Sanctifying our Families in the Temple

Feast of the Holy Family

The Holy Family in flight to Egypt

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  As we come to this Feast of the Holy Family, we once again have the opportunity to reflect on how we can grow as holy families, whether our family is an individual, a couple, or a couple with children.  The Church sets before us a unique family as a model, as the mother is sinless, the husband and wife are celibate, and the child is God, but they show us the way to be like them, though we are not sinless or God.
    And this year what struck me was the Gradual, from Psalms 26 and 83.  In the English it reads: “One thing I ask of the Lord, for this I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life;” “Blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord, they shall praise you for ever and ever.”  As the Church has prayed, she has chosen to include these two verses from two psalms into the way we worship God and thank Him for the gift of the Holy Family.
    To be a holy family, our goal must be the house of the Lord.  The psalmist certainly thought about the Temple in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit inspired him to write this psalm.  And for a good Jew, to be close to God one had to go to the Temple, where His presence dwelt, especially in the holy of holies with the ark of the covenant.

    And so for us, no matter what our family looks like, we should strive to be close to God every day.  As a family that may include this temple, where God dwells in the tabernacle in a special way as our holy of holies.  But it also means being close to God throughout the day, even when we cannot make it here to this beautiful temple.  Because, as the Apostle reminds us, we are the temple of God since the Holy Spirit dwells within us through Baptism, Confirmation, and the other sacraments we have received.  
    This should give us comfort when we can’t make it to daily Mass, or even those times when we cannot come to Sunday or holyday Masses because we are sick, or we’re caring for a sick parent or child.  Even if we cannot physically be in a church, God is close to us, in fact, closer than we are to ourselves.  He walks with us each day, whether we go to work, or work at home with or without the kids, or enjoy the rest of retirement, or travel on vacation.  
    In fact, Solomon constructed the Temple to be like a new Garden of Eden.  There were pomegranates and leaves, animals, a bronze sea, lights from candles, and bread.  Genesis says that God accustomed Himself to walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening, and in the Temple one could have contact with God.  But since the veil of the Temple at the time of our Lord was rent, and the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost, we can find God, not only in a building, but also in our daily lives and in the silence of our hearts.
    But, the Temple also created a more stable meeting tent that the Jews traveled with in their Exodus, which God gave to Moses based upon heaven.  And so the Temple points us not only to the past in the Garden of Eden, but also to the future in the heavenly Jerusalem, the temple not made with hands.  And to be a holy family, we should keep our eyes and our attention on that heavenly temple, where we hope to worship God night and day with the angels and saints, singing “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts.”  Whether we are trying to keep our attention on heaven for ourselves, or trying to help our spouse keep his or her eyes on heaven, or trying to teach our children about how wonderful heaven will be and how we have to learn to make choices that get us closer to being there, to be a holy family means to keep our eyes on the prize and keep heaven in mind.  Our family Rosary, or going to Mass as a family, or learning and living out the virtues as a family all help us focus on being with God for ever in heaven, or at least that’s what they’re supposed to do.  It’s not just about the doing or the teaching, but about preparing our family, no matter its size, for the life that never ends, which we hope will be in heaven for us.  
    Keeping our eyes on heaven also means trusting in God, who supplies all of our needs in heaven.  And in that sense, it struck me that our Lord exhibited this in the three days that He was in the Temple area, as Mary and Joseph returned to look for Him.  Our Lord was twelve years old, and yet He survived in the Temple for those three days without parents to feed him.  I imagine he received some help from the teachers with whom He dialogued, but I know that Christ did not worry about what He was to eat or drink or wear, as He would later encourage us to not worry about such things in the Sermon on the Mount.  He was with His Father, and He knew His Father would take care of all things for Him.  So will God the Father do with us who are His adopted children through baptism: He provides, directly or indirectly, for what we need, and invites us to trust His will for our life, especially when it doesn’t match what we wanted to happen or what we thought should happen.  God may not will difficult times for us, but anything difficulties He allows help us to trust in Him and trust how He will take care of us even in the midst of our struggles.
    So, to be a holy family, focus on dwelling in the house of the Lord every day.  Maybe you can’t make it to Mass every day, but make time for God with daily prayer, especially silence, if you are able.  Sometimes it may be a simple sign of the cross as you care for your children, or a fervent prayer, “Jesus, help me!” when the chaos seems more than we can handle.  Or maybe its the less-than-five minutes to pray the Angelus each day at 6 a.m. and/or noon and/or 6 p.m.  Or maybe it’s a holy hour, especially during our Monday times of adoration.  But blessed are those who can dwell with the Lord each day, no matter where they are.  Those who seek to be with God will certainly be a holy family and will prepare themselves for the heavenly Jerusalem, where God–the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit–lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen. 

The Blessings of Baptisms

 Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Tate with his parents after his baptism

    One of the great blessings of being pastor of St. Matthew is all the baptisms we have.  Today, during this Mass, I’ll baptize Tate Matthew, and then after the 1 p.m. Mass I have three other baptisms.  Over the last three years I have averaged a little over 18 baptisms per year, which is the highest three year average I have had since Bishop Boyea ordained me in 2010, and that includes being in a parish of some 3,000 families.  Today, as we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, as well as Tate’s baptism, I wanted to reflect on baptism and just what a great blessing it is, not just for me as a priest, but for the whole Church and for families individually.
    To appreciate the blessings of baptism, we have to know what baptism is.  Baptism is the first sacrament by which we receive God’s saving grace which opens for us the possibility of heaven.  Until baptism, we only are connected to God through His will in letting us be conceived and existing.  After baptism, we become a son or daughter in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  We go from merely being the child of our parents to being a child of God.  
    I think that we’re used to hearing this phrase, but it really is quite powerful!  In baptism, God claims us as His own, and promises to support us with all we need to spiritually thrive, much as parents do when they conceive a child.  We could not earn this status as adopted children of God, anymore than a child could earn its parents’ love.  St. John puts it this way: “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.  Yet so we are.”  We are not simply called God’s children; we are God’s adopted children in Christ.  Islam sees itself as a slave of God, with the word islam meaning in Arabic, submission.  Through baptism, we rise above mere service to God to joining His family.  
    Because we are joined to God through His Son, we also become members of the Church, as the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ.  This is an extension of God’s family: all those who are configured to Christ in baptism.  It is the Church who helps us grow into the child our Heavenly Father wants us to be.  She dispenses to us from God all the graces He wants to bestow.  We see this especially in the other sacraments that God opens to us after Baptism: Penance/Confession/Reconciliation; Confirmation; the Eucharist; Anointing of the Sick; Matrimony or Holy Orders.  But she also helps us with sacramentals, things like blessings, or holy water, or medals of the saints, or the Rosary.  The Church helps us to be the saints that God calls us to be in baptism.
    Baptism also washes away any previous sins, including original sin.  St. Paul makes it very clear that, before we baptism joins us to God, we are at enmity with Him.  The dictionary defines enmity as being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something.  Before sin is washed away in the waters of baptism, it opposes God and His rule in our lives.  Even with the good that we can do without baptism, sin still works against that good and draws us toward evil.
    So baptism is such a great gift from the Father.  Our Lord showed us humility in being baptized, but by doing so encouraged us to receive baptism ourselves to be like Him, though He was already the Son of God, was already the Head of the Church, and did not have sin.
    But baptism is a great gift that calls for a continuous gift.  While it can only be received once, it’s not as if we can get baptized and then walk away from God and hope to enter into heaven, any more than a man could marry his wife, walk away from her, and then expect a big party for the 50th anniversary.  Baptism calls for us to respond each day to the greatest gift we could have, new life in Christ, not just get water poured on our head and then walk away from God.  As we heard in the second reading, baptism helps us to reject “godless ways and worldly desires,” and helps us to live “temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age,” so that we can be prepared for heaven.
    Because heaven, to which baptism points, is not a club where if you have your baptism card you get admittance, no matter what.  Heaven is a way of life that images Christ.  Heaven is the fulfillment of the sonship in Christ.  And we only enter there if we want to be there, which we make manifest in the choices we make each day.  The more we choose to live like Christ in obedience to the will of the Father, the more we ready ourselves for heaven.  The more we choose to live like the world where we do whatever we want and follow each desire, the more we ready ourselves for hell.  
    The French Catholic novelist Leon Bloy said, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”  What a sad reality it would be if we received the great treasure that baptism is, giving us everything we need to allow Christ to live through us, but did not act on those graces.  It would be like God giving us $1 billion each day, and all we had to do was invest it in particular companies who promised us significant returns, but we chose to waste that jackpot and ended up broke because we wanted to invest elsewhere, which squandered our investment and left us holding an empty bag.
    Baptism is a great gift, but one that we probably don’t always appreciate.  We live with it every day, but how often do we take advantage of the treasures God gives us through baptism?  We are blessed in our parish to celebrate baptisms frequently.  But the real blessing will be if we each allow baptism to give us the grace to live as Christ desires so that we are ready for heaven when we die, and share in the eternal life God desires for all His children.

What's in a Name?

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Shakespeare famous wrote in his play, “Romeo and Juliet,” “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  Today as we celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus, we may fall into the same nominalism error that Shakespeare seemed to espouse, that names don’t really make any difference.  But names contain power and access.
    When God first reveals His Name to Moses in the theophany at the burning bush, God reveals Himself as “I AM WHO AM,” or, more simply, “I AM.”  This doesn’t sound like a name to us.  But that’s on purpose.  When we know someone’s name, we have a certain power over that person.  When I stand in a crowded room with my parents with a fair amount of noise, I might say “dad” numerous times without him hearing me.  But, if I were to say “Robert,” it would likely gain his attention.  Or, when a pope dies, to make sure he is dead, they tap him with a decorative small mallet and whisper his baptismal name, figuring that he would respond to the name his parents called him.  When we know a name, we have power, as that person’s attention is turned to us.  But even God did not grant His Chosen People to have power over His Name.  He promised to be with them and to turn to them whenever they called upon Him, but they could not say His name.  In fact, they would simply use the Hebrew word Adonai, which means “Lord,” instead of using the Hebrew word for I AM, which is abbreviated by the consonants YHWH. 

Pope Benedict XVI, of happy memory, asked Catholics not to use this sacred name in the Mass, out of respect for our Jewish brothers and sisters.  Only one time, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, would the high priest, standing before the ark of the covenant, utter the sacred Name of God.
    When our Lord, at least once, in the Gospel of John, referred to Himself as “I AM,” He taught us of His unity with the Father in divinity.  And the people recognized this.  They rise up to stone our Lord for blasphemy.  While some of the I AM statements in John work grammatically and could be interpreted simply as indicative statements using metaphors, the one that stands out is when Christ says, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  That sentence makes no sense, unless Christ is identifying His oneness with the Father.  
    But, just as the prohibition against making images of God changes with the Incarnation, so does the relationship between God’s People and His Holy Name.  Part of the humility of the Incarnation was that God had a name that the people could freely use.  The name of Jesus means “God saves.”  It does, in a sense, define Him, as our Lord is the salvation of God.  No longer is the name not to be uttered at all, but it can be called upon freely in times of need.  Peter and John will heal a lame man “in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean.”  The people come to believe at this great act and Peter’s preaching, such that Peter and John are arrested and stand on trial before the Sanhedrin for what they have done.  That’s where our epistle comes in.  St. Peter proclaims that there is no other name by when men can be saved other than Jesus, a teaching the Church has continued throughout the centuries.  It is the name at which, as we heard in the Introit from St. Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, every knee should bend, whether those in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, because Jesus Christ is Lord.  Again, Lord was the term that a Jew would have used for God, so St. Paul is affirming the divinity of Christ through His Name.
    The custom of preaching during the Mass is not to use the name of Jesus too often.  I refer to Him as the Lord, or the Savior, or the Redeemer, or simply Christ.  But we should not be afraid to call upon the name of our Savior in time of need, because He has given us His name so that we can receive help.  In the Orthodox Church, there is a practice of simply saying the name, “Jesus” as one breathes in and out.  This beautiful prayer can calm us when we are anxious, and rely on the strength of the Holy Name to cast aside anything that seeks to harm us.  When exorcists cast out demons, they do so with the power of the Holy Name, at which the demons have no choice but to obey, because the power comes, not from the priest, but from Christ Himself.  
    So names are important.  The Holy Name of Jesus is the most important name, because it identifies who God is and what He does.  Whereas in the Old Testament, the name of God was used only rarely, our Lord invites us to call upon His Holy Name whenever we are in need, whenever we are giving thanks, whenever we pray as a church.  May the Holy Name of Jesus protect us from all assaults of the enemy, and may we receive salvation through the Holy Name of Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

The Light

Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  Probably most of the time when we think of the Epiphany, we think about giving gifts, especially the gifts that the magi gave to Christ: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  In some countries, Epiphany is the day that people exchange gifts more than Christmas.  And the Christmas carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” are actually about the twelve days after Christmas, and sing about giving gifts leading up the Epiphany.  

    And focusing on gifts at the Epiphany is well and good.  However, there is another aspect to the Epiphany that we probably miss: the theme of light.  The word epiphany finds its root in the Greek word 𝜙𝛼𝜄𝜈𝜔, which means to reveal or to shine.  We hear it in John 1:5 [every Sunday]: “the light shines (𝜙𝛼𝜄𝜈𝜀𝜄) in the darkness.”  We hear it in Isaiah, chapter sixty, our (first) reading: “the glory of the Lord shines upon you.”  And the star that the magi follow shines upon the place where they could find the King of the Jews.  We hear it in the Collect, the opening prayer: “O God, who on this day revealed your Only Begotten Son to the nations by the guidance of a star.”  Light is as big a part of this day as giving gifts.
    And as we think of Christ as He reveals Himself as the Light of the World, we see the light growing.  Think of Christ like a candle: first it was simply one light.  As the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived Him in her virginal womb at the Annunciation, her candle was lit.  As Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist in her womb recognized the Lord at the Visitation, their candles were lit.  At the Nativity, the angels shared the light of Christ with the shepherds.  And now, as the magi come to visit, seeking by the light of a star the new born King of the Jews, they receive the light of Christ, and then take it back with them to the east, whence they came.  
    The light allows us to see well.  So light is connected with truth, which helps us understand the way the world works.  When we know the truth, we speak of being enlightened.  And besides the visit of the magi, the Epiphany also celebrates Christ shining during His baptism as well as at the wedding at Cana.  In these three events, others come to know the truth that Jesus is no mere mortal: the magi as they bring their gifts of gold for a king, frankincense for God, and myrrh for one who is to be buried; the people at the River Jordan as the Holy Spirit descends and the voice of the Father is heard; the disciples and servants as they realize that Christ has changed water into wine.  Pope St. John Paul II, wrote an Encyclical called Veritatis Splendor, the splendor (or illumination) of the truth, which is also a definition of beauty.  
    So for us today, Christ invites us to receive His light.  When we are baptized, the priest lights a candle from the Paschal Candle, the candle that represents Christ, and are invited to walk in the light.  Christ shares His light with us, as He did with the Blessed Mother, St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist, the shepherds, the magi, and the Apostles and disciples.  “The light shines in the darkness,” and with each person who chooses to live in the light, in the truth that God has revealed through His Church, more people see more clearly how true happiness can be found.  
    It is like at the Easter Vigil, at the beginning rites called the lucenarium, the ritual of light.  At first the Paschal Candle alone shines in the darkness of the church.  Then the priest lights his candle from the Christ Light.  Then the rest of the people begin to receive the light, until the entire church shines with the light of Christ that He has shared with others, one by one.
    Our Lord tells us that people don’t light candles to put them under a bushel basket.  So we should not hide the light that Christ has given to us.  Christ invites us to share that light with others.  He gives us grace, a form of His life and light, to allow us to live holy lives and follow Him.  But He also wants us to share that grace with others by the way we speak to them and the way we treat them.  King Herod remained in darkness because He feared the Lord as a threat to his earthly power.  Herod plunged himself deeper in darkness as he tried to snuff out the Light of Christ as young child and killed numerous innocent children, which we celebrated on 28 December.  When we don’t live as a disciple, especially when we commit mortal sins, we also go deeper and deeper into darkness.
    Instead, though, Christ invites us to love others in word and deed, and to share the Gospel with them in word and deed.  Maybe it’s a donation made to a food pantry, or, even better, time actually spent with the poor at a food pantry, serving them food and talking with them as we would talk to Christ.  Maybe it’s hugging a person who had a rough day.  Maybe it’s asking someone to pray with them after they tell us about a family member who has gone on the wrong path, or a scary medical procedure, or even just when they are tired of doing their job.  Maybe it’s inviting a person to come to Mass with you, or sharing an important Gospel passage that helps you to make sense of life.  In these ways and more, we take the light that Christ gave to us at our baptism, and we share it with others.  Sometimes the other person won’t be accepting of the light of Christ, or their light will blow out due to the winds of fear, pride, or error, but at least we did our best to share it with them, and maybe it will take a few times for the light to catch, like it sometimes takes a few strikes before a match begins to burn.  
    So as we celebrate Epiphany, may we remember and put into practice the words of our Lord from the Gospel: your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Humility and Poverty

Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the foci (plural of focus) of St. Francis of Assisi (or, as the Dominicans call him, our Holy Father St. Francis), and the Franciscan Orders, is the humility and poverty of God.  This shouldn’t surprise us much, as Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone (as he was baptized) gave up his family’s wealth and prestige to become a begging or mendicant friar and took the name Francis.  He literally (and I use that word properly) stripped off his family’s wealthy clothes and put on a rough, brown habit, and relied on the generosity of others to survive.  And through this poverty, and with the assistance of our Holy Father St. Dominic, they did much to rebuild the Church, which had so greatly fallen into disrepair.
    But poverty and humility don’t only regard physical possessions or wealth.  Our Lord shows us great humility and poverty in His Incarnation.  And yes, the Gospels are clear that the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph did not have much wealth (they had to present the poor family’s offering of two turtledoves or pigeons to redeem their firstborn son).  But the poverty of Christ comes from recognizing how much He gave up to take our human nature onto Himself.  As pure spirit, before the Incarnation, Christ had no limits, experienced no lack, and existed in pure actuality.  After the Incarnation, Christ could be seen in only one place, few the pangs of hunger and thirst, and would grow from potentiality to actuality throughout His life.  The King of the Universe could be mocked by his neighbors.  He could get splinters and feel pain while working with St. Joseph in his workshop.  
    But beyond that, Christ subjected Himself to the Law of Moses.  Our Lord gave the Law to Moses, and knew its deeper meaning, as He would preach in the Sermon on the Mount.  But, as one like us in all things but sin, He subjected Himself to a Law to which He, as Lawgiver, should never have had to follow.  The Law was for children as a tutor.  He needed no such tutor.  And yet, He did not consider it beneath Himself to obey the law in all its commands.  He received circumcision on the eighth day (as we will hear on Wednesday); His parents redeemed Him in the Temple 40 days after His birth (as we will celebrate on Candlemas), which is the earlier passage of today’s Gospel; He went to the Temple for Passover and the Feast of Booths and the Day of Atonement.  He who would declare all animals clean to St. Peter in a vision, obeyed kosher laws.  He would pay the temple tax, though He was the Lord of the temple and the object of its worship.  
    And He did all this so that He could redeem those under the law, so that we might not simply be servants or slaves (though St. Paul will still use these words from time to time), but sons and daughters in the Son of God, so that we could have the same access to the Father that He has.  What great humility for the one who did not sin, which the Law was meant to guard against, to live according to the Law!  What great poverty that He would live under the same rule as slaves, though He is Son.
    So how do we demonstrate this humility and poverty?  Or are we too important to humble ourselves and live under the rules of others, even when they seem not to apply to us (as long as they don’t go against our conscience)?  Kids will often confess disobedience to their parents in one way or another.  I know I disobeyed my parents when I was a child (shocking, I know!).  I will often remind them that our Lord, when He was a child, obeyed Mary and Joseph, even though Christ made and redeemed Mary and Joseph.  Christ, strictly speaking, owed no obedience to anyone; He is God.  And yet, if Joseph told Him to wash His face, or help His mother with dinner, or join in in the workshop, Jesus would yes, “Yes, Abba.”  If the Lord of all Creation can obey human parents, then we, who are not divine, can certainly give our best attempts to obey our parents and what they say.
    How about when Holy Mother Church asks us to do something: how do we respond then?  Some laws are man-made.  They are rooted in what we believe, but they are not directly from God.  Do we take time to obey them, or do we figure that we know better and don’t need to be shackled by such limiting regulations?  When the Church asks us to do penance to unite ourselves to Christ on the cross on Fridays, do we do that, in one way or another?  When the Church asks for some support in prayer, can we add a little prayer time to our daily habits, or do we complain that we pray enough, and are too busy to add another devotion?  Certainly devotions are not necessary, but they can sometimes help.  
    It is so easy to think that we know best, and we shouldn’t have to do something because it doesn’t apply to us, or won’t have an effect on us.  But Christ, through. His Incarnation and Nativity, shows us how to humble ourselves, and how to live in poverty, maybe not of possessions or money, but in poverty of spirit.  May the humble Christ Child, whom St. Francis, il Poverello, the little poor one, loved so much and imitated, help us all to be a bit more humble, a bit more poor, so that we can be more like our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Not Mine

Feast of the Holy Family

    One of the things that we learn from a young age, which is not necessarily good, is the concept of “mine.”  Certainly there is a natural, perhaps genetic, reaction to items that we need to survive.  But anyone who has dealt with a toddler who has learned the word, “mine,” can attest that it quickly goes beyond basic necessities of life like food and drink, and becomes the M.O., the modus operandi, or way of operating, when it comes to just about anything.  And toddlers have a grip strength that seems to defy logic.  Hopefully, the child grows out of this obsession with mine, though some adolescents, and even adults are still fixated on what is mine, such that they sound more like the seagulls in “Finding Nemo,” or like Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings.”
    Contrasted with the idea of mine is the family, as we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family today.  Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, had experienced difficulty in conceiving, and had wept copiously in the temple, such that Eli, the priest, thought she was drunk.  But she, with God’s help, conceived and gave birth to Samuel, and, as promised, she returned Samuel to God after she finished weaning Samuel.  
    This probably does not make sense to us.  We would never give up a child.  But this theme of a child that belongs to God runs through the Old Testament.  Think of Isaac, the son of Abraham.  Or Samson, whose father and mother couldn’t conceive, but who received the blessing of a child as announced by an angel, as long as the parents didn’t drink alcohol or eat unclean foods.  And their son, Samson, could not cut his hair.  In fact, the Mosaic law commanded that every firstborn son had to be presented to the Lord in the Temple and redeemed with a sacrifice, as Mary and Joseph did with Jesus, which we will celebrate at Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So offering one’s child to the Lord was not unknown to the Jewish People before the birth of Christ.
    But even after the birth of Christ, we should offer our families to God.  No, I’m not saying that when you child is misbehaving you can drop him or her off at the church and not have to worry about the child again.  But we should be ready to offer our family spiritually to God each and every day.
    Because, after baptism, before we belong to anyone else, we belong to God.  Yes, naturally we belong to our human family, but the bonds of baptism bind us to God in a way that supersedes our bonds to the human family.  That is how Jesus can say that if we cannot give up father and mother, we cannot truly be His disciple.  Most of the time we don’t have to give up family to follow God, but if our family asked us to do something wrong, our first allegiance should be to God.

    For husbands and wives, that means that your spouse, who is probably the most precious person to you in the world, doesn’t really belong to you.  He or she belongs to God, and your vocation as a spouse is to help your spouse get to heaven, because that’s where God wants him or her to be.  In the Episode III of “Star Wars,” Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side because he cannot stand the idea of his wife, Padmé, dying, and so the Sith Lord, Emperor Palpatine, tricks Anakin into following him with the promise that Palpatine will help save Padmé’s life.  He forsakes all the good he could do for the opportunity to hold on to his wife.  Ironically (spoiler alert), Anakin himself ends up killing Padmé in his anger towards her for not going along with his conversion to evil.  Certainly, husbands and wives should love each, and sacrifice their own good for the other.  But your spouse belongs to God first and foremost, who allows you to be a good steward in caring for your spouse.  But you do not fully possess him or her.
    For parents, this applies to children, as well.  Your child is yours.  But your child is primarily God’s.  You are called to help the child know God and follow God.  Sometimes children will thank you for this and make this part of your vocation easy.  Sometimes children will not like you making sure that you know about God and about how following Him leads to perfect happiness.  And, to a certain extent, we can’t control how children end up.  But parents are responsible for doing all that they can to help their children grow in the faith through prayer, Bible reading, instruction, and even discipline to help children grow in virtue.  From the second you have your child baptized, you acknowledge that your child is “on-loan” to you from God, and God will want to collect on that loan with interest.  God doesn’t want your child to remain a child in the faith, but to grow to adulthood in his or her relationship with God.  That is the interest God expects on what He entrusts to you.
    So please, by all means, care for your family members: your spouse, your children, your parents, your siblings.  But do so recognizing that they are not primarily yours.  We cannot be toddlers when it comes even to our families and say “mine” all the time.  To paraphrase St. Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians, you are not your own.  You belong to Christ, and Christ to God the Father.  May we each find ways of offering our family to God each day, and helping them get to our true home in heaven.

"Jesus Our Brother, Kind and Good"

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord
    Merry Christmas!  One of the non-theological things that I enjoyed most about seminary was the fraternity.  Now, when we think of fraternity and college students, our minds probably turn to John Belushi and rowdy houses filled with boys in men’s bodies, drinking, debauching, and the like.  But I mean fraternity in the sense of brotherhood.  I have two younger sisters, so going from that to a seminary with 80-110 young men my age was a big, but welcome shift.  It was good to have other guys with whom I could play the board game Risk or the video game Call of Duty, share the joys and struggles of the very fast-paced and filled-to-the-brim activities of preparing for the priesthood, play ultimate frisbee, and watch “Band of Brothers,” not to mention enjoying an adult beverage once we had come of age.  

    So, as we celebrate Christmas, my mind this year turned to Christ our brother.  This is part of the great news of Christmas and the Incarnation.  Jesus became our brother.  He took on our human nature, though without sin.  I’m sure the neighbor kids at Nazareth–where the Savior spent His youth after His family fled Bethlehem for Egypt, and then moved to Nazareth after leaving Egypt–played games with the young Messiah, talked about their joys and sorrows, and took time to enjoy His company.  
    But beyond the very human daily activities, Christ chose to stand in solidarity with us, to be united with us in all the things that made us great, and even took upon Himself all the sins that are the worst of us.  [That’s why we read the entire genealogy tonight, which I usually don’t do: to show that] Jesus became our brother, a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a son of King David, and even joined with us in the darker parts and stories of our human family, names like Tamar, the wife of Uriah, Manasseh, whose wickedness led to the Babylonian Exile.  Christ was our brother with all the holy men and women who came before Him, and Christ was our brother with all the evil men and women who came before Him.  
    And because He is our brother, this gives us a certain familiarity.  This is certainly true for priests who are ordained to act in His Name.  One of my favorite lines of prayer comes from the Preface for the Chrism Mass: “…with a brother’s kindness he also chooses men to become sharers in his sacred ministry through the laying on of hands.”  But it’s also true for all the faithful, not just priests.  We hear it in the devotional Christmas carol, “Jesus Our Brother, Kind and Good,” whose title is the first line of the song.  We hear it in the third verse of the Christmas carol, “O Holy Night,” as we sing, “Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother.”  We read it in the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2, verses 11-12: “Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them ‘brothers,’ saying: ‘I will proclaim your name to my brothers, in the midst of the assembly I will praise you.’”  
    But the mystery of the Incarnation is not simply about a fellow human who did some amazing things and lived a holy life.  The Redeemer is not only our brother; He is also our God.  He is not just a good man; or a good teacher; or a person who live an exemplary life.  He is the Eternal God, Son of the Eternal Father.  If He were only our brother, He could not save us, anymore than Abraham, Moses, or Elijah could save us, though they were holy and upright and allowed to work great deeds in God’s Name.  But, if He were not our brother, we would not feel the camaraderie with God that God desired us to have, like He had with Adam and Eve when He walked with them in the cool of the evening, as Genesis 3:8 says.  In the Messiah, the divinity of God, whom we cannot approach and before whom the proper response is to fall on our needs (again quoting “O Holy Night”), comes to us in a way that we can accept and feel comfortable, so that we could imagine, as the country singer Thomas Rhett does, having a beer with Jesus.  It all comes together in Christ, so that we can sing another great hymn, though not specifically about Christmas: “Jesus my Lord, my God, my all / How can I love thee as I ought?”  
    That is why our hearts are moved with great love and tenderness as we think on the Christ Child, lying in a manger, but also why I bowed before that same manger, and why we will all genuflect today as we profess our faith that, “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”  In Jesus Christ, we encounter both our Lord who frees us from the bonds of sin and death, and our brother who shares with us in all that is truly good.  
    Today, as we come to receive Him in the Sacrament of the Eucharist at Holy Communion, we approach our Lord and our brother.  Probably, we each emphasize one or the other, but both are equally true.  Our goal as followers of Christ is to live both in balance.  If we tend to focus on Jesus as Lord most of the time, then perhaps allow a little more familiarity in your life with Him, and make it a point to remember that, aside from sin, He did not deem it unbecoming to take on all that it meant to be human: from soiling His diapers, to enjoying a good meal, to sitting with friends and just talking about life.  If we tend to focus on Jesus as our brother most of the time, then remember that our brother created all the heavens and the earth, and is our King, whom the angels dare not even look upon out of reverence and awe.  Both Lord and Brother come together in Christ, and are present with us here tonight, in you, the People He has made His own; in His Word, proclaimed to us and alive for us; in me, His brother who, despite my unworthiness, He chose to act in His Name and with His power; and most especially in the Eucharist, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of our Lord and our Brother who shares with us all that it truly means to be human and redeems us from all the fallen realities that were not supposed to be part of being human, but which we introduced into the world through our disobedience.  On this Holy Night/Day, may we remember and put into action in our lives the reality that Christ is both our Lord and our Brother, through the words of the hymn:
 

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is our Lord!  O praise His name forever!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!

Revealing What is Hidden

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Recently the fifth season of the western-drama, “Yellowstone” finished up.  Like most TV shows, the audience is given a divine-like view, where they know what is going on, while the characters in the show have to figure things out for themselves.  This fifths season begins with the death of one of the major characters, and while the death is initially ruled a suicide, the TV audience knows that, quoting Shakespeare, “there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”
    I think that many television shows, especially, but not only, dramas, rely on the human desire to play God.  We don’t want to wait for God to bring to light those things hidden in the darkness.  We want to know now all that is going on, even the things that don’t seem to make sense or those that confound us.  
    St. Paul promises that God will reveal all hidden things when the Lord returns.  And in some sense, we might enjoy this.  When many people talk about heaven, they talk about an eternal Q & A session with God, asking questions as profound as why this person had to die, or why that person got to live, to the more mundane and silly questions like whether Adam and Eve had belly buttons, or who killed JR (you might have to be a little older to get that reference).  
    It’s also something to which we look forward because often there are serious questions to which we could never know the answer for sure.  We sense a lack of justice when we don’t know if the guilty party received punishment or not.  Think about how much ink has been spilled about whether Lee Harvey Oswald truly killed President Kennedy, and whether he acted alone or was part of a grander conspiracy, whether with the Mafia or perhaps even with our own government.  When those who, ostensibly, do not get punished for the wrong they do, especially prominent people like actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians, our desire for justice seems unfulfilled, like there’s no resolution that satisfies.
    However, bringing to light what has remained hidden in darkness cuts both ways.  It doesn’t only apply to actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians.  It applies to us as well.  The things that we work so hard to hide from others, whether simply out of embarrassment or perhaps out of true shame and contrition, Christ will also manifest as He judges us.  That, I imagine, delights us a bit less than the idea of knowing where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.  I imagine we would like to know the secrets of others, but we probably don’t want them to know our own secrets.
    Of course, the Lord knows it all.  He is omniscient.  He sees all time as at once, and knows the causes and the effects of every action and reaction.  Nothing we could do could ever be hidden from him.  And yet, God chooses to forgive us for those wrong actions, and, when we are truly sorry and confess our sins, He no longer holds those things against us, no matter how secret they may be.  Yes, those sinful actions still happened, and yes, they still echo through their consequences, but God does not hold them against us at our judgment if we are contrite and confess.  Those sins going from being things of shame to being opportunities to grow in the grace of God, who transforms our sins into healing, just as God healed the death of sin through taking death upon Himself, though He had no sin Himself.  

    But, as we approach the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord, we also have another aspect of revealing what was hidden.  And that is God Himself.  True, God had revealed Himself, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews states, in various and sundry ways.  But the birth of our Savior was a true revelation, the revelation, of who God is.  When Christ came in the flesh, even though the flesh sometimes hid his divinity, it also revealed it.  One of the Christmas songs I hate, and I consider it at least partially heretical, is “Mary, Did You Know?”  And one of the lines I think is heretical is, “Mary, did you know / […] when you kiss your little baby / You’ve kissed the face of God?”  First of all, yes, she did know, because the Archangel Gabriel told her.  But more importantly, in the Incarnation, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who was pure spirit, took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and after He was born, we all saw God any time we saw Christ.  Throughout His life, the Savior revealed God as the one who loves sinners, but hates sin; as the one who welcomes those who wander away, but condemns those who make obstacles to repentance; as the one who heals the sick with tenderness, but casts out vendors from the Temple; as the one who dies for our sins, but rises on the third day because death cannot cancel out life.  God does not hide himself, but reveals Himself, so that we can access salvation.
    Though not my favorite season of “Yellowstone,” this, what I believe to be, final season draws people in by allowing them to know what remains hidden from the characters in the show, at least at first.  Through our upcoming celebration of our Lord’s birth, may we rejoice at the revelation that had remained hidden, only suggested and pointed to from afar by the prophets, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

"It is the Small Things"

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    Galadriel asks, “Mithrandir, why the halfling?”  “I do not know,” Gandalf replies.  “Saruman believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check.  But that is not what I have found.  I found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay.”  In the movie, “The Hobbit,” this is the exchange between Lady Galadriel, an Elven queen, and Gandalf, known to the Elves as Mithrandir, who is a wizard.  They know that a great, evil being, Sauron, is active again.  And yet, Gandalf seems very focused on Bilbo, who is a Hobbit, a halfling, who only begrudgingly acquiesced to Gandalf’s request and went on a quest with twelve dwarves to reclaim their home and treasure from a dragon.
    In our readings today, we hear about the small: Bethlehem, the Incarnate Christ, and the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Maybe Christ seems odd to have in a list of the small, but even Christ, in His Incarnation, became small, when compared to His Divine Nature.  But I’ll come back to that.
    First, Bethlehem.  Micah describes the little town as, “too small to be among the clans of Judah.”  Bethlehem means “House of Bread,” and had a long history in the Bible.  It was the burial place of Rachel, the wife of Jacob in the Book of Genesis; in the Book of Judges, Bethlehem was the home of a young Levite who served as an idol-worshipping priest, as well as the home of a concubine whose murder almost destroyed the Tribe of Benjamin; in the Book of Ruth, it is the home of Naomi, whose servant, Ruth, moved back with Naomi after they had left for Moab, and where Ruth married Boaz.  Boaz and Ruth gave birth to Obed, who was the grandfather of King David, who also came from Bethlehem.  After the Babylonians exiled the Davidic kings, it loses all fame, except in this passage from Micah, which is fulfilled when Christ is born in Bethlehem.  
    In our Gospel, we hear about the Blessed Virgin Mary, who, to us, seems anything but small.  But in her own time, she was not well known.  She was likely around fourteen years old at the time she conceived our Lord.  While she was from the family of King David, she had no power or prestige.  She was the daughter of an old couple Joachim and Anne, who had no other children.  She was, to everyone except God, a nobody.
    And even in the Letter to the Hebrews, the sacred author talks about Christ coming into the world in His Incarnation when He took on our human nature.  Even this was small, in its own way, because Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who created the universe and whom the heavens cannot contain, allowed Himself to be limited by our humanity, to do the will of the Father and reconcile us to God.  When comparing Jesus’ divinity and humanity, He did become rather small.
    But this is how God works.  St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, “God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.”  When great people do great things, they might think that it is them, not God, who accomplishes it.  When a weak or lowly or despised person does something great, they know that they could never have done it by themselves; they needed help from God.

    And, as we prepare for Christmas on Wednesday, that’s what God wants us to remember.  We could not, we cannot, save ourselves.  No amount of right living on our part could have ever bridged the gap between heaven and earth that Adam and Eve created when they disobeyed God and passed on their disobedience through original sin to us.  God had to save us.  Without Christ, we could not enter heaven, not even Abraham or Moses or King David.  All had sinned, and were deprived of the glory of God.  But God sent Jesus to save us, He whose name means “God saves,” and opened heaven not only for Abraham and Moses and King David, but also for us.  And even now that we are baptized, God gives us what we need to respond to that salvation.  Without the grace of God, we cannot do anything good even simply to cooperate with God’s salvation offered us through Christ.  The only thing that we can do without God’s grace is sin.  Every good thing requires God’s help.
    When we remember this, nothing can stop us, because nothing can stop God.  With God’s grace, Bethlehem became, not only the birthplace of a strong, human king, David, but the birthplace of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.  With God’s grace, a young virgin who seemed to have nothing special about her became the Mother of the Redeemer.  Jesus Himself made Himself small so that He could attract us to Himself and save us by His invitation, rather than by force.  And we need only, by the grace that God gives us, respond to that invitation in order to enter the enteral home that God wants for us in heaven.  
    Some do believe that it is only the powerful that can keep evil at bay.  But, it is in the small ways that God defeats evil, with those who know of their smallness and yet rely on God.  May we cooperate, in our smallness, with the grace of God through small things, everyday deeds of we, ordinary folk, and so participate in Christ’s victory over sin and death.

Rejoicing and Patience

Third Sunday of Advent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Patience is not a virtue at which I generally excel.  While we had posted the Office Manager job, I wanted good candidates to immediately apply for the position.  My best friend is sometimes bad at responding to texts, and I struggle when he doesn’t respond to me quickly enough (at least quickly enough in my mind).  And, generally, I respond pretty quickly, whether to an RSVP, a request for information, or to a text or a phone call.  In fact, I’m becoming a bit of a cause celeb among the Diocese of Lansing priests because I usually pick up my cell phone on the first ring, which somehow means it hasn’t even rung once for the person calling (I don’t know how that happens).

    So, as we hear the word “rejoice” today in the introit and in the epistle, which both come from Philippians chapter four, verse four, I’m all for it!  We rejoice because soon we don’t have to be patient anymore!  The celebration of our Lord’s Nativity, the day when our salvation became known in the flesh, is closer than the beginning of our time of waiting in Advent.  Our waiting is closer to finishing than when we first began waiting.
    But, we rejoice, not because we don’t have to exhibit the virtue of patience.  We rejoice because we can celebrate soon.  And that goes for our celebration of the Nativity (which will become an even greater focus in the readings in the coming days), but also for the return of Christ in glory.  The second coming is closer today than yesterday.  And that second coming is when all will be made right, the righteous will be welcomed into heaven to enjoy eternal bliss.
    But, we can even rejoice today because we know that Christ has come to save us, and that the salvation He offers us we can receive at any time.  Christmas is near.  The return of Christ is near.  But Christ offers us the gift of salvation now.  All we have to do is take hold of it and make it a part of our lives.  
    We see this most especially in two important Advent sacraments: Penance (confession) and the Eucharist.  Through the Sacrament of Penance, God reconciles us to Himself.  Twice in two verses in his second epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul talks about how God reconciled the world to Himself in Christ.  That was the good news of Christmas and the Incarnation.  But that good news still applies today.  God is still reconciling the world to Himself through Christ.  And in the Sacrament of Penance, we participate in that reconciliation.  God takes our sins, like my impatience, and He removes it from us, and gives us in its place His grace, which is really His life.  He breaks down all the barriers between us and Him that sin creates, “so that we might become the righteousness of God in him,” to use the words of St. Paul from that same second epistle to the Corinthians.  In the Sacrament of Penance, the Holy Spirit accomplishes in us what Christ accomplished when He died on the cross.  And that is certainly a reason to rejoice.
    Likewise, in the Eucharist, we receive our salvation.  Christ gives Himself to us under the sacramental signs of bread and wine which truly become the Body and the Blood of Christ, so that we can have, in the most special way on earth, Christ living within us.  The same Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, took flesh and humbled Himself to be born with our human nature, again humbles Himself by allowing bread and wine to become Him, and allowing us to see His Sacred Flesh and Precious Blood with our eyes of faith.  The same Incarnate Lord whom St. Joseph, his foster father, held in his arms, I get to hold in my hands and give to you.  The same Suffering Servant who offered His life for the salvation of the world by dying on the Cross, joins us to that same sacrifice on Calvary through the Mass.  As I invite you to “Behold the Lamb of God,” (“Ecce Agnus Dei”), I remind you how near the Lord is to you and encourage you to rejoice as you behold your salvation.  And this is certainly a reason to rejoice.
    Patience is not my greatest virtue.  I continue to work at growing in that virtue which is described by St. Thomas Aquinas quoting Tully, “the voluntary and prolonged endurance of arduous and difficult things for the sake of virtue.”  And this virtue will help us to wait these next ten days until we celebrate Christmas, and these next days, however many, until Christ returns in glory.  But, what we will celebrate at Christmas, and what we await at the end of time, we also have now: Christ our God, reconciling us to the Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.