New Catholics, New Life

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Today we have the great joy of celebrating the baptism, confirmation, and first Holy Communion of Mia who has been preparing over these past months, growing in her desire to follow Jesus and make the pattern of His life her own.  We also have the great joy of welcoming Kelcie into full communion with the Catholic Church, and then celebrating her confirmation and first Holy Communion.  The prayer of St. Paul from our second reading we make our own for you both: may you excel in faith, knowledge, and love.
    Christ is doing for you both, each in your own way, what he did with the daughter of Jairus: raising you up to new life.  From today on, you begin a life that is meant to be a witness of the emptying of Christ (we use the church word kenosis) for our sake.  There are so many people at the point of death: not physical death so much, but spiritual death, but God does not want it to be that way, as He said through the sacred author of the Book of Wisdom.  God wants us to be with Him for eternity, and He has give us the Church to help us get there.  Really, the Church is a map to eternal life and happiness, helping us know which way we should go, and which ways lead to danger and move away from our final desired destination.  
    When I use the word Church, you may think of the official teaching office which promulgates and clarifies Church teachings.  And there is truth in that.  But you, as our soon-to-be newest members of the Church, also have that mission: to know which way we should go, and to know which ways lead away from salvation.  You might think that is a bit much for someone who is just joining the Church today, but guiding humanity to God is the mission of each baptized and confirmed person, no matter how long he or she has been Catholic.  We all help others to know what to do and what not to do.  Sometimes we know this because we have studied the faith and learned in our head the path to salvation.  Sometime we know this because we have wondered away from God and felt the negative consequences that come with opposition to God, and so we can let others know that we’ve been there, done that, and how it hasn’t worked out for us.  
    You also inspire us today by your choice to become Catholic.  Many here were born into the faith, so to speak.  As infants, our parents had us baptized, and so we take for granted sometimes the profundity of what it means to be Catholic.  But, as we see you, both adults, make a free and purposeful choice, we can be stronger in our convictions that our life in the Catholic Church makes sense, and is something others have chosen who didn’t grow up surrounded by Catholicism in their family.  So it’s not just others outside whom you will impact.  We feel the impact of your faith even now, inside the four walls of this church building.
    In confirmation, you will receive the Holy Spirit again, so that you can have the courage to proclaim the Gospel by word and by deed.  You will be filled with power from on high to live a life that reflects what you believe, and help people understand how the answer to the deepest questions of their hearts is connected to Christ and faith in Him.  

    But, let us now return to the daughter of Jairus.  We also see in this passage something that many pass over, but is also important: after Jairus’s daughter comes back to life through the prayer of Jesus, He tells them to give her something to eat.  New life has to be strengthened by food.  And so, the culmination of her new life on earth is strengthened by food to sustain her newly-animated body.  So your new life that you are given, either through baptism, Mia, or by your profession of faith, Kelcie, which joins you to us in fulness, will be strengthened by the heavenly food, the Bread of Angels, the Eucharist.  
    For children, the order has been changed, but the ancient order of the sacraments of initiation was baptism, confirmation, then the Eucharist, an order restored for the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults.  The Eucharist was the culmination of becoming Catholic and growing in the faith because it is the closest one can come to Christ.  Your entrance into the Catholic Church again confirms that all of our life as Catholics leads to the Eucharist, and then flows from the strength we receive from the Body and Blood of Christ.  
    So today we rejoice with you; we thank God for you; we thank you for your “yes” to Him.  May you remain in Christ’s Holy Church while on earth, and so enter the heavenly Jerusalem, the Church in triumph in heaven, which is the goal of your baptism, confirmation, and reception of the Eucharist today!
   

Kenosis

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

    Usually for Palm Sunday, I contrast the beginning of Mass when we entered, waving palms, singing “Hosanna,” joyful in acclamation, and me wearing my very festive red cope, to the somberness that we get to by the Gospel, hearing the Passion narrative, and no longer singing “Hosanna,” but shouting, “Let him be crucified!”  But this year, there’s no waving palms, no singing “Hosanna” by the parish assembled here, no red cope.  #ThanksCOVID19.
    But it has pushed me to focus more on our second reading, from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  Bishop Barron notes that scholars hypothesize that this was an adaptation of ancient hymn or prayer that St. Paul was repeating to the people of Philippi, perhaps from only a decade or so after Jesus died and rose from the dead, as this letter was written by St. Paul sometime in the 50s.  And this part talks about Jesus emptying Himself, which is the crux (if you’ll pardon the pun) of this passage.  The beginning (“Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.”) leads up to Jesus emptying Himself, and the next verses describe the example (the how) and the consequences (the so what?) of Jesus emptying Himself (“taking the form of a slave…becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross…God greatly exalted him…every knee should bend…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”).  We talk about this emptying in theology by using the Greek word 𝜅𝜀𝜈𝜊𝜎𝜄𝜍. 
    Isn’t that what we heard about in the Gospel today?  Jesus emptied Himself through His Passion and Death on the Cross.  In modern phrases, we might say, Jesus “gave His all” or “gave 100%.”  But this was precisely a part of who Jesus is.  As the second Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus, from all eternity, poured Himself out to God the Father, who, likewise, from all eternity, poured Himself out to God the Son, in a bond of love so strong that it eternally breathed forth the Holy Spirit.  And it’s who Jesus still is today; His emptying didn’t stop at the cross.  Jesus continues, for all eternity, to pour Himself out to the Father in that communion of love that I just mentioned.  
    We joke about people hoarding toilet paper, or panic buying in general, but hasn’t COVID-19 demonstrated the radical opposite focus of our lives?  Hasn’t it revealed a deep darkness in our world?  We, as members of the mystical Body of Christ, are not made for selfishness, for taking as much as we can, but for emptying ourselves for the other, for selflessness.  And yet, the selfishness of many parts of our culture are on display now more than ever.  When times get tough, the tough tend to only think of themselves.  It’s one thing to prepare in case a family is stuck at home for weeks on end.  It’s altogether different when those same supplies will be available week after week at the grocery store, to which we all can have access. 
    We are made for giving, even to the end.  And yet how many times are we afraid of giving ourselves?  Like any other virtue, selflessness has two extremes: too little, and too much.  We do have to take care of ourselves.  But more often than not, we’re not selfless enough, because we’re afraid that if we give ourselves away, we will lose something.  Maybe that goes for our marriage or family life.  Maybe that goes for work.  Maybe that goes for our relationship with Jesus.  We are afraid that if we give Jesus everything, then He might take something away that we like.  If we empty ourselves for Him, will He really empty Himself for us?
    Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI spoke about this to the youth in particular, but it applies to us all.  He said:

Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? . . . No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return.
       
        During this Holy Week, following the example of Jesus, who emptied Himself for our salvation, who gave all of who He was, not only to God the Father, but “for us men and for our salvation” (as we say in the Nicene Creed), let’s also empty ourselves for God and for our fellow human beings.  What’s the result for us?  The same as it is for Jesus: when we empty ourselves, God greatly exalts us in Christ, and makes us sharers in the glory that is to come.  While we usually have on our lips “Hosanna” today, may this year’s struggles remind us today, this week, and every day, to also have another word in our minds and hearts, and on our lips: kenosis; emptying. 

Running on Empty

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

While all generalities fall short in describing the reality of the world, we can say with decent accuracy, that there are two types of people in this world: those who fill up for gas when they’re around half a tank, and those who try to get that needle as close to E as possible before getting gas.  Being the cautious guy that I am, I usually try to fill up my Malibu when I have about half of a tank left.  But, when it comes to our life in Christ, we should mimic those who, more often than not, are running on empty.

There are so many messages that God wants to communicate to us as we enter Holy Week this year.  There are so many themes that I could preach on as we begin our pilgrimage from the triumphant entry, into which we entered at the beginning of Mass, to the Last Supper, which we enter into on Holy Thursday evening, to Calvary, in which we participate on Good Friday at the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, to the empty tomb, proclaimed to the world at Easter.  But today, I want us to examine how God emptied Himself.

St. Paul uses that exact phrase, “emptied himself,” in our second reading today.  In this beautiful hymn which focuses on the divine kenosis, which is a Greek word which means “emptying,” St. Paul reminds us that, “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,…[and] humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Jesus, the full revelation of the God the Father, runs on empty as He saves the world.  He leaves nothing in the tank, but abandons Himself fully to the will of God.  And in this emptying, in this kenosis, God the Father exalts Jesus and glorifies Him.  

If we were to read the chapters of the Gospels that cover the time of the triumphant entry into Jerusalem through the crucifixion, we would not find Jesus holding anything back.  He accepts the praise of the people, who acclaim Him as the Messiah; He cleanses the temple; he fights back every verbal tussle with the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees; He washes His apostles’ feet as He calls them to serve; He gives His very Body and Blood for His Apostles at the Last Supper; He gives so much of His strength that He begins to sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane; He takes the mockery and cruelty of the trials before the chief priest and Pontius Pilate; He gives His last breath on the cross, and even the blood and water that filled His sacred Body are shed for our salvation.  And this is why God exalts Jesus: because He holds nothing back for the good of His people.  And this is why God will exalt us: if we hold nothing back from God.

This is one of the many paradoxes of Christianity.  It is only by giving ourselves away that we can gain what is most lasting.  It is only by emptying ourselves that we can truly be full.  Vatican II, in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, entitled Gaudium et spes, says it this way: “…man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”

In this life we can be scared of losing; we can be afraid of having nothing left, of running out of gas.  When we do it for God, however, we do not lose anything, but gain everything.  This week I invite you to participate in Jesus’ kenosis, His emptying.  After a long, hard day of work on Thursday, give God even the fatigue by participating in the Mass of the Last Supper; empty yourself, maybe even of some of your paid time off, by participating in the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion; empty yourself even of the time that you would normally sleep and participate in the new life of the Resurrection, the new life that will be given to the newly baptized at the Easter Vigil.  The Sacred Three Days, the Sacred Triduum, is our participation in Jesus’ kenosis, so that we can understand and live in our lives the paradoxical truth of Christianity that we learn from Christ: it is only by emptying ourselves that we can truly be full; it is only by giving ourselves away to God that we can find who we are truly meant to be.

How Can I Be More like Jesus?

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            How can I be more like Jesus?  It’s a pretty straightforward question, and one that hopefully we are asking ourselves at least each week, if not every day.  How can I be more like Jesus?  When we talk about becoming more like Christ, we are talking about acting more like Christ in the way we respond to others.  To paraphrase St. Paul from our second reading, we are talking about having the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

            The sacred authors present two main virtues that we can work on, with the necessary help of God’s grace, that will make us more like Christ: humility and obedience.  Humility is a tough word.  Many of us tend to think of humility as denying gifts that we have, or at least playing them down.  But this is not the humility of Jesus, and it is not truly humility.  Humility is the recognition of the truth before God.  Of course, before God we have to admit our total poverty.  By that I mean that everything we have is a gift from God, and if it weren’t for God, we would have nothing, not even existence.  But we also stand before the Father as beloved sons and daughters in the Son of God.  We are the only creation on earth that God willed for its own sake as the Vatican II document Gaudium et spes states.  No plants, no animals, not even pets, exist in such a way. 

            But what we see in Jesus is that humility is the gift of the entire self to the Father and trusting in Him to return that back in full.  In Greek the word is kenosis, or self-emptying.  We see it in Jesus as the one who, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness…becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Jesus does not deny that He is divine.  In fact, He asserts it all throughout Scripture, which is why Jesus was condemned for blasphemy.  But he does not cling to His divinity.  He gives all that He is to the Father, who does not abandon Him to the power of death, but “greatly [exalts] him and [bestows] on him the name above every name.” 

            In the Gospel passage today, Jesus extols the virtue of obedience.  Obedience is a virtue that many consider a vice today.  We want control.  We want to be independent.  We want to be self-governing.  We want to be our own masters and have no one over us.  Perhaps we even come close (though we would never admit it) to the words that Milton puts on Satan’s lips: “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven,” so keen are we to be in charge.  But Christ sets before us obedience as virtue.  He doesn’t eliminate our ability to freely choose, but puts forward that the right thing to do is to use that freedom to obey our Father, who calls us to work in His vineyard.  Even if we don’t respond positively at first, like the first son, who at first is disobedient, we can still use our free will to choose obedience.  And Jesus tells us that obedience is one of the ways that we prepare ourselves for heaven, where this is no democracy, no voting on which values to promote or which goods to pursue, but where we are all subjects of God who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  In fact, if we are being humble, then part of pouring ourselves out to the Father is even pouring out our free will so that it can be used by the Father for good.  Obedience is almost a corollary of humility.

            How do we see humility and obedience in action?  We see kenosis in a unique way in marriage, though everyone is called to self-emptying.  We see kenosis in the love that a man pours out on his wife, that the wife freely receives, and that the wife pours out on her husband, and that he fully receives.  We see kenosis in the many sacrifices that a married couple makes for each other: from something as simple as putting the toilet seat down, to the great sacrifice of giving up one’s physical life in order to protect the spouse, and many ways in-between those two extremes.  We see kenosis in the many ways that a man and woman have to give up their own preferences, their own desires, for the good of the couple, who are no longer two, but one flesh.  We see it in the many sacrifices parents make for their children, the fruit of that one-flesh union.    And even outside of marriage in the many ways that people sacrifice to help family members, friends, neighbors, and sometimes even strangers.  And while we might be afraid to pour ourselves out for another, we see that Jesus, who poured our even His very life for His spouse, the Church, lost nothing of who He is, but gained everything because of the great trust He had in His Father.

            Obedience in a Catholic context is often associated with priests and religious because priests make a promise of obedience to the bishop, and religious make vows of obedience to their superiors.  But often, obedience has the connotation of a tyrant lording it over another.  In my experience of obedience, that is farthest from the truth.  Obedience is communicating between the superior and the inferior.  I tell the bishop what I believe to be important: what gifts God has given me, where I would like to serve, what responsibilities I would enjoy having.  He listens to those and takes them to heart.  And then he decides, for example, where I am assigned, based upon his understanding of the needs of the parish and the diocese.  And in trust and filial love, I respond with the free and full assent of my will.  That obedience gave me that great blessing of being sent here to serve.  That relationship between a priest and his bishop is also meant to inform the relationship between each layperson and God, and the legitimate authorities that God has established in His Church.  Communication is part of obedience; it is part of kenosis, the self-emptying, from which obedience comes.  But once the time to give our own thoughts has passed, it means freely choosing the will of God over our own wills, using our freedom to obey.  And in that obedience, we find true happiness, because God has created us for obedience.

            It is difficult to be like Christ.  It is difficult, at times, to be humble, to pour ourselves out totally to the Father, abandoning ourselves entirely to His will.  It is difficult, at times, to be obedient, to use our God-given freedom to freely subject ourselves to the will of God.  Our temptation, the result of original sin, is always to cling for dear life to our own will and our own good.  But what we see in Christ is that true happiness and glorification are the fruits of true humility and obedience.  And the more we become like Christ, humble and obedient, the more God sees in us the image of His Beloved Son.  Pour yourself out to God; you will not be lacking anything but will instead gain everything.  Freely choose to serve God; your freedom will not be limited, but will instead flower into the freedom to choose what is good and right.