Praying for Kings and Governors

Third Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  We’re knee-deep in election time again, and that means that the usual cantankerous atmosphere almost inherent in a two-party system will saturate our lives until at least November.  Among Catholics, we will hear the usual arguments about how you can’t call yourself Catholic and vote for fill-in-the-blank.  This is to dismiss those arguments; one’s voting should reflect one’s religion and how one best thinks the common good can be achieved.  I enjoy true policy debates, but we don’t really get those anymore, because good policy often cannot be contained by a pithy soundbite. 
    The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council spent a bit a time talking about how the laity should take upon themselves the transformation of the secular order by the values of the Gospel.  Participation in politics can help this transformation (or harm it, depending on how a layperson lives and for what policy he or she advocates).  And, I will admit, I used to enjoy doing a deep-dive into politics and the machinations of power and control.

Statue of St. Peter at his basilica in Rome

    But St. Peter admonishes us today to subject ourselves to the king or governors.  If you stop to think about it, this statement is a bit startling, as the leader of the general government was the Roman Emperor, who would eventually put St. Peter to death for professing the true faith.  Maybe at this point the local governors didn’t antagonize Christians as much, but it was a governor, Pontius Pilate, who put our Lord to death.  And yet, we are supposed to subject ourselves to them. 
    The early Christians, I’m sure, would have appreciated a more Christian-friendly administration.  But they certainly did not place their hope in this or that political authority.  They focused their lives on waiting for the time when they would see Christ again after He had ascended to the Father.  They didn’t ignore their earthly lives, but the took seriously the call of St. Paul to fix their minds on things above, not on things on earth.  I don’t think they suffered any illusions that the world would embrace Christ and His followers, because they had opposed them from the beginning.  They knew that this time between the Ascension, when they would not see Christ, and the return of Christ in glory, when they would see Him again, was a time of labor pains, that would include sorrow and suffering, but that Christ would grant them a joy that no one could take from them.
    This doesn’t mean that we can’t work hard to elect good people, especially good Catholics, or that you, as the lay faithful, shouldn’t participate in the electoral process.  We need people to stand up for life, from natural conception to natural death.  We need advocates for the poor and the disenfranchised.  Policies like subsidiarity, which keeps as much control as locally centralized as possible, and solidarity, which recognizes our inter-connectedness with each other, regardless of race, socio-economic status, or religion, make sense not just for Catholics, but have been time-tested as the best way to deal with legal and social issues.  But without Catholics participating in politics, these time-tested principles won’t find their way into public discussion.
    Still, as Catholics, we straddle heaven and earth.  We have a responsibility to do things as well as we can here on earth, but our eyes and especially our hopes are based in heaven.  We don’t ignore what happens in our city, State, country, and world, but we also know that the solutions to what ails our city, State, country, and world are not found in any law or political policy or personality.  The only thing that can turn things around at any level is a strong relationship with Jesus, and a firm commitment to following His will. 
    While it has looked different in the 2,000 years of its existence, we are the only “government,” if you will, that has endured.  The Roman Empire, which first persecuted us and then endorsed us, faded away, first in the West, then in the East.  The Holy Roman Empire came and went.  The monarchies of Europe and the dynasties of the Far East have changed throughout these two millennia, some more than others.  The Communists, who tried to eliminate religion, are merely a shadow of their once proud power, but even they are only around a century or less old.  No institution can outlast the Catholic Church. 
    While keeping our eyes fixed on heaven, we pray for our political leaders, even the ones with whom we don’t agree; even the ones whose policies are obnoxious to us; even the ones who cite their Catholic baptism while endorsing laws and policies that contradict the Catholic faith.  Perhaps those prayers will change their hearts.  Perhaps they will be receive a conversion, either to deepen their faith and grow in their knowledge of the truth, or to repent of their evil actions.  If we can’t even pray for them, then we need to go back to our own faith and remember that our Lord taught us to love, not only those who agree with us, like the hypocrites do, but even our enemies and those who persecute us.  In that way we begin to reflect the divine image in which we were made and love like our heavenly Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit is one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Benedict and Dominic

Fourth Sunday of Easter
    Throughout the past decade, especially as the United States started to drift away from the Judeo-Christian culture that had previously permeated the secular environment, people started to ask the question of what we should do as Catholics.  Even as many as ten years ago we came to realize that we could not rely on the federal or State governments to support people living out their faith, and, in some cases, the government grew very antagonistic towards Catholics and how they lived out their faith (think of the Obama administration’s seemingly hell-bent desire to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraceptives in their health plan). 

St. Benedict

    So some proposed a solution, based upon an historical precedent, which gained the moniker “The Benedict Option.”  While Pope Benedict XVI did reign during some of the past decade or so, the reference looked back much farther to Benedictine monasteries that preserved Catholic literature and formation from the barbarian advances all throughout what had formerly been the Roman Empire.  This perspective advised that Catholics form small communities and basically hunker down until the barbarians (those who attacked the Church) destroyed themselves (as those who promote the culture of death eventually do destroy themselves). 
    There’s a certain solace in the bunker mentality when you feel like you’re under attack.  While the analogy will limp given its drastic nature, living the faith right now can seem like fighting in the midst of World War I.  The trenches seem much safer, because if you try to advance, you’re going to get mowed down by gunfire or mustard gas.  So you stay low and just try to ride the war out, hoping to survive to the next generation.
    But, besides the fact that Benedictines were responsible for a lot of missionary activity, even during the Middle Ages (St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Ansgar, and St. Boniface, just to name a few), this bunker mentality, while sometimes appropriate and certainly lived out beautifully by cloistered monks and nuns, misses what our readings reference today. 
    In the passages leading up to our first reading, St. Peter and St. John had been arrested because they healed a crippled man in the name of Jesus.  Peter didn’t cut bait and run.  He, the Prince of the Apostles speaking for the other apostles, proclaimed that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that He was the only way to salvation.  He proclaimed the Gospel because he knew that it was the truth, the truth which would set people free.  Any of the Apostles could have simply stayed in the Upper Room and quietly taught people about Jesus, trying to avoid publicity and controversy, but they didn’t.  They proclaimed Christ boldly, even in the face of persecution.  And the Church grew because of their witness.

St. Dominic

    This is what one author termed the “Dominican Option,” named after the Order of Friars Preachers.  St. Dominic only had a few cloistered nuns praying for him and his few friars, and yet he sent the friars out to the major universities of Europe, and his order grew almost exponentially.    It seemed like foolishness, even to some of the first friars, but St. Dominic said, “The seed will molder if it is hoarded up; it will fructify if it is sown.”  The Dominicans imitated the Apostles and spread the Gospel far and wide.
    Part of the animus for this is what Christ proclaimed in our Gospel today: “‘I have other sheep that do not belong to his fold.  These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.’”  Christ desires that all people would belong to His one flock, the Catholic Church.  He desires that all people are united in charity and in truth.  This won’t happen such an effective way if we rely simply on hunkering down and having more babies than the pagans who surround us (though I would say that having babies according to God’s will and your own discernment is another beautiful way to pass along the faith).  Yes, we can form communities of men and women who purposefully follow Christ, and not simply because someone told them to or because their family always did it this way.  Yes, we need to form people to understand the Gospel so that they can be able to preach it (and we’re striving to do that through our faith formation groups of all ages). 
    But at the end of the day, we cannot stay in our bunkers; we cannot remain in the trenches.  We should have the magnanimity to try to win souls for Christ, to help them see that following Him is not only the path to heaven, but a way to live life more joyfully and with more fulfillment than if we try to live life on our own terms and follow our own patterns of sin.  If Christ’s desire that we all join His flock are to come to fruition, then we have to cooperate with Him and share that good news with others.  And not just on the worldwide church level: if we wish our parish to grow, then others need to join us.  And the way that others join us is through people convincing them of the truth of the faith and having them be baptized or enter into full communion with the Catholic Church.  Yes, we also welcome and encourage our young families to engage in the very countercultural act of supporting life and having babies according to God’s plan, but we also have to bring others in.  We are growing, but if we each lived with the zeal of St. Peter and St. John, then I would need to add at least one more Mass because we had so many people joining the Catholic Church and our parish. 
    Yes, things are rough for the Catholic Church right now, and I don’t see them getting noticeably better any time soon.  Yes, some of us will support the work of spreading the faith by our prayers and attendance at Mass.  But most of us need to get involved in sharing the good news, or telling others why they should follow Christ and why they should be Catholic.  If we don’t share the seeds of the Gospel, they will become moldy.  But if we sow the seeds of the Gospel in the hearts and minds of those we encounter, they will bear fruit thirty, sixty, and one hundredfold.

Staying on Christ's Path

Second Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Generally there are two kinds of people in life: those who blaze trails and those who stay on the trails that have already been laid out.  In our own American psyche we tend to elevate those who blaze trails.  Think of Lewis and Clark, cutting a path through the wilderness as Sacajawea helped them to explore the Louisiana Purchase.  Or think of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.  Certainly there is more danger for those who “boldly go where no man has gone before" (to quote Star Trek), but there is also generally more excitement as you see and experience things that no one has experienced before.
    Contrast this glorification of those who make their own trails with what we heard St. Peter say in his first epistle about Christ, who left us, “an example that you should follow in his footsteps.”  Our first pontiff is not encouraging us to make a new trail, but to follow in the one that Christ made, He who is the shepherd and guardian of our souls (the Greek and Latin word is bishop or overseer).  We are not to make our own way on the path of salvation, but to follow Christ.
    This, of course, does not signify an aping of everything Christ did.  We don’t have to pack up and leave Michigan for the Holy Land, and wander on foot around Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Capernaum.  The way in which Christ wants us follow Him means that we seek to conform our lives to His in our own vocations and jobs.  And we do this because He has not only blazed the trail for us, but He is the trail for us, as He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life [emphasis mine].” 
    There is only one way to the Father, and that is through Christ, as He also said at the Last Supper: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”  If there were other ways to salvation, then Christ’s suffering would have been superfluous.  The trails that others blaze lead to wolves and bad pastures.  The trail that Christ lays out for us leads us to safety and green pastures.  Our way needs to be Christ’s way, or it is no way to heaven at all.  As my spiritual director has often been quoted as saying, Frank Sinatra’s hit, “I Did It My Way” is the theme song of Hell.
    But despite Christ laying out a clear path for us, and instructing us to follow Him, others throughout the centuries, and even we to this day, continue to try to forge our own path to happiness.  Whether we’re blazing a trail ourselves, or simply following other teachers or gurus, we do not always follow Christ.  And part of that is because following Christ involves sacrifice.  St. Peter demonstrates this for us as he reminds us that Christ suffered for us, and that the path of Christ that we are to follow involves setting aside vengeance when others make us suffer, and even includes the cross.  Our lives are not all suffering and pain, but to follow Christ means that we will experience suffering and pain from time to time, because that is what happened with Christ. 
    So we try to find ways that are easier, that do not involve pain or suffering.  But when we do that, when we seek to avoid pain at all costs, we find ourselves among wolves who are ready to devour us.  Recently, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith came out with a document, Dignitas infinita, which treats offenses that go against the dignity of the human person.  One of those offenses is in vitro fertilization, or IVF.  There is real pain in wanting to conceive a child and the body not responding accordingly.  Not just for women, but especially for women, the ability to bear a child correlates closely with her feeling of self-worth.  And the voices of the hirelings who tell couples that God would want them to conceive a child in any manner because it would make them happy, or that God wouldn’t want a person to undergo pain, tempts like the voice of a siren.  But IVF makes a child a commodity to be acquired at any cost, requires the sin of self-stimulation of the man, and introduces a doctor as the material agent of conception.  Often, with IVF, many embryos are implanted in the woman’s womb, in case some don’t take, but if multiple do, abortions are encouraged to make sure the body isn’t overwhelmed.  The whole process includes many acts contrary to God’s will. 
    The path that Christ has blazed may involve not getting what a couple exactly wants, but it leads to heaven.  And it opens up opportunities for adoption, or simply being an uncle or aunt that can shower that love on nieces and nephews.  And most importantly, it keeps one on the path to heaven, which is the destination of the path of Christ.
    Dignitas infinita also treats gender dysphoria and its many manifestations.  It demonstrates that attempting to change a person’s God-given biological sex through hormones or mutilating surgery does not lead to true happiness, since it seeks to contravene God’s plan.  Instead, the document encourages understanding the deep psychosexual wounds that can lead a person to think that he or she is in the wrong kind of body or is sexually attracted to a person of the same sex.  What seems easier is to allow a person to determine how he or she wants to express the self.  It can definitely feel easier to live out of wounds because they feel so familiar, even if they do not give us wholeness. 
    Instead, the path that Christ lays out is starting with the fact that God does not make mistakes, and that if He made us male or female, that is part of His plan for us.  It also includes extra love and attention to help a person uncover the sources of those wounds and work through them to find integration of the whole person.  That work of dealing with wounds is often very painful, just like it would be physically painful to clean out an infected cut.  But it leads to a greater happiness than ignoring the problem or treating the problem like normalcy could ever achieve. 

    And, in spite of our failings, of any kind, whether those mentioned in Dignitas infinita or any other sins that we may have committed, the good news is that our Lord is the Good Shepherd who seeks after us, not just calling out with His voice, but even tracking us down in the wilderness of sin, and putting us upon His shoulders so that we don’t even have to walk back on our own.  Christ does not want us to wander away, but if we make that error, He will always search after us and seek to bring us back to His path, as long as we have breath in us.
    There is a place and a time for blazing our own paths and trails.  If sailors had never crossed the Atlantic, or the first Americans had never crossed the Appalachians, or Lewis and Clark would have never explored the Louisiana Purchase, then where would we be as a country?  But when it comes to our salvation, Christ desires not that we make our own trail, because it doesn’t lead to where He created us to be, but that we follow the example He left us.  He calls to us in love, as the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen.

Mercy in the Present Moment

Second Sunday of Easter/Low Sunday
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  Today we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday.  The paradox of mercy is that we all want it regularly accessible, but we can often struggle to actually dispense it.  When someone has wronged us, we can so easily focus on justice and how the other person should make restitution for what he or she has done.  But when we have done something wrong, how quickly do we run to God and ask for His Divine Mercy, hoping that we can obtain it without too much effort.
    Our Lord reminds us of our obligations to share with others the mercy that we receive in the parable of the unforgiving steward.  If you remember, the steward owes the master a large amount of money, and cannot pay back the debt.  When about to go to debtor’s prison, the steward pleads with the master to give him more time, and the master forgives the debt.  But when the steward sees fellow workers who owe him a much smaller amount, the steward throws them into debtor’s prison, despite them using the same plea that the steward had used earlier with the master. 
    That call to mercy reflects what God has already done for us.  His mercy, which was won at the price of the Blood of the Son of God, granted us freedom from the bonds of sin.  It released us from the hold of Satan so that we could freely continue as sons and daughters in the Son of God.  If we are adopted sons and daughters, then our vocation is to live like our heavenly Father, whose mercy endures forever, as Psalm 118 (117) states. 
    Part of living a merciful life means showing mercy to ourselves.  St. Faustina, the great apostle of Divine Mercy, once said, “The past does not belong to me; the future is not mine; with all my soul I try to make use of the present moment.”  How easy it can be to dwell on our past mistakes, or hope that we can make up for sins in the future.  Instead, God invites us live in the present moment, because that is all we have. 
    As far as the past goes, we can all say, to one degree or another, that there are things we wish we would have done differently in the past.  For some of us, that means major deviations from the type of life Christ wants us to live.  For others, that means smaller veers away from the path of holiness.  But we all have things that, in hindsight, we should not have done.  On this Divine Mercy Sunday, God invites us to commend our past to Him, and no longer be shackled by past mistakes, no matter how big or how small.  Sometimes this is done by making a general confession or life confession, where, in an appointment for confession with a priest (not at the usual weekday times), one gives all the past sins that he or she can remember to the Lord to be washed clean in His Blood.  But, aside from those rare times, we should not bring up past, confessed sins.  Because ruminating on those past sins and treating them like they still exist is lacking confidence in the power of God’s mercy.  Satan will often try to get us to act as if past confessed sins are not forgiven, but we should reject that temptation as a lie from the father of lies.  Yes, each act has a consequence, and sometimes those consequences reach into our present.  But, if we have confessed our sins, we can trust in the mercy of God and know that the sins are no more.
    As for the future, it can be easy to act like everything depends on us; that we have to do everything to save ourselves, and so we fret about what might happen.  Just as God wants us to entrust our past to Him, He also wants us to entrust our future to Him, a future that is purified by the mercy of God.  We don’t know what the future will hold.  We know that our present choices affect our future, but God can mercifully guide our future in spite of our present choices.  It is a mercy not to worry about what might happen, because we can spend so much energy and time on fretting about what could be, but what might never be. 
    As a planner and a type A personality, this is probably the hardest way for me to accept God’s mercy.  It is so easy for me to get worked up and lose sleep over how something will turn out, or if someone meant something by a particular choice of phrasing.  If, instead, I am doing my best to seek the will of God and do it, then no matter what I know God will help me through whatever consequences may come from any of my actions, good or ill.  There is a real freedom in not trying to be God and be in all the possibilities of the future.  It is part of God’s mercy that we don’t worry about what tomorrow holds.  Today, as our Lord says, has enough concern for itself.

    Mercy means living in the present, because it is all that we have, and it is the only opportunity that we have to reach out for God’s mercy, and share God’s mercy ourselves.  God’s redemption, His act of mercy, stretches into all time: past, present, and future.  But we can only accept and share that mercy in the present, because that is the only time in which we operate.  The Apostles in the Upper Room could have worried about how they had abandoned the Lord at His Passion.  Peter could have worried about how he had denied even know the Lord only a few days before.  The disciples could have wondered what this Risen Lord would do with them in the coming days, weeks, months, and years.  Thomas could have fretted not being in the Upper Room when Christ first appeared.  Instead, Christ invited them to be in the present moment, to receive His peace, a true gift of the Holy Spirit.  Instead, Christ gave His Apostles the power to extend that mercy in a formal and sacramental way so that the work of mercy, culminated in the Cross, could be accessed by generations of followers of Christ.  Christ did not encourage them to worry about the past.  He did not encourage them to plan for the future.  He only invited them to receive His peace in the present moment.
    [Mia, God’s mercy has brought you here to us as a catechumen.  Though not fully, you already belong to us by your desire for baptism.  As you continue to come to know the Lord in the coming weeks, you will see how God has worked in your past to bring you to this day, but you will also remember ways that you lived according to your ignorance of Christ and His Church.  Give that to God and His mercy, which will be poured over you in the waters of baptism.  You may worry about living as a Catholic after you are baptized, and if you will have the strength to continue in the path to which God called you.  Entrust that future to God’s mercy, and know that He will give you the strength to follow Him.]
    God wants to show us His mercy.  He wants us to share His mercy with others, but also to be receptive to His mercy ourselves.  He does not invite us to dwell on the past, nor to fret about the future.  Instead, in His mercy, He invites us to live in the present, and to be vessels and vehicles of the mercy of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

The Gospel according to The Princess Bride

Easter (Vigil and Sunday)

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  The cult classic movie “The Princess Bride” has so many memorable lines: “Hello.  My name is Iñigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die.”; “Inconceivable.”  “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”; “Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?”  “If there are, we all be dead.”; and I won’t even mimic the wedding scene with the bishop speaking about marriage.  But, in my most recent viewing, I noticed another line that truly is a pearl, and one especially fitting for Easter.  Westley, dressed as the Dread Pirate Roberts, says to Buttercup, “Death cannot stop true love.  All it can do is delay it for a while.”
    While “The Princess Bride” is not the Gospel, that phrase describes in a pithy and beautiful way precisely what we celebrate at Easter.  Death could not stop true love.  All it did was delay it for a while.  The forces of darkness threw everything they had at Christ.  His own people rejected Him.  The Romans cowardly cowed to the Pharisees and Sadducees rather than risk loss of political prestige.  The Lord’s own Apostles (save John) abandoned Him and hid in an Upper Room, including one who even denied knowing Jesus.  Christ experienced excruciating pain, first from the scourging, where pieces of flesh were torn from His back; then from the crown of thorns thrust upon His head in mockery; then from the purple robe torn from His skin, which had joined to the blood and wounds earlier suffered; then from the nails hammered into His sacred flesh and into the cross.  All sin from all time, from Adam and Eve first disobeying God in the Garden of Eden to the last sin that will ever be committed right before the end of time, Christ took upon Himself, though innocent.  Everything that evil could pile on it did, and yet, as we celebrate tonight/today, evil could not win.  Death could not stop the love of God.
    And that still rings true today.  Death still cannot stop love.  “All it can do is delay it for a while.”   If we are connected to the love of Christ, nothing can stop us, not even death.  Yes, we can still endure pain and suffering and darkness from the forces of evil, but if we remain in the love of God, as did Christ, then even death will not have victory over us.  It may look like it does, as it has looked so many times throughout these two millennia of martyrs, but at the end of time, when the time of delay ends, those who remained in the love of Christ will be shown victorious.
    That love of Christ is not mere delight or pleasure, as we so often confuse love.  Love and truth are connected as closely as Divinity and Humanity in Christ.  Love, true Christian love, offers itself for the good of the other, and does not seek its own gain.  The love of God never goes against what God has revealed through Sacred Scripture and through the teachings of the Church.  God, who is Love, cannot contradict Himself, cannot allow what He has previously forbid, and cannot forbid anything that truly benefits us and helps us to be ourselves, as He created us. 

The inside of the Empty Tomb

   “Death cannot stop true love.”  And that is why death, though sad, is not the end.  In Christ’s Resurrection, all who remain in His love rise from the dead.  Yes, our bodies may return to the dust whence them came.  Yes, until all things are placed under the feet of Christ, our souls will wait for the resurrection of our bodies.  But that is but a delay, a slight delay when viewed in the perspective of eternity.  The enemies of God, whether those on earth or those under the earth, can throw everything they want at us.  But if we remain in Christ, we have nothing to fear, not even “though the earth should rock / though the mountains fall into the depths of the sea, / even though its waters rage and foam, / even though the mountains be shaken by its wave. // The Lord of hosts is with us: / the God of Jacob is our stronghold” as Psalm 46(45) states.
    We, the Church, are the princess bride.  Our beloved seemed to have left us for a while, but He returned.  And He reminded us then, and reminds us now, “Death cannot stop true love.  All it can do is delay it for a while.”  [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]

Obedience

Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

    On Sunday, 17 March, before celebrating Mass on St. Patrick’s Day here at St. Matthew, while in the sacristy, Bishop Boyea had me make a Profession of Faith and take the Oath of Fidelity, which are required for me based upon my recent appointment as the Dean of the Flint Deanery.  He had not prepared me that this was going to happen, and perhaps that made the moment even weightier. 
    The Profession of Faith has me begin by professing the words of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, and then stating that I believe everything contained in God’s Word, written or handed down, in the ordinary and universal Magisterium, firmly accept all that the Church definitively teaches for faith and morals, and will submit my will and intellect to the teachings of the Roman Pontiff or the college of bishops when they exercise the authentic Magisterium. 
    The Oath of Fidelity has me promise that I will preserve communion with the Catholic Church, hold fast to and hand on the deposit of faith, and avoid anything contrary to it.  I also promise to observe all ecclesiastical laws.  Lastly, I said, “In Christian obedience I shall unite myself with what is declared by the bishops as authentic doctors and teachers of the faith or established by them as those responsible for the governance of the Church;” and assist the diocesan bishops in carrying out the apostolic activity in communion with the Church.  The Oath of Fidelity closes with, “So help me God, and God’s holy Gospels, on which I place my hand.”  Those last words, in particular, really weighed upon me, not so much as a burden, as a recognition of just how serious the office is to which I was appointed.

Calvary in Jerusalem

    I thought of that obedience for today when meditating upon what our Savior did for us.  The obedience I promised imitates the obedience that Christ demonstrated usque ad mortem, even unto death.  But that obedience was not just God the Father imposing His will against the will of God the Son.  That obedience was an act of love, willingly endured for the sake of Christ’s beloved–the human race–from the creation of man until the return of Christ in glory at the end of time.  Yes, Christ’s human nature, as seen in the Garden of Gethsemane, desired not to drink from the chalice that the Father presented to our Lord, but He drank from it out of love, and knowing that whatever the Father wills is for good. 
    Our society struggles (to put it lightly) with obedience.  And while recognizing the legitimate times that one should refuse the will of others when asked to do something against Divine Law or Natural Law, we find all sorts of reasons to disobey even without those legitimate times.  And perhaps this is because we do not trust enough and we do not love enough.  Our fallen wills balk when someone asks us to do something that does not delight us, unless we can see a higher good.
    For this year, it would be good to think about how obedient we are: first to God, then to the Church, then to others who exercise legitimate authority.  The model of Christ reminds us that love submits to the will of the Father because of the trust that the Father will not abandon us, no matter how bad things get.
    And things may get bad.  The agony of the cross was no small thing.  Besides the physical pain, there was the spiritual pain of the eclipse of God’s love and favor that are the consequences of all sins from all time.  But Christ could still follow through and not call upon His army of angels to make it all stop because He trusted the Father; He loved the Father.
    How much do we love the Father?  How much do we trust the Father?  The more we love God and trust God, the more we will submit our wills to His and allow His plan to work itself out, no matter how painful and dark it may seem.  But remember, the pain and the darkness, both of today and of our individual acts of obedience, are not the end.  Yes, today we mourn in sorrow,  but obedience bears fruit that not even death can hold back.  But to bear that fruit, we have to plant the seeds of obedience.  “So help me God, and God’s holy Gospels.”

The Eucharistic Plan

Mass of the Lord’s Supper
    When I was a young kid, one of my favorite pastimes was building stuff with my Legos.  Sometimes I would just put blocks together, but I’m Type A enough that I would always return to the plans that I came with the Lego set.

The Upper Room in Jerusalem

  Christ today sets out for us a plan, a plan centered around the Eucharist, whose institution we celebrate tonight. We don’t hear the entire plan tonight, as we hear just one snippet from John’s Gospel, but we are all (hopefully) familiar enough with what happened on Holy Thursday that we can extrapolate from other Gospel accounts the plan that Jesus gives us for how to follow Him.
    Jesus demonstrates the first part in the Gospel we heard tonight.  John is the only evangelist to recount this beautiful encounter between Christ and His Apostles, His first priests (tonight also celebrates the institution of the priesthood).  Christ takes off his outer garments, and washes the feet of His disciples as a demonstration of love and humility from God.  And this is the first part of our Lord’s plan for following Him: allow Him to come to us and show His love and care.  
    We can often think that we have to make the first move when it comes to our relationship with God.  But that’s not how it works.  God always comes to us first.  Even the desire to know God is itself a gift from God.  God has loved us from all eternity, and He makes His love known to us in real ways.  Maybe that love is the love we receive from our parents.  Or maybe it’s a moment that we acknowledge the presence of God because we sense it deep within ourselves.  But God comes to us to invite us to enter into a relationship with Him.  
    Sometimes that invitation comes to us in ways that unsettle us.  Peter did not want the Lord to wash his feet.  He felt that was beneath the Messiah.  But, let’s be honest: taking on our human flesh is beneath God, inasmuch as the God who created heaven and earth and all that is in them humbles Himself to be bound in time and space, to feel the pressing heat of the day, to get chilled in the cool of the night; to hear a stomach growl because the food didn’t fully satisfy the desires of the body; to lick chaffed lips which had dried out.  God did not need to experience any of that, and yet He did, because of His great love for us.  So, in our desire to be good disciples, good followers of Jesus, we need to be attentive to God revealing Himself to us and sharing His love for us, sometimes in unexpected and uncomfortable ways.
    Secondly, we knew what happened after that.  Matthew, our patron, Mark, and Luke, record it well, and St. Paul speaks of it as well in our second reading: our Eucharistic Lord takes bread and changes it into His Sacred Body; He takes wine and changes it into his Precious Blood.  The second part of God’s plan is to allow Christ to offer Himself for us.  Of course, the offering on Holy Thursday night was a prefigurement of the total offering of self on Good Friday on Calvary.  The Eucharist always points to the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the altar of the Cross.  But Christ desired that all generations would not only remember, but also share in, the once-for-all sacrifice, and so He gave us His Body and Blood, without which, Jesus says in the Gospel according to St. John, we do not have life within us.  
    That is the great joy of what we celebrate tonight, and at every Mass.  Christ, mindful of our need for Him, offers Himself for us, so that we can have His life flowing within our veins.  If Christ is the Vine and we are the branches, the Eucharist is the sap flowing through the branches, keeping us alive on the vine.  This is one of the greatest sadness of those who walk away from the Catholic Church: no matter how good the preaching is; no matter how much the music moves them; no matter what other programs are offered; they lack the spiritual sustenance which keeps us alive in Christ.  Tonight should not only stir up in us the sense of how much we need Christ feeding us, but also encourage us to reach out to those who have fallen away, and bring them back, first to the mercy of God in confession, so that they can fruitfully receive the Body of Christ and restore them to life.
    Third, and all the Gospel writers communicate this action, Christ goes out with His Apostles.  In the case of our Lord, He goes to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray to His Father for the strength to endure the Passion which awaited Him.  But the Eucharist does not mean we hunker down and stay hidden from the world.  It means we go out, to take that life and share it with others by the increased joy and love that we have because of Christ.  The going out, as Christ shows us, is not always easy, and sometimes involves great pain and sacrifice.  But the Upper Room is not an end in itself.  Our worthy reception of Holy Communion should push us out, like an infant who wants to leave the comfort of the womb in order to begin to realize a fuller potential.

An olive tree in Gethsemane which existed at the time of Jesus

    So, this pattern for us is: to allow Christ to come to us, even in unexpected ways; to receive spiritual nourishment from Christ Himself; and to then allow that spiritual nourishment to push us out and follow God’s will.  All of our Catholic life can be broken down into one of those three parts of the plan for us following Christ.  And they all happen, or are meant to happen, time and time again throughout our lives, in this continuing cycle on our pilgrimage to heaven.  
    Build with the plans God has given us.  Allow God to come to you tonight, in whatever way He wants to.  Receive worthily the Eucharist and be fed by God to have strength for God’s mission for you.  Joyfully share the love and truth of God which you have received in Holy Communion.  The plan may include heartbreak and suffering; it may take us out of our comfort zones.  But the plan will help us to be the disciples and the saints that God wants us to be, and so transform the world according to the plan of God.

"Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?"

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.].  In today’s Responsorial Psalm/Tract, we hear the words of Psalm 22 (21), which are also echoed in Matthew and Mark’s account of the Passion.  Today I wanted to reflect on these words, words which sounded forth from the lips of Christ as He hung on the cross for our salvation.

The place of the Crucifixion

    The first words do not sound appropriate for our Lord to say.  How could the consubstantial, co-eternal Son of the Father say, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”  How could God abandon Himself?  Christ, as He hung on the cross, felt the full weight of sin in His human nature.  Sin does not simply reflect a choice we make contrary to what God wills.  Sin is, in some sense, a separation from God.  Even venial sins make a momentary choice where we do not choose God, who is holiness Himself, as we hear from the Books of Isaiah and Revelation: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts!”  So when we choose that which is contrary to holiness, even if it is but for a second, we choose against God and we alienate ourselves from Him.  Our Lord, though He had no sin Himself, took upon Himself the consequences for sin of all time and space, and so felt, in His human nature, the horrible absence of God, though, of course, He remained God through all of His Passion.
    But to put these words of the psalmist on his lips also demonstrated His total union with us in all things but sin.  He experienced what we experience when we know we have wandered away from God: that lack of true happiness, that darkness, that void in our hearts that come from choosing lesser goods over our ultimate good. 
    And there is a beauty and a strength for us that come from the knowledge that our God loved us so much that He would humble Himself to experience the pain of sin, though He knew not sin Himself.  We can never truly understand the depths of another’s pain, since each person’s pain is unique, just like each person is.  Yet, it does help when someone we know has been through a similar circumstance, and knows what it is to lose as we have lost.  God can give us that comfort because He has been there, and suffered what we suffer when we do not live up to our supernatural purpose. 
    In saying this one line, Christ included the entire psalm, just as we sometimes will include in our conversation entire lyrics with simply one line.  So Christ also includes the later words within this psalm, “I will proclaim your name to my brethren; / in the midst of the assembly I will praise you: / “You who fear the Lord, praise him; / all you descendants of Jacob, give glory to him; / revere him, all you descendants of Israel!”  In the midst of this pain and sense of abandonment, our Lord also directs His suffering as an offering of praise to God among His brothers and sisters.  Indeed, we use the word assembly, but the Hebrew word is qahal, which is translated into Greek as 𝜀𝜅𝜅𝜆𝜂𝜎𝜄𝛼, whence we get the English word “ecclesial,” meaning belonging to the church.  In the midst of the pain and suffering, Christ praises God the Father in the Church, and invites God’s People to worship Him.
    Pain and suffering do not end in themselves.  Even these are gifts that can be offered to God and lead to praise and worship.  How?  As verse 20 states, “But you, O Lord, be not far from me; / O my help, hasten to aid me.”  God, even in the darkest times of our life, even in the darkest times of human history, past, present, or future, does not abandon us, even when it feels like it.  God the Father was ever present with his Son, Jesus Christ; the Father was not far from the Son, nor is He far from us.  And God sends us help to persevere through our suffering.  When we suffer, united to Christ, our suffering becomes redemptive, whether for ourselves or for others.  Pain gives way to healing; death gives way to life.  And isn’t that precisely what this week is all about?
    So, in the midst of our suffering, may this psalm be on our lips, just as it was on our Lord’s.  May we not stop at the first verse, the feeling of abandonment by God, but continue throughout the entire psalm, proclaiming in the midst of the Church God’s goodness and His proximity to us even when things look darkest, and giving glory to God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Made for More

Passion Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  This is the time of year that new assignments start coming out.  Just last Monday we received the notice of the movement of a number of pastors and parochial vicars to new assignments.  I was subsequently speaking with a brother priest and telling him how I received an email a couple of months ago from a parishioner at Immaculate Conception parish in Milan, Michigan (not to be confused with Milan, Italy) who asked me to apply for that parish because I am a young priest with lots of energy.  I joked with my classmate that I am not as young as I used to be.  And, besides that, I really feel that St. Matthew is the perfect fit for me (and I hope you feel that way, too, at least most of the time).  That’s not to say that we don’t have any challenges here and ways that we can continue to grow, not only in population but in our relationship with Christ.  But I really feel like I belong here, that we compliment each other well, and that we challenge each other to grow as a parish family.  As many of you live outside of the territorial boundaries of this parish, I know that you, too, feel like St. Matthew is a perfect place, and you witness to that by driving past other parishes that are geographically closer to you.

My installation as pastor of St. Matthew

    But while St. Matthew seems like the most perfect assignment I’ve had so far as a priest, and hopefully the most perfect parish for you, our epistle today is a good reminder that this is not all there is.  Christ is the High Priest, the Supreme Pontiff, of a greater and more perfect temple, not made with hands, in heaven.  As St. Paul says, we have here no lasting city.  We are made for heaven, and that is the temple into which we should all strive to enter.
    It is so easy to focus on what is here below.  Our church building can rightly be called beautiful as it reflects the truth of what this place proposes to be: a house of God, who is utterly transcendent and awesome.  The precious materials like marble and gold leaf offer to God the best of what we have for His glory.  The images of the saints throughout this church, like in our stained-glass windows, the medallions near the ceiling, and the statues (which are now covered) remind us that what we participate in is not just an earthly affair, but is the meeting point between heaven and earth, where saints and angels worship God together with us.  In this place we not only remember but participate in the offering of Christ in the Holy of Holies, no longer with the blood of a dumb animal, but with the precious blood of the Son of God, the blood which speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.  We join ourselves to the one Mediator between God and men, the God-Man Jesus Christ, who invites us into a covenant not carved on stone by the hand of God, but carved into our hearts; a covenant not marked by the cutting away of flesh in circumcision, but the cutting away of that which separates us from God, original sin; a covenant which brought not temporary purification, but opened up for us the possibility of eternal life in heaven if we keep our wedding garments clean in the Blood of the true Unblemished Lamb in which they were washed.
    But God reminds us today through the readings that His covenant surpasses anything that came before, and, in fact, fulfills them all.  Even that great covenant with Abraham, wherein God made Abraham and his descendants the People of God, looked forward to the covenant with Christ, as Christ Himself noted in the Gospel that Abraham looked forward to the day when God would take union with man and redeem man once and for all.  The Jews picked up stones to kill our Lord because they recognized that Christ was not claiming to be another prophet or religious leader like so many that had come before Him.  The Savior claimed that Abraham rejoiced in Him, which made Himself equal to God.  He also used in some way, that sacred name of God that God Himself revealed to Moses: I AM.  Christ is a prophet, but also greater than the prophets, and the God who inspired the prophets.
    For us, then, the Lord invites us not only to keep in mind His Divinity, but that, while we exercise good stewardship of this earth and all that lives in it, we also keep our minds fixed on what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father.  As good as this earth is, our time on it will end, either by death or by Christ’s return in glory at the parousia.  At the end of time, what is good will be perfected and what is bad will be cast away.  Even the sacraments will end in heaven, because we will no longer need material reality to mediate God’s presence.  We will be able to behold God face to face, no longer dimly, as in a mirror.  The indelible marks of the sacraments will still remain–baptism and confirmation, and for those in holy order, the mark of ordination–but no longer will we baptize, confirm, or ordain, because Christ will be all in all.
    So while we remain on this earth, we also do what so many advise against: keep our heads in the clouds.  Not in the sense that we are absent minded or distracted, but that our attention is ever-split between earth and heaven, keeping before us always the destination for which God created us.  As good as life can be here, something even greater awaits those who remain faithful to the covenant sealed in the Precious Blood of Christ our God.
    So yes, let’s continue to build up St. Matthew parish.  Let’s draw others to this beautiful House of God.  It truly feels like where I belong, and I hope you feel like it’s where you belong as well.  But, even so, may we also remember the tabernacle not built with hands, greater and more perfect than our tabernacle here, where Christ, our High Priest, eternally intercedes for us, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Two Approaches

Fourth Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Sometimes we have Scripture passages that we really like, that “hit us in the feels” or that motivate us to follow Christ more deeply.  Other times there are Scripture passages with which we struggle, which seem harder to digest.  And perhaps St. Paul’s epistle today is one of the latter.  

    St. Paul tells us today about the two covenants: that of Sinai (the law) and that of Christ (freedom in Him).  And St. Paul seems to suggest that we should get rid of the law because it connects us to slavery, where as the covenant in the Blood of Christ gives us the true freedom of the heavenly Jerusalem.  But how can we square this with the fact that we are still supposed to follow the Ten Commandments?  Certainly, we don’t have to follow all of the dietary and ritual laws of Judaism, and every time we eat bacon we can thank God for that.  But what does St. Paul mean?  Especially when we consider that Christ Himself said, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.  I have come, not to abolish, but to fulfill.”  
    What the Apostle speaks of today is how God saves us.  And this was and is a rather big point in how we view salvation, which still challenges us today.  Both in the Epistle to the Galatians and in the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul outlines how the law doesn’t save, but existed as a tutor to help us grow in holiness.  It didn’t gain for us salvation.  And the Apostle to the Gentiles shares how no one, once God gave the law, ever lived up to all its 613 precepts perfectly.  
    Christ came and gave us a new law, one that built upon the old law, but surpassed it, as much as light surpasses shadow and reality surpasses sign.  Christ fulfilled the law perfectly, and even took upon Himself the punishment or curse due to those who did not follow the law, as the law says, “Cursed be he who hangs on a tree,” and Christ allowed Himself to be hung on the tree of the cross so that He could take away the curse from us and grant us everlasting life.  This new law is seen especially in Matthew, chapter five, as Christ, the New Moses, gives us the Beatitudes and reinterprets the law to go beyond simply “Thou shalt not,” and move into the positive area of blessings and fulness of life.  These are the teachings, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…”.  The fulfillment of the law that Christ talks about is, from the point of action, much more difficult, as it’s easier to not murder someone than it is not to hold anger in the heart, or not to have sex with someone other than your spouse than it is to avoid even lustful glances at others.  
    But, going deeper, the dichotomy that St. Paul points out between the covenant of Sinai and the covenant of Calvary points to a more profound difference: do we save ourselves or is salvation a gift?  If the law saves, then salvation is something that I achieve for myself.  I may ask God for help; I may lean on others to support me in following each commandment, but I am the main actor in my salvation.  On the other hand, if Christ saves me, then I have a part to play in my salvation, but it is a supporting role, not the lead in the movie.  And if Christ saves me, then if I mess up, it doesn’t mean salvation is lost to me necessarily.  It simply means that I have temporarily interrupted salvation.  But if I save myself and I do not fulfill the requirements of the law, then there is no hope for me; I have spent my chance for redemption and have nothing but despair for my eternal future.
    This is the good news of salvation: salvation doesn’t depend on me!  And, at least as far as I, personally, am concerned, that’s great news!  Because I don’t always do the good I intend, and I sometimes do the bad I do not intend to do.  The freedom comes from knowing that I am not my own savior, so I don’t have to act as if everything depends on me.  Because it doesn’t.  If everything depends on me, then I am in slavery, striving with all of who I am to follow a law that I am bound to break at one time or another.  
    So, the Law does not save.  Christ saves.  And thanks be to God for that.  But does that mean that I can forget the Ten Commandments?  Does that mean that my choices don’t matter?  Of course not.  Again, the new law of freedom means we act in a certain way that goes even beyond the old law.  Christ has won for us salvation, so that we don’t have to earn it (because we can’t earn it).  But in order to receive that gift of salvation, we still have to follow Christ and conform ourselves to Him.  Because really, being in heaven is a matter of being united to Christ.  If we are united to Christ, then heaven is the logical destination for us because Christ is already there and we are joined to Christ.  But, if we sever ourselves from Christ by doing things that are contradictory to who Christ is, then we cannot hope to be in heaven because Christ is in heaven and we have separated ourselves from Him.
    So we still do our best to avoid: having other false gods; taking God’s name in vain; working on the sabbath (the Lord’s Day, now, rather than Saturday); disobeying our parents; murdering others; committing adultery; stealing; lying; and coveting our neighbor’s spouse or goods.  And we even go beyond that.  We ask God to help us avoid: even other swear words, wrath, lustful thoughts; to be content with what we have, mean what we say, and not give in to envy.  But we do so as our response to what God has done for us, not trying to earn His love or eternal salvation.  While we can still reject salvation, our salvation is not up to us, in the end; Christ has already accomplished it for us.  We merely need to show that we want it (which sometimes is a bit of challenge because of our fallen nature).  But God also gives us the Eucharist, the true Flesh and Blood of our Risen Lord, to help conform us to Christ and to strengthen us so that we can choose salvation and reject damnation.  May our worthy reception of the Body and Blood of Christ today and each time we go to Mass help us to choose the freedom that is ours in Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.