Challenges for the Holy Family

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

This Christmas was different than in years past.  In the past the tradition was always to visit my mom’s parents on Christmas Eve, celebrate Christmas as an immediate family Christmas Day morning, and then go to my dad’s parents for Christmas Day dinner.  Then, when I became a priest, we tweaked things a little to adjust to my new responsibilities.  This year, with both my mom’s mom and my dad’s mom deceased (and I think many of us know how mom’s are often the glue that holds the family together), we celebrated our immediate family Christmas on Christmas Eve morning, and invited both grandfathers over later in the morning so that we could see them.

Those changes weren’t easy.  And this year especially it felt like Christmas celebrations were truncated, even though I got to see my immediate family and both grandfathers.  I am certainly the kind of person who likes to leave traditions the way that they have been.  But, with both grandmothers now gone from this earth, it was inevitable that things would change.  And, we’ll see what happens for Christmas 2019.

In our parish family over this past year I’ve buried my fair share of grandparents, and some younger people, too.  We’ve had 19 funerals of active, sometimes very active, parishioners since 2018 began.  The trend, going back at least to 2014, but likely before, of losing 80-90 parishioners per year according to our October counts, has continued to the present, where we’re down to just under 400 people who attend Mass at St. Pius X each weekend.  These changes to our parish family precipitate adjustments, just like changes in our biological family yield new realities.  Adjustments are difficult.  Changes can be hard, especially when they are not always communicated well or received well.  Each member of the family takes changes differently, and that’s no different with our parish family.  Over my past three years here, there have been some who have been very welcoming to changes of different kinds that were made, about 25% of the people.  There have been some who have been very vocal about not liking the changes, about 25% of the people.  There have been some who have not communicated delight or disgust, about 50% of the people.  Some have joined our parish family because of changes; some have left our parish family because of changes.  

As we celebrate the Holy Family, I think we forget that their life was not easy, not really in any way.  Before Joseph and Mary were married, Mary comes to Joseph and says that she’s pregnant, and that the child is not his.  But don’t worry, it’s the Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit!  Talk about changes!!  Then, as Mary’s ready to give birth, Joseph and Mary, pregnant with Jesus, have to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for a census put on by the Roman government, which was none too kind to Jews.  Then, they finally make it to Bethlehem, only to be told that there’s no room (because of the census), they should have left earlier if they needed a place to stay, so they go to a nearby cave, which I’m sure is the exact place any mother would want to give birth, especially when you’re child is the Son of God!

After settling in Bethlehem for around 2 years, the Magi visit, and bring unique gifts.  But then, Joseph is warned in a dream that he has to take Mary to Egypt, because King Herod wants to kill Jesus.  Egypt was not a place a Jew went willingly.  When Joseph, the son of Jacob, from the Old Testament, went down to Egypt, it eventually led to 400 years of slavery.  Deciding to settle in Egypt is like asking a Spartan to settle down in Ann Arbor, or a Wolverine to settle down in Columbus.  And yet, on the road again, Joseph, Mary, and the Christ Child are obedient to God.  After King Herod dies, the Holy Family travels back to Judea, but because of another not-so-hot king, they again settle in Nazareth, a very backwoods part of the area called Galilee.  And we all heard the story about losing Jesus in the temple.  And then Joseph dies sometime before Jesus turns 30, and Mary follows Jesus, because she has no one to take care of her.  

The Holy Family was a family that was, more often than not, going through changes and challenges.  And yet, they are our example of how to respond: by trusting in God.  They didn’t complain; they didn’t tell God that if there was one more change they were going to stop believing in Him.  Theirs was a true example of patient perseverance in following God.

St. Paul also reminds us how we can all navigate changes that happen in our lives, both those in our biological family and those in our parish family: “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.  […] And over these put on love.”  That’s how we can imitate the Holy Family every day.  It’s certainly a tall order, but it’s also a recipe for how to be saints.

Just like the Holy Family, our life will probably include changes, some of which will be difficult.  But we all can look to the Holy Family to see how to trust in God, to remain faithful, even in the midst of difficult changes.  

Belonging to Jesus

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord

One of the great feelings that we get to experience as humans is the feeling that we belong.  There are so many groups to which we can belong.  First and foremost is family, and as we celebrate Christmas, we have a strong sense of belonging to that group.  We might also belong to a school, and we especially gravitate towards high school and belonging to a particular class (e.g., I’m a member of the Lansing Catholic High School class of 2002).  Maybe work gives us a sense of belonging.  I know that one of the greatest blessings in my life is belonging to the fraternity of the Catholic priesthood, a band of brothers who are in the field, fighting spiritual combat day in and day out.  Or perhaps our volunteer work gives us that sense of belonging.  I would say that being a chaplain for the Michigan State Police is also a great blessing for me and is a group I treasure.  Or maybe it’s something altogether different than any of the categories that I have mentioned.  Still, as humans, we seek to belong.

As Catholics, there is a group to which we belong which should be a defining aspect of our life: our faith.  In baptism, we became part of the family of God.  We also became members of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, through baptism, a group that offers us belonging.  We often break down this sense of belonging into a more manageable size, we might say bite-size pieces, as we look to our parish.  Parish identity is often how people identify how they belong to the Catholic Church, and how they define their membership as a Catholic.  I know that, as a priest, while I have been in three parishes in my eight and a half years as a Catholic priest, each time I go to a place, I dive in, and make that new place my home, my family, and how identify myself (at least partially).  

I think of all the people who are back here tonight because of a connection, present or past, to St. Pius X parish.  In my three years here I have seen people come to Christmas Mass here (regardless of where they live now) because they went to school here, because they were baptized here, or because their family still goes here.  And it’s beautiful to welcome them back.  People always talk about how St. Pius X always feels like home.  And I think we can say that part of that is that they belong.

But what we celebrate tonight is one of the primary mysteries, or realities, of our faith: that God became man.  God did not lack anything.  He was a perfect communion of Divine Persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–existing from all eternity in perfect love, in perfect belonging.  But, in the fullness of time, in order to save His highest creation, humanity, who had wandered away starting in the Garden of Eden and through the subsequent centuries.  God joined Himself to us in Christ, uniting the Divine to the Human in the Person of Jesus.  We might say, in a sense, that God wanted to belong with us in a way that He never had before.  God knew us better than we knew ourselves, but He wanted to share all of our human experiences, except without sin.  And that’s what we celebrate tonight/today: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  Jesus, who is consubstantial with the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Mother by the power of the Holy Spirit, and was born in Bethlehem.

Few things are more hurtful than when the desire to belong is not reciprocated.  Mary and Joseph, looking for a place to give birth, did not belong and were not welcomed in Bethlehem.  How many times would Jesus be rejected throughout His public ministry, especially by the Pharisees and scribes, but eventually by almost all people, including most of His closest friends who were not with Him at the foot of the cross.  When Jesus taught about Himself as the Bread of Life, the Eucharist, in John 6, at the end, it says that many of His disciples left Him because His teaching was too difficult for them.  And on the cross, Jesus even experiences the full weight of sin, of feeling separated from God the Father, as He cries out, “‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’”

But have we changed?  Are we so different from those who rejected Jesus?  Being a follower of Jesus means more than just showing up tonight/today.  Yes, this is one of the important high points of following Jesus, celebrating His Nativity, but if we wish to truly belong with Jesus, then it can’t be the only point.  If we think of our relationship with God like a marriage, it becomes obvious that this is true.  If I imagined myself married for a second (every woman’s nightmare, I’m sure!), and then, after the wedding, told my bride that I’d see her once a year, or even once a month, I’m sure our marriage wouldn’t be exactly a model union.  If, in our home, we agreed to treat each other with a certain level of respect, and follow certain practices for the betterment of our union, like putting the toilet seat down after I’m done, but then I never followed through, I’m sure our marriage wouldn’t be one for the ages.  I’m sure if we had kids, and I let the kids do whatever they wanted, while I relied on my wife to do all the disciplining, our marriage would be more written in the sand than in the stars.  

Belonging to someone means that we change our life for that person.  Belonging to Jesus means that we give our whole life–not just one day a year, or one day a month, or even just one day a week–to Him.  If we haven’t before, today is the perfect day to start.  The Lord always is waiting for us with open arms.  Jesus gave us everything: His conception, His birth, His life, His Death, and His Resurrection.  He left nothing out when He chose to belong to us.  Will we, to the best of our ability, leave nothing out when we have chosen to belong to Him?

Humble Moses

Fourth Sunday of Advent

There is a meme that I recently saw on Facebook.  It is a picture of a person writing at a desk (probably supposed to be Moses), and it says, “‘Moses was more humble than any other person on earth’, by Moses.”  What it references is Numbers 12:3, which reads, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than anyone else on earth,” along with the tradition that Moses himself composed the first five books of the Bible…including the Book of Numbers. 

Our first reading an our Gospel focus specifically on humility.  In the first reading we heard about Bethlehem, who is so small, and yet will be the place from which comes the ruler in Israel, the ruler “whose origin is from of old, from ancient times.”  Bethlehem was the City of King David, which is why Joseph and Mary had to travel back there during the census, since both Joseph and Mary were of the house of David.  But it had long since lost its notoriety, and was a place of no importance.  Still, God chose that place for His co-eternal Son to be born, from two parents who were very poor, who had next to nothing.

Our Gospel, too, talks about the Blessed Mother’s visit to Elizabeth.  Now, I’ve never been pregnant, but I’m not sure, if I were pregnant, that I would walk from Nazareth to Ein Kerem, a distance of 80 miles, to see my cousin, who was also pregnant.  However, Elizabeth was old, and it was out of love and concern that Mary did not think about her own needs, but went to take care of her family member.  Mary does not bask in the fact that she is the Mother of God (remember that life starts at conception, not birth!).  She does not let this great honor go to her head.  She focuses on the needs of others, and does as a pregnant woman what others may not have done without a child in the womb.

I’m sure we’ve all heard lots about humility.  Often times it gets confused with abasement, with lowering oneself.  And maybe that’s because our general trend is puffing ourselves up.  But humility is primarily concerned with the truth about ourselves, not with making ourselves less than we are.  Humility is thinking neither less nor more than we truly are.  And in not thinking more of ourselves than we are, in not holding on to what we want to believe we are, we open our hands to receive who we are from God.  Humility allows us to not try to take our identity, certainly not from what others say, but from the one who created us, from God, who knows who we are better than we do ourselves.

Bethlehem didn’t try to put on heirs.  It didn’t advertise itself as a center of power (that would have been Jerusalem).  But God chose it to be the place where the Messiah would be born.  Mary, though she was of the house of David, did not act as if she was supposed to be a queen.  And yet, because she became the Mother of God, truly became the Queen Mother of Heaven and Earth.  Humility allowed more honors than either of them could have achieved if they would have sought after honors and privilege themselves.

That approach to life is hard for us.  And it certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t use our gifts and talents to better the areas in which we live, work, etc.  That’s false humility, not recognizing the gifts that we have, burying our talents.  But it also doesn’t mean that we seek after power and notoriety.  We strive to be the best mother, father, daughter, or son that we can be, but when we do something well, we don’t have to proclaim it to the world.  We strive to be the best boss or best employee that we can be, but we don’t do it so that we are noticed by corporate or by our boss, we do it because it helps the company and the people that the company serves.  We strive to be the best student we can be, but we don’t have to brag to our friends that we got an A.  It’s not bad to be happy about those things, and maybe even to share then with close friends and family.  But it’s not about what others think of us.  It’s about how God thinks of us. 

Pride so often closes our hands to what God wants to give us.  God wants to give us every good gift that we need for our salvation.  God never holds something back from us that we need, because He is our loving Father.  And yet, in our pride, we close our hands to hold on to the lesser gifts that we think we need, that gives us passing pleasure.  And because of that, we might miss out on opportunities that God desires for us.  In these last couple of days of Advent, may we rediscover the gift of humility, which opens our lives us to the great things that God wants for us.  May we have the trust in God to let Him exalt us, rather than trying to exalt ourselves.

A Level Path to Heaven

Second Sunday of Advent

One of the great memories in my life is my pilgrimage in northern Spain to the tomb of St. James the Greater, Apostle in 2004. 

One of the mornings as we started to walk

Eight of my fellow seminarians who were studying in Rome and I walked 110 km. in five days from a little town of Sarria to the city of Santiago de Compostela, the resting place of the remains of St. James.  Generally we would wake up around 5:30 a.m., get walking at about 6 a.m., and finish walking around 1 p.m., before it got too hot.  We averaged a little over 20 km, or 12.5 miles per day.  It was an amazing trip, with beautiful landscapes.  But I have to admit, rolling landscapes are much easier to look at than walk.  I was in much better shape in 2004, but even then I needed ace wraps for both my knees, which were ready to give out after only two days of walking.  Honestly, walking up the hills was easier than walking down them, and a make-shift walking stick was a great aide to the pilgrimage.  

So for me, the first reading and Gospel, which talk about mountains being made low, and valleys being filled in, makes perfect sense to me.  A flat land is much easier to traverse.  And let’s remember, whether it was during the time of the Prophet Baruch in the sixth century BC, or around the year AD 30 when Jesus was doing His public ministry, there weren’t cars to drive you, trains to take you, or Ubers to call, so hills and valleys were tough, whether it was on the knees of a donkey or the knees of a human.

Jesus makes things easier.  He levels out the road to salvation.  It may not always seem that way, but it’s true.  In order to find salvation, we need to follow Jesus.  It’s that simple, and that difficult.  No longer do we have to try to figure out if this or that prophet was really sent by God.  No longer do we have to make yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great Jewish feasts.  All we need to do is follow Jesus.  Even Jesus Himself tells us to take His yoke upon our shoulders, for His yoke is easy, and His burden light, and we will find rest for ourselves.  

Our Catholic faith is simply following Jesus as the full and final manifestation of who God is.  Our understanding of the Trinity comes from Jesus, who revealed the Communion of Three Divine Persons.  All the letters of St. Paul, the letters of St. Peter, the letter of St. Jude, the Letter to the Hebrews, the Letters of St. John, and the Book of Revelation are simply Jesus continuing to teach through those He appointed to act in His Name, so that, as He said, “Whoever listens to you, listens to me.”  All that the Church has taught as necessary for salvation throughout these nearly two millennia is Jesus teaching us what we are to believe and how we are to live.  This is done through the pope and the bishops in union with him, in a variety of different settings and different ways.  But at the end of the day, it’s simply following Jesus.  

I’ve been, for some time, very impressed with Bishop Robert Barron, who is an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles.  Before that he was a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and founded Word on Fire, an evangelistic Catholic ministry whose work is to spread the Gospel.  In particular, Bishop Barron focuses on beauty as a way to evangelize, rather than outlining the “rules” of Catholicism and defending them.  There is something to this, as the leveling out of the hills and valleys.  Rules can seem like efforts to climb and descend.  But beauty is something for which we were made.  St. Augustine says it this way in his work, The Confessions:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!  You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.  In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.  You were with me, but I was not with you.  Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all.  You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.  You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.  You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you.  I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.  You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

God is Beauty itself, just as He is also Truth itself and Goodness itself.  But Beauty is often more accessible than truth.  Bishop Barron talks about baseball, one of his great loves, and says that no one really gets into baseball by simply studying the rules.  There is a beauty to the game which attracts the person to it.  But, he also states that, in order to play the game well, you need to know the rules, and the rules actually make you a freer baseball player.  Still, no one learns about the infield fly rule, and then says, “I really want to play baseball!”  They play because of the beauty of the game.  

In regards to our faith, Jesus is the one who attracts us, or should attract us, because, as Pope Benedict XVI said in Deus caritas est, his Encyclical Letter of 2005, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with…a person,” and that person is Jesus Christ.  If we have encountered that Person, if we love that Person, then all the other rules fall into place, make sense, and help us to encounter Jesus and love Jesus more.  That is the easy way, the level path, the road to salvation: falling in love with Jesus and following all that He teaches us because of our love.  No hills, no valleys, just a level pilgrimage to the goal of every human life: eternal happiness with God in heaven. 

History is Going Somewhere

First Sunday of Advent

If you asked a seminarian for a description of Hell, he would likely say that Hell would be remaining in seminary forever.  Don’t get me wrong, seminary is a great place, and were some of the best eight years of my life (four in college, four in theology), but it had a goal: ordination to the priesthood.  Of course, there’s no way to teach us all the things we’ll need to know in seminary, but if they kept us until we knew everything we needed, we’d never become priests; we’d be seminarians forever; which would be Hell.

It think sometimes we forget that history has a goal.  History is not aimlessly meandering throughout the centuries and millennia.  History is proceeding to the final judgement.  History is going towards Jesus.  And our goal, as Catholics, is to make sure that we’re on the right side of history.  

History for the Jews was going towards Jesus, their long-awaited Messiah.  Jeremiah speaks the Lord’s message that God was going to “raise up for David a just shoot.”  God was going to fulfill His promise that a son of David would sit on the throne of Israel forever, and that promise was fulfilled in Jesus.  Of course, the Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, but He is the Messiah, and proved it throughout the Gospels .  

For us as Catholics, as the fulfillment of Judaism and  even the Gentiles (those who were joined to Judaism who were not originally part of the Chosen People), our goal is to remain faithful to Jesus the Messiah until He returns to judge the living and the dead.  St. Paul reminds us that we know how to conduct ourselves as pleasing to God, through the instructions that St. Paul gave us.  And not just St. Paul, but the apostles, joined in union with St. Peter and his successors, the popes, who are called to authentically teach us how to live out our faith, and how to follow Jesus in new times and places.  

Jesus Himself reminds us in the Gospel not to become drowsy from immoral behavior and the daily grind of life.  Instead, we are to be vigilant, waiting for that culmination of human history in the return of the Messiah who, at the end of time, will bring to fulfillment the victory He won on the cross.

And this season of Advent is our reminder to be ready, and to keep ourselves on the right side of history.  Advent is the time when, as the days grow darker, we focus more intently on the Light of the World that is Jesus.  Nations will be in dismay because they are not faithful to the teachings of Jesus.  The ending of the world will cause non-believers to fear because they will be on the wrong side of history and their days of power and control will come to an end.  Those who follow Jesus will “‘stand erect and raise [their] heads because [their] redemption is at hand.’”

What will remain?  Jesus and all that is in Him and His Mystical Body, the Church.  What will pass away?  Everything that is contrary to Jesus and His Mystical Body, the Church.  Sadly, we tend to see things more in a political view than in a Gospel view.  We give allegiance to this or that political group, but not as much to Jesus and His Church.  The Gospel and the unbroken teaching of the Church tell us that we cannot support abortion, artificial contraception, homosexual activity, and the philosophy that we can determine our gender independent of the way God has created our bodies.  Of course, to our American ears that sounds like I’m attacking women and diversity and the Democratic party.  And certainly, we are called to love those who try to promote or get an abortion, those who engage in homosexual acts, and those who are confused about their gender.  But at the same time that we love them we cannot endorse their actions.  The Gospel and the unbroken teaching of the Church also tell us that we have an obligation to assist the poor, especially those who cannot care for themselves, and to care for the stranger, the alien, and those in prison, to strive for just working conditions and a fare wage.  Of course, to our American ears that sounds like I’m supporting laziness, like I don’t care about national security, and am in the pockets of the unions, and attacking the Republican party.  But God the Father doesn’t call us to be part of a political party.  He calls us to follow Jesus with all that it entails, which cannot be entirely encompassed by one political party (at least not one that I’ve seen).  We can have strong borders, encourage others to work, and make sure that employees are not taken advantage of for profit.  But we also have to make sure that we are treating all people with human dignity, no matter what their circumstance in life.

Our goal is to advance our life and the lives of those around us, towards Christ, following what He teaches in its fulness, not picking and choosing the parts we like.  Our goal is to be part of the trajectory of history that is going towards Jesus, committed to Him entirely, not committed to other groups or ideologies before Jesus.  During this Advent, let’s recommit ourselves to moving towards the goal of history, towards Jesus, and avoiding being on the wrong side of the judgement of Christ.