Patience is a Virtue

Fourth Sunday of Advent

One of the most frequently confessed sins, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a male or female, child or adult, is impatience.  Perhaps it’s more prevalent now because technology has made it so that we get most things at the click of a mouse in a few seconds.  If we want to know the weather, we open up our weather app or click on our favorite weather page.  If we want to know what’s happening in the US or around the world, we go to CNN or Fox News or whatever news app or webpage or television station that we prefer.  We are the drive-thru culture that wants everything our way and we want it immediately.  We’re can be a lot like Veruca Salt from the original “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” with Gene Wilder constantly saying, or at least thinking, “I want it now!”  And certainly I’m not immune to these temptations to be impatient.

But God, more often than not, operates with patience.  Take for example that our first reading from Micah, where it was prophesied that the ruler of Israel would come from Bethlehem, was written 800 years before the birth of Christ.  If you think you waited a long time for your Big Mac, imagine waiting 800 years!  

From before time began, God the Father knew that He would send His Only Begotten Son, Jesus, to take flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  But He waited for the perfect time.  We hear that on Christmas Eve at our Mass at night (7:30 p.m.) in the proclamation of the Nativity of  Our Lord Jesus Christ from the Roman Martyrology: “when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world,…when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood,…in the twenty-first century since Abraham…came out of Ur of the Chaldees; in the thirteenth century since the People of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt; around the thousandth year since David was anointed King.”  So much waiting!!  

In the face of such waiting we can give up hope.  We can forget that God will fulfill His promises.  The Blessed Virgin Mary is praised in our Gospel today by St. Elizabeth because she “believed that what was spoken…by the Lord would be fulfilled.”  Mary was patient herself, but Mary as the type and image of the Church was patient as she waited through all of those millennia and centuries for Her Messiah to come.  

We, too, are invited to wait for to fulfillment of all time, when Christ will return.  Perhaps we have lost hope that it will happen.  Perhaps we don’t even think that it will happen.  But, at the right time, in God’s time, everything will be subjected to Christ, and God’s Kingdom will be all in all.  But it cannot be forced; it cannot be rushed.  One of the popular Advent and Christmas hymns is “Lo! How a Rose ere Blooming.”  Just as with Jesus’ Nativity in the flesh, so with Jesus’ second coming: like a rose, it cannot be forced open.  The seed must die in the ground first, and then ever-so-slowly rise up through the ground; and then the bud must come forth from the stem, and then the bud start to blossom.  You cannot force a rose to bloom without ruining the rose.  So we cannot rush God to fulfill His promises.  We simply wait in joyful hope that what was spoken to us by the Lord will be fulfilled.  

Patience is a virtue.  I’m sure we’ve all heard that from our mother, grandmother, religious sister, or someone.  A virtue is an acquired habit that has become second nature.  The only way we acquire that habit of virtue is by doing acts of patience.  In these last days before Christmas, the temptation will be to practice impatience in trying to finish last-minute shopping; traveling to see friends and family; waiting to open presents; and so many more ways.  May the Holy Spirit fill us with His grace so that we can be like Mary, the perfect image of the Church, who waited patiently for the Messiah to come and God to become man, as we wait for the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus made before He ascended into heaven: that he would return.  The Kingdom of God is not an app nor is it a drive-thru.  To experience its fullness, we must be patient.  Lord, make us patient people.

My Favorite Sacrament

Fourth Sunday of Lent

            When people ask me what my favorite sacrament is, I don’t think they’re generally surprised to hear me say the Eucharist.  Vatican II teaches us that the Eucharist is meant to be the source and summit of Christian life, the beginning of our life in Christ, whence we get the strength to live as disciples, and the goal of the Christian life, that we have intimate communion with God.  For priests even more so, the Eucharist is the key to the priesthood, as the priest acts in the person of Christ the Head, offering himself to the Father represented by the bread and the wine which become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

            I think they are more surprised when I say that there is another sacrament that is tied for first with the Eucharist, and that sacrament is Reconciliation.  But it’s true.  While I was, in some ways, prepared for the joy of celebrating the Mass and bringing about, in an unbloody manner, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross through the Eucharist, I have to say I was not prepared for what a gift celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation would be.

            At this point I have to make a disclaimer: I don’t love to celebrate Reconciliation as a confessor because I get to hear all your dirty little secrets of the things you’ve done wrong.  What I love is the fact that I get to take part in an intimate moment between the penitent and God and get to grant that penitent the forgiveness of their sins in the name of Christ, and bring them back to the road to heaven.  It is an experience of humility (because it takes true humility to tell God, not that we have made a mistake, but that we freely chose to go against His will) and an experience of love.  I treasure the “ministry of reconciliation” as St. Paul says in our second reading, that God has entrusted to me.  I am in awe of the fact that, though I continue to need to confess my sins (being a priest doesn’t mean that I suddenly stop sinning), God has chosen me to grant that forgiveness to His beloved sons and daughters so that they can, once more, be prepared for heaven.

            Our Gospel passage is all too familiar to us today.  We likely hear it every year, at least once.  But it is so powerful, if we let it speak to us!  We can put ourselves in the place of the prodigal son, the son who wastes his inheritance on dissipate living, and then who goes broke, and has to work as a swineherd (one of the worst jobs that a Jew could have), and would love just to eat the pigs’ food.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son who recognizes that he needs to return to the Father, if for no other reason than just to work as a slave so that he can eat.  And we can put ourselves in the place of the son who is embraced by the Father who has run out to meet him.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son, because that is what happens in reconciliation.

            “All men have sinned,” says St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, “and are deprived of the glory of God.”  We all tell God that we know better, that we’d rather control our own lives and do our own thing.  It’s the ancient sin of pride, which leads to so many other sins.  We squander the inheritance of grace that we received in baptism, when we were made sons and daughters in the Son of God.  And when we do that, we squander it quickly, and we find that we are living a trashy life, amidst slops that are meant for the pigs.  But God does not abandon us.  He gives us grace, we use the term prevenient grace, to lead us back to Him, to consider that the “threshold of the house of God” is better than the “tents of the wicked,” as Psalm 84 says.  Even just being close to union is God is better than living with evil.  And so we start on our way back.  But before we can even get out the words of our apology, to try to argue our case for being a slave rather than the heir that we were, the Father embraces us and says to us

“Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.  Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.”

God doesn’t rub in our face the wrong we have done, but celebrates that we have returned to our Father’s house, and that we are back to life in grace.

            There is nothing quite like the experience of welcoming someone back to the love of God in reconciliation.  Often, those who have been away from the Church for some time or those who feel the heavy weight of sin are brought to tears.  I am not ashamed to say that from time to time I am brought to tears as the love of God flows through me and I rejoice in the fact that the penitent was lost and now is found, was dead and is now alive by the grace of God.

            I want to invite each of you today, whether it’s been a week or a lifetime, to come experience this great sacrament of God’s mercy, and to start a habit of making regular confessions.  There’s no sin that can permanently keep you from the love of God, unless you give that sin that power.  God will forgive all sins, if we come to Him in sorrow, sincerely at least wanting to stop.  Whether it’s lying; impatience; stealing; adultery; viewing pornography and the sin that often accompanies it; sex outside of marriage; contracepting; murder; abortion; missing Mass; pride; or whatever other sins we may struggle with, God wants to put a robe of love around you and put the ring that signifies your place in God’s household on your finger.  Maybe it’s only been a few days since you last went to confession.  Maybe it’s been forty years since you last went to confession.  In either case, we priests are glad to give you the assurance of God’s mercy.  We have a great confession schedule between St. Thomas and St. John, and we even have a communal penance service with individual confession & absolution next Sunday, 17 March at 2 p.m. at St. Thomas in case you want to go to a priest from out of town (though recall that we can’t tell anyone else your sins, nor can we treat you any differently based upon your confession).  Don’t stay stuck in the pigs’ slop.  Come back to the Father’s house.  Let God love you and forgive you.  “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”