Why is there Suffering?

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In my five years as a priest, I’ve had a lot of questions, both from children and adults.  The questions kids ask sometimes seem silly, but show real engagement with what the Church teaches: Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?; Where is heaven?  Sometimes they’re come more from movies and TV shows.  Around this time of year with Halloween around the corner I often hear: Have you ever seen an exorcism?; Is it hard to get possessed?  After five years, I’ve heard probably every question asked in one way or another.  And most questions I can answer without any relative problem.  But there’s one question, asked by both kids and adults, that is tough to answer: why do bad things happen to good people?  In essence, the question is: why is there suffering in the world?

It’s not an easy question to answer.  And the answer that people often desire is an answer which will make the pain of suffering go away.  We can talk about different types of suffering: there is natural suffering that comes from the way the world was created, like hurricanes, tornadoes, etc., which is just part of the way that the world continues its natural processes.  We can talk about moral evil, about someone experiencing pain because of another person, that is much harder to answer.  We can look back to the story of the Fall, when humanity in Adam chose to sin and disobey God, and how we are all affected by that choice, but that answer doesn’t really satisfy.

When children have to bury their parent at a young age; when a parent has to bury a child at any age; when a loved-one succumbs to the ravages of alzheimer’s and no longer recognizes anyone; when an employer or manager has to lay off employees simply to keep the company solvent; when you’re the employee that was laid off and you don’t know how you will make ends meet for you and your family; when a parent or parents have to make a decision that upsets children in such a way that the relationship is damaged, but which is in the best interest for the children; those are all experiences of suffering that a lot of theology about Original Sin and fallen humanity doesn’t quite take away the pain.  One of my most difficult moments as a priest was trying to comfort a family after the father, Shaye Ramont, died from multiple fights with cancer at the age of 50, and left behind a widow and 6 children that I knew, the oldest of which was in high school and the youngest of which were twins in elementary school.  At that moment, no theological gymnastics could take away the pain that the Ramont family was experiencing.  All I could do was just hug them, love them, and pray for them.  

So it seems like suffering has no answer.  And that doesn’t sound like very good news.  But our readings, the Word of God, give us the good news today, and, while they don’t answer the question of why bad things happen to good people, they do give us comfort.  The Prophet Isaiah today speaks of a suffering servant, whom the Lord is pleased to crush in infirmity, but who, through suffering, justifies many and bears their guilt.  The suffering servant is Jesus, who gave “his life as an offering for sin.”  While Isaiah looked in the future to prophesy the suffering servant, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews looks back at Jesus, and preaches Him as “a high priest” who is able “to sympathize with our weaknesses, [and] who has been similarly tested in every way, yet without sin.”  Jesus knows us, not just in an etherial sense, but in His humanity Jesus suffered and understood what suffering was.  Jesus had to bury His foster-father, St. Joseph; He saw real agony at the funeral of the only son of a widow; He experienced the death of one of His best friends, Lazarus; He was betrayed and abandoned by His best friends and followers; He was rejected by the very people He came to help; and He experienced the physical pain of the crucifixion, as well as the emotional pain of having to watch His own mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, watch Him die in a most agonizing way.

The good news is that our God, in the person of Jesus, took upon Himself all our suffering, and experienced it throughout His earthly life.  Sometimes the hardest thing about suffering is that we feel alone.  No matter who else has gone through similar circumstances, there is a realization that no one else knows exactly what we’re going through, and that isolation adds to the pain of the already painful situation.  But Jesus does know.  Jesus walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and never abandons us.  Our God loved us enough to sacrifice His Only-Begotten Son so that we would not be alone in suffering, but could always have someone to suffer with.  That is how Jesus came for us: not to be served but to serve, and to give His life for us so that we would not be alone precisely when we feel the most alone: in our suffering.

Whatever our suffering, we can unite it to Jesus on the cross.  We can allow Jesus to walk with us in our suffering so that we are not alone.  It is not an answer to the problem of bad things happening to good people, but it is a consolation to know that whatever our suffering, we are not alone.  Whatever pain you are undergoing at this time, or whatever pain you will undergo in the future, never be afraid to turn to Jesus and say, “Jesus, please walk with me during this time of pain and suffering.  Unite my suffering with yours on the cross.  Help me to know that I’m not alone, but that you suffer with me.”  Amen.

"Rebuild My Church"

Solemnity of the Dedication of St. Joseph Church

While praying at the Church of San Damiano, Francis of Assisi heard Christ speak to him from a crucifix, saying, “Francis, rebuild my church, which you can see is falling into ruin.”  Francis though that Jesus was speaking to him of the physical structure of the little church, and so he started to rebuild it, stone by stone.  But, gradually, Francis realized that Jesus meant that Francis was to rebuild not a physical structure, but the Church, the living stones of God’s temple.  

I tell that story, not because last week was the day which celebrates St. Francis on 4 October; not because our current supreme pontiff is named Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi.  I tell that story because, on this day on which we celebrate the dedication of this beautiful church, Jesus is asking us to do the same.  

Today, Jesus invites us to be rebuilt into the living stones of God’s temple in heaven.  To be honest, that’s a life-long process.  As Bishop Mengeling so often says, we’re not done yet.  We are not done being formed into those living stones until the day we die, and even then, many of us will likely still be shaped through the purification of Purgatory.  And although today is a day of rejoicing, as we look at the status of the Church, we could easily become depressed.  

While the Diocese of Lansing is doing ok, more priests are retiring or are at retirement age, than we are ordaining.  We need more men to respond to God’s call to follow Jesus as a priest and serve His people, especially through providing the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance, which, without priests, we do not have.  More and more families are not putting God as their first priority.  We see this through fewer couples getting married in the Church; fewer baptisms; fewer people attending Mass or practicing their faith in any way, shape, or form.  It leads so many parents and pastors to ask, “What did I do wrong?  What more was I supposed to do?”  Fewer and fewer people understand their faith and what the Church teaches.  There is confusion about marriage, about the Eucharist, about sin, even about who Jesus is and the necessity of Jesus and His Mystical Body, the Church, for salvation.  The Church, in so many ways, is in disrepair.  Before this vast undertaking, we can easily ask ourselves a question that St. Francis perhaps asked himself: what I can, an individual, do, to rebuild the Church?  The task is so great!

But Our God is a God of hope, not despair.  And so there is a way to respond to Jesus’ call to each of us to rebuild His Church.  And this divine renovation cannot happen by money; we cannot throw dollars at this problem.  The rebuilding happens with us being shaped into the living stone that God wants us to be.  The plan is the same as it was for St. Francis: become a saint.  That’s all it takes.  We tend to think of the saints as those who did extraordinary things.  And certainly there are some canonized saints who did amazing things.  But as St. Thérèse teaches us, we don’t have to do great things.  God does want us to do little things with great love.  Some God might call to do great things, but let’s all start where we can, by doing little things with great love.

The first way to respond to God’s invitation is to develop a relationship with Him.  Many of us know, at least a little, about Jesus.  But how many of us know Jesus?  You can know a lot about a person without knowing that person  The way that we start to get to know Jesus is not complicated.  Two practices suffice: daily prayer and going to Mass at least every Sunday and Holyday.  Mass is where we encounter God in a most intimate way through the Body and Blood of Jesus.  We receive God into us.  Why do we go to Mass?  Is it because of an obligation?  Is it because we want to hear good music?  Is it because we’re convinced that one of these Sundays Father Anthony is actually going to give a good homily?  Those are all things that might get us into the door, but those reasons won’t keep many of us going to Mass each Sunday and Holyday.  We go to Mass to worship God and to receive God into us.  Going to Mass for any other reason is like going to a football game for the band.  Bands are great!  I love the MSU Marching Band.  But you don’t drop the kind of money you would for a football game just for the band (though some band parents might).  The reason for going to a football game is to watch football.  All the other stuff is extra.  You have received season tickets, worth more money than all the gold in Fort Knox, to a preview of heaven and an encounter with God through sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.  Going to Mass at least every Sunday and Holyday is a great way to start to become a saint.  Now I know that I’m preaching to the choir.  But we all know someone, maybe a friend, maybe a family member, who hasn’t been to Mass in a while.  Invite them to come back home.  Invite them to come to Mass with you.  

Daily prayer is another way to begin to become the saint that God wants us to be.  It is supposed to be the growth from our experience at Mass.  How often do you talk to your colleagues at work?  How often do you talk to your friends?  How often do you talk to your spouse or your children?  If you talk to God less than any of these people, or any others, there’s room for improvement.  The less you think you need to pray, the more you actually do.  And don’t forget to listen.  Conversations are two-way streets.

Those are two simple ways to start becoming the saint that God called each of you to be in baptism.  There are more.  But let’s start with the basics.  Then we can talk about reading Scripture regularly, sharing faith in small groups, going on yearly retreats or to the Women’s or Men’s Conferences.  There’s a lot of disrepair in the church right now.  We can easily despair.  But, if we become saints, in God’s way for us as an individual, just like St. Francis responded to God’s way for him to become a saint as an individual, then God’s church will be rebuilt.  There will be more good news.  And, most importantly, we’ll prepare ourselves to be ready to spend eternity in heaven with God, enveloped by His love with all the other people who were saints and helped to rebuild God’s church.  God is inviting you today: rebuild his Church!

Holy Competition

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Competition seems to be part and parcel in our lives these days.  Maybe it starts as siblings.  I imagine that those of you who have brothers and sisters have argued about who is mom and/or dad’s favorite, who’s the smartest, most athletic, etc.  I am, in case you were wondering.  We have competitions in schools to attend the most days and get the highest grades.  Sports are über competitive, with people vying for the top spot and the starting position.  The arts are similar, as musicians vie for first chair or the lead in the play or musical.  

Hyper-competitiveness can be a problem.  It can lead to cheating, or doing anything to get that top spot.  It can create the mentality that if you’re not a winner, then you’re a loser, which is not true.  Of course, sometimes we go to the opposite extreme and try to eliminate all competition.  We give everybody a trophy, whether they were first or last.  In my Italian classes in Rome when I was doing a study abroad, the director of the program was so afraid of competition that instead of calling the Italian classes Italian A and B, or Italian 1 and 2, based upon the language proficiency of the students in two groups, our two classes were called Italian A and Italian 1, to make sure that it didn’t seem like one group was smarter than the other.

Jesus seems to support the lack of competition in the Gospel today, and St. James in the epistle backs Jesus up.  Jesus gives silent chastisement (maybe all Jesus had to do was give “the look” that parents are so good at giving) when he asks the disciples what they were arguing about as they walked.  And He instructs them that to be the greatest, they have to be the last and the servant of all.  And St. James talk about the exterior conflicts come from the interior conflicts, from jealousy and selfish ambition.

But if we give more than just a passing glance, Jesus is not condemning competition.  He is just asking for a conversion of competition.  Jesus doesn’t say, “Nobody’s first, because first doesn’t matter.”  He says, “‘If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last and the servant of all.’”  Jesus teaches that we should compete for being the greatest servant, because the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the one who is looked upon as the least in the eyes of the world.  We could even broaden what Jesus says and say that, if we are competing about anything, we should compete about being saints, about being followers of Jesus.  Not that we compete about who has the most power or authority, but that we compete about living life in accord with what Jesus taught in our different vocations and avocations in life.  Imagine if the thing we competed for the most was the eternal prize, the trophy of being in heaven with God, which we won through giving our all to be like Jesus as a priest, consecrated man or woman, husband or wife, father or mother, child, and classmate.  Imagine if we converted our view of success so that, we weren’t concerned first and foremost with getting the best job that pays the most and has the most power and prestige, but instead if we were working with all of who we are to use our gifts and talents that God has given us to further the kingdom of God.  We may still be in the same job, but it wouldn’t be about getting the title, but rather about doing all we can to share our talents for the betterment of our city, church, State, and country. 

Competition is not bad.  But like all things in life, it has to be converted according to the pattern of Jesus.  If we compete to get the most publicity, the most honor, the most money, then St. James will continue to be right and we will continue to have wars and conflicts among each other.  Instead, if we compete to be saints, to be the best servants of the church and the building up of society in justice, truth, and integrity, then many of the wars would probably cease, and our cities would be better instances of how living according to the Gospel is the means of happiness for all people.  

To the Point

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus asked the apostles a question in today’s Gospel that today has asks us: “‘who do you say that I am?’”  Who do we believe Jesus is?  St. James reminds us in the second reading that what we believe about Jesus will be manifested in our actions.  Our actions show what our hearts, minds, and souls, believe about Jesus.  The more that we believe Jesus is who He says He is, the more we change our lives to look more like what He teaches us through the Scriptures and the Church.  What do our lives say about who we believe Jesus is?  Put another, albeit cliché, way: if we were put on trial for being Catholic, would there be enough evidence to convict us?

Be Opened!

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Imagine never hearing your favorite song again; never hearing the sound of your spouse or your children or loved ones say: I love you.  The sense of hearing is so important in our everyday life, and most of us probably take it for granted.

It is hard to imagine what life would be like being deaf.  A person’s world would be totally different.  We can imagine the shock, then, of the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, after Jesus healed him.  That man’s life was totally different from that point on!  It’s no wonder that the people who were there responded with astonishment.  Perhaps they realized that Jesus was fulfilling the prophecy from Isaiah that we heard in our first reading: “Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing.”  Perhaps they were wondering to themselves if Jesus could be the Messiah.

The way that Jesus healed the man was interesting, too.  Mark writes, “[Jesus] put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’–that is, ‘Be opened!’”  In our American culture that doesn’t like touching too much, that may sound very uncomfortable!

The Church retains a ritual with a similar name in the Baptismal Rite for children.  After baptizing the child, anointing her with the Sacred Chrism, clothing her with the white garment, and giving the godparents and parents the baptismal candle lit from the Paschal Candle, the priest or deacon “touches the ears and mouth of the child with his thumb, saying: The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak.  May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”  The Church continues to open ears and mouths when people are baptized, but not just of children who are deaf or who cannot speak.  She allows this rite for all children.  Why?

Holy Mother Church is very realistic.  She knows that we need ritual symbols to remind us about who we are called to be, and what we are called to do.  By our baptism, we are called to open our ears and speak, not just to hear sounds and speak words, but to listen for Christ and to speak His Word.  Let’s be honest, there are times where we would rather be deaf to God and not talk about Him.  We need Jesus to open our ears and mouth.

Do we hear Jesus speaking authoritatively through the Church?  Do we treat the Church when She speaks about faith and morals as just one more opinion, or do we treat it as God continuing to communicate in the world, even when it goes against what we think is best or right?  Do we hear the cry of the poor, or have we closed our ears to them because we cannot be bothered with their struggles?  Do we hear people screaming for the love and truth of Christ, or do we just figure that they can find their own way to God?

Do we speak about Jesus?  This past week I was feeling a little lazy, so I decided to go to Hooligans for dinner.  I was one of three people in the restaurant at the time.  The waiter recognized me as a priest (I was in my clerical attire), and mentioned how he tries to go to church every Sunday, but he certainly prays every day.  I felt a tugging to say something about why Sunday is important, but decided just to be quiet.  He served me my meal, and did a very good job.  At the end of the meal, as I was signing the receipt, I couldn’t help, pushed as I was by the Spirit, to say, “Do you know why Sundays are important to Christians?”  He told me it was about fellowship.  But I pressed him even further and said, “Yes, but why Sundays?”  He said he didn’t know, and that started a conversation about how Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, which sets us apart as Christians, and which is a reason to rejoice because of the new life we are offered in Christ.  From there I found out that he is a fallen away Catholic, and we talked about his issues with Catholicism.  I don’t know if he’ll come back to the Church, though I did invite him.  But I know I was docile enough (after a bit of prodding) to the Holy Spirit to talk to Him about Jesus and His Church.  That’s nothing to brag about; that’s my vocation, and I’m more embarrassed that it took me so long than I am proud that I did it.  But Christ encountered one of His sheep through me, and maybe that sheep will return to the Catholic fold.  He might have through someone else, but maybe not.  Maybe I was the only one who could've talked to him in the way I did.  Maybe you’re that person with someone else.  

Christ tells us today: “‘Ephphata!’”–that is, “‘Be opened!’”  “May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”  Amen.

You Can't Cheat God

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sometimes it is made very clear to me what I should preach.  This past Monday, when I looked over the readings, I was immediately drawn to the Gospel where Jesus talks about how the practice of washing hands is not about what happens outside the person, but what happens inside the person.  It struck me that the Pharisees went through the ritual motions of religious life, without letting those actions take root in their soul.  As Jesus says, it is not what is outside the makes one unclean (that is, unfit for worship in the Temple) but what comes from the heart: all our passions that we give in to.

But, as I sat down to write my homily out on Thursday, I found myself drawn to a similar topic, but going in a different direction (how symbols are supposed to be sensible things that communicate an invisible reality).  I had my hook.  I was going to talk about how we misunderstand words, like when English speakers make the mistake of thinking that the word for embarrassed in Spanish, embarazado is a cognate–a similar sounding word–when it really means pregnant, leading to numerous embarrassing moments when a man says, Yo soy embarazado.  I had my main point, how symbols are meant to communicate the invisible through what we can receive through our senses, and how what we do in religious symbols should reflect what is truly going on inside our hearts and souls.  And I managed to talk about all of this and expand on the main topic in the usual Fr. Anthony homily duration (I’ve been told I preach a bit longer than our deacons).

But then Friday I stopped by the Adrian Police Department.  Some of you know that I have been doing ride-alongs with the Police and I have offered to provide any help to the officers that I can.  I went to talk to Clay, who often works the front desk.  I stopped by at about 4:10, and he wasn’t there, but when I asked I was told he was just getting ready to leave.  I waited a little, and then Clay came out and we had a nice little talk.  In the midst of that talk, he said that he didn’t understand two things about Catholics (he’s not Catholic, but is Christian).  The first difficulty we spoke about were the saints and praying to them.  That might be a homily for a different day.

The second thing we talked about took me back to what I first thought I was going to preach on, and caused me to totally rewrite my homily on Saturday morning, between altar server training and confessions.  He asked me about the experience he’s had of Catholics who say they can do whatever sinful thing they want Monday through Friday, then they go to confession on Saturday and Mass on Sunday with a clean slate, and then get back to serious sinning on the weekdays; rinse and repeat.  Clay said that it makes no sense.

Clay is right.  And I explained to him that we can’t cheat God.  Yes, we have the Sacrament of Penance to cleanse us of sin, the Sacrament established by Jesus in Matthew 16 and John 20 when He gave the Apostles the authority to forgive sins.  But I also told Clay that the Church teaches that, for the Sacrament of Penance to be valid, the penitent (the confessee, as it were), has to be truly sorry for his sins and has to make a firm amendment to not commit those sins in the future.  Certainly we sometimes fall into the same sins week after week that we don’t want to.  But if we’re not truly sorry for what we did Monday through Friday, and we fully plan on doing the same thing again the next Monday through Friday, then our sins are not forgiven.  We can’t cheat God. 

And that’s precisely what our Gospel is about.  Jesus did not condemn ritual purification and ritual actions.  But He taught us that the ritual is meant to have an effect in our lives, not to be a meaningless gesture.  Washing hands without washing souls means little in our relationship with God.  And sometimes doing the rituals without the meaning behind it becomes a scandal, an obstacle to other people believing in the Catholic faith.  I’m sure Clay is not the only Christian who thinks that the way some Catholics treat the Sacrament of Penance betrays the fact that these Catholics think that the Sacraments are magic.  They’re not magic.  They are meant to convert us, to change us, to become more like God.  If we’re not open to having God change us, God will not force His grace–His life, His love, His peace–on us.  We can go through the motions, but we won’t receive the effects that those actions are meant to have in our souls. 

Jesus gave us the Good News to help us draw closer to God.  The Good News He teaches us today is that while we can struggle with the same sins each week and be truly sorry, if we are trying to treat the religious rituals like a get out of Hell free card, we’re in for a not-so-pleasant surprise.  This is Good News because it gives us a chance to truly have a change of heart, a metanoia, a conversion, and ask God to purify us from the things that really make us unfit for the Temple.  God wants to truly cleanse us of those things and wash, not our hands, but our hearts.  Will we allow God to wash our souls with His cleansing grace?

Human Freedom by Bishop Boyea

        Moses is pretty clear with the people about what they are to do--they are to observe all the commands which he will give them from God; he adds “you shall not add to what I command you nor subtract from it.  Observe them carefully.”  This is exactly what the Pharisees were doing in the gospel reading from St. Mark.  They were observing the commandments of the Lord very carefully and thus they asked Jesus why his own disciples did not wash their hands before eating, something required in the law.  

Jesus then teaches a new form of morality.  It is not the following of a set of rules and regulations, but rather it is conversion of heart.  What comes out of a person is what constitutes goodness or impurity.  Jesus notes that evil comes not from washing or not washing the hands, but from an evil heart.  Jesus is telling us that what really matters is what is within us.

In essence then, Jesus is appealing to our human freedom.  Because we are free we are responsible for our actions.  We are responsible to shape our lives so that they attain truth and goodness, that is, so that they attain God.  The trouble is, as Jesus was well aware, all too often we do not choose to do the good, but rather we choose to do evil.  That was certainly the case with our first parents, Adam and Eve, but it is also true of each of us.  We are, in a sense, slaves to sinfulness because we keep choosing sinfulness.  

Because we are free, it is clear that we are responsible for this condition.  We need more training in how to choose good rather than sinfulness.  Our actions are good when two conditions are met: the thing we choose to do itself must be good; and, secondly, our intention or reason for doing it must also be good.  Thus something is not good unless both these conditions are met.  If we do the wrong thing (and somethings are wrong in themselves) for the right reason it is still the wrong thing to do (thus the end never justifies the means); if we do the right thing for the wrong reason it is not a good action we are performing, there may actually be a good which results, but that goodness is not credited to us since we have done it for a bad reason.

Jesus also wants us trained to do good, to be good and thus offers us a way out of our choosing sinfulness.  He offers us the true freedom to choose to be God’s children rather than the false freedom to choose to stay in sin.  It is when our hearts rest in Jesus that we are most open to his grace and the true exercise of our freedom.

This openness on our part is what is called our conscience.  This is not just some intellectual thing, for it is also something of the heart.  In our heart can be found our passions or our feelings.  These can help us to do the good.  If we have the most fundamental passion, love, then we are drawn to the good and we take joy in the presence of the good and then we do the good. This same feeling of love will mean that we hate evil and seek to avoid it and we feel sad in the presence of evil.  In a sense we learn to hate what God hates—sin.  Thus what fills our heart will have a direct bearing on what we decide to do, how we exercise our freedom, and thus these passions are part of our conscience.

But conscience is also an act of judgment; it is when we spend enough time to recognize with our intelligence that something is good.  We need to take time to look into ourselves in order to hear this voice.  This voice helps us to see the truth and to apply that truth in specific circumstances.  It is what allows us to be responsible for our behavior.  In order for this reasoning part of our conscience to work correctly it needs to be formed, to be instructed.  This takes a lifetime.  The Gospel and Christ’s cross must be our teachers from our earliest days.  We are helped in this when our passions or our feelings push us in the right direction; we are also helped by the light of the Holy Spirit; and we are helped by the guidance of the Church.  Sometimes our conscience is faced with difficult choices; then we need the help of all three of these.

So, if we, my sisters and brothers, are to follow a moral life as Jesus wishes us to, not merely by following a list of laws, then we must have a change of heart.  We need to do two things: we need to open our feelings or our passions to the Lord so that he can fill us with his divine love; secondly, we need to educate our decision making process so that we will choose the good at all times, even in difficult circumstances.  Jesus listed a lot of evils that come from within us; if he looks deep inside me, what does he see?  A well of love which will lead to good, or an abyss of confusion which will lead to evil?

GOD BLESS YOU ALL

Catechism, #1730-1802

Eating with your Feet

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Pope Francis and Bishop Boyea have been speaking a fair amount about being welcoming people and parishes as part of the New Evangelization.  And it makes sense.  Who wants to come to a church where you are new, or just visiting, and as you are sitting in your pew, quietly praying and waiting for Mass to begin, a person comes up to you and says, “You’re in my seat!”?  Or who would want to join a parish where your family, which includes young children, gets horrible glares when the kids are being a little noisy, or even where someone says to you, “Can’t you control your own children and keep them quiet?!?”?  I wouldn’t want to join that parish!  

There are numerous groups that also feel like they’re not welcome in the Catholic Church.  We are called to be a welcoming community, and to welcome all people to a deeper relationship with Jesus.  More often than not, people are drawn to a relationship with Jesus when they know that others want them to be there, and will support them in living their life according to the Gospel.  It is especially helpful to note that none of us can get on our high horse, because we are all sinners of various kinds, all in need of God’s mercy.  Yes, some sins are more serious than others, but we should always recognize that all of us are in need of deeper conversion–of conforming our lives to that of Jesus.

But, being welcoming is not the end all, be all.  Parents: I’m sure you’ve all had times where your children wanted to have their friends over for dinner and you’ve agreed.  You welcome your children’s friends to your house to eat with you.  You are glad that they are there.  But then, at dinner, as they’re sitting at the dinner table, your children’s friends decide they’re going to eat with their bare feet (kids, don’t try this at home!).  What would you do?  

You would probably tell them to stop (hopefully in kind, yet firm, words).  While your children’s friends are welcome at your house, there are certain rules that exist for the health and well-being of the household, even with honored guests.  And sometimes that means holding firm on certain issues.  We see that with Jesus in the Gospels that we have been hearing over the past few weeks from John chapter 6.  No one would accuse Jesus of not being welcoming.  He drew in so many people who felt ostracized from Judaism and general society to follow Him.  And yet, when it comes to His teaching on the Eucharist, He seems very stubborn.  

Two weeks ago, as I’m sure you all remember, the Jews followed Jesus across the sea.  Jesus didn’t say: “It’s so nice to see you!”  He said, “‘Amen, amen, I say to you, you are not looking for me because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.  Do not work for food that perishes but for food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.’”  That doesn’t sound very welcoming.  

Last week we heard about how the Jews started murmuring as Jesus continue His teaching that He is the bread that came down from heaven.  They said, “‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?  Do we not know his father and mother?  Then how can he say, “I have come down from heaven”?’”  Jesus doesn’t respond with, “Oh, you just don’t understand what I’m saying and where I come from.”  Jesus says, “Stop murmuring….No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him….Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.’”

This week, Jesus continues to say that He is the living bread come down from heaven, and whoever eats this bread, His flesh, will live forever.  That really sends the Jews into a tizzy: “‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’”  But Jesus doesn’t say, “You misunderstand me; I’m talking about my Flesh under sacramental signs in the Eucharist, not as in cannibalism.”  Instead, he solemnly doubles down on his previous statements: “‘Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.’”  Is Jesus not being welcoming?  Why would we follow a God who is not welcoming?

Jesus, of course, is always welcoming, especially to sinners.  But His welcome of them is to His way, His life, His truth.  Jesus was not concerned about winning the largest congregation award.  He was not concerned about converting everybody there, no matter what it takes, though He does desire all to be saved.  Jesus’ welcome is always paired with the truth.

If we are to be a parish formed after the heart of Jesus, then we, too have to hold those two things in tension: welcome and truth.  We have to be kind, understanding, and loving to those we meet, and encourage them to follow Jesus and strive to be like Him, as we try to do.  But that only happens when we also hold firm on what Jesus hold firms to: the truth.  Welcoming others does not mean watering down our faith.  It means lovingly welcoming others to conform their lives to Jesus, as we attempt to do the same thing.  Being welcoming does not mean anything goes.  It does not mean you can eat with your feet.  Being welcoming means embracing anyone with our words and deeds, and walking with them to become more like Jesus.  

Fruit, Not Chocolate, Please

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Many people are surprised to hear that I’m not the biggest fan of chocolate.  I’ll eat the occasional Snickers bar, but for the most part I stay away from almost anything chocolate.  It all stems from a time in 3rd grade where I ate way too much chocolate in one sitting and almost got sick.  My last pastor. Fr. Mark Inglot, who said Mass here in November, would tell me from time to time that he would tell people that I loved to receive chocolate for Christmas and Easter, just so he could eat whatever the parishioners would give me.  Instead, I love fruit.  Berries and cherries are my favorite, but I’ll eat almost any kind of fruit, with the exception of papaya: yuck!!

What we eat effects us in many different ways.  Runners tend to eat a lot of carbs before they run long distances.  Apparently it helps give the body what it needs before a run.  Cross country teams often have pasta parties the night before a meet.  Some people don’t eat meat, others only certain kinds of meat for health reasons or other reasons.  But food changes us in one way or another. 

In our first reading, the angel tells Elijah that he has to eat the bread, “‘else the journey will be too long for you!’”  Elijah needs the energy that the bread is going to give him to continue his prophetic mission from God.  That bread gave him the strength to walk forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb, also know as Mt. Sinai.  

Whenever we hear bread in the Old Testament, we, as Catholics, should be reminded of the Eucharist, the bread that is not bread.  And Jesus speaks about that today in the Gospel.  He teaches the Jews that He is the bread of life, and that while the Jews in the desert ate manna and died, whoever eats the bread of life, that is, whoever eats Jesus’ Flesh, will not die, but will live forever.   

That is why the Church teaches, in fidelity to what Jesus taught, that the Eucharist is not merely a symbol of the Body and Blood of Christ, but truly is the Body and Blood of Christ.  We are not merely reminded about Jesus when we celebrate the Eucharist, but Jesus’ glorified Body and Blood becomes present in our midst under the appearance of bread and wine.  But substantially, what makes a thing what it is, we are not eating bread and drinking wine; we are eating the Body of Jesus and drinking the Blood of Jesus.  And this is the way that we can have eternal life.

The Body and Blood of Jesus, as supernatural food, is supposed to change us and change the way we live our lives because it conforms us to Christ.  St. Paul reminds us in the second reading that, for us who have received Jesus into our very bodies, there should be no more “bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling,” and that we are to be “kind to one another, compassionate, [and] forgiving one another as God has forgiven [us] in Christ.”  The Body and Blood of Jesus are meant to change us to become more like Him.  

We fast for 1 hour before Holy Communion from all food and drink except medicine and water because we don’t want to confuse the earthly food–which becomes part of us–with the heavenly food, which makes us part of Jesus.  We are called by St. Paul to discern the Body of Christ and whether we are in a state of grace–that is to say, unaware of any grave or mortal sins–so that we are not joining our grave or mortal sins, where we radically say no to God, with the Body and Blood of Jesus, which is always about making us more like God.  We need to go to confession first if we have grave or mortal sins before receiving the Eucharist so we don’t join our “no” to God with Jesus’ “yes” to God.  If we do receive the Eucharist in an unworthy state, not only do we not become more like Jesus, but we add the sin of sacrilege to whatever other grave or mortal sins we have committed by receiving Jesus unworthily.

That might not seem very welcoming to tell people they can’t come to Holy Communion.  And Pope Francis has reminded us how we are to welcome others.  Yet, we welcoming others is always at the service of giving people the opportunity to encounter Jesus.  To encounter Jesus means that we change for Him, not that He changes for us.  

So when we come to Mass, we should ask ourselves if we are aware of any major ways in which we need to change to conform our life with Jesus’ life and teachings, both in Scripture and through the Church’s teaching office.  If there are major gaps, then we should go to confession, or set up an appointment with me to discuss the situation and what we can do to remedy it, before receiving Jesus in the Eucharist.  I can promise you that I’ll do all that I can to provide God’s healing for whatever ways that are lives are not following Jesus.  That way, having dealt with those obstacles, when we receive the Eucharist, it will truly make us more like Jesus and give us the strength that we need to live as disciples of our Lord.

The Good Ole Days

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Summer is the time of year when many of us take vacation time.  Whether it’s a little trip down to Cedar Point in Sandusky, a trip to Lake Michigan or Lake Huron, or maybe we have a place somewhere, summer in Michigan always feels like a good time to get away from home.  And yet, as good as vacation is, it is always good to be back home.  I know I was very ready to come back home from my summer classes.  There’s something about sleeping in your own house that is different from sleeping elsewhere, no matter how nice it is.  

Perhaps we can better understand the Jews’ frustration, then, because they were leaving their home (they had been in Egypt for over 400 years!) for a place they have never been, which was to become their new home.  They were not familiar with where they were going, and they were wandering around in a desert.  I think many, if not all, of us would grumble a little if we were put in a similar situation.  

But, their grumbling (and our grumbling, too) reveals how much we trust God.  Do we have faith that God will take care of us?  Or do we idolize the past, even though it had its own challenges.  How silly we probably think it sounds for the Israelites to say, “‘Would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread!’”  They were basically saying, “I’d rather be a slave in Egypt and have died there than travel here, because at least I had food in my stomach!”  God had promised to send them to a land flowing with milk and honey, with the basic necessities (milk) and with the sweet things of life (honey), but they weren’t there yet, and so they preferred their past, even though it meant slavery.

In our Gospel, the same thing happens, except in a different way.  Instead of wanting to go back to Egypt, they want regular bread.  Jesus gave them a great sign, a miracle, when He fed the 5,000.  But the miracle was not intended merely for their bellies: it was intended to reveal who Jesus is: the Son of God.  But the people, who are excited about a new way of getting food, follow Jesus to get more.  Jesus understands their hearts, and says, “‘Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.’”  But then Jesus promises them food, “food that endures for eternal life.”  How do they respond?  They go back to the past, they go back to “the good ole’ days” with Moses in the desert and manna and quail.  

But Jesus isn’t promising them manna and quail.  Jesus is promising what manna pointed to: the Eucharist.  Jesus is giving them bread which is not bread, but which is flesh.  And we get a hint of that at the end of the Gospel when Jesus says, “‘I am the bread of life.’”  

We, too, have that tendency to look backwards and pine for “the good ole’ days.”  When exactly those are varies from person to person.  Maybe it was two years ago.  Maybe it was 20 years ago.  Maybe it was the ‘50s.  Whenever it was, it can be hard to leave what is familiar to us and go on pilgrimage to where God leads us.  It means change, which is almost always hard.  It means going towards the unknown, because none of us know exactly what will happen in the future (if you do, let me know, and I’ll start playing the lottery).  But we can’t go back, any more than the Israelites could go back to Egypt.  That was their past; God was moving them into their future.

Maybe this present isn’t the future you imagined 5 years ago.  Maybe your health is not as good as you hoped it would be.  Maybe the culture is not what you hoped it would be.  Maybe there have been unexpected deaths that have shaken your very foundation.  Maybe the Church isn’t what you hoped it would be.  But, I can promise you this: if we follow God and trust in Him, He has nothing but our good in mind.  God did not lead the Israelites from Egypt to Sodom and Gomorrah.  Jesus did not feed the 5,000 and then given them little crackers that would rot after each day.  God led the Israelites to the Promised Land; Jesus gave His Bride, the Church, the Eucharist.  God is leading us somewhere, both as a parish and as individuals.  We’ve never been there before, and the unknown can be scary.  But if we trust in God and trust that He will never lead us where His love cannot surround us, then we don’t need to be afraid, because that place, too, will become our home: the place to which we long to return.