Keeping the Past in the Past

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In the spring of my senior year of high school, my friend group decided to go out to breakfast after our last final exam of high school.  The exam started at 8 or so, and finished by 10.  The restaurant we decided to frequent wasn’t far from the school.  We all got in our cars and drove there individually.  For whatever reason, even though I knew where I was going, I followed another car that did not.  It was able to get over into the far right lane of a four lane, one way highway and turn into a parking lot to go back on a perpendicular street.  I, however, was in the second lane from the right, and panicked a little.  So, without much thought and without looking, I just decided to make a right turn into a parking lot from my current lane.  I heard the screeching of tires, the honking of a horn, and my adrenaline rushed through my body.  Somehow, no doubt due to my guardian angel who was working extra that morning, the car I had just cut off did not hit me, and I was able to turn back towards the restaurant and arrive safely, albeit with a heart rate that was more congruent with sprinting a 200-meter race.

    We all have things we’re not proud of in our past, things that we would do differently if we could.  St. Paul was no exception.  He wrote to the Corinthians that he was the least of the Apostles and not even worthy to be called an Apostle because, before his conversion, he persecuted God’s holy Church.  If we think back, the Acts of the Apostles makes very clear that Saul of Tarsus–who started going by Paul after his conversion, especially with his work among the Greeks, since Saul was a very Jewish name and Paul was more Gentile–consented to the stoning of St. Stephen, and had been arresting Jews for proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ.  He was, to use a mafia term, the enforcer for the Pharisees, and was a Pharisee himself.
    But, St. Paul, whom St. Thomas Aquinas does and we can refer to as the Apostle, continued: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.”  Paul did not ignore his past, but neither did he let it define his present.  He acknowledged his past, but recognized that the grace of God had changed him, and he was no longer that man from his past.
    We all have a past.  Maybe it’s bad driving, like in my example from the beginning of this homily.  Maybe it’s something not that bad.  Maybe it’s something far worse.  We cannot change the past, but we shouldn’t live in the past, either.  God does not want us to allow our past sins to control our present and our future.  If we repent from them and convert, that is, turn towards God, our past can remain and education for us, rather than a life-sentence of guilt.  

Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate Hearing

    Of course, the first step is acknowledging our past sins.  Forgiveness and conversion only happen when we acknowledge that we have done wrong.  If we pretend like we’re perfect, God’s mercy finds no room in us, and so it cannot change us.  St. Paul, when writing to the people of Corinth didn’t say, “On the advice of council, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” like Dr. Fauci did at the Senate Hearing on 29 July.  Paul acknowledged that he persecuted God’s Church, God’s people, with whom God so identifies that Christ said to him on the road to Damascus, “‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’”  But Paul didn’t stay in his past.  He then also acknowledged that God’s grace had done a mighty work, which allowed Paul to preach the Gospel.
    So if we have acknowledged our sins and confessed them, we don’t forget them, but we don’t live in them, either.  The enemy often likes to remind us of our past sins.  But if our sins our forgiven, then in God’s eyes, the sins themselves are gone.  Might there be consequences for those sins that come with us into the present?  Sure.  But the sins are gone.  As King David sang in Psalm 102: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.”  If we have made a good confession, God’s not coming back to us to remind us of all the bad things we have done.  We will have to deal with the temporal effects due to sin, either on this earth (which the saints say is much preferred and much easier) or in Purgatory (which is still not bad, because Purgatory always leads to heaven).  But the sins themselves are gone. 
    We, though, have to accept that forgiveness.  Some scholars say that the sin against the Holy Spirit is not being willing to accept God’s forgiveness, which is why it is the only unforgivable sin.  If we don’t accept God’s mercy, then God won’t force it on us, which leaves us in sin, rather than restoring us to grace, as God desires.  
    We cannot erase our past, much as we would like to at times.  We should learn from our past, especially when we have sinned and done wrong.  But we should not drag our past into the present, at least not when we’ve given those sins to God through sacramental confession.  That is a yoke too heavy to carry, a yoke the Lord does not desire for us.  He desires us to carry His yoke, which is mercy, a burden truly light and easy.  Open yourselves up to God’s mercy and live in the freedom of those forgiven by God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

All Are Welcome, but We Need to Prepare

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    How wonderful to receive an invitation!  I don’t mean the incessant invitations to subscribe to this, or buy that which we seem to receive every day through email or text.   I mean invitations to some celebration or to become a part of a group or club that means something.  Invitations make one feel desired, appreciated, even treasured.  Especially when not everyone can join, due to cost or space, invitations have a way of stroking the ego in a healthy way.

    And so our Liturgy of the Word, the first main part of our Mass today, begins with an invitation.  “All you who are thirsty, come to the water!  You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!”  And when paired with our Gospel and the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, we certainly understand this banquet to point towards our Eucharistic celebration, the Mass.  I’ve mentioned before the beautiful mosaic at Tabgha at the place of the miracle in the Gospel, where there's a chapel, and underneath the altar is a mosaic with two fish and four loaves, signifying that the fifth loaf is the one on the altar, and that the miracle points to the Eucharist.
    What we see in both the prophecy from Isaiah and the miracle that we hear from Matthew, but which is in all four Gospels, is that everyone is welcome.  God invites everyone to come to him to receive proper drink and food.  And Christ feels compassion for the crowd of 5,000 people who have nowhere to go without being quite hungry.  They were certainly all disciples, as they stopped to listen to Him for an entire day, but we don’t get a sense that they were equally knowledgeable of Christ, or faithful to Christ.  Some may have simply been curious and become quite intrigued with the words Christ spoke.  Others may have been dragged there by friends and simply didn’t want to be rude and return home without the host who brought them.  So we see a certain universal call, a call to all people, to Christ’s banquet where He feeds them.
    However, Isaiah’s prophecy and the feeding of the 5,000 are not the Mass, even though they point to it.  We don’t use bread and wine and milk in the Mass.  Nor do we use bread and fish.  Milk doesn’t really agree with my digestion (though I’ll suffer through it for ice cream, pizza, and lasagna), so I’m glad we don’t use milk.  And imagine trying to keep fish and distribute it at Mass: we’d have to use incense just to mask the smell of aging fish!
    So even within the universal call to the banquet of Christ that we hear issued, which, in some sense, is true of the Mass, we also have restrictions on who partakes of the banquet.  In another parable, Christ speaks about how he invites the unlikely to the wedding banquet after the original invitees demure and do not come, but how the master expects the guests to come to the banquet in proper clothing.  So a universal invitation and guidance on how we carry ourselves in responding to that invitation is not foreign to the Gospel.  Imagine thinking that because your friends invited you to their wedding, you could show up in your pjs, because that made you feel the most comfortable.  Your friends may not mention your attire to your face, but I assure you everyone would be talking about it.
    So how do we come to this Eucharistic banquet to which we were invited?  I know it was vogue to say that clothing doesn’t matter when you come to Mass, but that’s simply not true.  I’m not saying everyone has to be in suit and tie or best dress, but there’s a reason why we call certain attire “Sunday best.”  Your Sunday best may be different than others, but do we give our best and show that this banquet means something to us, at least as best as we can muster as a college student, or parents with an infant, or established adults, or senior citizens?  Again, as long as we can say we’re giving our best to God, that’s what counts, not as much of what type of clothing we wear (though, if you’re over the age of 5, pjs should never be considered one’s best).
    Another consideration on the invitation to all is what we believe.  St. Justin Martyr, writing in the mid-second century, says that only those who have been baptized and believe in what the Church teaches receive the Eucharist.  That’s why we generally don’t have intercommunion, even for baptized non-Catholics, because they don’t believe in the fullness of what the Catholic Church teaches.
    Likewise, in order to receive the full graces of the banquet, we should prepare for receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  If we are aware of grave sins, like skipping Mass, using God’s Name in vain, improper use of our sexual faculties, etc., we need to go to confession first.  If we receive Holy Communion in a state of grave sin, we add the sin of a sacrilegious communion to our previous list and damage further our relationship with Christ.  We fast from all food and drink except water and medicine for one hour before receiving Holy Communion in order to prepare even our bodies, which are united with our souls, to receive Christ into us.  We might even, on Saturday or earlier in the week, read the Sunday readings ahead of time so that we’re more ready to hear them proclaimed at Mass, or if our kids are distracting us, as kids do, we still know what God is saying through the Scriptures for that day.  This doesn’t mean God doesn’t want you to come at all to His banquet, but that while attendance is open to all, the full participation in the banquet does require certain actions and forbids others.
    There is room for everyone in God’s kingdom and at the wedding feast of the Lamb.  God invites each of us to union with Him and attendance at His banquet because of His great love for all of us.  But He expects that we will prepare ourselves for the banquet, because it is such a joyous occasion, just like we prepare ourselves for a wedding.  Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb!

Faithful to the Covenant

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When it comes to family or friends, we probably have some sort of red line that, if crossed, would mean a break in that relationship.  For me, loyalty and honesty are two virtues that I insist on in order to maintain a friendship.  If I find out a person has lied to me, or has been disloyal, I find it very difficult to continue that friendship.  It may seem fine at the surface for a little while, but I tend to disengage that friendship until the friendship dies from lack of contact.
    Thanks be to God that our God does not operate in the same way!  God remains faithful to the covenant He entered upon, even when we don’t hold up our end of the bargain.  And, in fact, God outdoes Himself by not only upholding a covenant that we break time and time again, but even giving us a better covenant than we had at the beginning.
    St. Paul mentions in our epistle how God made a covenant with Abraham and to his seed.  What was that covenant?  In Genesis, chapter 15, God promised to be Abraham’s God and to give Abraham the land of Canaan, and to multiply Abraham’s descendants so that they would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  God’s People were then to simply follow God and His will.  To enact this covenant, God asked Abraham to cut a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, and a three-year-old ram in two, and then to sacrifice a turtledove and a young pigeons as well.  This action, sociologists tell us, was to signify the penalty if either party broke their side of the bargain: what happened to the animals (death) would happen to the one who broke the covenant.  As another sign, God commanded Abraham to be circumcised and to circumcise all the male descendants as a sign that they belonged to God.
    The first few generations did ok: Isaac, Jacob, and his twelve sons (though the twelve sons did try to kill their brother, but instead sold him into slavery into Egypt, which ended up saving the day).  But then the people, now enslaved in Egypt themselves, forgot the Lord.

    So God gives a new covenant, the Law, to instruct the people on how to be God’s Chosen People.  The blood of animals is sprinkled on them to join them all to the covenant and to again reaffirm that whoever breaks the covenant deserves death, and the people agree because God has saved them from slavery and from Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea..  Before Moses has time to communicate this new law, they build a false god, a golden calf, and begin to worship it.  Fail.
    But God remains faithful to His covenant, and leads them to the Promised Land, even though they complain regularly that the food isn’t good, or that Moses has too much power, or that they’re going to die of thirst.  Time and time again, the people do not live up to their side of the covenant.  Even at the door of the Promised Land, the people lose faith that God can grant them entry and push out foreign armies, even though they had just destroyed a couple armies of pagan kingdoms, and so they have to wander in the desert for 40 more years.  
    But God remains faithful to His covenant, and gives them the Promised Land, displacing kingdoms and entire peoples.  But even then, the Chosen People follow false gods, then get into trouble, then are oppressed, then cry out to God.  And God saves them time and time again.
    God sends prophets to remind them to follow the law, to care for the poor and the orphans, to live justly and walk humbly with God.  But they always end up rejecting God and not living according to the covenant.  And while God does allow the consequences of their disobedience and idolatry to fall on them (like the exile and dispersion of the ten northern tribes and the destruction of the temple and the exile into Babylon of the two southern tribes), He remains faithful to His covenant, and sends a Messiah.  While the people expect an earthly Messiah to free them from Roman oppression, God provides a true Messiah who frees them from slavery to sin and death and opens up heaven.  God even takes upon Himself the punishment for infidelity to the covenant, though He was the only one who had remained faithful to the covenant, and did not deserve death.
    All of this is to say that God remains faithful in the midst of our infidelity.  God fulfills His promise even when we don’t.  And He does so to draw us back to Himself.  He lets the rain fall on the good and the bad, and the sun to shine on the just and the unjust in order to woo us back to Him, our Lover, so that we can enjoy the close relationship that He desires for us.
    As we look at the Gospel: only one leper returns to give thanks, and He’s outside this covenant.  But God doesn’t give the other nine leprosy again.  They are healed, even though they do not give thanks to God for the miracle they received.

    In our lives, are we like the nine or are we like the one?  God has given us so much, and we don’t deserve any of it.  We cannot claim any merit on our own, because we could not do anything good without God.  Every time we sin we walk away from the covenant, not just that to Abraham or Moses, but to the covenant sealed by the Precious Blood of the true Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who offered His life, taking upon Himself the punishment that should have been ours for our infidelity.  God gives us so many good things, but do we give thanks to God for His fidelity?  Do we worship God wholeheartedly for forgiving us every time we ask in the Sacrament of Penance?  Do we do our best to avoid sin and breaking the covenant?  Yes, sometimes God does allow the consequences of our actions to fall upon us, but more often than not He is patient with us and does not give us what we deserve so that we can return to Him.  
    At one point, though, our ability to turn back to God will end.  When we die, we no longer have a chance to return to the covenant that Christ made with us in Holy Baptism.  If we, in the end, reject that covenant, then we will face the punishment of breaking the covenant: eternal death in Hell.  But if we turn back to God, if after the disease of sin has affected us and we ask God to heal us and we return to Him to thank Him for that healing, then we will receive the rewards of the covenant that we did not deserve, strictly speaking, but that God will grant to us as a merciful and loving Father: residence not simply in an earthly Promised Land, but eternal life in the true Promised Land of heaven.  May God’s patience with us allow us time to convert and do our best to be faithful to the covenant sealed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit are God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Flirting with Death

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

A trail at Zion National Park

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In my visits to National Parks, which are a great treasure of our country, there have been some, like Zion National Park, where you can hike up high mountains and use trails that seemingly climb to the heavens.  Now, when I say trails, I don’t mean nice, paved, even trails.  These are usually parts of a mountain, sometimes with rudimentary railings, but often not, with sharp drop-offs if one were to lose his or her balance.  Some more adventurous folk like to get right to the edge.  As for me, I try to stay as far away from the edge as possible, because I definitely have a fear of losing my balance and falling to my death.
    While I, and many others who have a fear of heights, may not enjoy the idea of flirting with death by falling off a path, how many others enjoy flirting with the death that comes from sin.  St. Paul says it clearly enough: “The wages of sin is death.”  And even if the English grammar doesn’t hit our ears quite right (wages, though it sounds plural, is a singular idea, and so yields a verb in the singular), the message is clear enough: do you want to die?  Then sin!  Sin is like floating one foot over the edge of the gorge with nothing to hang on to in case you fall.  

    It can be hard to take sin so seriously, especially with such ready access to the Sacrament of Penance at this parish.  If I sin, then I go to confession.  And that is a good rule to follow.  We rightly focus on the mercy of God, because God, through Christ, has revealed the Father’s great love for us, a love which never wants us to be separated from Him, and a love which will be wasteful in mercy and look foolish just to reconcile us to Him.  
    But while not giving sin more power than God’s mercy and grace, we do also need to recognize the horror of sin.  And, our appreciation for the mercy of God increases with our appreciation of just what we deserve when we sin.  If I don’t think that sin makes all that big of a difference, then God’s mercy also doesn’t mean as much.  But if I know that the wages of sin is death, that I deserve death every time I sin, then when I do confess my sins and when God reconciles me to Himself through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, I recognize just what an amazing thing God has done.
    If we forget just how awfully sin takes a toll, then we need only look at a crucifix.  And, if we really want to understand crucifixion, then a Spanish crucifix is probably the best, as they are the most gruesome depictions of the death of Christ, rather than the very placid depictions we are used to seeing in bronze, silver, or gold.  Think of the excruciating (literally, from the Latin, from the cross) pain of having nails hammered into your hands and feet.  No matter where exactly the nails would have entered, they would have hurt.  Think of the struggle just to breathe, which is the way most died from crucifixion, as your lungs slowly filled with fluid and you struggled just to take a quick breath, all the while your body seeking any way to stay alive, but without any way to do so.  Add to that the shame of being totally naked before all, and we begin to get the idea of how terrible undergoing crucifixion was.  
    That, the crucifixion, was the wages the of sin.  No just sin up to the time of Christ.  Not just sin at the time of Christ.  But all sin, from all time, nailed to the cross and carried upon the shoulders of the spotless Lamb of God.  That was the price for our salvation.
    But the Apostle doesn’t end with “the wages of sin is death.”  He continues: “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Death does not get the last say, though we deserve it.  We don’t have to fear falling off the side of a steep cliff.  God remains vigilant, ready to grab us and pull us back to safety if we but call upon His Name.  Earlier in this epistle, St. Paul reminds us that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.  God’s mercy and grace are infinitely more powerful than our sins.  It’s as much a competition as my legos trying to fight me.  
    But it’s still good to keep in our mind that sin yields death.  Because the Church teaches us that if a person were to die in a state of mortal sin, we do not know how that person could go to heaven.  When we choose separation from God who is the source of life, we choose separation from eternal life.  It’s not that God sends us anywhere, as much as we choose by our actions if we want death or if we want life.  God will lovingly take us back if we desire, but if we don’t, God loves us enough to respect our misuse of free will, because true love never forces itself on another.  
    Yes, God is merciful.  If we ask for God’s mercy then He will grant it to us.  But if we choose sin, then we choose death.  And if we choose death, no matter how attractive it looks at the time, we will get death, eternal death.  Do not presume that just because we can say, “Lord, Lord,” we will go to heaven.  But do not despair of God’s mercy, as long as you seek to do the will of God the Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.   

Drawing Near the Unworthy

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Last week we had the profession of faith by St. Peter that our Lord is the Christ, the Messiah, and this week we get a second dose of St. Peter, but this time we hear about his call.  What strikes me in this Gospel passage is that Peter acknowledges his own sinfulness, and yet the Lord does not draw back.  In fact, the Lord draws in Peter and gives him a new mission, no longer to strive to catch fish, but to work at the catch of men, captured in the nets of the love of the Lord.
    We’ve all, I believe, been in the position of Peter.  We sin, whether venially or mortally, and we don’t feel worthy for Christ to be around us.  I think this is especially true of mortal sin.  Mortal sin, as we hopefully remember, is when we commit a grave sin (something serious); we know it’s wrong; and we freely choose to commit that sin anyway.  All three characteristics have to be present in order for a sin to be a mortal sin.  Mortal sin separates us from God and takes away sanctifying grace, the grace that allows us to go to heaven.  Mortal sin is ordinarily removed by sacramental confession, though it could be removed if we had perfect contrition (though I’m not sure you want to take a chance that you had perfect contrition if you have the chance to go to confession).  The Church teaches that if a person were to die in a state of mortal sin, we do not know a way that that person could go to heaven.
    But, some may espouse the view that if we are in mortal sin, God stops loving us.  Or that, if we are in mortal sin, we should stop praying, because God won’t hear our prayers anyway, since we’re not in a state of grace.  But that’s not what our Gospel shows us today.  Who knows if the sin Peter thought of was mortal or venial.  But to fall on his knees makes me believe that there was something big, maybe even just his lack of faith in our Lord’s command.  Still, the Savior doesn’t say, “Sorry, I can’t hear you; your sin is blocking my hearing.”  The Savior doesn’t say, “You should have thought about the consequences before you chose to do what you did.”  The Savior didn’t say, “I can’t love you if you choose to sin.”  Our Lord told Peter not to be afraid, and called him to mission as His Apostle.
    We shouldn’t give sin more power than it has.  We shouldn’t give sin more power than God, which is what we do if we think that God stops loving us or God cannot hear us or will not answer our prayers if we are not in a state of grace.  Anything good only happens by the grace of God, including repentance.  Otherwise, we fall into a kind of semi-Pelagianism, where we earn our own salvation.  Feeling sorry for what we have done can only happen by God’s grace.  The movement towards the confessional can only happen by God’s grace.  And God does not stop being our loving Father when we have been sinful children.  
    Think about it in human terms.  If your child comes to you with an obviously broken arm, but is also covered in mud, do you make your child shower off before you address the broken arm?  Do you yell at the child because he’s making the house a mess when your child just wants you to take care of his fracture?  Do you tell your child you won’t listen to her request until she takes off her dirty clothes and cleans up the mud she has tracked into the house?  “‘If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heaven Father give good things to those who ask him?’”  
    Now, this is not to ignore sin, or say that mortal sin is no big deal.  Some of the saints have said that they would rather have excruciating pain than commit a mortal sin.  But if we fall, do not push the Father away because you feel unworthy.  To be clear, you are not worthy.  But the Father doesn’t care about your worthiness.  He cares about your salvation, and will do whatever He can to affect your healing.  
    And, having been healed, the Lord also wants us to become fishers of men.  Some are called to be fishers of men in the sense of a call to a vocation to the priesthood, where they will join others to Christ through the Sacraments, especially Holy Baptism, Holy Penance, and the Most Holy Eucharist, though certainly the other sacraments as well.  But God calls all of us to seek out those who have strayed from their Catholic faith and to invite in those who are not Catholic so that they can have union with Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church, so that they can be saved.  Is it possible to be saved without baptism, or without full union with the one Church that Christ founded?  God can save people however He wants.  However, our more certain way towards heaven is through the narrow way that Christ shows us through what He teaches us in the Scriptures and in the Church.  How sad it would be if others missed out on salvation, or maybe even just had a longer time in Purgatory because we were unwilling to invite them to become Catholic, or to return to the practice of the faith of their childhood.  
    Does that mean that all whom we invite will accept the invitation?  No.  Sadly, sometimes when we present people with the joy of following Christ, they walk away.  It happened in the Gospel; it will happen in our interactions with others.  But woe to us if we do not at least invite people convincingly and joyfully show them how much we love Christ and how it makes our life more fulfilling.
    Our Lord did not depart from Peter when he acknowledged his sinfulness.  Our Lord does not depart from us when we sin.  May we do all we can to avoid sin, especially mortal sin.  But if we do fall, may we run back to our loving Father and trust in His mercy.  And then, strengthened by His mercy, may we invite others to run to the Father and His merciful love, and find the joy and peace that all people desire, because they are made in the image and likeness of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.   

A Tradition Unlike Any Other

Third Sunday of Easter

    A few weeks back, during a few, rare downtimes on Palm Sunday weekend, I was able to tune in to the Masters Tournament at Augusta National coverage on TV.  I don’t golf, but there is something about the Masters which draws even non-golfers in.  While I was primarily rooting for Jordan Spieth, who ended up with a decent set of scores, I was also very happy to see Rory McElroy not only win his first green jacket, but also complete the career Grand Slam of winning all four major championships: the PGA Championship, US Open, Open Championship, and the Masters.  There’s something about the Masters that signals spring is finally here.  It’s not just the game itself; it goes beyond a simple few days in Georgia.
    The same could be said for our Gospel passage today.  But I want to focus more on the second part of the Gospel passage, Peter’s interaction with Jesus, which also goes beyond a simple apologetic conversation, though it is that.  Part of the beyond is Jesus again supporting Peter’s special role as pope and head of the Apostolic College, the group of apostles.  But it also demonstrates for us what confession is mean to be like.
    The Gospel writers are clear that Peter denied Jesus on Holy Thursday evening and into Good Friday.  They are clear that he wasn’t at the cross, but that, once the cock crowed after Peter had denied Christ, he went away weeping, knowing that he had betrayed the Lord.  But we never hear anything else, until this passage, about the reconciliation.  Peter had been going all this time after seeing the Risen Christ on Easter Sunday without dealing with his sin.  But now the Lord invites Him to reconcile.
    How many times do we carry sins with us, perhaps even avoiding confession because we are ashamed?  We, in our own way, have denied and betrayed the Lord.  And while we have later seen His goodness and His new life, we’re afraid to confront our sin.  But if we don’t reconcile, we can’t receive healing.  And if the wound is mortal, deadly, then we could perish forever.
    So the Lord invites us to speak with Him in confession, and the priest acts in His name, in persona Christi capitis, in the person of Christ the Head, we say in theological language.  And He asks us, “‘do you love me more than these?’”  Now, in the Gospel, perhaps Jesus meant more than the other apostles, or more than fishing.  But with us, the Lord asks us if we love Him more than we love our sins.  The act of confessing makes us confront what or who we love more.  
    In the Greek (and Venerable Fulton Sheen makes a whole homily about this), the type of love Jesus asks Peter is not the type of love that Peter responds to Jesus.  Jesus asks, <<𝛼𝛾𝛼𝜋𝛼𝜍 𝜇𝜀;>> or, “Do you love me with the love of God?”  Peter responds, <<𝜙𝜄𝜆𝜔 𝜎𝜀>> or “I love you with brotherly love.”  The second time Jesus asks the same question, and Peter responds the same way.  But the third time, Jesus asks, <<𝜙𝜄𝜆𝜀𝜄𝜍 𝜇𝜀;>> or “Do you love me with brotherly love?”  Hence, Peter gets upset that Jesus asked, not only a third time, but changed the type of love (though that was the love Peter could muster in response).  But he still responds in the same way.  
    Jesus desires us to have 𝛼𝛾𝛼𝜋𝜀, or caritas, or selfless, Godlike love.  But He knows we are weak, and He accepts that we can’t always affirm that.  So he takes what we can give.  When we sin, especially mortal sins, we should have perfect contrition: the sorrow that comes, “not because of the loss of heaven or the pains of hell, but most of all because they have offended thee, my God.”  Still, through the sacrament, God raises our imperfect contrition, the fear of punishment, and makes it perfect by His grace so that we can be forgiven.  

    Through the Sacrament of Penance, which we often call confession, God reconciles us to Himself, even when we’re not fully ready to be reconciled.  We need to be sorry in some sense, confess our mortal sins in kind and number, have a firm purpose to not commit sin again, and be ready to accept penance, but God knows that sometimes we cannot honestly say that we love Him the way He loves us.  Still, He doesn’t want anything to stand in the way of His relationship with us, so He forgives us.  He asks us to love Him and let that love be manifest in our actions.
    The Gospels tell us what Jesus truly did and taught for eternal salvation, as Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from the Second Vatican Council taught.  But the Gospels go beyond the telling of true stories.  They also help us continue our life in Christ.  May our hearing and reading of the exchange between Jesus and Peter draw us closer to our Lord as we confess our sins, receive forgiveness and healing, and help us to live with the mission Christ gave us: to be saints.

Remembering a Past (and Current) Teaching

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Sometimes, after a number of years or decades, if the meaning of something is not refreshed in the minds of the people, things once taken for granted are forgotten.  Take Veterans’ Day: you may or may not know that Veterans’ Day is always 11 November, no matter on what day of the week that date falls.  But many people probably don’t know that 11 November wasn’t a random day chosen for this federal holiday.  11 November marked the end of World War I in 1918, and was celebrated as the end of the war to end all wars.  Of course, we know that World War II followed, and so, in 1954, rather than simply celebrating Armistice Day and the end of World War I, the name was changed to Veterans’ Day, honoring all those who served in war.  
    Today in our second reading, we heard about a particular sin: that of withholding wages from laborers.  St. James writes, “the wages you withheld from the workers…and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.”  This is one of a list of sins that Scripture notes cry to heaven for vengeance.  The full list is: the blood of Abel (homicide); the sin of the Sodomites (homosexual activity); the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt (slavery); the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan; and injustice to the wage earner, which we heard today.  You can find this list in paragraph 1867 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
    We probably don’t use this phrase that often, and because we don’t use it, we forget that it still holds true.  Certain sins cry out to God for His divine justice.  And even though one may think that he has gotten away with it because no one has noticed, God has taken notice; He has heard the cry from that sin, and will repay accordingly if there is no repentance.  Some make sense, especially homicide and slavery.  Others, like the sin of Sodom or maybe even the sin that St. James mentions today, may not seem serious.  In fact, some would not even call them sins.  But they are gravely against God’s plan for human happiness and the justice that He desires exist among all people.
    In the Gospel, Jesus also reminds His disciples, which includes us, that while good deeds, even the smallest ones, can echo into eternity, so can evil deeds.  Jesus advises us to take seriously the punishment for sin, because one will account for the evil done in the “unquenchable fire” of Gehenna, another name for Hell.  Jesus even notes hyperbolically, that if a part of our us is causing sin, then cut it off.  Of course, he’s not asking us to perform surgery and mutilate ourselves.  But He is encouraging us to figuratively cut out the parts of our life that separate us from God, so that we can enter heaven.  
    We don’t talk about sin too much, because talking about sin makes us admit that we are wrong, and no one likes to do that.  We don’t talk about the consequences of sin because we prefer to think about God as more of a grandparent who never tells us no, and who will welcome us into His home no matter what we may have done at ours.  Sin has an effect on us, and draws us farther away from God.  God, who is Justice Himself, cannot ignore unrepentant sin, anymore than light can allow darkness to continue in its presence.  The light always destroys the darkness whenever it is present.  This doesn’t take away from God’s mercy, which is also who God is, but somehow in God justice and mercy meet perfectly.
    Dr. Peter Kreeft, a Catholic apologist, notes:
 

If you really think that you can endure and enjoy the full light and fire of God for a second after you die, being essentially the same kind of being you are now, without any kind of divine operation on your soul, then you dangerously underestimate either your sinful nature, God’s holiness, or the gap between them.

It’s not as if God can let sin go, in the sense that He can allow sin to persist in His divine presence, like it’s a permission He can grant.  God, being holiness itself, burns away sin, which is why God told Moses that he couldn’t see God face to face on earth and live.  Instead, God had to shield Moses in the rock, and only let Moses see God as He passed by, so that Moses would not be destroyed.  
    So, for us, all unrepentant sin will receive its consequence.  Venial sins will not be treated harshly because they were not a strong turning away from God and His life.  But God will still deal with them.  And even more harshly will God deal with mortal sins and the sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance, because they signify serious, even deadly repudiation of God’s presence in our life.  We can deal with those mortal sins in confession, where the Blood of Jesus washes those sins away so that they are no more, or we can deal with them at our judgement, at which point, as the Church teaches, we have no hope of salvation if we have not yet repented.  Again, we don’t talk that way often, but the Church teaches, and I quote, “If [mortal sin] is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell.”  
    So today, it’s a good thing to ask ourselves, do I have serious sin that needs to be forgiven through sacramental confession?  Do I participate in or encourage any of the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance?  Am I forming hatred in my heart for another that can lead to homicide?  Do I encourage human trafficking through the viewing of pornography?  Do I oppress those who have no one to help them, like the foreigner, the widow, or the orphan?  Am I just to those who work for me?  Are there other mortal sins, even simple ones like taking God’s name in vain or skipping Mass out of laziness or preference for other things that are endangering my eternal salvation?  If so, today is the day for repentance.  Today is the day to return to the Sacrament of Penance so that the mercy, rather than the justice, of God can wash over you and save you.  
    Just because we don’t talk about sin as much does not mean that it has gone away, or that it no longer matters.  May we not forget just how serious sin is, but rather accept God’s grace to turn away from our sin, and turn to God to be wrapped in His divine mercy.  

Better than Having $1,000,000

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In the mid 90s there was a song by the group Barenaked Ladies (ironically a band entirely made of up males) called “If I Had $1000000.”  It’s a catchy tune, and it talks about all the things that the writer would do if he had a million dollars.  He’d buy a house, furniture, a “reliant automobile,” a tree fort with a tiny fridge, a fur coat (“but not a real fur coat, that’s cruel”), an exotic pet like a llama or emu or monkey.  We’ve probably all thought of what we could do with an unlimited or nearly unlimited amount of money at one time or another, and maybe our dreams have even included some of the things of which the Barenaked Ladies sang.
    St. Paul, on the other hand, talks about becoming rich in Christ, so that no one wants for any grace while we wait for the return of our Lord.  Probably not a catchy enough phrase for a song, but a chance to reflect on how we can truly be rich.  Our world so often associates riches with material things and possessions.  But St. Paul talks about the richness of a relationship with Christ and the openness to His grace.

    Even as we look at the Gospel, the sick man’s friends brought him so that the Lord would heal him.  But what is the first thing the Savior does?  He forgives the sick man’s sins, which drives the scribes up a wall.  It is only to prove that He has the power to forgive sins that a physical healing follows.  What would the man have thought if all he received was the forgiveness of sins?  What would we think if we approached the Lord for physical healing, but only received spiritual healing?
    Physical healings are amazing.  They reveal God’s power over the human body, His ability to remake it as it should be.  And physical miracles can help to bolster our faith in spiritual realities, like the communion of saints.  But eventually whatever is healed will break down again.  Skin, muscle, organs, and bones will decompose, and then what will we have left?  But with spiritual healing, the effects can last into eternity, possibly snatching us from the teeth of the devil in Hell to the loving embrace of God in heaven.
    And even on earth, we can have opportunities to realize that material things, while nice, do not have as much value as intangible things.  For my birthday I received gifts from my family and from parishioners, for which I am very grateful.  I received a gift card to a brand of hotels in which I often stay to help lower my cost of future travel.  I received some cash and other gift cards with helped me purchase some items on my personal wish list.  And I received some very kind birthday cards.  But honestly, and with no ingratitude intended to anyone who gave me a gift, my best present was the chance for my very busy best friend to set aside time to spend with me, and let me know that, for that evening, he didn’t have anywhere else to be and didn’t have to cut out early to do anything else.  As MasterCard used to remind us, while you can buy many things with a credit card, the best things in life are priceless.
    So do we see God’s grace that way?  Do we view our relationship with God as our most treasured gift?  This is not to say that we can’t have material things that are precious to us, but do we treasure God above even our most expensive goods?  Do we treasure Him even above the intangible things on earth?  Or does God take second, or third, or fourth place when we consider what we value most?
    Do we appreciate the treasure that confession is?  God gave us a sensible way to receive His forgiveness through the Sacrament of Penance.  We hear the priest, acting in the person of Christ the head, in persona Christi capitis, telling us that our sins are forgiven.  Especially with my analytical mind, I can’t imagine simply asking God for forgiveness from my heart, but then wondering if I was truly sorry, which is the requisite for forgiveness.  Instead, if I have at least imperfect contrition, a firm amendment not to sin in the future, and a willingness to do penance, and if I confess my grave sins in number and kind to the priest, I know, I have certainty, that God has forgiven me; no ifs, ands, or buts.  What a treasure that is!  Can God forgive me without the sacrament?  Certainly.  But we will only know if that happened at the end of our life when we meet God for our final judgment.  Through the Church that Christ Himself founded, I can have confidence that those sins won’t be brought up at my final judgement, because Christ has washed them away in His Precious Blood.
    One million dollars is an impressive amount of money.  It can buy a lot of things that can help us live a comfortable life while on earth.  But the comfort that God wants for us doesn’t always come on earth, but lasts for eternity in heaven.  Each day we have the opportunity to decide how we want to be rich.  Do we want to strive primarily for the riches that can buy us a house, a car, or an emu?  Or do we want to strive primarily for the riches of knowing Jesus Christ and receiving the graces He sends us?  The two don’t always conflict, but one is always more important than the other.  Even if, at the end of our life, the world does not recognize us as rich, may God see how we have worked for and received the riches that He showers upon us each day: His grace, and knowledge, and love.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

The Strong Man and the Stronger Man

Third Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  For many men, especially as they’re in adolescence or a young adulthood, one of the worst things you can say is, “You look like your mother.”  I can’t be sure if this applies to daughters being told they look like their dad, but I can’t imagine a young girl wanting to hear she looks like a guy.  The physical comparisons, whether between mother and son or father and daughter might be somewhat true, but, at least for guys, it’s not the sort of thing you want to hear. 
    In a different vein entirely, but still something that shouldn’t be compared is our Lord and the powers of evil.  Christ was not afraid to use physical force with objects (as in the cleansing of the Temple) or sharp words with people (as in his rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees) to get his point across.  So the fact that He used neither of these in today’s Gospel demonstrates just how patient Christ could be.  There He is, working to free people from the dominion of the evil one, and people start surmising that He must be doing the work of the evil one.  I can’t say that I’d be as patient as our Lord in such a situation.

St. Irenaeus

    Instead, the Savior asks them how Satan is supposed to survive if he’s undermining his own work?  He says the words that Abraham Lincoln would paraphrase some eighteen hundred years later: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  And then Christ speaks about His own work.  The strong man in this explanation is Satan, but the stronger man is Christ.  St. Irenaeus the early second century bishop of Lyons and martyr, writes in his magnum opus Adversus Haereses:
 

For as in the beginning [Satan] enticed man to transgress his Maker’s law, and thereby got him into his power; yet his power consists in transgression and apostasy, and with these he bound man [to himself]; so again, on the other hand, it was necessary that through man himself he should, when conquered, be bound with the same chains with which he had bound man, in order that man, being set free, might return to his Lord, leaving to [Satan] those bonds by which he himself had been fettered, that is, sin.  For when Satan is bound, man is set free; since none can enter a strong man’s house and spoil his goods, unless he first bind the strong man himself.

We are the spoils, the ones that Satan first duped, but that Christ freed from slavery to Satan, while Christ bound up Satan and put an end to his dominion over us.
    But, Christ also notes in this Gospel that even with His work of freeing us from Satan, it’s not as if Satan just gives up.  Christ does His work of freeing us, but we have to continue to cooperate in that work by standing guard against falling into that slavery again.  Because, as Christ noted, demons may be cast out, but he may return, and may bring his friends to try to wrest us back to the power of the enemy, so that we are more under Satan’s control the second time than the first.  As St. Peter warns us in his first epistle, the devil is prowling like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.  If we knew a lion was outside, we would be very careful about watching where it was, and making sure we were protected from an attack. 
    How do protect ourselves?  The works of Lent are a good starting point.  Prayer is a great way to guard against the enemy.  A daily habit of prayer is not only good to strengthen our relationship with our Beloved, a strong relationship with our Beloved keeps us from looking for other lovers.  Some people find that in the moment of strong temptations, prayer can help greatly.  Others find that, in the midst of strong temptations, it is very hard to pray.  But daily prayer, especially the Rosary, can assist in keeping watch against attacks of the enemy.
    Fasting also helps us to fight off temptation.  It may not always seem obvious how fasting helps, but we are a union of body and soul, and so when we discipline one, we discipline the other.  Fasting is intended to raise our mind to heavenly things, since we are not focusing as much on satisfying the body.  It reminds the body, which is so often the way that Satan tries to get us to follow him instead of God, that just because the body wants something does not mean that it gets it.  Bodily desires have to be subordinated to the soul, which has to be subordinated to the will of God.  And fasting helps to put that divinely established order back into line.
    Lastly, confession is an important part of regaining freedom and remaining free from the grasp of the enemy.  Of course, if we have fallen into mortal sin, confession restores us to sanctifying grace, the grace that allows us to be received into heaven.  It removes the obstacles to God’s grace that we have put up, and unshackles us from attachment to the enemy.  But even if we only have venial sins, confession strengthens us to work on avoiding those sins, and helps us to avoid falling into other sins, which can be more grave.  Confession not only treats the disease, but also helps prevent us from getting the disease in the first place.  Many exorcists have said that the best way to make sure that we are not susceptible to demonic oppression or possession is to make frequent confessions, since confession means that we want Jesus to be Lord in our life and we wish to serve Him, not the enemy. 
    In the end, resisting the devil means doing the will of God.  God does not want us to be slaves of Satan, but wants us to be God’s children, united with Christ.  Christ always works to free all those created in the image and likeness of God from enslavement to sin so that they can live in the freedom and joy of the children of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Rules or Relationship?

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Some people view Catholicism as a set of rules, or maybe even a particular type of morality or ethics.  They hear the Church rightly say that one ought to do this, or ought not to do that.  They sense, whether from reality or from caricatures in popular culture, that being Catholic is all about going to Mass each Sunday, going to confession, saying the rosary, listening to the pope, not eating meat on Fridays, getting married in a church, not having sex outside of marriage, not contracepting, etc.  And those are all aspects of the way that a Catholic, every Catholic, should be living his or her life. 

    But, as Pope Benedict XVI said, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”  And the encounter that Pope Benedict mentions is not just a meeting, but really a falling in love.  That is why Jesus teaches us today in the Gospel that the greatest commandment is the two-fold love of God and love of neighbor.
    When we love someone, we love not only that person, but the things that he or she loves.  When we truly love someone, our affections change to better match that person’s.  Our life becomes not about us, but about the other.  We see this start to bloom even in adolescence when a boy starts to care more about the things that his crush likes.  I think I have mentioned this before, but that’s how I started listening to country music: a girl I liked listened to country, and I wanted to have something to talk to her about.  But the love of the other fully blossoms in marriage, where one’s life is not one’s own, but is inseparably joined to the other, intertwined at the deepest levels, and the importance of the other eclipses the importance of the self and one’s own desires. 
    God desires that we each have an encounter of love with Him.  God desires not that we simply know about Him (even the demons can do that), but that we love Him, that we give our heart to Him, that He becomes more important to us than we are to ourselves, and that the things He loves become the things we love, which are really what will make us happy, since God, as our Creator, knows exactly what will fulfill our human nature. 
    “‘The whole law and the prophets,’” says Jesus, “‘depend on these two commandments.’”  The phrase, “the whole law and the prophets” means the entirety of Scripture.  All of what God has revealed depend on love of Him and love of neighbor.  Every genuinely Catholic practice–every law, every precept, every commandment–needs to find its base in this two-fold commandment of love, or else it is built on sand.
    This may not always seem obvious.  What, we might ask, does giving up fish on Fridays have to do with love of God or love of neighbor?  Is it because I’m supporting the fish industry, and those who work in it are my neighbor?  Not entirely, though I suppose it is love of neighbor in that sense.  But much more deeply, God has revealed to us that our desires are not always in accord with His will or with the truth.  We want things we shouldn’t.  And in order to help train our wills and our bodies not to go astray, God tells us that we should give up good things to focus on that which is even better: not fish in se, but on growing closer to God through restraining our human desires, even the good ones, so that we can more easily say no to the desires that take us away from God. 
    Or consider going to Mass every Sunday and Holyday.  Can’t I love go through a screen on the TV or the computer?  Can’t I offer worship to God from my couch?  In a word, no; not in the same way.  Is FaceTiming your spouse the same as sitting with her at the table, holding her hand, smelling her perfume, seeing the radiance of her smile in person?  And God not only gives us His presence.  He enters into us through the Eucharist so that we are even physically united to Him.  You cannot have that watching the Mass on TV or via Live Stream.  Each time we stand, or sit, or kneel it is like we are dancing with God, our bodies moving this way and that based upon how the sacred liturgy is progressing.  And our encounter with God culminates in Christ giving Himself to us, giving us today the same sacrifice of some 2,000 years ago on the cross, though doing it not in an unbloody way.  True love of God wouldn’t want to miss out on that for the world.
    Love of neighbor follows from our love of God, because when we love someone we love the ones they love, and God loves all of His children, even the difficult ones.  As we grow in our love with God, we cannot help but love our neighbor.  And if we are not growing in love of neighbor, then it’s a good chance that we’re not really growing in our love of God.  It is as St. John says in his first epistle: “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  Any authentic growth in holiness means that we are growing in love of our neighbor.
    Yes, Catholicism has a lot of things that we do or don’t do.  Yes, it has its own morality.  But it’s not just dos and don’ts.  It’s not just a moral system.  Catholicism is a love story between the individual and God, and therefore also between the individual and God and those whom God loves.  If you name a teaching or a moral precept of Catholicism, it will find its way back to love of God and love of neighbor.  “‘The whole law and the prophets,’” and the whole exercise of our faith, “‘depend on these two commandments.’” 

Too Old for Silly Stuff

Solemnity of St. Matthew
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  Last weekend in Fort Wayne I had a chance to be with my fellow Knights and Dames of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.  We had excellent talks on the Eucharist, on the worsening conditions for Christians just trying to survive in the land where our Lord lived, died, and rose again, and on the work of the Order.  But another benefit is catching up with people that, generally speaking, I only see once a year at these Investiture Weekends.
    During drinks with one such person, he was talking about a men’s gathering he recently started attending in his parish.  If I remember the details correctly, it’s on a Saturday morning beginning at 7:30 a.m., with confessions, then Mass, then a formation talk and socializing.  This friend of mine asked one of the men what drew him to give up a Saturday morning and focus on his faith.  The man, I believe in his mid-50s, said something to the effect of: I’m too old to put up with silly stuff anymore.  I want to take my faith seriously, and I want to be fed with solid food, not with the fluff upon which many parishes so often focus.  
    I thought of that conversation as I prepared to compose this homily for our parish patron, St. Matthew.  His feast was this past Thursday, but so that we might celebrate it as a parish, I transferred it to the Sunday, as Bishop Boyea has allowed me to do in the past.  

    I don’t know how old St. Matthew was when he received the call to follow our Lord (many of our images in this church depict him as an older man), but perhaps, sitting at that tax collector’s booth, as our Lord invited him to become an Apostle, St. Matthew had that same sentiment: I’m too old for all this useless focus on cheating others to make a living, not practicing my faith, but supporting pagan oppressors.  St. Matthew must have noticed that something about our Lord was different, and that following Him would be a life worth living.
    Following Christ for St. Matthew started with a banquet in his home.  Not a bad commencement to the apostolic life.  Maybe think of it like an ordination reception.  But after that it got real, real quick.  The Apostles lived by donations from others, our Lord was not always welcome, especially by the Pharisees and scribes, and He even prophesied His own Passion and Death, in the most horrible way possible.  Even after the Ascension, and after writing the Gospel which bears his name, St. Matthew died as a martyr, by the axe, as we see in the apse above.  So life wasn’t easy.  But it was a life worth living, and worthy of being celebrated for some 2,000 years.
    As Catholics, no matter what our age, are we doing our best to live with that same drive, with that same desire to make a difference, and not just exist in the “fluff”?  Are we serious about our faith life?  How easy to just float upon the river of life like we’re in a tube, not always knowing where the current takes us.  In fact, if we float in the river of the world, we know it’s not taking us to Christ, as our world is not ordered to Christ; it’s ordered to pleasure at all costs, to numbness, to whatever comes easiest.  The call of Christ is to take up our cross daily, to feeling the great joy of serving God and following His will, as well as the sadness of giving up what feels good but leads to destruction and damnation, to fixing our eyes ahead of us as we plow, and not looking back to count the costs.  
    It is easy to preach “God loves you.”  It is a true message.  God loves you more than you could ever imagine.  But love calls for love in return.  The greatest displeasure to one who loves is not to have that love returned.  Think back (or currently) to the pain of high school when someone you crushed on didn’t like you back.  Or imagine giving your all to a spouse who does not return that all back to you.  God loves you is only half the message; do you love God?  Can anybody tell you love God?  
    As we celebrate our parish patron, I would like us to commit or recommit ourselves to being serious about our faith life.  Not just professing with our lips that we are Catholic, but living a life that demonstrates that faith.  I’m not asking you to be perfect, as I will tell you that I am not.  But I am asking you, and I will join in with you, to trying to live that heroic life, like St. Matthew, that means something, that echoes through the millennia as a witness that others can follow.  
    What does it mean to be serious about our faith?  I can’t give you an extensive list here, but I do have some ideas that can help.  One: at least make it to Sunday and Holyday Masses, but attend other Masses if you can.  Our worship of God is one of the most important things that we can do.  Not just when it’s convenient; not when it’s easy; but even when it takes some sacrifice.  Two: commit to confessing your sins at least once per month, or more frequently, especially if you are aware of grave or mortal sins.  If you’re struggling to think of sins, find a better examination of conscience to help you out.  Three: choose to pray each day: as a couple and/or family.  Pray for at least 10 minutes.  It can be formal prayers like the Holy Rosary; it can be conversational prayer and prayer of petition.  And leave some time to listen to God in the silence.  Four: when possible, abstain from meat every Friday.  If you can’t, for health reasons or because you’re spending time with people who are not Catholic, then create some other penance to do on that Friday.  But try to deny yourself something each Friday and unite it to the cross of Christ.  Five: read a book about the faith.  Maybe it’s just a few pages each day; maybe only one page each day.  But deepen your faith.  Attend a Bible study or a faith-sharing group.  We offer numerous options here at St. Matthew.      There are, as I said, many other important ways to take the faith seriously.  We are called to serve the poor, to welcome strangers, to instruct the ignorant, and the other Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.  But choose today to be a serious Catholic: not serious in the sense that you never smile, but serious in the sense that you are purposeful in living as a Catholic, not just floating by, hoping that you’re floating towards God.  No matter how old you are, we are always too old for fluff that doesn’t strengthen us to follow Christ.  We are never promised tomorrow.  Live each day, like St. Matthew, focused on following with all of who we are our God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Revenge

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When I was (I think) in first grade, there were these fifth graders at my parochial school who liked to pick on me.  They weren’t horrible, but they would sometimes just grab on to my arms, which I didn’t like.  One time they were holding my arms on the playground, and I could feel the frustration welling up inside of me, wanting to break free of their grasp, but not having the physical strength to wrest myself away from them, so I did what I could: I bit one of their arms.  They let go, and I was free; at least until a teacher found out and I had to go to the principal’s office, and eventually write an apology letter to them.
    Revenge is a primal urge that we all can have.  We experience some sort of injustice, no matter how big or small, and we want to make it right on our own terms.  The sense that something is not right and should be addressed, which leads to the emotion we call anger, is a sign that we recognize good and evil.  If we didn’t want wrong things to be righted, that would not be a good sign of the state of our soul.
    The problem is that our view of what is truly just is not always accurate, since it is limited by our restricted view of reality (as compared to God’s omniscient view of reality), and our passions for justice often goes beyond what is truly just.  When we respond to someone who has done us wrong, we tend to give them a little more than they gave us, just to make sure that they know not to mess with us again.  It’s like kids in the back of a car, where one looks at the other in a funny way, so then the other pokes the first with a finger, and then the first hits the other with a hand, and it just keeps escalating (until mom or dad says, “If I have to pull this car over…” and metes out their best justice to get them both to stop). 
    Which is why St. Peter and our Lord both instruct us this weekend not to give into revenge.  St. Peter tells us not to render evil for evil, but a blessing instead.  And Christ tells us that the true life of God to which He calls us does not suffice not to kill someone, but to stop that anger in the heart, which is where all action begins.  Murder, which the commandment forbids, is the end result of seeking to administer justice on our own terms, which often, as I said, goes beyond true justice.

St. Paul the Apostle

    St. Paul, quoting Leviticus and Deuteronomy, reminds us that vengeance belongs to the Lord.  So our desire to exact punishment on those who have done us wrong is also a form of pride, a desire to supplant God and put ourselves in His place.  St. James takes up a similar theme in his epistle when he writes, “There is one…judge who is able to save or to destroy.  Who then are you to judge your neighbor?”  When we try to take revenge, we are trying to take the place of God, falling to the temptation that the enemy gave to Eve in the garden, when he enticed her to evil by suggesting that eating the fruit would make her like God.
    But if we truly wish to be like God, then we should seek to reconcile whenever possible.  Yes, God is the judge of the world, and He will judge justly.  But He is also merciful, because in Him justice and mercy have embraced.  He is patient with us sinners, giving us so many opportunities to turn away from our sins and repent, so that we can have union with Him.  That is why our Lord not only teaches us that we should seek to root out anger in our hearts so that we don’t turn to revenge, but also encourages us to make sure that we reconcile before we offer our sacrifice to God in the Mass.  How can we be in communion with others through Holy Communion if we are at the same time seeking their downfall? 
    Instead, God wants us to bear others faults patiently, as he bears ours.  This doesn’t mean that we can’t correct and call others to right behavior, but no matter what, not to carry a grudge if others have done us wrong and have not repented.  A great way to accomplish this is through the Sacrament of Penance, which we often call confession.  Through the sacrament, we are not only reconciled with God, but we are also reconciled with the the community, both of whom the priest represents.  We turn to our brother and ask his mercy for our offenses, and then God invites us to be merciful with others, just as He has been merciful with us.  And having been reconciled with God and with the community, our gift is then acceptable to God, because it is truly offered in communion with Him and with the rest of the Church. 
    A good examination of conscience today will ask ourselves: against whom do I seek revenge?  What harm have others done to me that I have not forgiven?  What anger do I bear in my heart towards my neighbor?  What might they bear against me?  If I truly wish to be like God, then I should offer opportunities to show mercy, just as we have been shown mercy by our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Cleaning Up and Encountering the Mercy of the Beloved (Precept #2)

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I’m sure most of us can relate to this scenario at one point in our life: mom and/or dad tell you that company is coming over, and that you need to clean up the common areas of the house (like the bathrooms, kitchen, living room, etc.).  As a kid, the thought came to my mind (and I may have vocalized this once or twice), “Why do we have to clean up?  If they’re such good friends, don’t they want to see the way we usually live, rather than faking it by pretending that our house is always this clean?”  I’m sure many of you have thought that as a child, or have heard a similar line of questioning from the kids who don’t want to clean up.

    The Precept of the Church that I’m focusing on this week is the second: “You shall confess your sins at least once a year.”  In my mind, anyway, this connects back to the Gospel we heard today, about our Lord cleansing the temple.  Christ wants the temple to be a place of prayer, though it had been made into a marketplace, or, to use His words, “‘a den of thieves.’”  But of course, beyond the obvious meaning of the building, we, too, as St. Paul says, are temples of the Holy Spirit, and Christ wants us to be people of prayer, rather than sullied by our sins.
    Confession allows us to “clean the temple,” as it were, by having Christ cleanse us of our sins and restore us to the state of our soul at holy baptism.  It invites Christ in so that all those fallen aspects of our life can be cast out. 
    But, we may say, doesn’t God already know who I am, and how I struggle?  Doesn’t He know my sins?  Why should I go, especially if, despite my best intentions, I may fall back into the same sins over and over again? 
    We clean our temples for God (and our homes for guests) because we want to give our best.  We clean our house for guests because we value their presence, and show that value by cleaning up the areas in which they might be (despite how horrible it is to mop, clean windows, vacuum, etc.).  We clean our temple for God because we value His presence, and want Him to feel “at home” in our souls.  Sin, especially serious sin, is contrary to who God is.  So we clean up so that He knows how much we want Him to be with us, and that we want Him to pray with us in our souls.  But, in this case, it’s really God who does the cleaning, as we cannot eliminate our sins by ourselves. 
    But even deeper than the metaphor of cleaning, confession is a chance to come into the presence of God, and experience His love.  God hates sin, but He does not hate us.  He does not want anything to stand between us and Him, and so He gives us the remedy for the sickness which we take upon ourselves when we choose to disobey Him.  Confession allows God’s mercy to wash over us and heal all those wounds that we inflicted. 
    How can that happen?  First, we must be sorry.  What the Church requires is that we have at least imperfect contrition, or as it was called in seminary, attrition.  This is the knowledge that we have messed up, and the sorrow for doing so, based upon the fact that we know it’s wrong, or we know we shouldn’t want to do the sin, or that we don’t want to go to Hell.  The fact that all that is required is attrition is itself a mercy, as what we should have is perfect contrition, or the sorrow for having sinned, not because of “the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.” 
    Or, to put it in the context of a marital covenant (which God does all the time in the Scriptures), when we sin we cheat on God; we are unfaithful to Him.  Attrition is the sorrow we have because we got caught in adultery.  Contrition, perfect contrition, is the sorrow we have because we know, or have some sense, of how much it hurt our spouse and the damage it did to the marital relationship. 
    Beyond being sorry, even imperfectly, we also need to have a firm amendment not to sin again.  We might wonder why we should go, if we think we’re going to sin again in this particular way.  I often put it this way: we hope that we won’t sin in that way again, even if that seems unlikely.  But, if we would be open to the grace God gives, then we would not want to sin again in that way.  And we should have confidence in God’s mercy, that it can at least start us down the path of not falling into that sin again. 
    We also need to confess actual sins.  The Church requires that we confess all mortal sins in number and kind.  This doesn’t mean you have to give the priest all the gory details.  But it does mean that you are honest.  God is our Divine Physician, but He does’t force His medicine upon us, so if we don’t tell Him the pain, He will not force His healing on us.  So we confess every mortal sin, which is a sin that is gravely wrong, we know it’s bad, but we freely choose it anyway.  Grave sins are the most serious: taking God’s name in vain; skipping Mass without a legitimate reason; killing an innocent person; committing adultery, fornication, or self-gratification; stealing something of significance (which may vary with age and financial means); lying in a serious case (like to a police office or in court), pornography and/or staring at a person for an extended time with lust; etc.  We also have to know that the sin is wrong, and then we have to freely choose to do it.  Addictions can sometimes lessen the freedom that we have to do an action. 
    And, no matter how strongly we do a venial sin, it doesn’t change it to a mortal sin.  We still shouldn’t sin venially, but if the sin is not serious matter, it cannot be mortal.  We do not need to confess all venial sins, as those are forgiven in entirety (even those we forgot) through confession, and through reception of the Eucharist (as long as we don’t have other mortal sins on our soul).  Venial sins which we frequently commit are great types of sins to confess.
    Lastly, we need to intend to do the penance.  Sometimes penances are more than simply prayers or reading Scripture, so you’ll need to do them when you get home.  But as long as you intend to do the penance, you can still receive Holy Communion after confession.  And, if the penance is not something you can do at all, let the priest know when he gives you the penance, rather than having to confess later that you did not do your penance. 
    The Church commands us to confess once per year.  But why not more?  If confession is an encounter with our loving God, who heals us of our wounds, then once per year is the bare minimum, and we should seek to experience that special love of God whenever we need to, and even if we don’t need to, when it’s available.  We’re not to be scrupulous, to think that every sin separates us from sanctifying grace–the grace that allows us to be in right relationship with God.  But we also don’t want to treat confession as something we do only when we need to because we’re in mortal sin. 
    Confession is a cleansing of the temple of our souls, but more than that, it’s a chance to receive the mercy of God.  Don’t miss out on a chance for God to show you this special kind of love.  Regularly ask for that merciful encounter with our compassionate God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Like Fr. Mulcahy

 Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of my favorite TV characters, for reasons you might guess, is Fr. Francis Mulcahy from the TV show “M*A*S*H.”  As the seasons progress, they really develop his character into a leading role in the show.  He often is known for his dry humor and his witty one-liners.  But one of my favorite episodes with Fr. Mulcahy is when a soldier who is AWOL (absent without leave) decides to claim sanctuary in the mess tent, which is serving as the chapel.  Though other, higher-ranking officers, the Judge Advocate General corps (think military lawyers), and even the head chaplain of the Army all say that the protection of sanctuary does not apply, Fr. Mulcahy is very serious about providing the soldier with the protection that is needed.  However, when the soldier, who is pressed in by the MPs (military police), grabs a rifle, Fr. Mulcahy is just as serious about rebuking the soldier for claiming sanctuary on the one hand, but then taking up arms in the same “house of God” on the other hand when things don’t seem to be going his way.  He bats away the rifle, almost on instinct, while scolding the soldier.  And then, when the soldier is visibly upset and penitent, Fr. Mulcahy is just as serious about comforting the soldier and getting him the help he needs.
    As Catholics, we could all learn a thing or two from Fr. Mulcahy; not just me as a priest and a chaplain for the State Police.  And I want to focus on his seriousness, because there are two things we should be very serious about: our sins and their effects on the one hand, and God’s mercy on the other.  
    St. Paul reminds us today that there are certain actions which are inconsistent with going to heaven: “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.”  Some of the English words don’t need an explanation.  But for a word like immorality, in Greek porneia, we could say any type of sexual activity outside of marriage (and this Greek word is the word from which we get the word pornography); impurity is also broad and has a sense of any physical act of lust; licentiousness has the meaning of an unbridled lust or excess of sexuality (no restrictions on sexual activity); the words that underline idolatry (false worship) and sorcery are fairly clear.  
    The word hatred is connected to the Greek word for enemy.  Rivalry can also mean strife or fighting.  Jealousy is pretty obvious, but fury could also be translated as rage or intense anger.  Acts of selfishness can also mean selfish ambition or selfish rivalry, and dissensions is about dividing.  Factions is connected to the word for heresies, which means a separate (and false) teaching.  The definitions for the rest seem fairly obvious.  
    In any case, St. Paul is clear that these types of behavior are not only opposed to the Holy Spirit, but “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”  That’s very serious!  And so should we take them: seriously; we might even say “gravely.”  Some on that list are not surprising as keeping one out of heaven: sexual immorality and the like, outbursts of fury, drinking bouts, etc.  But others, perhaps like jealousy, envy, and even dissensions might not seem as serious.  And yet, if we take the Word of God as given to us by St. Paul seriously, then even those things can keep one from heaven.  
    And yet, we also have to be as serious about the mercy of God, not undermining the evil that can keep us out of heaven, but also not giving more power to sin than to God’s grace.  The Galatians included probably many people who, as pagans, had lived in such a way as St. Paul describes as contrary to the Spirit and part of the works of the flesh.  But they had turned away from such things, at least for a while.  The fact that St. Paul is writing to remind them about not living according to the flesh leads one to believe that at least some had fallen back into old habits, and they needed a little encouragement and admonition about living according to the Spirit.  God’s mercy is more powerful than our sins, and can restore us to a right relationship with Him, no matter what we have done.  
    But, we want to respond to the grace of God, which is the source of any good we do, and not try to serve two masters.  Our Lord talks about the choice between God and mammon, which means money or wealth.  But the choice of which master we serve can also go for any of the sins which St. Paul lists out.  If the master we serve is not God, then it makes sense why we would not go to heaven, because we would not want to go there.  If we prefer to indulge our illicit sexual appetites, or our passions, or even our own self-importance or the superiority of our intellectual positions, then we have made no room for God.  We should take seriously whom we wish to serve, because the small choices we make daily can determine our eternity.
    At the same time, we should take seriously God’s mercy, and his patience with us if we are trying to repent.  In times such as these, while it doesn’t excuse sexual immorality of any kind, sex is ubiquitous and it is very easy to get snared, sometimes even unwittingly at a young age.  Are we turning to the mercy of God, not presuming on it, but truly seeking to do better, doing our best to cooperate with God’s grace, and returning, sometimes even time-after-time, to the confessional?  Going to confession is our part in asking the Lord to re-establish Himself as the Master of our life.  That is why exorcists say that the best way to avoid demonic oppression or possession is to make regular confessions.  And we have a good amount of times here and at St. Pius X where the Sacrament of Penance is available.  As those times consistently fill-up, I can look to add other times.  
    But do not despair of God’s mercy, or take it lightly.  God desires our salvation, and, as as Jesus told us, He will seek us out like a lost lamb or a lost coin.  “God already proved His love for us in that, while we were still sinners, he died for us,” St. Paul writes.  There is no place God will not go to rescue us from our sinfulness.  So take courage and ask for God’s mercy.  Ask for God’s help to put to death the works of the flesh (which is impossible to do by ourselves) and to live, guided by the Holy Spirit.  When we call upon God in true sorrow for our sins, moved by God’s grace, we can have confidence that God will help us to live by the Spirit, who with the Father and the Son is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.