesus as the Christ.  Both…and, not either…or.
    And the harvest is abundant.  There are many people in our daily lives who are not Catholic and have had no connection to the Catholic Church.  And if we believe that the Catholic Church reveals the fullness of truth that God has revealed, the truth we need for salvation, then how can we not share the Gospel with others?  I’m not talking about being the annoying person who goes up to everybody all the time and says, “Have you thought about being Catholic?”  Or, even worse, “Can I tell you how not to go to Hell?”  Those approaches tend to turn people away.  
    But, if we’re living our life as faithful Catholics, and then we take opportunities when the situation arises to talk about Christmas Mass, or why we have a black cross on our forehead, or why we don’t eat meat on Fridays, that can help people start looking into the Catholic Church.  Or sometimes it just means praying with someone who is going through a difficult time, and showing them that we care by our attention and by praying with them.  While some may not be open to hearing the teachings of the faith, very few are not open to people praying with them, especially if they or their loved ones are struggling.
    Christ had two miracles of multiplication in order to show that He intended the Gospel for the Jews and for the Gentiles.  Each day we have opportunities to interact with fallen-away or lukewarm Catholics and non-Catholics.  Do we take the opportunity to share the Gospel with them?  Are we committed to sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ?  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.

St. Peter: An Icon of Hope

Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul

St. Peter

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  Today we have one my favorite liturgical celebrations.  It helps that I have seen the Papal Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, and the amazing, giant letters of the Gospel that we heard today (in Latin): TU ES PETRUS AND SUPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM.  It helps that I have been to the Holy Land and visited the Church of the Primacy of Peter, which commemorates another Petrine dialogue with Jesus on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.  But mostly I love today because I love Peter.  I love Peter because he gives me hope.
    Now, this is not to leave out St. Paul.  St. Paul preached the Gospel with boldness, suffering greatly as he traveled.  And I have also visited the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls and the smaller church called Tre Fontane, where the Roman soldiers beheaded St. Paul.  His life, too, is encouraging and inspiring, especially his conversion.
    But Christ calls Peter to greatness, almost in spite of himself.  Peter always seems to be tripping over himself, from his first call to the time right before he suffered martyrdom.  Peter has moments where you just want to hit your head and say, “C’mon, man!”  But then he also has moments where you stand in awe at what he is willing to do out of love for the Lord.
    Think back to the call of Peter in Luke, chapter 4.  Peter had been fishing all night and had caught nothing.  And then the Lord asks him to go out into deep waters and throw his net over the sides.  At first, Peter objects, but he complies with the command, and then catches so many fish that his business partners, James and John, have to come and help him drag it in.  Peter begs the Lord to leave because of his sinfulness, but Christ calls Peter to abandon his boats and nets, and become a fisher of men.  
    We hear today the great proclamation of faith, that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God.  And Christ promises to build His Church upon the rock of Peter, and that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it, no matter how dark times seem to get.  Great moment for Peter!  But then immediately afterwards, the Savior tells the disciples how He will suffer, and Peter pulls Him aside and tells Him to stop saying that nonsense, wherein the Lord calls the other disciples together again and rebukes Peter to his face, saying, “Get behind me, Satan.”  Not a strong start for this newly-named first Pope.
    At the Last Supper, Peter assures Christ that even if everyone else abandons Him, Peter will stay faithful.  What a great statement of loyalty.  But then Christ tells Peter that He will deny even knowing Him three times, which, of course, happens, and Peter goes off to weep because of his betrayal.
    And, by tradition, even at the end of his life, Peter still struggled a bit.  Peter was warned by the Christians in Rome, where Peter was preaching, that the soldiers were going to arrest him.  So Peter runs away, and begins to leave Rome.  As he’s going away from Rome on the Appian Way, he sees Christ walking back to Rome.  “Domine, quo vadis?” Peter asks.  “Lord, where are you going?”  The Lord tells Peter that He is going to Rome to be crucified a second time.  At that point, Peter realizes he is not supposed to run away, and returns to Rome.  He undergoes crucifixion on Vatican Hill, though upside down because he did not consider himself worthy to die in the same exact manner as his Lord and Savior.

St. Paul

    Back to St. Paul, you can imagine how Paul, a trained theologian, might have wondered about Peter.  Perhaps Paul asked the Lord, “So Peter, this leader of your Church, how much as he studied the Law and the Prophets?”  And you can imagine the Lord saying, “Not much beyond a common man.”  Then Paul: “But certainly he has spent a great deal of time, like me, away from everyone else on retreat in the desert for this great mission,” and our Lord, “Nope.”  Paul: “Well, then, you must have given him some special visions and experience of the third heaven, like you did for me.”  But our Lord responds, “He has been open to special revelation from my Father, to be able to recognize me as the Christ.”  And St. Paul: “Hmmm.  Ok.”  Then our Lord speaks, “And you might have to correct him about how he interacts with Gentiles at some points, but not others, because he sometimes gets cold feet about my will.”  Paul made much more sense for a first pope.  But Christ chose Peter.
    And that gives me, and should give you, hope.  No, I’m not going to be pope.  But God has called us all to some mission for spreading the Gospel.  He chose us, me and you, not because we’re the smartest, or have the best training, or because we’re the holiest, or because we have our life figured out.  He chose us because He wants us to cooperate with Him in our own salvation and the salvation of others.  He has given us gifts that will help us proclaim the Gospel and bring others to Him, that others can’t do as well.  As St. Paul says in his second epistle to the Corinthians, “we hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.”  And as long as we recognize that, even if we, at times fail and fall, we can, like Peter, be successful in the end, maybe not in an earthly sense, but in the only sense that matters: in God’s eyes.  
    Peter gives me hope because, while he has moments of greatness, he is, more often than not, tripping over himself and putting his foot in his mouth.  He was, if I might, a fool.  But he was a fool for Christ, and Christ could work with Peter’s zeal, even though it came with warts.  May we open ourselves to the power of the same Holy Spirit who transformed Simon, the fisherman, the son of Jonah, into Peter, Prince of the Apostles and Pope of the Universal Church.  May Sts. Peter and Paul both intercede for us so that we can spread the Gospel as God wills, and inherit, by our life, the reward these holy Apostles won by the shedding of their blood: union with God[–the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen].   

Obvious to Some, Not to All

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Country star Randy Travis

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

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

The Authority of Suffering

Sexagesima
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  To whom do we listen?  Whom do we vest with authority?  That seems to be the topic of the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth chapters of St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.  And since our Collect today asks for the help of St. Paul, the Doctor of the Gentiles, I thought it fitting to focus in on those questions.

St. Paul

    Because St. Paul is encouraging them not to listen to the so-called experts who profess to correct the Corinthians and how they should believe.  Instead, the Apostle adjures them to listen to him, not only because of his bona fides, but because of his sufferings.  Yes, he is Hebrew; yes, he is an Israelite; yes, he is of the seed of Abraham.  But the false apostles have not suffered for the faith as St. Paul has: through labors, imprisonment, scourging, stoning, shipwreck, perils all around, and hunger and thirst.  But not just suffering: St. Paul also claims glorious visions of heaven.  And all of that is why St. Paul has a claim to authority to which the people of Corinth should pay attention.
    We so often do exactly what our parents and teachers warned us not to do in childhood: judge a book by its cover.  We look for the finest outside image, rather than looking deeper into the person.  We estimate that the ones who have all the answers are those who look the best.  But they often do not.  
    And if it’s true for the Apostle to the Gentiles, it rings even more true for the Lord who called him to preach to the Gentiles.  Well did Isaiah prophesy about Christ, “He had no majestic bearing to catch our eye, no beauty to draw us to him.  He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, Like one from whom you turn your face, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.”  Yet this rejected God-Man saved the world, and communicated God’s message of reconciliation, not the fair-looking Pharisees in their fine robes and lengthened phylacteries.  
    And to drive home the point, J.R.R. Tolkien develops this same truth in “The Lord of the Rings.”  Aragorn is the rightful heir of the throne of Gondor.  And yet, from his wandering in the wilderness with the Dúnedain, he is rough and bears, at the surface, no kingly visage.  Still, Frodo recognizes, when they first meet, some goodness in him.  Frodo says, “‘I believed that you were a friend….I think one of [the enemy’s] spies would – well, seem fairer and feel fouler.’”  Frodo looks beyond the outward appearance and goes more deeply to see the regal nature of a man so many brushed aside as a mere Ranger.

    Or even consider Frodo himself.  In the end, it was not a wizard, or the son of the Steward of Gondor, or even the fair elf who understood or had to bear the weight of the One Ring.  Frodo, though small and easily written-off, was the only one who could fight effectively the evil that the Ring contained, and, even with some resistance, eventually bring it to Mount Doom where it could be destroyed.
    We do learn some lessons from those who have not had to endure suffering.  You don’t require your doctor to have had cancer in order to seek treatment from him or her.  Though I’m celibate, I am called upon to help married couples in their relationships.  Sometimes there is a wisdom that comes from not struggling through the midst of a problem.  But suffering through something and coming out on top speaks for itself, and provides an authority that those who have never experienced that suffering can never fully understand.  Like Jacob from the Book of Genesis, sometimes we have to wrestle with God all night before truly understanding His plan.
    This should encourage us in our own suffering, whether allowed by God or by our own making.  By going through the fight, by chastising our bodies as we will do in this upcoming Lent, we understand more about God and about ourselves, and how we can respond to His grace better each day.  As we wrestle with God to remain close to Him, even amidst the temptations of life, we understand better His plan and the work of His grace in our lives.  If we remain on the sidelines and take no risks to become saints, we may look better on the outside, but our relationship with God will be shallow and not fulfill us as much as we would like.
    It is as President Theodore Roosevelt said so marvelously, a quote that was echoed in the CBS cop-drama, “Blue Bloods”:
 

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

As we approach the forty days of Lent, the Quadragesima, may we prepare to enter the arena of self-disciple and conversion.  May we not stand on the sidelines and pretend like we know what it means to enter the desert of self-denial, though we look quite good.  But may we spend the forty days in the desert with Christ, allowing His grace to put to death in us all that is not of Him, getting mangled and beat up and coming out looking none-the-better, but truly knowing what it means to suffer for and with Christ in order that we might take hold of the gift of eternal salvation He offers us: who with the Father and the Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.

Angry Woman Meme

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    It’s a little old now, but there’s a famous meme where a woman is sitting at a table, yelling and pointing, while a white cat, sitting at the table, ostensibly across from her, has a snarky look on its face.  People put in all sorts of dialogues between the woman and the cat, some of which are pretty funny.  If I were to make a meme based on today’s readings, the woman would say, “God calls sinners!”, while the cat would respond, “He calls them to repent.”  
    After all, in all three readings, we hear about sinners whom God calls.  In the first reading, God calls Isaiah to be His prophet, to speak for Him.  But Isaiah knows that he is a sinner.  So he says, “‘Woe is me, I am doomed!  For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips!’”  In the second reading, St. Paul acknowledges that he is not worthy to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the Church.  And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus calls St. Peter to follow Him, but Peter demurs, saying, “‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’”  
    God knows that Isaiah, and St. Paul, and St. Peter, were all sinners.  God’s omniscience cannot be fooled.  But He does call each of them to do His will: Isaiah to speak for God as His prophet; St. Peter to be the first pope and head of the apostolic college; St. Paul to be the Apostle to the Gentiles.  And with each person–Isaiah and Peter and Paul–God offers them His mercy.  Isaiah receives an ember, touched to his lips, which takes away his sins.  Jesus asks St. Peter three times if he loves Him, and then gives Peter the mission of caring for Jesus’ flock.  St. Paul, who loses his sight when he encounters the Lord on the road to Damascus, regains his sight and is baptized through a follower of Jesus, Ananias.  
    So yes, God calls sinners.  And yes, He forgives their sins.  But He does so in order that they repent and change their ways, which is exactly what Isaiah and St. Peter and St. Paul did.  They left behind what the old man in them, the old Adam, to be exact, and they put on the new man, the new Adam, Jesus Christ, and lived according to His will, rather than their own.  God didn’t call them to Himself so that they could go back to their old ways.  God didn’t want Isaiah to use his speech for sinful matters.  God didn’t want St. Peter to go back to fishing.  God didn’t want St. Paul to return to persecuting His Church.  He met them where they were at, yes, but He led them to a new place, a new mission.

His Eminence, Francis Cardinal George

    In our laziness, our sloth, we can miss that second part.  We’re very happy that God meets us as we are.  It warms our heart that God would choose us, sinners though we are, to share in His life.  But when it comes to leaving the past behind, and going where God wants, no longer just where we want to go, we balk at the change and choose to remain in our past.  This is why so many people love the horrid hymn “All Are Welcome.”  It’s the first part of the call of Jesus to any person.  He welcomes sinners and tax collectors to dine with Him; that is true.  He does not condemn the woman caught in adultery, or the Samaritan woman at the well.  But the story doesn’t end there.  He tells them not to sin anymore, and gives them, by His presence, what they need to change their life to conform to His.  It is as His Eminence, Francis Cardinal George, used to say, “All are welcome, but on Christ’s terms, not their own.”  
    Today, as we admitted Jenna, Raegan, and Skyler to the Order of Catechumens, we saw the witness of one whom Christ called.  Ladies, you, like all of us before we were baptized, have original sin.  Original sin is an obstacle that following God as He desires.  But God has overcome that obstacle to invite you to follow Him by becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.  God met you where you were, but now He calls you deeper into relationship with Him, to put out into the deep waters that might be scary, and which take you way from anything in your past which is not of God.  But He doesn’t leave you alone as you put out into the deep waters. He goes with you, and we also, now that you are a catechumen, promise to support you, pray for you, and help you as you prepare for baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist.  
    We stand before you as those whom the Lord has also called, though we are sinners.  And we do not claim that we follow Christ perfectly.  But each time we fall, each time we sin, Christ reaches out for us again, and encourages us to put that behind us as He forgives us in the Sacrament of Penance, and strengthens us to say yes to Him and no to anything contrary to Him and His teachings.  He has called us, too, to deep waters, and sometimes we fear to go with Him, but He calls us, and we hope to follow as best as we can.
    Because the Lord doesn’t want us to wallow in our sins of the past.  He doesn’t want us going back there because our sins don’t give us life.  They don’t give us happiness.  They don’t allow us to be the people He has called us to be.  Only by following Christ, by making His life our own, by living according to what He has taught us through the Scriptures and the Church can we truly be happy and be fully ready for heaven at the end our life.
    So you, and we, are sinners.  And God has called you, and us, to leave that sinfulness behind.  He desires to burn away our sins like with the Prophet Isaiah; to open our eyes like St. Paul; to call us to leave behind our old way of life like St. Peter.  May you, and we, have the courage to answer that call, repent, and be faithful to the Gospel.

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.