Good Soil and Good Fruit

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time/Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  It never failed that during summer vacation while in high school, my teachers would always give me something educational to do.  Usually it was literature classes requiring us to read a certain book or books, and we would have a test our first week back at school.  I always had the intention of reading the book progressively through the summer so I didn’t have to cram it all in at the end.  And for the first couple of weeks I did pretty well of reading a chapter or two every few days.  But then I always felt like I had a lot of time during the summer to read, which meant I put it off, which meant I usually had a majority of the book or books to read in the last two weeks before school began.     
    The way we treat summer can sometimes mirror the way we treat our spiritual life.  We figure we have lots of time, so we don’t need to rush anything.  Instead, our Lord uses the image of seeds and crops and trees to remind us about how we should always work at improving our spiritual life and remaining open to the ways in which the Lord wants to work in and through us.  

    We’re all used to the parable about the sower of the seeds [which we heard today].  There are different types of soil that have the ability to sustain or not sustain the crops.  The meaning doesn’t take a rocket scientist to sleuth.  But how are we treating our soil?  Do we cooperate with God’s grace to have good soil, or do our hearts mimic more of a path, or rocky soil, or soil with thorns already growing there?  Do we generally know that God has spoken through the Scriptures and through His Church, but we don’t really bother to engage what God says?  Or do we joyfully hear God’s Word at Sunday Mass, but then forget about God’s word on the car ride home or through the rest of the week, and then act like practical atheists who do not involve God in life, whether life goes well or poorly?  Or do we read the Bible daily, but then treat the rest of life as more important and more practical than living by God’s Word, and so it cannot take root in us?  Or do we hear God’s Word at Mass, and read it at home, and allow it to transform the decisions we make and the words we say and the way we treat others so that, with St. Paul, we can say that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me?
    God wants us to bear fruit.  But how we receive the Word of God and allow it to saturate our lives will determine what kind of fruit we bear.  If we don’t care for the soil, the tree of our spiritual life will produce rotten fruit rather than good fruit.  And the state of our soul manifests itself in our words and actions.  A person animated by the love of Christ does not curse out other people.  A person trying to follow Christ does not put sports above God and the Sunday obligation of Mass.  A disciple makes decisions not on how much money he can make, or how much power and prestige this will gain her, or what his favorite political party and spokesman says, but on the teachings of the Gospel as expounded throughout the centuries by the Church.  
    But all too often, our lives can contradict what we say we believe and whom we say we follow.  It’s like the young person arrested for possessing or selling heroin or fentanyl while wearing a DARE shirt (which, for those who didn’t grow up in the 90s, stood for Drug Abuse Resistance Education and was meant to help kids avoid doing drugs).  Or the person who wants to live a healthier life but eats fast food every day of the week.  Or the politician who says he or she cares for the environment and wants to limit carbon emissions and the flatulence of cows because they make too much methane gas, only to fly across the country and the world every month in a private jet.

St. Anthony of Padua

    Does this mean we will live the Gospel and Church teachings perfectly?  No.  We are all sinners, and we all miss the mark, sometimes often, sometimes rarely.  But are we doing our best to cooperate with God’s grace and God’s will, or do we say one thing and do another?  St. Anthony of Padua once preached: “Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak.  We are full of words but empty of actions, and therefore are cursed by the Lord, since he himself cursed the fig tree when he found not fruit but only leaves.”  There’s a difference between me wanting to bench press 225 pounds for one or two sets of three reps, and not having the strength yet but going to the gym regularly to improve my bench press, and wanting to bench press 225 pounds but not even bothering to go to a gym, or only doing so once or twice a week.  
    The vice of sloth can act as a temptation to many, that we can delay really putting in effort to receive the Word of God and live the Word of God until we’re older and when we have more free time.  But God doesn’t promise us tomorrow.  All we have is today.  As St. Paul says, quoting the Prophet Isaiah: “Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”  Tend the soil of your soul today.  Put in the work now to bear good fruit in the future.  Before we know it, the summer will be over, and the harvesters will come to reap the fruit from the crops they sowed in the spring.  May we not be the branches that brought forth bad fruit and were cut down and cast into the fire, but the branches that bore good fruit because we cultivated our soil and stayed connected to the Vine, Jesus Christ [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen]. 

An Easy Yoke, A Light Burden

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Recently we celebrated Father’s Day, and I received a number of Father’s Day greetings for my role as your spiritual father, for which I was very grateful.  While my responsibilities of caring for you may not be as concrete as the ways that fathers make sure (with their wife) that the kids are housed, clothed, and nourished, certainly the weight of my spiritual responsibilities to you, my spiritual children, are not lost.  By my actions and by my words, I either help you get to heaven or lead you farther away from heaven, even if you also have a certain responsibility towards your own spiritual formation.
    And as any father knows, children respond to different ways of parenting differently.  One child may just need “the look” to correct behavior, while another child needs a spanking at times.  One child may find encouragement in a parent challenging them to do better, while another child needs more tender care to bring out the best.  And this goes for you, my spiritual children, as well.  I often preach strongly, with challenges about avoiding sin and living the faith concretely in your life, not just saying you’re Catholic without any evidence to support that claim.  But today, rather than challenging, I do want to preach more gently, based upon the readings.  And even those who enjoy a challenge, sometimes need a break and a word of comfort.

Mural from Bethany, where Christ began his entry into Jerusalem 

    And what drew me to this approach today is how Christ comes to us: meekly.  Zechariah prophesies that the Dividic king will come to them, not with the pomp and circumstance of a military victor, but meekly.  He will not storm in on a gallant horse or with a chariot, but will ride a humble beast of burden.  We rightly associate this reading with Palm Sunday, as Jesus fulfills it, riding into His city, the City of David, on an ass.  And even though the people give Jesus an exuberant welcome, Jesus does not grand stand, but enters with the meekness of which Zechariah spoke.
    This entry finds commonality with the Incarnation, both as the Word became flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and as the Word-Made-Flesh was born for us in Bethlehem.  While the Archangel Gabriel certainly has some pomp and circumstance, others did not know, at first, of Mary’s special role.  Gabriel simply appeared to Mary, and invited her to become the Mother of God, and it happened with Mary’s fiat, her yes.  No trumpet; no thunder; no proclamation from the heavens.  Simply the event.
    At Bethlehem, there were heavenly messengers, angels, telling the shepherds that the Messiah was born for them, but we have no indication that any one else really took notice or cared.  Our Lord came to us in a humble setting, in a cave, because there was no room at the inn.  And even with the angelic choirs, Christ came to us as a baby, as one utterly devoid of power or prestige.  His meekness demonstrated itself by His fragility, His smallness, His accessibility.  We didn’t have to grovel and beg to have an audience with the King of Kings.  He let us come to Him and approach Him as one like us in all things but sin.  
    And so Christ in the Gospel invites us to come to Him, not only to encounter Him, but to lay our worries, our troubles, our concerns upon Him.  He invites us to give Him our labors, and take His yoke upon our shoulders, because He is “meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.  For [His] yoke is easy, and [His] burden light.”  
    So today, no strong words about avoiding sin, or spreading the Gospel by word and deed, or living in a way that provides enough evidence that you do, in fact, love God.  Simply an invitation to offer to Christ whatever heaviness weighs on your heart and mind.  Give to Him your anxiety about family, friends, or your job.  Give to God whatever labors give you fatigue, whatever areas of your life where you feel inadequate, and feel the embrace of the Father who knows you and loves you more than anyone else, even a spouse or parent, ever could.  
    In many areas of our life, we can feel like we just have to do things ourselves and we cannot ask for help.  When it comes to our life in Christ, it’s the exact opposite.  We should always ask God for His help, because we cannot live as disciples without God’s grace.  Anything good we can do only becomes possible with God.  As Christ says elsewhere, without Him we can do nothing.  And when we try to live as saints on our own power, our failures become tiring, and we can easily despair.  But, again, that’s not what God wants you to do.  He wants you to run to Him, even in your failures, and offer everything to Him who can transform even the worst failures in the greatest successes, as we see in Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  He wants you to unite your life in the bread and wine offered on this altar, and see God transform the different areas of your life, just as He transforms bread and wine into the Body and Blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.  
    Today, run to God the Father.  Approach Jesus, who remains meek for us so that we can approach Him.  Invite the Holy Spirit to give you a real sense of the love of God and His care for you in easing your burdens.  “See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, [and] meek.”  Take His yoke upon your shoulders, and you will find rest.  For His yoke is easy, and His burden light.

War and Peace Begins with Us

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Pope Pius XII

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war.”  Who do you suppose said this?  Pope Leo XIV?  Pope Francis?  It was Pope Pius XII in 1939, a week before historians say that World War II began.  “It is hardly possible to imagine that in an atomic age era, war could be used as an instrument of justice.”  That was Pope St. John XXIII in his Encyclical, Pacem in Terris.  As we hopefully find ourselves at the end of another war, this time with Iran, and given the readings today, I thought it important to reflect on violence and peace on this fifth Sunday after Pentecost.
    To be fair, declarations of war are the proper authority of governments.  Yet the Church has something to say about war and the moral questions and implications of war.  But today’s homily is not for members of Congress nor for heads of state.  Today’s homily is for you, not so much as a one-sided talking to about whether or not we should have entered into a war (declared or not) in Iran, but what we contribute to war or peace.  
    St. Peter, our first pope, tells us today in the epistle that Christ does not call us to return evil for evil, and that we “must turn from evil and do good, seek peace and follow after it.”  Why?  Because, frankly, we’re bad at meting out just punishment.  It doesn’t mean that we can’t, but we’re not very good at it.  And we see this from a young age.  There you are, a young child, minding your own business, riding in a car with your parents on a beautiful sunny day, maybe even on your way to or coming from church, and your sister decides to push your buttons by poking you in the arm.  Now, you know your parents have told you to use your words, so you tell your sister to stop.  But this only eggs her on all the more, and she keeps poking you.  So you hit her, to show her that she can’t pick on you without repercussions.  But she doesn’t want to look like a weakling, so she pushes you back, until you’re in a full-on car fight and your parents look back and tell you both to cut it out, and your dad says, “If I have to pull this car over…”
    When we respond to perceived wrongs, we tend to give a little more than we got, as a deterrent to the person wronging us.  In our attempt to be just, we tend to go a little beyond justice.  But then the other person feels aggrieved, and has to respond to us, and goes a little beyond what we deserve.  And so the cycle starts and sometimes even goes to a point we never would have imagined.
    St. James asks in his epistle, “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from?  Is it not from your passions?”  Our Lord knew that we often don’t hit the target of justice and tend to give more punishment than others deserve.  And so, while the Decalogue forbade murdering another (“Thou shalt not kill”), Christ the New Moses teaches us that we have to nip anger in the bud in order to stop unjust force, and change our hearts so that we act from a place of peace, not a place of wrath or vengeance.  

G.K. Chesterton

    “But,” you may say, “what about the Nazis?  Shouldn’t we have fought them?”  Before answering that, if you have to use Nazi’s to justify your argument, you probably haven’t developed your arguments well enough, and simply disagree with the conclusion without having an issue with individual propositions that lead to the conclusion.  But, having said that, the Church does allow, in some limited cases, that war, primarily in self-defense, is necessary.  And this finds its basis in our individual right, and sometimes duty, to defend ourselves and others.  A parent who doesn’t defend their child from violence is a coward, not a virtuous person.  But, again, what is the motivation?  Is it because we really don’t like the aggressor and we’re glad we finally have a reason to knock his lights out?  Or is it because we love our children and don’t want any harm to come to them.  G.K. Chesterton wisely wrote, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”  The motivation comes not from antagonism towards others, but love of those he or she is bound to protect by some obligation, be it a parent of a child, a law enforcement officer of a community, or a soldier of a nation.  
    When we “give it to them” to prove that we are the victors and the stronger person, we tend to perpetual the cycle of violence.  Even looking at World War II, most historians agree that the ingredients for the rise of the Nazi party came from an overaggressive and punitive response to Germany and Austria in the Treaty of Versailles.  The allies were so hurt by the people and materials lost in World War I, that they allowed vengeance to govern the resumption of peace, rather than trying to truly bring back justice and not going beyond that.  
    In our lives, we have to ask ourselves if we, or probably how we, perpetual a cycle of violence.  Even if I am simply acting only out of anger or animus towards another, I am contributing, even in a very small way, to a mentality that might makes right and violence is the only answer that works.  While we don’t have to make decisions on going to war, we do have to decide how we respond to injustices.  Are we willing, without denying our right to self-defense and defense of others, especially the vulnerable, to seek good rather than evil, peace rather than conflict?  Do my insults and harsh words of others build up the common good, or make others feel victimized so that they have to get back at me?  If every person learns to give better than you get, will the people who get elected to positions of government just carry that over into international relations?  
    God does not call us to be doormats and allow others to victimize us without consequence.  But if we can die to our passions which seek retribution; if we can truly seek the good of the other, even if we have to do so from afar, then we can, in our own small way, promote peace, which comes when people feel they are treated with dignity.  If we wish to stop wars, violence, and hatred, then we cannot simply state that we have not murdered anyone.  As Christ teaches us, we have to first work on eliminating the anger and hatred in our own hearts, and love others as Christ has loved us.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.   

Living and Dying

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    As the connection to Christianity dips, many people have developed very weird habits in connection to death.  People don’t want to have funerals any more, or if they do, they have the bare minimum.  Many choose to have a “celebration of life,” (which, by the way, is not what a funeral is) where you simply remember the good qualities of the person, rather than praying for the person.  Or sometimes people will scatter ashes in a person’s favorite nature place (which, for the record, the Church does not allow; not to mention you better hope you judge the direction of the wind as your pouring ashes out of an urn).  Or sometimes people will make jewelry that has little amounts of ashes in a locket that a person wears (the Church also does not allow this).  Or, some people just forgo burial altogether, and leave the urn on the mantle (which is also not allowed by the Church; and, which, if you have seen the movie “Meet the Parents,” can turn out quite poorly, especially if you have a cat).
    I connect the newer, weirder practices that surround death with the waning of Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, because as Catholics, we should live without fear of death or need to create our own new rituals with death.  Why?  Because we’re already dead!  No, this isn’t a weird way in which the TV series “LOST” depicts reality.  But through Holy Baptism, we already died.  We had to, if we wanted to live.  It is Christ’s death that allows us to have life, and we have to join in that death, albeit sacramentally, in order to join in His Resurrection.  That was the point of the epistle today from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.  In baptism we died with Christ so that we could live in newness of life.  And some religious orders demonstrate this during vows, where one is covered with a death pall and lies prostrate on the floor, signifying that they’re old life is dead.  
    But this death, whether of monks and nuns or those in another vocation, isn’t a death of our biological life, but a death to our life of sin and separation from God.  And the new life that we receive is not like an extra life from a video game, but a new way of life in which we strive for holiness and union with God.  Our new life consists in choosing that which is truly life, that which is connected to God, and rejecting that which is truly death (sin), that which separates us from God who is the source of all life.

St. Pier Giorgio Frassati

    Ironically, it is those who die to sin who are the most alive.  Look at the saints: they live the most invigorating lives!  Those who go from sin to sin exist, but don’t have anything that exciting.  Those who persist in mortal sin are like zombies who still walk around, but they are dead.  The quote from now-Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati comes to mind: “To live without a faith, without a patrimony to defend, without a steady struggle for Truth, that is not living but existing.”  He also said, “Vivere, e non vivacchiare” which means “to live, and not just to get by.”    But when we do not live according to our baptism; when we decide that we choose our own will over God’s; when we go from sin to sin, we just get by.
    Life without the Lord is like “The Wizard of Oz” at the beginning in Kansas (with no offense intended to the State of Kansas).  It’s black and white (figuratively, not literally).  It’s simply getting by on a farm.  It’s not living life to the fullest.  But after baptism, and as one follows Christ, life is like Oz: colorful, exuberant, and overflowing goodness; song, dance, and joy.  What’s odd is that we often feel like black and white is better than color, and death is better than life.
    Sin is like the feeling when you’ve eaten way too much food on Thanksgiving (or maybe on other days of the year, as well): you feel sluggish, lethargic, not really excited about anything.  Life in Christ is like when you’ve enjoyed a good meal in moderation, which then gives you energy to go for a walk, run, or bike ride, or play a game outside.  You have what you need, which then gives you the energy to enjoy life even more.
    So how do we live and not simply get by?  We die.  We die to those things that we know do not give us true happiness.  We crucify in ourselves the anger that flares up at someone who has harmed us; the need (or rather, illusion) to be in control of everything; the greed to take all for ourselves and not share with others; the laziness that tells us not to go to Mass or to prioritize fleeting pleasure over sacrificing for the good.  
    Catholics who live the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans seriously aren’t afraid of death.  Because they’ve already been through it, albeit sacramentally.  If they’re following Christ, then death doesn’t matter all that much, because what comes after death for one who follows Christ is an even fuller life than what we can live here on earth by God’s grace and under God’s rule.  We don’t hasten our death, but we don’t fear it, either.  They don’t make weird rituals for death because death is not all that important to one who has already died.  You are already dead, and are leaning into the new life of heaven by the choices you make (or, perhaps, leaning into the eternal death of Hell by the choices you make).  Life the new life of Christ where death has no more power or sting.  “Think of yourselves as dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus."   

The Struggle Is Real

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time/Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the Michigan State Police Training Academy to potential recruits who will hopefully join the 151st/152nd Trooper Recruit School or the 29th Motor Carrier Officer Recruit School.  They were doing an overnight stay to get them a little accustomed to how life in Recruit School would be.  A number of them were not following instructions, and the staff was loudly telling them to do better.  As they lined up, I could see the fear in their saucer-sized eyes, wondering if they would make it through all the mental and physical challenges that recruit school entails for them to be a good Trooper or Motor Carrier Officer.

Prophet Jeremiah

    Following Christ can sometimes feel like being a recruit.  No, our Lord isn’t going to yell in our face to do better when we fail (thankfully!).  But following Christ means that we prepare ourselves for struggles and challenges, from within and without.  The Prophet Jeremiah is a great example of this.  God calls Jeremiah to deliver a difficult message, and even though Jeremiah does exactly what God asks of him, he still gets threats (as we heard in our first reading) and is thrown into a muddy well.  Or St. Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans that the sufferings of this age are nothing as compared to the glory that will come.  And St. Paul knew of what he spoke.  In his second epistle to the Corinthians he writes:
Five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes minus one.  Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I passed a night and a day on the deep;…dangers from rivers,…robbers,…from my own race,…from Gentiles,…in the city,…in the wilderness,…at sea,…among false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights, through hunger and thirst, through frequent fasting, through cold and exposure.  And apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches.

The Apostle to the Gentiles didn’t have to imagine suffering for Christ; he did it regularly just for spreading the Gospel.  
    Where do the struggles come from?  They come from within and from without.  From within, they come from our own sinfulness and concupiscence.  St. Paul mentions that all have sinned.  Even after original sin is wiped away through Holy Baptism, we still have a desire to disobey God that remains within us.  And so we suffer from the struggle of dying to our old self, our sinful self, and living according to the new man, Jesus Christ.  Temptations often beset us, but we have all the grace we need to resist those temptations.  Still, the struggle is real.  Often, the struggle comes simply from wanting to do our own will, rather than the will of God, that struggle that comes from pride.  But also we struggle with temptations towards the other deadly sins: sloth; greed; envy; wrath; gluttony; lust.  We may not be tempted toward all of them, but we all experience temptation from at least one of them.  And just like we cannot grow stronger muscles through doing nothing, so we cannot grow spiritually without doing exercises to fight those temptations.  The more we do those spiritual exercises like prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, the easier following God’s will becomes, though there is always a struggle to make the right choice.  
    But the struggles also can come from a world which does not always support Christ and His rule.  When others choose not follow Christ, they advance a kingdom which fights against those who serve the Kingdom of Christ.  Others who choose those seven deadly sins spread dysfunction, conflict, and pain in their wake.  And sometimes, they not only unknowingly spread these, but also sometimes knowingly spread evil in order to make everyone else experience chaos and sin.  These can be in big ways, like the gun violence that plagues our City of Flint, or they can be in small ways, like cheating people from money they deserve, spreading slander, or working to undermine our good deeds.  
    This work of fighting evil requires us to engage, not with the tools of the enemy, but with the weapons of Christ: the sword of the spirit, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, and the sandals of peace.  The best way to fight evil is with good.  Of course, we can always defend ourselves and our families from violence with force when necessary, but violence tends to beget violence, and continue a cycle that never ends.  But still, our work of advancing the kingdom of Christ should come primarily from the good that we do motivated by our love of God and love of neighbor.
    Following Christ does not mean life will go easily.  Sometimes we struggle with others who want to keep us from Christian living around us.  Sometime we struggle with our own fallen desires and temptations.  Usually we struggle with both.  But engage the struggle for goodness, for following Christ.  Because the reward for engaging in the fight will infinitely outweigh any suffering we undergo here, and that reward is eternal life with Christ in heaven [who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen].

Changing our World

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time/Third Sunday after Pentecost
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  I doubt anyone would argue that the world is not as good as it used to be.  In my own life time (I was born in 1983), the world seems to have become more violent, more antagonistic, less concerned about one’s neighbor.  Certainly, the world wasn’t perfect in my youth.  And yet we have made some amazing strides in protecting innocent babies in the womb.  In 1983, the rate of abortions was 28 per 1,000 women.  In 2023 it was 15.9 per 1,000.  The US was involved in wars and was the victim of terrorist attacks even in the 80s and 90s.  But it seemed less prevalent, less sustained.  While parents still had to be careful in protecting their children in public, I can remember riding my bicycle to school in 5th and 6th grade, traveling the 4.5 miles each way without worrying that some creep would pick me up and traffic me.
    What changed?  There are too many factors to create an exhaustive list, but certainly one thing that has changed is how Catholics participate in their faith.  There are even factors within this factor.  Most didn’t know it at the time, but the Church was suffering through a sexual abuse crisis that certainly turned a number of people away from living their faith.  Catholic schools had teachers who openly opposed Catholic teaching, and CCD didn’t so much mean the Confraternity of Catholic Doctrine as Cut, Color, and Draw.  Catholics didn’t know their faith and were settling for dribble, not only in the classroom, but also liturgically, where sisters would dress up in leotards and prance up the aisle at Mass with streamers.  In the early 1980s, Catholic weekly Mass attendance was in the mid-30% range.  By 2023, again with numerous drivers of this stat, weekly Mass attendance had dropped to somewhere around 20%.  

    Doesn’t everyone feel good on this Sunday morning?  Probably not the most uplifting start to a homily.  But do we just mope around and bemoan the bad numbers?  What can we do to change, not only our Church, but also the world?  To quote King Théoden of Rohan from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: “What can men do against such reckless hate?”  
    In order to change the world, we need committed, serious Catholics.  What changed the Roman Empire from a greedy, violent, debaucherous society into a place where basilicas could be built, universities could develop, and peace could generally exist (though, to be honest, no time in Church history has ever been perfect)?  Committed, serious Catholics who lived in the way Christ taught them and shared that way of life with others.  In the Gospel of Matthew [that we heard today] Christ not only chooses His twelve Apostles who will lead His Church, but says that, “‘The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.’”  Christ wants more people to share the Gospel and to live the Gospel so that all can come to salvation.  There are never enough; we always need more.  You are the ones Christ wants to share the Gospel.  Not just me as a priest.  Not just professional missionaries in remote parts of the world.  Christ wants us all to work at His harvest of collecting souls, souls who know that this life is not as it should be and who seek happiness but do not find it in power, fame, or money.  Without cost we have received the Gospel; without cost we are to give the Gospel.

    And I know this is a change.  We didn’t know it at the time, but the cultural Catholicism that had pervaded the Church for decades in the United State, and probably for centuries before that in Europe was fading.  And now, you have to choose to be Catholic and live according to the teachings of Christ and His Church; it doesn’t happen without some effort and struggle.  No longer do we just have kids and make sure they’re baptized.  We have to raise them in the faith purposefully, and invite others to join the faith through word and deed.  In the Gospel of Luke [that we heard today], our Lord talks about how we should search out the one lost sheep, rather than be content with the ninety-nine who are safe.  He talks about how we should seek out the lost coin, upturning everything to find it.  Do we have that approach to living our faith and sharing our faith?
    We traditionally talk about Confirmation making one a soldier of Christ.  It would be odd for a soldier not to fight when the battle is right in front of him.  We should approach non-believers as the lost sheep or a lost coin.  Now, this doesn’t mean we need to be weird or creepy about sharing the Gospel.  But it does mean we do our best to live in a way that others notice the difference following Christ makes in our life.  And when we have opportunities, like something very good that happened to someone, or even something bad that happened to someone, we should be ready, as St. Peter says in his first epistle, to give a reason for our hope in Christ.  I work with Troopers who don’t always believe, and even some who never have practiced a religion.  It’s not every day, but there are times when they ask me about why I believe what I do.  They’re not looking for a doctoral dissertation, but just the basics, that every Catholic should know.  And if you don’t know, don’t be afraid to tell them that you’ll find out, or maybe even find out together over coffee or a beer or bourbon.  
    What will change the world to be a better place to raise a family, to work, to recreate, and generally to live?  People who follow Christ, who provides the key not only to happiness in the next life, but even joy in this life.  We may not always see the change, but by understanding our faith and by living our faith, we can change the world.  The harvest is abundant, but those who are willing to seek out the lost sheep are few.  Tell the Lord that you’re ready to work in His field and find the lost sheep that He wants you to find and bring back to good pastures.  Be the soldier of Christ God called you to be through Confirmation.  “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord” [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen].

Putting God Off

Second Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I struggle with a bad habit.  And it manifests itself in two primary ways.  In one situation, I see some dirty dishes on my counter that can’t be washed in the dishwasher.  I know it will only take me about 5 minutes to clean them, but I don’t feel like it, so they sit on my kitchen counter until I get disgusted enough to actually clean them.  In the other situation, I have folded my clothes and they are in my room, ready to be put in my dresser drawers or hung up in the closet.  It will take me all of 5-10 minutes to do this.  But I’m tired and just want to go to bed, so I put it off as long as I can.  
    When it comes to these bad habits, the weight of inaction doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.  But the Gospel alludes to another way that we can procrastinate, and that is with our faith.  All the invitees to the banquet have reasons to delay attending.  And the reasons make sense as to why one would not go.  But the point of the parable is that the banquet is so important, that even those legitimate reasons make skipping out the wrong choice, because they may be left out for good.
    I can’t find an original source, but there’s a quote floating around the internet about procrastination that bears hearing: “Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what He gave you a chance to do today.”  When it comes to doing the dishes or putting away laundry, maybe it’s not that bad.  But how many times do we think about or talk about truly growing in our faith with God, only to put it off until tomorrow, which God never promises we will have.
    Obviously, there are some ways in which one has to delay certain good spiritual desires.  For example, a stay at home mom may want to go to daily Mass, but with six kids that may not be practical.  She may have to wait at least until the kids can get in and out of the car and their appropriate car seats themselves.  But what is stopping her from taking a little time to look up the readings for the day and thinking about those readings as she cares for her kids and her house.  A dad may want to pray the Rosary each day with his family, but he works nights and the kids are all in bed after he leaves for work and then are up mostly when he is sleeping.  But what is stopping him from saying a decade or two on his way to and from work, and asking the rest of the family to pray while he catches up on his sleep?
    We have to make realistic goals that conform to our vocation.  God does not call married couples to follow all the monastic hours.  But He does want couples to pray together every day in some way.  God does not give every person the ability to go to Mass each day, or even to make a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament each day.  But He does want us to offer up our daily sacrifices in union with the cross of Christ, whose perfect sacrifice is made present in an unbloody way in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  Simply a quick, “God, I offer this to you” is a great way to accept your invitation to the banquet, and not make an excuse, however plausible you think it is, for not attending.  Or maybe, right after you wake up, you pray your morning offering, so that you have the intention of uniting everything you experience with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  

St. Paul

    Making little changes, and capitalizing on little opportunities may not seem like much, but daily little practices add up and can change the entire trajectory of one’s life.  By doing what we can, no matter how great or how small, we open ourselves up to more and more of God’s grace, until the areas of our life that we have not given over to God slowly transform into the actions God would take were He in our shoes.  When St. Paul wrote in his epistle to the Galatians, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,” that didn’t happen all at once.  In fact, even after the Lord appeared to him, and Ananias healed Paul’s blindness, Paul went into Arabia for three years.  I would guess that the Apostle to the Gentiles had to slowly change his mind to more conform with Christ and work out how he could accept the Gospel and then share it with others.  But because he did those daily spiritual practices over three years, he could so identify with Christ that he became an icon of the one whose Gospel he proclaimed.  
    True transformation rarely happens quickly, and never happens if we put it off for tomorrow.  What if, as Garth Brooks sings, tomorrow never comes?  Based upon how we lived today and all the yesterdays that came before, would we be welcomed into the banquet?  Or would God say that we had other priorities, and that we will never taste of His banquet?  “Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what He gave you a chance to do today.”  Don’t put off living your faith more deeply, according to your vocation.  Accept the invitation to the banquet, and prepare for the heavenly life now, with God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Entering into the Communion of Love

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  You can imagine, and maybe you have even experienced this in your life, a young engaged couple, getting ready to be married, looking at their grandparents or and older couple who have been married 50 years.  The young couple sees the way they hold hands while walking together, carefully shuffling their feet while progressing ever so slowly.  They see the love that exudes from the golden jubilarians, not with the large flames of exuberant love, but with the white hot coals that is less demonstrative but no less strong.  The young couple notices how the older couple anticipates each other’s needs and can even finish each other’s sentences with a cuteness that not even a Hallmark Christmas movie could muster.  They see that love, that dedication, that seeming success in married life, and they wonder, ‘How do we get that?’
    Last Sunday we celebrated the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity.  We celebrated our Triune God, Three Divine Persons but One God, as He fully revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  We celebrated their unity in substance, but their diversity in Personhood.  We celebrated a Communion of Divine Persons.

    And so it is no mistake that today we celebrate Corpus Christi: the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.  We use other words for it, too: Eucharist; Blessed Sacrament; Holy Communion.  
    That last set of words, Holy Communion, gives us the key to understanding how we “get that.”  Last week we meditated on that Communion of Divine Persons, the full outpouring of love between the Father and the Son, a love so strong that it breathes forth or spirates another Person: the Holy Spirit.  And if we fully entered in to our celebration of the Most Holy Trinity, we likely, even if not strongly, had a tugging at our hearts, wondering how we could have that kind of communion with God, how we could enter into that eternal outpouring of love.
    Christ gave us the Eucharist as the way we share in Trinitarian love.  Yes, we may share in that love of God in other ways, especially by God creating us in His image and likeness.  But through Holy Communion, Christ unites us to Himself, and in our union with Christ we have union with the Father and the Holy Spirit, who give us life.
    And that is why Christ can say, as He does in the Gospel, that in order to have true life within us, we need to eat His Sacred Flesh and drink His Precious Blood, as we do in the Mass.  If God is the source of life, and Jesus is God, then when we worthily consume the Eucharist, life Himself enters into us.  And if we have the life of God inside of us, then we are also caught up into the life of the Blessed Trinity.  We probably most often think of Christ entering into us, but at the same time, in a mystical way, Christ is carrying us up into heaven and into that Communion of Persons that we called the Most Holy Trinity.  God draws us into Himself, and into the Love which truly makes all creation exist and thrive.  God draws us to the eternal wedding banquet of the Lamb, the nuptial feast where Christ’s love for His Bride, the Church, is eternally consummated in an act to which God allows access sacramentally across the millennia.  

    St. Augustine, as we have heard so often, said that our hearts our restless until they rest in God.  We see the love that God has, that God is, and we want access to it, like an engaged couple wanting the love that the couple celebrating their fiftieth anniversary has.  But there are no tricks, no special exercises, no secret codes to access the communion of love of our Triune God.  Simply come to the Lord worthily for Holy Communion, and be drawn up into the love of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Finding Love in God

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  A few years ago, after visiting Boston and the bar that served as the model for its self-named series, I had a hankering to re-watch “Cheers,” the 80s sitcom about a bar owned by a washed-up, Boston Red Sox pitcher who is not a paragon of moral virtue.  It turns out the series wasn’t as good as I remember it being when I watched the show (probably because I was young enough that most of the topics the show dealt with flew over my head).  But one part that many people know, even those who haven’t watched a full episode, is the theme song, or at least the lines, “Sometimes you want to go / Where everybody knows your name / and they’re always glad you came…”. There’s a couple more lines, but for the purposes of this homily, that’s enough.
    What made me think of “Cheers” is the Most Holy Trinity, whom we celebrate today.  When it comes to our God, He always knows our name.  And He’s always glad we come to spend time with Him.  Our Trinitarian God, St. John the Apostle and Evangelist tells us in his first epistle, is love.  And love affirms, to paraphrase Bishop Barron and quote a country music title from Dan and Shay, “I’m Glad You Exist.”  There is something especially good about having another person affirm your existence and affirm that they treasure you.  
    There’s nothing “soft” about wanting to be wanted.  God, who is Himself a Trinitarian Communion of Divine Persons, made us in His image, which means that He made us for union with others, whether that be the union of friendship or even, for many the union of Holy Matrimony.  But likewise, God made us for union with Him, which can happen in any and all states of life.  So many people try to mask over that desire with goods which will never truly satisfy.  Maybe, as Luke Combs sings, beer never broke your heart, but it also doesn’t support a healthy self-esteem and a feeling of desirability.  You can buy a lot of things, but as Paul McCartney sings, you can’t buy me love.  
    So many young people, and I’ll admit that I got a little caught up in this too, think that social media affirms them.  And maybe, in some small way, it does.  But a like, or a share, or a snap-streak cannot compete with true love.  The trouble is that social media seems to be set up to give some good feelings, feelings of acceptance and desirability, but ones which quickly fade.  So you post more to get more attention.  But that still fades.  So you post more and more, until you find yourself addicted to social media reactions.  Or, on the flip side, as much as you post, people don’t like or favorite or share your status or pics or posts, which only reminds you more of the lack of true love in your life, sometimes leading to depression or even suicide.  
    God made us for love.  God made us with the desire to be in a communion of human persons and divine Persons.  We need love, just like we need God.  And nothing else will fill that hole in our heart.  Nothing else–not riches, power, fame, or sex–will ever fill up the tanks in our hearts that love can.  
    “God showed His love for us,” St. Paul says, “in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”  Or, to quote John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  Love does not equate simply to an emotion, but requires action.  And Christ demonstrated in a way we could understand just how far the love of God would go to reclaim us for Himself, to remind us that nothing earthly thing could ever truly fill our need for love.  God the Father showed His love for us by creating us in His image and likeness.  God the Son showed His love for us by dying on the cross for our salvation.  God the Holy Spirit shows His love for us as we get those God moments, of various types, that remind us just how much God loves us.  The action of love, from the beginning of all time until the consummation (very much a love word) of all time at the return of Christ, is a work of the entire Trinity, who is Himself a Communion of Love.  
    Our role is to accept the invitation into that love that truly makes us whole, and to invite others into that love, too.  The command of Christ at the end of Matthew’s Gospel to baptize all nations is a command to invite the entire world into the love which truly fulfills us.  Baptism, by uniting us to Christ, gives us entry into Trinitarian love.  And everyone needs that, even if they don’t recognize it.  Otherwise, they’ll try to find it in a bottle, in a paycheck, in notoriety, or in power.  And while those will satisfy for a little while, they will leave people feeling even more empty than before, because the thing they thought would fill their need for love abandoned them and lied to them and did not give them what they wanted.  
    We have a God who knows our name.  We have a God who is always glad when we come to Him.  We have a God who is love and who wants to embrace us with His love.  So many other things cry out and pretend to love us.  But in the end, only God’s love, and any true loves connected to God’s love, will last and sustain us.  Through Holy Baptism God joins us to His love.  Through the Mass, we see that love in action as God allows us to join in to the sacrifice of Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, made once for all on Calvary.  Through our daily lives the Holy Spirit helps us to respond to that love that God first offered us.  Don’t search for love in a bar, not even a famous one in Boston.  God’s love is here, ready to be shared.  And God wants us to share that love out there, outside of this church, so that all people can experience the fullness of love, from the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

The Work of the Spirit

Pentecost

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  When it comes to bourbon distilleries, most people have the mentality that the older a distillery is, the better bourbon they produce.  I guess the thinking goes that if you’ve been distilling America’s native spirit for a long time, you must have learned something along the way about how to make good bourbon.  For example, my beloved Buffalo Trace claims that they are the oldest continuously operating distillery in America, as there are records that distilling began on the site we now know as Buffalo Trace in 1775, one year before the US gained its independence, and continued to sell bourbon with a special medicinal license during Prohibition.  Evan Williams claims that it is the first commercial distillery in Kentucky, beginning commercial distilling along the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville in 1783.  Old Forester claims the title of oldest continuously sold bourbon and family-owned distillery in the US, going back to the first bottled bourbon in 1870 by George Garvin Brown.  And even if you don’t have longevity, you try to latch on to the “old” mystique.  Bulleit Bourbon brands itself as “Frontier” bourbon, evoking images of the wild west in the 1800s.  But Thomas E. Bulleit, Jr. founded the company in 1987.  

    As we celebrate Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we see a similar trend in the Church.  Everyone wants to claim that the Holy Spirit, God, is on their side.  And usually that means that they want divine support for something new that they create.  After all, the Holy Spirit, as we heard in the Acts of the Apostles, so excited the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples in the Upper Room to spread the Gospel, that as the Jews heard the Gospel proclaimed in numerous languages, they thought those proclaiming it were drunk.  When the Pharisees drag in the Apostles for proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and tell them to stop saying that salvation comes from Christ, Peter says, “We must obey God rather than men,” a line that Jan Hus, a Bohemian heretic, would use to justify his teaching that no one had to listen to the Church or the pope, only what their interpretation of Scripture was.  Other later protesters like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and others who founded breakaway ecclesial communities would claim that the Holy Spirit was the impetus behind their rejection of Catholicism.
    In our own days, we see the unity of the Church and its commitment to fidelity to Christ’s teaching stretched.  On the one hand, some, including members of the Church hierarchy seek to make Church teaching subject to current cultural norms and majority rule (even if the majority is only a vocal minority).  Even while the Holy See said that marriages not recognized by the Church cannot formally be blessed and that ordination is reserved to men, some want simply to change those teachings, and those upon which they are founded, and they appeal to it being a work of the Holy Spirit.  On the other hand is the Society of St. Pius X, which Pope Benedict XVI tried to to reconcile by lifting the excommunications issued by Pope St. John Paul II; and even Pope Francis tried to bring them more into the fold by granting them authority to celebrate Catholic weddings.  The Society now seeks to consecrate their own bishops without a papal mandate, which Rome has clarified would be an act of schism and those who participate and even those who obstinately hold fast to their errors, would be excommunicated.  The Society appeals to the work of the Holy Spirit throughout the ages, to which they believe they are holding firm, while denying that the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council was truly a work of the Holy Spirit.  
    But how do we know what the Holy Spirit does?  Can we have any surety?  Our surety comes from the fact that the Holy Spirit continues the work of Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church, which Christ set up in a particular way, with certain members having authority to speak in Christ’s name, as we hear in John, chapter 20 and elsewhere.  If Church teaching was determined by majority rule, none of us would believe that Christ is consubstantial with the Father, as that heresy, Arianism, was much more popular than true or orthodox Catholicism, which followed the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea.  But, the same authority that grants Nicea I validity, also means that when Pope St. John XXIII convoked Vatican II, and all the bishops gathered in union with him; and when Pope St. Paul VI continued the council after Pope St. John’s death, and confirmed its decrees, we also hold fast to what it teaches dogmatically.  Theology and liturgy cannot be frozen in time, nor can theology and liturgy simply blow in the winds of the spirit of the age.  
    So how do we know that we have the Holy Spirit, given to the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples at Pentecost, and given to all followers for two millennia afterwards?  We hold fast to the one Church that Christ founded, which has the Holy Spirit as its catalyst and protector.  Has the Catholic Church always implemented its teachings well?  Has she always been clear in particular statements by the popes or even the holiness of every pope?  No.  In many ways, the implementation of Vatican II, or maybe better said, the hijacking of the implementation of Vatican II, has led to much confusion, even among those who have the charism of helping to lead the Church.  But Vatican II did not teach error or heresy.  If she did, then we ought to leave the Catholic Church, because Christ’s promise to St. Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church has been broken, and a God who claims to be the truth but breaks a promise is not worth following.  Likewise, Church teaching is not a political program that can change when a “new party” gains power.  What has been revealed as dogmatically true is true for all the ages, no matter how unpopular or how difficult following Christ becomes in a particular age.  If Church teaching can change with cultures, then it would be better not to be a part of the Church and just do whatever we felt right moment by moment.  
    But neither of those positions are the work of the Holy Spirit.  How do I know?  Because the Catholic Church has clarified both of those positions as outside what it means to be Catholic.  If the Society of St. Pius X goes forward with its illicit, albeit valid, consecrations of new bishops, to join with them is to participate in schism and jeopardize your immortal soul.  If priests or even bishops encourage ordination of women and/or blessings of unions which the Church does not recognize as marriage, and you join with them, you jeopardize your immortal soul.  The Holy Spirit pushes the Church, and the work of God sometimes does surprise us, just like Pentecost surprised the followers of Christ and the Jews in Jerusalem.  But the Holy Spirit does not work against the Church.  We must obey God rather than men.  But make sure it’s God you’re following, and not just your own will, or the will of other men.  [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]