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.]

Can I Get a Witness?

Sunday after the Ascension
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  While the official version of the Bible for Catholics is the Nova Vulgata, the New Vulgate, which is Latin, the Gospels themselves were written in Greek.  I took one year of Biblical Greek in Major Seminary, which has helped me with clues as to the meanings of words.  While I can’t really read Greek, certain words still stick out.  Today’s Gospel is a great example.  The Latin, which we heard, talks about testimonium, which in English we translate as “witness.”  But in the Greek, our Lord says that the Apostles (to whom He is speaking in the Upper Room) 𝜇𝛼𝜌𝜏𝜐𝜌𝜀𝜄𝜏𝜀.  Now, some of you are joking that this is Greek to you (in fact, it’s Greek to everyone; it’s Greek).  But that word is connected to the Greek word, whence we get the English word “martyr.”  To be a witness, in Greek, was to be a martyr.  We now associate martyr with the shedding of blood, but the original meaning simply connected to telling the truth as a witness.
    But Christ does not only call the Apostles to be martyrs.  He calls us, all of us, to be martyrs.  Certainly, most of the Apostles, with the exception of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, did shed their blood it witness to the truth of Jesus Christ and His Gospel.  But dying for the faith was the consequence of their earlier martyrdom, their earlier witness by the spreading of the Gospel by word and by deed.  And God calls us, too, to witness to the Gospel, whether it means the red martyrdom of shedding our blood, or the white martyrdom of dying to our own wills to live for God and bring others into the truth that Christ revealed.  
    We cannot, however, live (or die) as martyrs on our own power.  We need the Holy Spirit to strengthen us to witness to our faith in the Lord.  Without the Holy Spirit, weakness could easily take over, and we could walk away from Christ rather than stay strong in the face of adversity.  And Christ clearly says we will experience adversity.  He tells His Apostles that others will kick them out of synagogues, and even will kill them.  And those who kill them will think they are doing God’s will.  We take for granted that Catholicism separated from Judaism.  But at this point, at the Last Supper in the Upper Room, the Apostles knew nothing other than Judaism, and did not realize fully that Christ would call them to be the foundation of His Church, His new assembly (the Greek word is 𝜀𝜅𝜅𝜆𝜀𝜎𝜄𝛼), the fulfillment of what God had promised the Chosen People.  

    So do we pray to the Holy Spirit?  I’m not only talking about these nine days between the Ascension of the Lord and Pentecost, the first novena which the Apostles and Blessed Mother and other disciples prayed.  But outside these days, do we ask for the strength, wisdom, and other gifts of the Holy Spirit?  There was a heresy in the Church in the fourth century called the pneumatomachianism.  Pneumatomachians did not believe that the Holy Spirit is truly God.  This teaching was condemned by the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in AD 381.  But are we closet pneumatomachians?  
    How often do we pray to the Holy Spirit?  Do we treat Him as God, or simply an extra add on that we don’t really need?  Each Sunday we profess in the Creed that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life (Dominum et Vivificantem).  Those are divine titles, as “Lord” is the acceptable way for the Jews to say God rather than saying His sacred Name, revealed to Moses in the tetragrammaton.  We profess that with the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit is adored and glorified (Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur).  But I think that sometimes we fear reaching out to the Holy Spirit.  We see charismatics, both those in and outside the visible Church, and we become uneasy, because we’re not used to speaking in tongues, or having words of prophecy, or raising our hands when we pray.  And while the Holy Spirit can still move people to speak in tongues, or reveal prophetic words, or even have us raise our hands in prayer at time, those are special gifts which are meant to build up the body of Christ, not the usual gifts that the Holy Spirit always gives: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
    We do need the Holy Spirit to help us to explain to others the truths of our faith, especially in ways that will convince them, which can vary from person to person.  And just because someone knows the truth, does not mean that they will accept it.  The Holy Spirit helps us go beyond head knowledge to having people accept in their heart as well that Jesus is Lord and that His life leads to happiness and heaven.  The Holy Spirit gives us the courage or fortitude not to cheat our boss or our employees, to use words that befit our Christian dignity, and to love others as Christ loves us, to the best of our ability.  Those are the ways that we live as martyrs, as witnesses.
    You don’t have to know Greek to be a martyr.  You don’t even have to shed your blood to be a martyr.  To be a martyr is to be a witness, and it is a vocation for all those who follow Christ.  But martyrdom, of the red or white variety, is only possible with the strength of the Holy Spirit, given to us in Baptism, and strengthened through Confirmation.  Make it your goal, not only this week, but especially this week, to ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, so that you can be a martyr, a witness, to Christ.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Already There

Solemnity of the Ascension
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  Country music has its fair share of sad songs.  After all, the joke is that when you play a country music record backwards, you get your wife back, your truck back, and your dog back.  But one song came to mind recently that, if you’re feeling some kinda way, you might get some tears.  
    That song is “I’m Already There” by the group Lonestar.  The verse begins with the current situation.  The man is on the road and calls his wife from his hotel.  He hears his kids laughing in the background, which makes him tear up a little.  Then one of his kids gets on the phone and asks him when he’s coming home.  His response is the refrain:
 

I’m already there /
Take a look around /
I’m the sunshine in your hair /
I’m the shadow on the ground. / 
I’m the whisper in the wind /
I’m your imaginary friend /
And I know I’m in your prayers / 
Oh I’m already there. //

Certainly, the musical rendition is every better than my simple recitation.

    This song came to my mind for the feast we celebrate today, the Ascension of the Lord.  And I didn’t recall it so much because of the Lord remaining with us in a variety of ways even if we don’t see Him, though it also works that way.  It came to mind because the joy of today’s feast is that, in some way, we’re already with Christ in heaven.  We’re already there.
    Now, I’m not saying that this life that we live equates to heaven.  Sure, there are some nice days here in Michigan, but it doesn’t take much to realize that we still walk through this valley of tears.  But mystically, we already are in heaven, because we have become a part of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, through Holy Baptism.  We don’t often talk about that effect of baptism, but it’s no small thing.  Not only does heaven break into earth in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but we also share in heaven, in anticipation, because Christ has joined us to Himself through the Incarnation and through Holy Baptism.  When Christ ascended into heaven, He didn’t leave our human nature behind.  He elevated our human nature and brought it to the right hand of the Father in heaven, higher than the angels.  As a side note, this is one theory on Satan’s rebellion: God showed the angels the Incarnation, and Satan couldn’t stand that humans, though lower than the angels, would receive a higher place than the angels through Christ.
    This time after baptism, then, strengthens or weakens our connection to Christ, or sometimes even severs it, if we choose to reject God through mortal sin.  If we think about our connection to Christ through Holy Baptism, it’s like we’re grafted on to Christ’s Body.  But we need good blood flow to strengthen that connection.  And so we have to stay, to switch analogies, connected to the vine in order to bear fruit.  God’s grace is like blood vivifying an attached limb, or sap flowing through a tree branch that keeps that branch strong.  The ways that we open ourselves up to that grace–reading Scripture, daily prayer, ascetic practices, service of the poor, etc.–keep that life force flowing from Christ, our Head, into us and keep us strongly in heaven, while still here on earth.
    But, while Baptism is once-for-all, because Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross was once-for-all, our eternal destiny cannot be taken for granted, and can be weakened or even lost.  When we sin, we’re lessening the flow of grace in our lives that weakens our connection to Christ our head.  And when we sin mortally–through a grave rejection of God’s law, which we know is wrong, but freely choose to do anyway–we cut ourselves off from Christ, like a limb that falls off due to lack of blood, or a branch that breaks off because of a lack of connection to the vine.  Holy Mother Church reminds us that we cannot go to heaven if we die in a state of mortal sin not so much because our Mother wants to scare us, but more as reminding us of the consequences of choosing that which is antithetical to Christ.  In heaven there is no sin, so we if we choose sin over Christ, we choose to separate ourselves from Christ and where He wants us to be, that is, in heaven.  
    Right now in our earthly life, we live in what we say in Italian as già, ma non ancora: already, but not yet.  Because Christ, in both His divine and human natures is in heaven, and because we have to been joined to Christ through Holy Baptism, we are, in some sense, already in heaven.  But our pilgrimage here on earth determines if we stay there and strengthen our connection to Christ, or if we decide that we don’t want Christ and the heavenly life and cut ourself off from Him.  Just like in the song, even though we’re not there, we’re already there.  May God help us to continue to choose connection to Him so that, at the end of our life, we can receive the inheritance God offered us when we received the Sacrament of Holy Baptism: eternal life in heaven [with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen].

Beginning and Return

Fifth Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  For whatever reason, certain phrases sound more elegant and intelligent in foreign languages.  Instead of saying, “this for that,” it sounds much better to say quid pro quo.  Or instead of saying, “exactly,” one can say per se.  If you said, “a certain something that I can’t describe,” people would understand you, but you could also throw in a little French and say je ne sais quoi.  Perhaps, due to the popularity of mafia movies, we find ourselves used to asking in poorly-pronounced Italian, capisci? when we might otherwise say, “Get it?” 
    Likewise, when we speak about the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, we use a phrase from St. Thomas Aquinas which is exitus-reditus.  That certainly sounds much more erudite than beginning-return.  But no matter how we say it, we recognize its veracity.  Christ came to us from the Father (in the Incarnation at the Annunciation which we celebrated on 25 March) and then returned to the Father (at the Ascension, which we will celebrate on Thursday).  Christ existed before all time, but the Father sent Him to us, and then Christ returned to the Father.  The Lord tells the Apostles in John, chapter 14 that He goes to prepare a place for them, “‘so that where I am you also may be.’” And our Gospel also points to this coming and going, as Christ speaks to His Apostles in the Upper Room at the Last Supper.  He tells them that He has come from the Father and into the world, and is now leaving the world and returning to the Father.   
    But exitus-reditus doesn’t only apply to God the Son.  It also applies to us.  We, too, though not consubstantial with the Father, come from Him, and our goal is to return to Him.  Even with all our advances in science, the gift of new life still comes from the Father.  And once our parents conceive us, our goal, our end, is to return to the Father so as to be one with Him in heaven.  It’s back to the Baltimore Catechism answer that says it so poetically and succinctly: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life so to be with Him in the next.  

    So this middle time, the time between our exitus, our beginning, and our reditus, our return, determines how our return ends up.  To paraphrase Denethor from the movie version of The Return of the King, our experience at our return will depend on the manner of our return.  Because, as Christ affirmed in the Gospel of John, He is the only way to the Father.  We cannot return to the place the Father has prepared for us, unless we follow the pattern that the Father set out for us, made visible in Christ.  We are, as St. Peter affirmed in his first epistle, “‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own,’” but our lives have to reflect that chosen status in order to receive the inheritance promised to us at our beginning.
    So do we recognize how to live like Christ in our day-to-day lives?  Do we give attention to the needs of others, rather than focusing only on ourselves.  We’re familiar with Catholic Charities, the North End Soup Kitchen, the St. Luke NEW Life Center.  Do we assist them?  Do we donate what we can, be it food, clothing, or other goods?  Sometimes I get new “secular” clothes.  When I do so, I try to make sure and donate older clothes that are in a similar style or that I know I don’t use that often, if they are in reasonably good condition, to Catholic Charities through the Hope in a Box box that is by the drinking fountain at the Beach Street doors.  When was the last time that you looked in your closet for clothes that you no longer wear?  Sometimes we have formal wear that we only use once or twice, but are there things that we never use, or don’t need to have, that others could?  St. Basil the Great once said in a sermon, “The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.”  Our attention to those in need makes up part of the way that we show where we want to return to: heaven or hell.  
    Whether we use the fancy Latin phrase or not, we all came from the Father and will return to judgment by Him, when we will learn our eternal destination: heaven (likely after some time in Purgatory) or hell.  If we wish to return to the dwelling place the Father has prepared for us, that Christ promised us in the Gospel, then we have to follow the example of the great exitus-reditus of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  We have to follow the Way that He is: the one who gave up His life for our good.  It may not be in the red martyrdom of shedding our blood in imitation of Christ’s perfect sacrifice of His Body and Blood, but it may be in the white martyrdom of dying to our own wills and living according to the will of the Father.  No matter in which language we say it, living the life of Christ in our day-to-day lives will help us embrace the inheritance Christ won for us, whom the Father has adopted through Holy Baptism as His adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Clarifying Confirmation

Sixth Sunday of Easter
    When it came to my own reception of the Sacrament of Confirmation in 1998 as an eighth grader, I think I had a fairly faulty understanding of what the sacrament really meant.  I remember reading facts about the gifts of the Holy Spirit (not a bad start) and a book that had examples of the saints who lived out the faith in more modern times (also, not a bad thing).  But I seem to remember some sense that Confirmation meant that I was choosing to still be Catholic and become an adult in the faith.  
    In my experience as a priest, I know that this mentality continues to this day.  Not as much here at St. Matthew, but in previous parishes young men and women would tell me, when asked what Confirmation meant, that they were choosing to be Catholic for themselves, since their parents had made the decision for them when they were baptized, and they were becoming adults in the faith.  But the choice to be Catholic happens when one is baptized.  Certainly, one can choose (sadly) to walk away from the faith after baptism, but that person will always be Catholic.  And an eighth grader, or a young high school student is far from being an adult, though they certainly can make more adult decisions than a younger child.

    So what does Confirmation mean?  Is it, as some have said, a sacrament in search of a theology?  We hear about a kind of confirmation today in the first reading, when the Apostles Peter and John go to Samaria and lay hands on those who had previously been baptized so that they could receive the Holy Spirit.  We do receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, but Confirmation gives us a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  And, in the Latin Rite, it is most often bishops, the successors of the Apostles, who still confer the Sacrament of Confirmation.
    But what is that sacrament about?  Why have it?  All sacraments draw us ever closer into the inner life of the Blessed Trinity.  They bring us closer into the love that is shared between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  All sacraments make the Blessed Trinity present to us to remind us that God has not left us orphans, but dwells within us.  Through Confirmation, we grow in our union with Christ, who gives us union with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  
    But, even while we grow in the life of the entire Blessed Trinity through the Sacrament of Confirmation, we receive a seal, a character, an indelible mark that gives us access to the Holy Spirit as our Advocate.  While we don’t use the term advocate as much anymore, the understanding of an advocate, or a Paraclete (the Greek word) is a defense attorney who pleads our cause.  The Holy Spirit pleads our cause before the Father, and defends us against the accuser, the devil, who seeks to separate us from the Father.  
    But the advocate also gives us strength and defends us as we encounter other humans who either are curious about the Gospel or antithetical to it.  The Holy Spirit gives us words to explain our faith.  He helps us to “be ready to give an explanation…for a reason for your hope,” as St. Peter said in our second reading.  The Holy Spirit strengthens us to share why following Christ makes a difference.  That is why, in the old rite, Confirmation was described as making young men and women “soldiers of Christ.”  They were to win the world for Christ by word and deed, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
    But St. Peter also helps us understand that the Holy Spirit gives us the grace to suffer for the Gospel.  Sometimes following Christ means that we will suffer.  We might lose out on promotions, or not be able to engage in certain social events, or maybe not play on all the sports teams we want to, or maybe even lose friends or family because they don’t accept our Christianity in general or our Catholicism in particular.  In addition to physical suffering, those situation are also suffering for the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit gives us courage “to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God.”  
    God gives us the sacraments to give us more of His life, His grace, to observe the commandments which Christ gave us, as the sign that we truly love God.  In particular, God gives us the Sacrament of Confirmation to strengthen what we received in Holy Baptism.  May God stir up the flames of the Holy Spirit in our hearts to witness, by word and deed, to the joy of the Gospel, and the true love of the Trinity, into which God drew us first through Holy Baptism, and into which we are called to delve more deeply each day of our life.