The Victory of Christ

Low Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  While it has waned a bit, there was a bit of a hubbub in years past about participation trophies.  I think it’s good to promote participation in competitions, to encourage people to reap the benefits of such competitions.  But in any competition there is a winner and a loser.  I myself have been a loser many a time (some may still think I am!).  When taken to its logical conclusion, few really want to eliminate winners, though.  Imagine the Michigan fight song in a woke context without winners: “Hail to the Participants, valiant!” doesn’t quite do it.
    St. John talks about victory on this Divine Mercy Sunday, also called Low Sunday (contrasting it with last week’s High Sunday), also called Dominica in Albis or White Sunday due to the baptized wearing their white robes.  When it comes to salvation and God, there is a victor.  God is victorious.  And we, St. John says, can participate in that victory.  We can overcome the world.

Icon from the place of the Resurrection

    How are we victorious?  We are born of God; we have faith that Jesus is the Son of God.  That is victory.  Sounds good, at face value.  Who doesn’t want to overcome the world?  But that victory does not look like the victories that we are used to seeing, for example in battle or in sports.  When we think of those victories, we think of the utter destruction of the enemy, or the super amount of points of one team over another.
    But while we do talk about the victory of Christ over Satan and all that is fallen in such ways (one Orthodox chant I remember for Easter says something to the effect of: Christ has risen from the dead, trampling death underfoot), Christ is not a demeaning victor to those who opposed Him.  In fact, His victory seeks to gather His opponents onto His team, at least those who still have a choice (i.e., us).
    Christ on the cross does not say: “Crush them, Father!  Make them pay!”  He says, “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.”  To the Apostles, almost none of whom stood by Christ in His Passion, Christ doesn’t say: “You were not with me, so you are against me; depart from me, evildoers, into the pits of Hell!”  He says, “Peace be with you.”  And even when Thomas fails to believe when Christ appeared the first time, saying that he would only believe if he had physical proof, Christ loving rebukes Thomas, but starts by repeating his Easter greeting: “Peace be with you.”  
    Christ does destroy sin; utterly wastes it away.  But with sinners, He is patient, He is merciful.  Which is good news for us.  Because we are all sinners.  We all, even though baptized, switch sides when it seems convenient, to play for the enemy because it feels better and is easier.  When we choose to sin, we become traitors, Benedict Arnolds of our own day.  
    And so the victory of Christ until the end of time will not look like a military, March Madness, or Super Bowl victory.  It is not kill or be killed.  It is not lose and go home.  Christ constantly seeks to have His victory take deeper and deeper root in us, even if we stumble and fall.  St. Peter shows us that even if we deny Christ, we can still return to Him, and even be called to great responsibility as the fruit of great repentance and great love.
    So if we are looking for stupendous buildings as a sign of victory; or vast quantities of people becoming Catholic; or political power and clout, we may not see that victory, yet.  Christ is still victorious, and yet churches may close; many may abandon the faith; we may be politically oppressed and powerless to change laws and policies.  But Christ has still one.  And as long as we continue in faith in Christ, both in our personal trust and in holding fast to the truths of what Christ has taught through His Mystical Body the Church (this means both Scripture and the unchanging truths of the faith), then we will be victorious, and share in the spoils of the one true Victor: eternal life with Christ in heaven.
    But one day, Christ’s victory will take hold over all creation as He returns in glory.  On that day, of which no one knows the day nor the hour, all evil will be defeated; all those opposed to God will be sent to Hell to receive eternal punishment and damnation.  At the end of time, no matter how much power or prestige a person had; no matter what office a person held, any person who opposed the reign of the true king and set up his or her own reign will receive the fruit of a just judgment.  
    Because when it comes to eternal salvation, it is not enough that we simply participated in life.  Our decisions now have eternal consequences in what happens after our death.  Our choices for or against God confirm if we want to remain with God, thus being prepared for heaven, or if we reject God, thus being prepared for Hell.  Keep those white baptismal garments clean.  Wash them clean in the Blood of the Lamb when you have sinned by going to confession.  Stay on God’s winning team, and receive the prize for those who are victorious in Christ: eternal happiness in heaven, where he lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Kenny Chesney the Theologian

 Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Since I’ve been a priest for ten years, people ask me if I just recycle my old homilies.  Generally, the answer is no, as each time I preach I am in a different place, and so is the parish to which I’m preaching.  And yet, as I heard this Gospel passage, and saw the theme developing, especially from the first reading and Gospel, my mind kept going back to a Kenny Chesney song that I knew I had used before in a Sunday homily.
    So I went to my blog where I keep all my homilies to see how I had used it, and if I had used it here at St. Pius X.  And lo and behold, I have used the song…twice…once in 2012 when I was at St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing, and once in 2014 when I was administrator of St. Joseph parish in Adrian.  So, now I guess it’s your turn to hear the words of this Kenney Chesney song that my previous two parishes had heard.
    The song is from the album “Lucky Old Sun,” and was written by Jim Collins and Marty Dodson.  It became Kenny’s fifteenth number one hit.  The song is entitled, “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven.”  Country music has long been known for its lyrics, and was described by Harlan Howard as “three chords and the truth.”  The lyrics I’ll highlight today are from the refrain and a little from a verse.  Kenny sings:

Everybody wants to go to heaven,
Have a mansion high above the clouds.
Everybody want to go to heaven,
But nobody want to go now.
[…]
Said preacher maybe you didn’t see me
Throw an extra twenty in the plate.
There’s one for everything I did last night
And one to get me through today.
Here’s a ten to help you remember
Next time you got the good Lord’s ear,
Say I’m coming but there ain’t no hurry
I’m having fun down here.

The lyrics are even better with the melody.
    There is truth in those lyrics, as in there are people who would say those words echo their sentiments.  There’s this general desire of people to go heaven, that mountain of the Lord about which the Prophet Isaiah spoke in our first reading.  But, if pressed, there are things that they would prefer to do while on earth, items to check off their bucket list, however saintly or devilish, that they want to do first.  Everyone wants to say with Psalm 23, “and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord / for years to come,” even if they don’t always want to follow the lead of the Good Shepherd and go to the pastures He points out.
    So there’s this cognitive disconnect.  When we hear the parable that Jesus tells, the one we hear today about the wedding feast to which the king invited guests, we think they’re crazy to say “thank, but not thanks,” especially for something as simple as farming or doing business.  But, if pressed, we often RSVP in the negative, but for worse or flimsier reasons than for farming or business.  
    The excuses become even more mundane if we look at the Mass as the foretaste of heaven.  Each week I say: “Behold the Lamb of God.  Behold him who takes away the sins of the world.  Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”  This is as close to heaven on earth as we can come.  And yet, even without COVID, we have all sorts of excuses why we can’t make it.  
    But truly, each day we are RSVPing to the King’s invitation for the wedding feast for His Son, Jesus.  Each day we make choices that say, “Yes, I’m coming,” or “Nobody want to go now.”  And what the Gospel reminds us is that a simple desire to go may not be enough.  Jesus, in the parable, tells of a guest who came, but one was not in a wedding garment (and in the parable it’s a man, which isn’t surprising, since men often wouldn’t know how to dress for a particular occasion).  The king says to him, “‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’”  The man has no answer.  So he is bound and cast outside into the darkness.  
    When we were baptized, we were given a wedding garment, a white cloth which represented the cleanness of our soul.  The priest said, “you have become a new creation and have clothed yourself in Christ.  May this white garment be a sign to you of your Christian dignity.  With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring it unstained into eternal life.”  When we make a choice against God, when we deem something other than God a higher and more important good, we stain that garment.  God, in His mercy, can cleanse it for us in the Sacrament of Penance, but we still have to hold on to it (symbolically speaking) and not throw it away by our choices.  
    It is so easy to fix our hearts and minds and attention on what is earthly, on the physical things that scream for our attention.  It is so easy to go day-to-day with an earthly mentality, that we don’t want to go to heaven, yet.  But that is why St. Paul reminds us to set our minds on what is above.  That is why, as we will hear in a few minutes, we are invited to lift up our hearts, so that we are, once more, reminded that getting to heaven is our top concern so that, at our time, we are ready for the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Invites, RSVPs, and Attendance

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ironically, as I was preparing for the homily this past week, I received an invitation in the mail for a wedding that is being celebrated in July.  Talk about the Word of God being active and alive!

With Facebook, there are more and more events to which we can be invited.  Sometimes there are still the paper invitations, especially with weddings, but I have seen more and more people go to online invitations for open houses, parties, and we use it on our parish Facebook page for different events happening in our parish.

An invitation is, firstly, a sign that we are important to the person doing the inviting.  I remember when I was helping to plan my ordination reception with my parents.  There were all the considerations about whom to invite.  Because you can’t only invite one second cousin.  If you invite one, you have to invite them all.  But sometimes you’re closer with some family members than with others.  So if we’re invited, it is a sign that we are important enough to get the invite.  And I think that’s one of the takeaways from the Gospel reading today: God considers each of us important enough to invite to His wedding feast.  That’s no small thing.  God wants each of us to share eternal life with him.  

Isaiah describes that wedding feast using the image of the mountain of the Lord.  There will be the best of foods and the best of wines.  The quality of the food and wine is so good that Isaiah does something common when something is too good for words: he repeats himself.  But beyond the food and wine, on the mountain of the Lord there is no more death, no more tears, and no more reproach (which is a word we don’t hear that much and means “the expression of disapproval or disappointment”).  The day of the mountain of the Lord is a day of rejoicing, because God has saved us.  And this reading is one of the suggested readings for funerals, because the mountain of the Lord should be the goal of our life, and it’s where we hope our loved ones go after death.

But, another takeaway from the Gospel is that not everyone RSVPs to the invitation in the affirmative.  There are people who decline the invite for things of lesser importance: farming, business, or even just ignoring the invite altogether.  Even though invited, they don’t give much weight to the relationship with the person who is inviting them to rejoice with him and his family.  And when there is more room for guests, because so many people have not accepted the invitation, the king invites others, some who are good, but even some who are bad.  Just because we are invited does not mean we go.  We have to choose to go to the wedding; simply having the invitation is not enough.

And lastly, Jesus talks about one of the guests not having the proper garments for a wedding.  Even though the king was glad to invite the good and bad alike, there were expectations about proper dress for the wedding.  And the one who did not have the proper garment was thrown out into the darkness, in the place of “wailing and grinding of teeth.”  When I hear those words about a garment, I immediately think of the words that I tell a child or adult at baptism: “you have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ.  See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity.  With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.”  We are told at our baptism, when we receive our invitation, that on the mountain of the Lord, at the Lord’s wedding feast, there is a proper clothing requirement, and that requirement is supposed to white to represent our purity from sin.  Reconciliation is, as it were, bleach, that, by God’s grace, washes clean our baptismal garment that we have soiled by our disobedience to God.

So often, evangelicals will ask the question, “Are you saved?”, and our Gospel helps us answer that question with a Catholic answer.  We were saved when we were baptized, when we accepted the invitation from Jesus to attend His wedding feast in heaven as we died with Christ in the waters of baptism that freed us from sin and made us children of God and members of the Church.  We are being saved as we, by the grace of God, try to keep our baptismal garment clean and daily act in such a way as to show that we want to attend the wedding at the end of time.  And we hope to be saved when we are invited to the banquet hall, with the proper wedding garment, and are able to rejoice with Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven forever.  

Being baptized isn’t enough.  Baptism is the invitation to the wedding feast.  We have to respond to the invitation that Jesus extends to us each day of our life.  Because Jesus also says at the end of our Gospel, that, “‘Many are invited, but few are chosen.’”  Let’s not ignore this invitation, or act in such a way that shows that we have better things to do than to go attend the wedding feast of the Lamb.  Let us make our own the words that we hear at each Mass: “Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”

We All Scream for Ice Cream!

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            On a warm, fall day, as today will be, there’s nothing quite like getting a little ice cream to cool down; to walk into a parlor and then choose a flavor that will explode in your mouth at the same time that it cools you down.  But then, there’s the real dilemma: what flavor is best?  What flavor do you want today?  Luckily, many places give you a little spoon with a small helping of the different flavors to figure out which one you want.  They give you a little taste.

            What we are engaged in right now is a small plastic spoon of the good things to come.  No, we’re not providing ice cream for you today after Mass.  But our readings all talk about a great feast that is to come.  Isaiah talks about the mountain of the Lord where there will be “a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.”  Our Responsorial Psalm mentions how the Lord will “spread the table before me.”  And in our Gospel passage we hear Jesus talking about how God is preparing a wedding feast and inviting people to that feast.  These images of the feast all refer to heaven, the goal for which hopefully we’re all striving.  If we are faithful disciples and live according to God’s law of love of Him above all else and our neighbor as ourselves, than we can look forward to enjoying heaven, as one enjoys a sumptuous feast or a nice, cold, ice cream cold on a hot day.

            But, getting back to what I said earlier, we don’t have to wait until heaven to start to experience this feast.  We get a foretaste of the feast of heaven in the Mass.  Our Mass is that little taste of ice cream that you get to make sure you know what you want.

            Think about the first reading again.  Isaiah first talks about the mountain of the Lord.  A mountain is a high place that is visible for all in the surrounding area to see.  Our churches are usually built at an elevated level, or with high steeples to stand, like a mountain, in the midst of the world.  And even if the exterior structure is not built up for all around to see, as we enter into the Church space, the nave, our eyes should immediately go to a raised area, the sanctuary, which stands in a particular way as the mountain of the Lord, a reminder of the mount of Calvary, where the one perfect sacrifice took place, that same sacrifice which is re-presented for you today.  It is that sacrifice on that mountain, made present once more for us now, that destroys the veil that veils all people and destroys death forever.  This sanctuary is the mountain of the Lord, where God reveals Himself, just as He did on Mount Sinai, as the people gather at its base to worship Him.

            This is also where the Eucharistic Table, the Altar, is prepared.  This is where the best food, the choicest wine, the Eucharist, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Jesus Christ is prepared under the appearances of bread and wine.  Christ Himself, through me, His minister, prepares the feast for the People He has won by His Blood and made His own.  He sets the table before us, even though, by our sins, we have made ourselves enemies of God.  Christ receives the bread and wine we offer, simple gifts, really, and changes them so that they are no longer bread and wine, but are substantially changed into His Body and Blood, and not just for this liturgy, but afterwards as well.  This is the feast on the mountain of the Lord.  This is the wedding feast to which we are invited.  In late November, when we start using the spoken words of the new translation, we’ll have the opportunity to see this more clearly.  Because while the priest currently says, “Happy are those who are called to his Supper” as the Body and Blood of Christ are shown to the people, in Advent of this year the priest will say, “Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb,” an allusion to Revelation 19:9, referring to the wedding feast that the Bridegroom, our Bridegroom, Jesus, has prepared for us, His Church, His Bride.

            Here, in this feast of faith, this Mass, we come together, those of us in humble circumstances, those of us in abundance; those of us are well fed, and those of us who are hungry; and we unite in our worship of God.  We receive the grace to do all things in Christ, who strengthens us, as God supplies our deepest need for His love and His presence among us.

            But, we need to come properly dressed.  And while I do think we can always examine if we’re giving our best to God in terms of what we wear, I’m not talking about exterior clothing.  In baptism, we all heard, even if we don’t remember it, “you have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ.  See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity.  With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.”  How are we doing at keeping that interior baptismal garment pure white?  Are we helping our family and friends to keep it that way?  Are they helping us to keep it unstained?  That is the proper wedding garment of the elect, those chosen by God.  Just as we wouldn’t show up for a wedding celebration in sweatpants, hair all disheveled, dirt on our face, so we should approach this feast with the interior wedding garment a pure white, a sign of our response to the grace of God and the avoidance of sin.  And if we get a few spots on that garment from sin, we have the great sacrament of reconciliation to wash that garment clean once more in the blood of Christ and to reunite ourselves to His grace.  Between our two sites here, we offer 6 different opportunities for reconciliation, and we priests will gladly set up a different time if none of those times work.

            We have been invited to the mountain of the Lord, to the feast of heaven in this Mass.  May we keep our baptismal garments clean for the wedding feast of the Lamb, so that we might be invited in.  Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb.