Tares, Not Just Weeds

Resumed Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Words matter.  The right words can convey more details than the wrong words, which can lack the force or complexity of an idea.  For example, the classic response to the parental question, “How was school today?” often gets answered, “Good,” or “Fine.”  When, in fact, the seemingly stuporous teenager may have had numerous exciting, humiliating, depressing, or enjoyable moments.  But all mom or dad gets is, “Good.”  Or a person who is a novice when it comes to bourbon, when asked, “What do you smell when you nose the bourbon?” may respond, honestly enough, “Bourbon.”  But a person who had learned to carefully investigate the aromas might respond, “oak, caramel, hints of citrus, allspice,” or other scents.  

Darnel

    I bring this up because today’s parable is often called the parable of the weeds among the wheat.  But the Greek word, which Latin simply transliterates, is 𝜁𝜄𝜁𝛼𝜈𝜄𝛼, which refers to darnel, a poisonous weed that, when it first starts to grow, looks exactly like wheat.  Yes, one can get part of the message of the parable if one hears that there are weeds growing among the wheat, which cannot be pulled without possibly killing the wheat.  But the depth of the parable increases greatly when one considers that the two plants are, from sight, nearly indistinguishable, though one is poisonous.  We used to utilize the word, “tare,” which is a type of darnel, but probably someone decided that no one knew what tares were, and so decided to change the translation simply to weeds and let preachers, like me, explain the complexity of the parable.
    So, as we hear this parable, one of the points simply from the text is that good and bad can sometimes seem indistinguishable.  Our Lord explains the parable seven verses later, telling the disciples:
 

He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the kingdom.  The tares [my translation] are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil.  The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.  Just as weeds are collected and burned [up] with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.  The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers.  They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.  Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

The mature darnel or tares looks very different than wheat, and then the harvesters keep the good wheat and burn up the tares, which can now be distinguished for the harm they would cause if consumed.  

    How often does evil disguise itself as good.  We might see this in a simple way again with speech.  We know that we should not speak uncharitably about another person, and though we want to say, “that boy is as dumb as a box of rocks,” we don’t want to get in trouble or offend.  So we might say, “Bless his heart.”  We mean the first thing, we just don’t want to get caught saying it out loud.  Or a person might quote saints or Scripture to try to support their bad actions or bad understanding of God’s will.  Even the devil quoted Scripture, but he did so without trying to communicate the grace that the Scriptures are meant to convey.
    But, of course, it can have weightier applications as well.  All too often what looks good ends up showing the evil contained therein.  And part of this lies in the fact that any good action has three parts: the act itself; the intention; and the circumstances.  And all three have to be good in order for us to consider an act morally good.  We can tell when an act is intrinsically evil, like abortion, euthanasia, stealing, misuse of our sexual faculties, just to name a few.  We don’t have to go any further than that in our moral evaluation.  But so many actions are morally good or morally neutral.  Let’s use the example of driving a car.  The action itself is morally neutral.  But the circumstances can change that action dramatically: let’s say the car is not yours and you don’t have permission to use it.  That changes a neutral act to a morally bad act, even though, from afar, it looks the same.  Or the intention can change the moral act, too.  Let’s say you’re driving a car (neutral), you own the car (neutral), and you are driving the car to get groceries for dinner so that your family can eat (good).  The entire act is good.  But if you change even just the intention, say, driving the car so that you friends who just robbed a bank can get away, that changes the entire moral act to bad, even though the action and the circumstances were neutral.
    Or, people often think that if you have good intentions, that’s all that matters.  But, as the cliché phrase goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  You cannot achieve good by doing evil.  It’s like trying to get to Detroit driving north on I-75.  It’s not gonna happen.  When evil enters into an act, no matter what good goal you want to reach, it taints the entire act, just like a drop of bleach can ruin an entire glass of pure, pristine water.  
    What do we do, if evil is sometimes so hard to distinguish from good?  We strive to do good ourselves, with good intentions, and under good or neutral circumstances.  We strive to accept the good seed that God wants to sow by His grace, and keep away from cross-germination with tares.  We choose to do the right thing for the right reasons, no matter what others do, or what it might cost us.  
    Whether we use the word weed, or tares, or darnel, Christ reminds us today that evil can often disguise itself as good.  Stay close to Christ and His angels, who know the difference between good and evil.  Choose to do good for good reasons.  And, by the grace of God and with His mercy and patience, we will be found righteous and “shine like the sun in the kingdom of” the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.   

Living Like We're Dying

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Last Sunday evening I went to confession to a local priest, and he informed me that a priest of our diocese, Fr. Mike Williams, had passed away unexpectedly.  Fr. Mike didn’t show up for the Saturday evening anticipatory Mass, so they made it in to his rectory and found him deceased.  He was only 60 years old.  I had known Fr. Mike from some of his assignments, and he was a fellow Dean, so we saw each other every few months when we met with Bishop Boyea.  
    I had read the readings for today’s Mass on Sunday morning, so when my brother priest told me that Fr. Mike had died, my mind immediately went to the second reading and Gospel we heard today.  On the one hand, the Holy Spirit reminds us that death should not cause to grieve without hope.  And on the other hand, the Holy Spirit reminds us always to be ready, because we don’t know when Christ will call us to our judgement.  
    To reference a Tim McGraw song, do we live like we’re dying?  In that song, Tim sings about all the things a man does when he finds out he has cancer.  He goes skydiving, Rocky Mountain climbing, rides a bull named Fumanchu for 2.7 seconds, goes fishing, reads the Bible, loves deeper, spoke sweeter, and gave forgiveness that he’d been denying.  But we don’t have to get cancer to live in such a way that we’re ready for Christ to return (nor do we need to skydive, climb mountains, or ride bulls).  
    The things we should commit ourselves to, so as to show we’re ready for our end, includes loving others more like Jesus does (to paraphrase an Eric Church song), to forgive others, even when they’re hard to forgive, to make prayer and the reading of Scripture a priority in our daily life, and to serve the poor in whatever way we can.  Whether it’s our own end of life on earth, or the return of Christ in glory, when we allow Christ to live through us (to reference St. Paul), the end won’t catch us off-guard.  Our life will show that we want to go to heaven, because each day we have chosen to live like we already have one foot in the door to heaven.
    Of course, living each day like it could be our last proves difficult.  There’s a reason why the five foolish virgins let their lamps keep burning.  They figured that they would have time to get more oil before the bridegroom arrived.  But he came unexpectedly, and only those who lived as if the bridegroom could come at any moment were prepared.
    When we hear the parable, if we’re wrestling with the meaning, we probably wonder at the part where the five wise virgins refuse to share.  The parable says that they told the foolish virgins that there may not be enough.  But if we consider the greater meaning, that we need to be prepared to meet Christ at any time, the reality is that we cannot share.  While we do share spiritual goods in the Body of Christ, which is why we can pray for the dead, your judgement is your judgement; you can’t have someone else stand in your place.  You can’t ask for someone else’s commitment to Christ to be transferred over to you.  When we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, He judges us on our actions and our responses to His grace.  Others can help me live a Christ-centered life, but they can’t live that Christ-centered life for me.  
    I used this quote on All Souls’ Day, but St. Augustine once preached, “Admittedly, it is not in our power to determine how our death may come about.  However it does lie in our power to determine how we live, so that we may die without fear.”  When we live as the disciples Christ calls us to be, our end, whether by death or by the return of Christ in glory, should not make us afraid.  Rather, we will welcome it as the culmination, the consummation, of the choices we made throughout our lives.  All those ways that we exhibited patience when we wanted to snap at someone; all the ways we cared for someone who didn’t really care for us; all the donations we made to support the poor and the church; all the times we chose not to hold on to grudges but to forgive; all the myriad ways that we chose light over darkness and holiness over sin will seem worth it, and even will seem so small in the face of what God gives us.  As St. Paul says in his epistle to the Romans, “the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed in us.”  
    Each day we need to choose to be wise, and to live like we’re dying.  Each day we need to choose to let Christ live through us.  We do not know the time of our end.  Today could be our last day.  Choose to live with death in mind, and death will not catch us off guard or cause us fear, but will be our transition to a better life and a day of rejoicing because we will receive our intended inheritance: life with the angels and saints in heaven, worshipping God and experiencing perfect happiness.  

Striving to be a Saint

Solemnity of All Saints
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  I think that when it comes to the saints, we have such an elevated view of them that we can forget they were real people, and some of them had not so pleasant pasts.  How often do we read or hear stories about the saints that make us think they never did anything wrong?  Certainly, the Blessed Mother never sinned.  And there have been some saints who did live pristine lives.  But the saints were people just like me and you, with their own small sins and foibles.  

    Think of St. Augustine, a favorite saint in this parish because of the long history of the Augustinians.  His past was anything but perfect.  He tried seemingly every philosophy and heresy he could.  He stole a pear simply for the pleasure of taking something that didn’t belong to him.  And he was a bit promiscuous and had a child out of wedlock.  Now, he’s not a saint because he did those things, but because he accepted the grace of God and turned his life around.  But still, he wasn’t perfect.  Or we could look at a more recent saint like Pope St. John Paul II.  Certainly he was a holy pontiff, and brought the light of the Gospel to many people by focusing on the new evangelization.  He had a deep devotion to the Blessed Mother, and a grueling pace of work and prayer.  Still, without knowing just how much he knew, a rot existed in the Church during his papacy due to sinful priests, bishops, and cardinals, and, in hindsight, these problems didn’t always get dealt with in the best way.  But still, even at his funeral, the crowds made signs and shouted “Santo subito!” Or “make him a saint immediately!”
    Being a saint does not mean necessarily that a person is sinless.  But it means that they continue to seek to do better to live a life of heroic virtue, or are willing to give their lives for Christ.  To use the cliché phrase, saints are sinners who keep trying.  And while we don’t want to lower the bar for what makes a person a saint, certainly we also want to recognize that holiness is possible, even if it comes after years of starts and stops.  The key is that we never stop trying to say yes to God and no to sin.
    The Church’s teaching on mortal sin is clear.  If we commit a grave sin, with knowledge and freedom in our choice, then we cut ourselves off from sanctifying grace, the grace that makes us saints and allows us to go to heaven.  Through Holy Baptism, God gives us all that we need so that we never commit a mortal sin.  And there are some saints who lived in such a way.  St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s confessor told her that he believed she never committed a mortal sin.  But what concerns me as a confessor is not so much if a person struggles with sin, even mortal sin, but rather if that person doesn’t seem to be struggling at all.  I’m not the judge, so I guess it doesn’t matter what I think, but while I affirm wholeheartedly what the Catholic Church teaches– that if a person dies in a state of mortal sin, we have no reason to believe that person could go to heaven–I also think that a person who struggles with sin, even mortal sin, could be a saint, that is, could go to heaven, even if a long time in Purgatory would be necessary, as long as that person was fighting for holiness.  
    Certainly, I do not mean to encourage anyone here to commit mortal sin.  Stay away from mortal sin as much as you can!  But, I think it can be easy to give into despair, and forget that God can make saints out of people who struggle, but who engage the struggle and do their best to respond to God’s grace and stay in a state of grace as much as possible.  So many young people today get exposed to sexual temptations, in person or through screens, which can create bad habits and even addictions.  But simply because a person has a bad habit, or even an addiction, does not mean that heaven is closed off.  Again, strive to remain in a state of grace, and make sure you go to confession as soon as possible if you fall into mortal sin, because we have very little hope if a person dies in a state of mortal sin.  But hope remains as long as the person strives to receive God’s grace and change.
    As we hear the Beatitudes enumerated for us in the Gospel, the list of what makes one truly blessed and prepared for heaven, it is easy even for a person who doesn’t sin mortally to struggle with one or more of the Beatitudes.  Perhaps we find it difficult to entrust ourselves to God in spiritual poverty, or stay satisfied with not being recognized or well-known.  Or maybe we struggle to stand up when others are oppressed, or to forgive one who has harmed us, or even to keep our minds pure and work for peace.  Or maybe we find it difficult to suffer insults for God or even have others calumniate us though we have done nothing wrong.  To be a saint means that we do our best to grow in whatever Beatitude or Beatitudes that do not come easily to us.  The one hundred forty-four thousand–a symbolic number which combines the twelve tribes of Israel times twelve thousand, which stands for a great multitude–certainly includes those who did not always live as our Lord taught, at least not perfectly.  But while they may not have lived as a disciple perfectly, they still strove for perfection, made possible by the grace of God, and allowed God’s grace to pick them up, even time after time, to choose God and reject sin.
    [My dear candidates for full communion: today you profess with us that you wish to be saints.  You have come to realize the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church, and want access to all the graces God wants to give you so that you can access His holiness.  God gave you a foundation in other ecclesial communities, and now He welcomes you into the one Church Christ founded.  Christ’s Church exists to make saints: to help us to be like God according to His terms.  Avoid sin as much as possible.  But even if you fall, even if it’s a serious fall or numerous falls, keep striving for holiness and returning to God for His mercy to give you a fresh start.]
    May all of us recognize that the saints were not perfect people (except the sinless, ever-virgin Mary).  But they were perfected people, who allowed the grace of God to strengthen them when they stood, and heal them when they fell.  May we recognize that holiness is possible for each one of us, and we can all accept the gift of eternal life in heaven, as long as we commit ourselves to doing our best, each day, to reject sin and open ourselves to the grace of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

For Such a Time as This

Feast of Christ the King

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “‘Who knows–perhaps it was for a time like this that you became queen?’”  Mordecai speaks these words to his cousin and adopted daughter Hadassah, who also went by the name Esther.  But God also speaks these words to us today: perhaps it was for a time like this that you became a king or queen.
    For while we celebrate Christ as our King today, on this day that we also celebrate the thirty-seventh anniversary of the foundation of the Flint Latin Mass Community, we also remember that, through Holy Baptism, we also have been given a royal dignity inasmuch as the Holy Spirit has united us to Christ, the one true King.  While this royal dignity does not find expression in the prayer at the anointing with Chrism in the older rite of Baptism, the new Order of Baptism clearly states: “[Christ] now anoints you with the Chrism of salvation, so that you may remain members of Christ, Priest, Prophet and King, unto eternal life.”  This teaching comes from, among others, Pope St. Leo the Great, who wrote:
 

In baptism the sign of the cross makes kings of all who are reborn in Christ…So,…any Christian who has the gifts of rational and of spiritual understanding knows he is a member of a kingly race…For what could be more royal than a soul which by subjecting itself to God becomes ruler of its own body?

We are all kings and queens in Christ the King, given a royal dignity and ruling, in accord with God’s will, our bodies, rather than being slaves to our passions and to the fallen powers of the enemy.

    But do we demonstrate our royal dignity?  In each generation, God raises us up to participate in saving His people, just as He raised up Queen Esther to save the Jews from the wicked Haman, the Persian prime minister of Ahasuerus.  God allows us to cooperate with Him in extending salvation to the world, not because we have conquered sin and death on our own, but because we share in Christ’s rule that saved all creation for all time by His Death, Resurrection, and Ascension.  
    The Preface of today’s Mass describes how that kingdom is supposed to look: “aetérnum et universále regnum…regnum veritátis et vitae; regnum sanctitátis et grátiae; regnum iustítiae, amóris et pacis.”;  “an eternal and universal kingdom, a kingdom of truth and life; a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.”  All those who participate in Christ’s kingdom demonstrate those attributes, whether fully, because they are in heaven, or to the best of their ability, because they still struggle on earth to fully accept that kingdom.
    So we can ask ourselves today about each of those adjectives of the Kingdom of Christ.  First: eternal and universal.  Does my life point to eternity?  Or am I only concerned with the things of earth, each of which will fade away at some point.  Do I truly believe that Christ’s kingship should embrace all people, regardless of race, gender, political party, sexual orientation, etc., or do I cut people off from salvation, or sharing the Gospel with them because they are not like me or do not fit into the cookie cutter of what I feel it means to be Catholic?
    Second: truth and life.  Do I share in the kingdom of the truth, or do I lie?  Does my yes mean yes and my no mean no, or do I purposefully deceive others by uttering falsehoods because telling the truth would make me uncomfortable?  Do I speak the truth with charity, or do I try to assault people with the truth and cause them further harm?  Do I promote life in all its stages, from natural conception to natural death?  Does my support of life not only concern infants in the womb and elderly in hospitals and nursing homes, but also the dignified way we treat the poor, the mentally handicapped, those who suffer from mental illness, and those who entered the country illegally?  We don’t have to pretend like a mental illness is healthy, or support open borders, but do we treat all people with the respect we want to receive?
    Third: holiness and grace.  Do I seek to live a life dedicated to God and fit for the temple?  Do I try to avoid behaviors and actions that stem from the darkness and choose behaviors and actions that spread the light?  Do I recognize that I cannot earn my salvation, but that God freely grants salvation to those who desire it?  When I am unaware of mortal sin and in a state of grace, do I try to stay there?  Or if I fall into mortal sin, do I strive to return to a state of grace as soon as I practically can?
    Lastly: justice, love, and peace.  Do I give others their due, or do I hold back what others deserve because of fear or greed?  Do I cheat my employers or employees from what they deserve from me as a member of the company?  Do I truly will the good of the other first?  Do I demonstrate the attributes of love that the Apostle enumerates in 1 Corinthians 13: patience, kindness, humility, etc.?  Or am I narcissistic, first concerned with my own desires and rights, seeking to dominate the other and insisting on what I think I’m owed?  Am I apathetic and simply lack proper concern for those around me, beginning with my family, but extending into the different orders of love?  Could God call me a peacemaker?  Or do my words and actions cause chaos and pain in my home, in my office, among my friends?  Do I protect others from violence and harm as I am able, or do I shrink in cowardice when God calls me to stand up against evil?  
    God has called us to have a royal dignity in a time such as this, in 2026 in Michigan in the United States of America.  God has called us to promote, “The kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,” to quote the Hallelujah Chorus.  The kingdom which is eternal and universal, a kingdom of truth, life, holiness, grace, justice, love, and peace.  May we live up to our royal dignity, given to us in Holy Baptism, and thus participate in the kingdom won by the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Underdogs

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    There’s something about underdogs.  People love to see them succeed.  I’ll find myself watching a sports game between two teams that I really don’t care about, and I’m often drawn to the team that is ranked lower, especially if it’s a close game.  People generally like to see the little guy succeed, even against all odds.  And I’d like to think that it has to do with something God put into our hearts.

    Now, to be fair, sometimes people want to see the underdog succeed because they really want to see someone else fall.  There were a lot of Spartan fans cheering on unranked Appalachian State in 2007 when they blocked the game-winning field goal attempt by #5 ranked U of M in one of the biggest upsets in college football history.  Or, basically any time anybody plays Ohio State, you know Wolverines will be rooting for the other guy, who, in recent history, have generally been the underdog.
    But there can be more virtuous motives behind seeing the little guy succeed, and it connects us to God.  Think about David and Goliath.  David should have lost, and yet, God chose David and rewarded his courage and confidence in God’s ability to give David victory over the giant who cursed God.  In our first reading, we hear about the underdogs and little guys even before David: aliens (foreigners; not extra-terrestrials or the Swedish hard rock band); widows; orphans; the poor.  God tells the Israelites in the Book of Exodus that He has a special love for those groups of people.  And note that God points out that He loves them because Israel once was in those groups, or was like those groups.  The Israelites were foreigners among the Egyptians and the Egyptians oppressed the Israelites and made them slaves.  The Israelites were often poor, relying on God for their basic needs, and hoping others wouldn’t take advantage of them.  Widows and orphans had no one to rely on, as in that time there was no social security or welfare, so if you had no family to earn money for you or to farm for you, all you could do was beg.
    The call to love our neighbor, part of the great law that Jesus highlights in the Gospel today, was a call to be like God: to care for those who could not care for themselves.  And it was the consequence of the first part of the great law, love of God, because when one loves God, one therefore also loves those whom God loves.  St. John in a New Testament epistle reminds us that we cannot love the God we don’t see if we don’t love the brother we do see.  The two are really inseparable.

    But how easy it is to forget that we once relied on others as others now rely on us!  It’s like the movie “Trading Places,” where the fortunes of the rich man, Louis Winthorpe III (played by Dan Aykroyd), and a street beggar, Billy Ray Valentine (played by Eddie Murphy) are switched through the conniving machinations and wagers of Randolph and Mortimer Duke.  When Billy Ray is poor, he condemns Winthorpe for the way he treats the poor.  But when Billy Ray suddenly becomes rich and encounters Winthorpe as a poor beggar, he suddenly forgets how he wanted the poor to be treated and treats Winthorpe the way Winthope treated him when they were in each other’s shoes.  
    And so the Church regularly puts before us reminders about God’s love for the underdog, which should also stir our hearts.  The Church reminds us that in order to love God, we also have to be mindful of the opportunities we have to love those whom God loves.  Since the readings talk about aliens, we can look at the immigration debate.  Catholics can sometimes find themselves split.  Some prefer to focus on the legitimate right of countries to regulate immigration, and the responsibility of immigrants to follow the laws of their new country and seek to integrate themselves to their new homelands.  Others prefer to focus on what we heard today: that we cannot “molest or oppress an alien.”  In fact, both are true, and both deserve our focus.  Open borders include a host of problems that afflict every-day people–drugs; human trafficking; terrorism–even while some legitimately are trying to make a better life for themselves.  So while we seek justice and public safety, which are very important goods, we also don’t want to forget that God has a special love for those who are fleeing oppression and hardship in their native lands.  In the midst of legitimately enforcing immigration laws, we still have a responsibility to treat illegal immigrants as human beings, not like animals or sub-humans.  I think most Catholics can actually agree on those principles if we really stop and dialogue, though how those principles are instantiated certainly become more difficult to flesh out.
    But God wants us to remember our poverty, not so much economic, as spiritual.  God calls on us to rely on Him, because everything good we have came from the hand of God.  In some way, we are all aliens, widows, orphans, and poor, because we started with nothing other than what God allows us to have.  God loves us, and so, if we want to love God, He calls us to love those whom He loves, as well.  May our love for God find its expression not only in coming to Church and worshipping Him, as is right and just, but also in our love for our neighbors, especially the underdogs.

Armed with the Sword of the Spirit

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I was once speaking with a traditional Catholic years ago, who said, “I don’t read the Scriptures.  That’s what Protestants do.”  And I remember thinking how sad it was that this person thought that reading the Bible was a Protestant thing.  I tried to encourage him to read the Scriptures, but to no avail.
    Hopefully, that is not the position of anyone here.  St. Paul today speaks about the Scriptures as the “sword of the Spirit.”  St. Jerome, in a homily on the Book of Isaiah, famously wrote, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”  But do we heed St. Jerome?  Are we armed with this important weapon of our faith?

    Christ Himself uses the Scriptures to take away the power of the temptations in the desert.  When tempted to turn rocks into bread, Christ quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 which reads, “it is not by bread alone that people live, but by all that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  When tempted to throw Himself down from the temple, because Satan said, quoting Psalm 91, that the angels would protect Him, Christ responds with another Scripture, again from the Book of Deuteronomy, this time 6:16 which reads, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”  And the last temptation of Christ, where the enemy says that he will give Christ all the kingdoms of the world if he worships Satan, Christ forcefully quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, which reads, “The Lord, your God, shall you fear; him shall you serve.”  Even when the devil takes Scripture out of context, Christ uses Scripture to defeat the temptation.
    Certainly, as we saw from that example, one can take Scripture out of context.  Which is why we should have a decent understanding of not just a few verses, but a good grasp of the whole, as well.  Often times, Protestants and Evangelicals will take a verse of Scripture out of context, so it is good to review together the entire chapter to make sure that the phrase is not part of a larger whole which gives a different meaning.  After all, there is part of a verse in the Psalms that reads, “‘There is no God.’”  However, the first part of that verse which gives it context is, “The fool says in his heart,” which changes the whole meaning of that verse.
    Knowing Scripture also helps us defend our faith, whether in public or in private.  Recently, a decently well-known politician said that the Scriptures don’t deal with abortion, and certainly don’t condemn it directly.  His opponent, a Catholic, easily rebutted that claim by pointing out the fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” which especially means killing an innocent human being.  Or, I recently mentioned to an evangelical that I had just gone to confession, so if I died, I had a strong sense that I would eventually make it to heaven.  He responded, “I don’t think that’s how it works,” and went on to explain that he simply confesses his sins to God; he doesn’t feel the need to go to a priest, because only God can forgive sins.  I responded that that was an interesting principle, and certainly God can forgive sins directly, but if God didn’t intend for us to go to confession, why did Jesus give the Apostles the authority to forgive sins?  He asked where that was in the Bible, and I responded, John chapter 20 (I couldn’t remember the verses), where Jesus says, “‘Receive the holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’”  I also pointed out that Jesus said something very similar in Matthew 16 where He gave the keys of the kingdom to St. Peter.  He wisely said he wanted to review the chapters I had mentioned, and I hope to continue that conversation with him some day.
    Now, to be fair, I’m fairly well-trained in Scripture.  I went to school for 8 years before ordination, and we dealt with a lot of Scripture.  And I pray with the Scriptures on a daily basis, and have gone through reading the Old Testament one year and the New Testament the next year over a course of many years.  But I know that sometimes it can seem difficult to understand certain passages, and that’s where having a Catechism of the Catholic Church, to keep with you when you read the Scriptures, can help you make sense of difficult passages.  There’s a cross reference in the back of the Catechism that can help you know how the Church interprets a particular passage.  As St. Peter says in the first chapter of his second epistle, “there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God.”  The official teaching office of the Church, which we call the Magisterium, guides us infallibly on how to interpret the Scriptures, because the Scriptures are a product of the Church, not the Church is a product of the Scriptures.  If we rely only on our understanding, we will splinter into thousands of groups, like the Protestants have, because there are different senses of Scriptures, even within the same book.
    All of this is to say: read the Bible!  We offer Bible studies here, and we recently had the Catholic Biblical School of Michigan here to advertise the classes they offer online and in-person at Holy Redeemer in Burton.  Whether it’s an intro course to help you feel basically familiar with the Scriptures, or maybe a deeper dive into particular books, knowing the Scriptures will help you know Christ better.  Do not neglect to carry your sword with you into spiritual battle!  Stay armed with the Word of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

God and Politics

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    We’re in that time in our country where all the ads on television, radio, Facebook, etc., seem to be about politics.  Generally, those who love politics get really excited about this time of year, studying polls and updates on the races.  I think everyone else tends to put-up with all the commercials and mailings.  Our country seems particularly polarized, and for a while now we have failed to teach people how to dialogue respectfully and logically about candidates and policies, so we tend to just shout our positions at each other without truly engaging the people seeking office and the policies they support.  Rather than a healthy discussion over a meal or a drink, we tend to act more like monkeys at the zoo, throwing dung at each other.
    So in the midst of the political activity, today the Church, which doesn’t assign the readings based on the democratic system in the United States, puts before us a first reading and a Gospel that remind us about government.  In the first reading, we hear about Cyrus, God’s anointed, whom God chose for the sake of His People.  What’s interesting is that Cyrus was the Persian king, a pagan.  And yet, the word for anointed is mashiach, or messiah.  Cyrus is not the messiah; that is Christ.  And yet, Cyrus is God’s anointed who, though he doesn’t know God, will help return the Chosen People to the Holy Land so that they can witness that there is one God.
    And in the Gospel, the Pharisees try to trap Jesus with a puzzle concerning another pagan foreign leader, Caesar, and whether they need to pay taxes to the pagan Roman government.  The Pharisees likely thought that if Jesus said to pay taxes, the people would reject Him (after all, who wants to be encouraged to pay taxes to an occupying force that teaches a false religion).  But, if Jesus said not to pay taxes, they could report Him to the Romans and they would take care of Him.  Easy peasy.  But instead, Jesus turns the question on its head, and avoids both the scylla and the charybdis that the Pharisees put before Him.
    All of this should remind us that the question of who has governmental power and authority does not concern God all that much, because as Jesus said to Pilate on Good Friday, Pilate would have no power unless God had allowed Pilate to use it.  God can use a pagan government like the Persians to accomplish good for His People.  He can use a pagan government like the Romans and the pax Romana that came from their military domination of Europe and the Near East to create the perfect time for Jesus, the true Messiah, to be born and grow up in the Holy Land.  
    Everything, in the end, finds itself subject to God and what He directs or allows through His will.  “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more,” St. Paul reminds us, and God can use the sinfulness of rulers and governments even to accomplish holiness in His People.  The invitation to give God what belongs to Him really reminds us that, while we have civic responsibilities that we should exercise responsibly, our first duty is to God, who has given us everything and against whom no power on earth can ever compete.
    For that reason, I no longer tend to get worked up about politics.  I can’t honestly say I was always that way, and when I was younger I loved politics and reading the polls and trying to understand positions and policies and how to argue for the best ones.  But after the delayed election results in 2020, I found that I obsessed about politics and it stole my peace.  When I stopped trying to think that who the president or the governor was would greatly change my life, I found that I was happier.
    To be clear, I do not mean to communicate that elections don’t matter.  Elections do matter, and we ought to form our conscience well and vote accordingly.  We ought to do our best to support candidates and policies that protect and promote human dignity and the common good.  A great many people in the world, including 1.4 billion people in China, probably wish they could vote for their government officials freely.  We ought not to take our political process for granted.  
    But, no matter who gets elected, and no matter how good or how evil the policies they enact are, God is King, and no one can challenge His power or unseat Him from His Throne.  Yes, it’s nice when the City of Man resembles the City of God, but even when governments oppress us, our key is to be faithful to God and give God His due, no matter what Caesar says.  The Church certainly rejoiced when Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity, but She didn’t shrink for the three hundred years earlier that Roman emperors sought to stop the spread of the Gospel.  
    Yes, do vote this November with a conscience informed by the Catholic faith.  Do not worry if your candidate got elected or didn’t, or if the candidates or the policies they support are contrary to the Catholic faith, like abortion, euthanasia, gender dysphoria, same sex marriage, or socialism.  “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and God will sort out everything else in the end when His victory comes to fruition.

You Gotta Have Faith

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  What came first: the chicken or the egg?  As a young student this question was posed, but I never really thought it too complicated.  If the egg came first, who would sit on it to incubate it so that the chick could hatch?  But, philosophers much wiser than me have debated this general question for centuries.
    In our Gospel, another question gets posed that could, if we’re not careful, trip us up.  That question is: what comes first: faith or miracles?  Perhaps we don’t consider this much of a question, as all the miracles seem to follow from faith.  And yet, our Lord says today that unless the people see signs and wonders (another way of saying miracles), they will not believe.  So what comes first: faith or miracles?
    Throughout the Scriptures, it seems mostly evident that faith comes first.  Christ does not do many miracles in Capernaum because of their lack of faith.  And miracles without faith are more like magic tricks, and God doesn’t do magic tricks.  So faith comes first.  And yet, the miracles themselves also beget faith.  Our Lord raises the son of the widow of Nain, without any sense that she believed in Him.  The woman with a hemorrhage has some small faith so that she touches our Lord’s clothes, but then, after she receives healing, our Lord turns and tells her that her faith has saved her, not only healed her.  So many people, after encountering the Savior, are certainly moved to a deeper faith after they receive a miracle.  So there we see a back and forth when it comes to the relationship with faith and miracles.  Faith leads to miracles, which lead to more faith, which leads to more miracles.  It’s like the chicken and the egg: chickens lead to eggs, which lead to more chickens, which lead to more eggs.
    So how is our faith?  Do we have confidence in what God has revealed?  Do we trust that God can still work miracles in our life and in the lives of others?  Do we have to see signs and wonders before we believe?
    The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews begins with faith.  The sacred author writes, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”  Hope assures us that what we have not yet received we will, and faith is the object of that hope, the thing unseen which we believe we will receive.  The author lists examples of faith-filled men: Abel; Enoch; Noah; Abraham.  In the Canon the Church refers to Abraham as “Patriárchae nostri Abrahae,” or “Abraham, our father in faith.”  And the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds the hearers and readers that Abraham, while still called Abram, left the familiarity of his home to go to a land he had never seen, with all his family and possessions, called by a God he didn’t know all too well.  Doubt could have taken hold of him, questioning if his mind was playing tricks on him, how he would survive and care for his flocks outside of what we now call the Fertile Crescent, and whether the people living there would welcome him or attack him.  But he didn’t allow those questions to stop him.  He left modern-day Iraq, or Chaldea, behind.

    So, too, Abraham demonstrated great faith when it came to Isaac, his beloved son and the son of the promise God had made.  Hebrews 11:17 reads, “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.’”  While child sacrifice was all too common in the near East, especially to the pagan god Moloch, Abraham had two seemingly contradictory things from which he had to choose: was Isaac the son of the promise that Abraham’s descendants would be more numerous than the stars?  Or was God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on the top of Mount Moriah?  Walking up Mount Moriah, one can only imagine the pain and questioning in Abraham’s heart, but he followed God’s command anyway, trusting that “God was able to raise even from the dead,” and, of course, God stopped Abraham’s hand before Isaac could be killed.  
    Faith is risky business, because we sometimes don’t see the results of our faith on this side of eternity, and sometimes what God asks us to do seems to defy logic.  It’s like Indiana Jones in “The Last Crusade,” who has to step out into what looks like a great chasm, taking an almost literal “leap of faith.”  Or it’s like Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring, recalling the words of his uncle, Bilbo Baggins, saying, “‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.  You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might go.’”  Faith led St. Frances Xavier Cabrini to leave behind Italy and help form the faith in the US by founding schools and teaching.  The same could be said for St. John Neumann and Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos, who came from Europe to help the Church in the new United States of America, or Bishop Benedict Flaget, a Sulpician priest who became one of the first bishops of the US, but who came to the US from France originally to spread the Gospel in the then-frontier lands of Indiana and Kentucky.

Bishop Benedict Flaget

      

So how is your faith?  Are you willing to leap out and trust when God truly calls you to something?  Can you trust your loving Father to care for you, no matter where He leads you?  Will you have enough faith for God to do great things for you?  
    Faith comes first.  But God strengthens our faith by signs of His love, be they miracles or simply little “God moments.”  And those signs of His love lead to more faith, which leads to more trust, and on and on.  May all of our names be written in the Book of Life, with Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, as those who had faith in God and received His gift of salvation. 

The Most Important Invitation

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    As we’re in the midst of our October Counts, when parishes across the Diocese of Lansing count the number of people who attend Mass each weekend, it may seem self-serving to preach on the importance of going to Mass.  For the past few years, St. Matthew has been seen the largest per capita growth of any parish in the Diocese of Lansing since 2019, or pre-Covid.  But, while I love to see us grow, the importance lies not so much in our numbers, but in making God a priority.
    Even those who do not have a degree in nuclear engineering can understand the meaning of the parable heard today: God’s call to the banquet, to His Kingdom supersedes everything else.  We hear about some people ignoring the invitation to the banquet; others make excuses because of farm work or other business.  In a similar passage in Luke, chapter 14, three excuses are given: examination of a newly-bought field; evaluation of newly-purchased oxen; a new bride.  Indeed, Deuteronomy 24:5 stated that a newly married man could not even be called up into service in the military for the first year.  His excuse took precedence over the defense of the nation.  Deuteronomy 20:5 also talks about how a person could receive an exemption for a new house that was not dedicated, or a vineyard that hadn’t had a first harvest.  So these excuses not to come would have been understandable to the Jews to whom Christ preached.
    But the banquet has such import that event these excuses do not negate the importance of showing up to the banquet.  When the invited guests demure, the master makes sure that the banquet will be filled with people, even if they were not the original invitees.  And at the end of the parable, we hear about the importance of showing up to the banquet in proper clothing.
    But each week, the Lord sets before us a banquet, His wedding feast to His Bride, the Church.  He gives us His very self on which to feast, the fruit of the sacrifice He made for His Bride when He gave up His life willingly and lovingly on Calvary, which the Holy Spirit makes present for us in an unbloody manner at each Mass.  And not just Calvary, but also the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus all become present for us on this altar.  And if we are in a state of grace, and have kept the communion fast of no food or drink except water and medicine for one hour before receiving Holy Communion, then we even get to receive Jesus into our very selves, to strengthen us to live as His disciples.

    St. John Vianney, the holy priest of Ars, France, told us that if we truly understood the Mass, we would die from joy.  All the angels and saints are here with us in this Mass, though we cannot see them unless God gives us a special grace, worshipping God in the banquet which anticipates heaven here on earth.  
    Does merely going to Mass make you a good Catholic, a saint?  No.  Our call as Catholics, as disciples, has to break out beyond these walls in the way we talk, the way we act, the way we think, the way we vote, the way we rest, as a witness to what happens within these walls.  But you cannot be a good Catholic and skip Mass, skip the banquet, because you feel you have more important things to do.  Notice I used the word skip, because sometimes people are ill and cannot make it, or are caring for the ill and cannot make it, or sometimes people are homebound and cannot make it.  They would if they could, but they can’t.  That’s a big difference from prioritizing something else over the Mass, whether it be sleep, sports, or simply one’s own will.
    And frankly, what has more importance than Jesus’ very presence before us?  The choice of virtue means choosing the highest good at each moment.  Sports can be good; sleep can be good; your own desires can be good.  But when we put those lesser goods over the greatest good of worshipping God, we disorder goods, which is one of the ways St. Augustine talks about sin.
    Mass anticipates heaven.  So if we ignore the Mass for some lesser good, we ignore heaven, and make the choice to reject God in a serious way.  Skipping Mass, if we know it’s wrong, and freely choose to skip Mass anyway, is a mortal sin.  It tells God that we don’t want to be in heaven, and God will respect that choice.  He won’t force us to be with Him if we don’t want to.  
    The other part of this Gospel is the evangelical push: the push to invite others to the banquet.  People can reject God and His invitation.  And yes, we should still work on them as best we can to invite them back, because God always welcomes us back if we repent.  But as the Master’s servants, we, too, should be going out to invite others to Mass.  When was the last time you invited a non-Catholic to Mass?  I know it can seem intimidating if you aren’t Catholic and go to Mass, but if you’re inviting them, then you should also join with them to show them the ropes.  Help them understand the different parts of the Mass, and why we sit when we take instruction, stand when we pray, and kneel in adoration.  Help them understand why we believe that what looks like bread is actually the Body of Christ, and why only those who fully believe and live their life in conformity with Christ’s teachings can receive it.  Help them understand the beauty of singing the Scriptures in our antiphons during the procession of the ministers and the procession of Holy Communion, chants which hopefully stay with us and help us to familiarize ourselves with Sacred Scriptures, especially the psalms.  
    It’s not about the numbers.  It’s about bringing people into a fuller relationship with God by helping them attend the wedding banquet of the Son of God, the anticipation of heaven on earth.  “Many are invited.”  Few choose to attend.  Don’t let lesser good keep you from the banquet, lest your find yourself cast outside.  Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.

Rebuilding the Church

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time/19th Sunday after Pentecost
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  Yesterday marked the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the most recognized saints.  Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV declared a holy year for Franciscans to celebrate their holy founder’s passing to eternal life.  While we still celebrate the twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time/nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, I wanted to take a break from focusing on our readings, and focus on St. Francis.

St. Francis of Assisi embracing a leper

    St. Francis, like St. Dominic, founded a mendicant, or begging order.  Just as we members of the Dominican Family refer to St. Dominic as our holy father Dominic, so we also refer to St. Francis as our holy father Francis.  Hopefully it won’t be too confusing when I refer to St. Francis of Assisi as our holy father Francis.  The Italians, for their part, refer to him as Il Poverello, or the little poor one. 
    Our holy father Francis was radical in both senses: he returned to the roots (from the Latin radice), but he also was a bit out there.  I remember a homily in college seminary where the priest said that if we went into the public square and stripped naked, as our holy father Francis did to demonstrate his rejection of his father’s money and inheritance, it wouldn’t be a man in a white cassock coming for us, but men in white jackets to put us into a padded room.  
    At the heart of our holy father Francis’s vocation was a call he heard to rebuild the Church.  At first, Il Poverello started to collect materials to re-construct the little church of San Damiano, which was collapsing due to age and neglect.  But he came to realize that his order, the Franciscans, was to rebuild the Catholic Church by his witness of evangelical poverty, chastity, and obedience; especially poverty.  Our holy father Francis wanted to live like Christ, who relied on God the Father and others for His basic needs; live a life totally given over to the mission of the Father by giving up the good gift of romantic relationships; do only and all that the Father willed in proclaiming the Kingdom of God is at hand.  
    Our beloved Church, though perfect in heaven, on earth is always falling apart due to age and neglect.  God constantly calls each generation to rebuild His Church.  How can holy father Francis help us do this?  Need we strip naked and give away all our money to beg from others as we proclaim the kingdom?  No.  Need we jump into rose bushes every time we feel a sexual temptation coming on (as the story goes, Francis jumped into the roses to get his mind off the temptation, and from that time on they bloomed without thorns)?  No.  Need we take a vow of obedience to a religious leader and go wherever he or she tells us?  No.  
    But when we live as owners of our possessions rather than our possessions owning us, we are living, each in our own way and according to our own vocation, the evangelical counsel of poverty and building up the Church of God.  God has called many of you to engage in the cares of the world, in commerce, and to build up the earthly world by our good stewardship of it, advancing appropriately technology and unlocking the secrets that earth has to help us better understand our Creator.  But all too easily we make life about money, or possessions, or some other thing, rather than living life for God.  
    When we recognize that human sexuality is a precious gift from God that God calls us to use very specifically, each according to our vocation, we are living the evangelical counsel of chastity and building up the Church of God.  God has called many of you to be spouses and parents.  Some of you have heard God’s will time and time again (and sometimes many times after that) to be fruitful and multiply, which not only increases the size of our human family, but increases the number of disciples of Christ.  But the key is not simply having as many babies as physically possible–a number which varies for each woman and a number to be discerned through prayer and study by husbands and wives–but to see how God wants you to engage in the marital act as a way of expressing the love of God, rather than simply seeking after the pleasure that comes with it.  And for those who are not married, to utilize that desire for fatherhood or motherhood either temporarily or permanently in a non-physical way: caring for others and showing others brotherly and sisterly love, or even fatherly and motherly love without the biological connection.

    Lastly, when we obey legitimate authority, always subject to what we know God commands us, and when we seek out the will of God and strive to do that above all else, each according to our vocation, then we are living the evangelical counsel of obedience and are rebuilding the Church of God.  Too often and too easily we live life with the theme song of Hell: “I Did It My Way” (with no offense intended towards Frank Sinatra, God rest his soul).  Now more than ever, society tells us to focus only on ourselves and what we want.  We are like the sea gulls from “Finding Nemo,” always saying “Mine, Mine.”  When it comes to Burger King, have it your way.  But when it comes to holiness, we find it through submitting our will to God the Father’s will, sometimes made known to us strongly and miraculously, often times made known through prayerful reflection and study.  And not just doing the will of God begrudgingly, but lovingly saying “Thy will be done,” with our lips and our lives.
    God calls us, as He called our holy father Francis, to rebuild His Church.  The way we do so will not follow exactly Il Poverello, but will follow the same principles: poverty; chastity; obedience.  St. Francis of Assisi wrote, “Praised be you, my Lord, through our sister bodily Death, from whom no living man can escape.  Woe to those who die in mortal sin.  Blessed are those who will find your most holy will, for the second death shall do them no harm.”  If we, according to each of our vocations, live a poor, chaste, and obedient life, the second death shall do us no harm, and we shall praise God for eternity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.