Groundhog Day Delayed

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Even though Groundhog Day was last Sunday, you may feel like we’re in the movie with Bill Murray as we come to today.  After all, it’s another Super Bowl Sunday with the Kansas City Chiefs playing, and the Lions not.  But, we also celebrated this exact Mass, that of the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, on 11 November 2024, just 3 months ago, because we celebrated the Resumed Fifth Sunday after Epiphany to fill in the last weeks of the Sundays after Pentecost.  The Sundays after Epiphany and before Septuagesima this year are more plentiful than they were last year.
    Luckily, the Word of God is living and effective, and is a treasure that cannot be fully mined or a spring that can fully be drained.  If we think we have exhausted the meaning of Sacred Scripture, the deficiency is in us, not the Word of God.
    It is so easy to look at the list that St. Paul gives us as something we just have to do, virtues we have to check off a list.  We strive to show mercy, humility, modesty, and patience.  We aim to bear with one another and forgive each other, and especially to demonstrate charity towards all.  Maybe sometimes some of those are more difficult than others.  But we get so wrapped up in what we should do, that we end up in a kind of Pelagianism where we earn our salvation.  Maybe consciously or subconsciously we think to ourselves: ‘If I am merciful, then God has to let me in to heaven.  If I just muster up the right amount of patience, then I don’t have to worry about eternal salvation.’  We end up trying to save ourselves, which is impossible for us, since it was also impossible for Abraham, Moses, and David, whose holiness probably exceeded our own.
    How easy it is to put the cart in front of the horse!  We want to earn God’s love and God’s favor.  We figure that if we just do enough good things, or avoid enough bad things, then God will be happy with us and we can rest easy.  But notice that St. Paul encourages us to certain behavior because we are already the elect of God.  St. Paul gives us moral laws, behaviors to follow, because we are already the beloved of God.  We don’t do certain things so that God will love us.  God loves us, so we do certain things and live a certain way.  
    St. Paul takes for granted, as do the epistles that we hear each week, that we already know that we belong to God the Father as His beloved sons and daughters in the Son of God.  That is the great gift of our salvation!  We had nothing that could close the gap that original sin had created.  We had no goodness in us that even approached deserving to be saved.  St. Paul writes in his epistle the Romans, chapter five: “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us….Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life.”  
    So God’s saving love comes first, and then what we do is our response to that love.  If we think about it like dating, it also makes sense.  If the other person doesn’t love us, no matter how many good things we may do for that person, it doesn’t create that love.  However, if that person loves us, then we want to be better, we want to show our appreciation for that love.  And we show that appreciation by doing the things that help that love to grow.  We can’t earn the other person’s love, but once we have that love, if we truly love the other person, we change ourselves freely and to the best of our ability to show gratitude for that love.
    Or, to use a similar example that our Lord uses in the Gospel, God’s love has already been sown into the fields of our heart.  Weeds do sometimes pop up, but we pull them up at the proper time in response to the desire that our field be clear so that the fruit of Christ’s love can grow as fully as possible, and not lose out to the weeds.  It’s not as if we can clear the weeds from our entire field, and then God will sow His love in us.  
    I often preach a fairly rigorous message about living upright lives.  I myself try to do whatever I can to live as Christ and His Church have taught, and I like the rules and the clear delineations of what the expectations are.  But it’s good for me, and for you, to remember that we don’t earn God’s love.  Nothing we could ever do could make God love us.  God has already loved us, so much that He allowed His Son to die for our salvation.  What we do is the response to God’s love, not the catalyst of His love.  
    You, brothers and sisters, are already chosen by God for salvation.  You, brothers and sisters, are beloved by God because, after Holy Baptism, He sees and loves in you what He sees and loves in His Son, Jesus Christ.  Do not seek to be worthy of God’s love; it will never be enough.  Open yourselves to His love, and return that love by putting on the mind of Christ, and living the life that He lived: mercifully, humbly, modestly, patiently, and charitably.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Angry Woman Meme

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    It’s a little old now, but there’s a famous meme where a woman is sitting at a table, yelling and pointing, while a white cat, sitting at the table, ostensibly across from her, has a snarky look on its face.  People put in all sorts of dialogues between the woman and the cat, some of which are pretty funny.  If I were to make a meme based on today’s readings, the woman would say, “God calls sinners!”, while the cat would respond, “He calls them to repent.”  
    After all, in all three readings, we hear about sinners whom God calls.  In the first reading, God calls Isaiah to be His prophet, to speak for Him.  But Isaiah knows that he is a sinner.  So he says, “‘Woe is me, I am doomed!  For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips!’”  In the second reading, St. Paul acknowledges that he is not worthy to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the Church.  And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus calls St. Peter to follow Him, but Peter demurs, saying, “‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’”  
    God knows that Isaiah, and St. Paul, and St. Peter, were all sinners.  God’s omniscience cannot be fooled.  But He does call each of them to do His will: Isaiah to speak for God as His prophet; St. Peter to be the first pope and head of the apostolic college; St. Paul to be the Apostle to the Gentiles.  And with each person–Isaiah and Peter and Paul–God offers them His mercy.  Isaiah receives an ember, touched to his lips, which takes away his sins.  Jesus asks St. Peter three times if he loves Him, and then gives Peter the mission of caring for Jesus’ flock.  St. Paul, who loses his sight when he encounters the Lord on the road to Damascus, regains his sight and is baptized through a follower of Jesus, Ananias.  
    So yes, God calls sinners.  And yes, He forgives their sins.  But He does so in order that they repent and change their ways, which is exactly what Isaiah and St. Peter and St. Paul did.  They left behind what the old man in them, the old Adam, to be exact, and they put on the new man, the new Adam, Jesus Christ, and lived according to His will, rather than their own.  God didn’t call them to Himself so that they could go back to their old ways.  God didn’t want Isaiah to use his speech for sinful matters.  God didn’t want St. Peter to go back to fishing.  God didn’t want St. Paul to return to persecuting His Church.  He met them where they were at, yes, but He led them to a new place, a new mission.

His Eminence, Francis Cardinal George

    In our laziness, our sloth, we can miss that second part.  We’re very happy that God meets us as we are.  It warms our heart that God would choose us, sinners though we are, to share in His life.  But when it comes to leaving the past behind, and going where God wants, no longer just where we want to go, we balk at the change and choose to remain in our past.  This is why so many people love the horrid hymn “All Are Welcome.”  It’s the first part of the call of Jesus to any person.  He welcomes sinners and tax collectors to dine with Him; that is true.  He does not condemn the woman caught in adultery, or the Samaritan woman at the well.  But the story doesn’t end there.  He tells them not to sin anymore, and gives them, by His presence, what they need to change their life to conform to His.  It is as His Eminence, Francis Cardinal George, used to say, “All are welcome, but on Christ’s terms, not their own.”  
    Today, as we admitted Jenna, Raegan, and Skyler to the Order of Catechumens, we saw the witness of one whom Christ called.  Ladies, you, like all of us before we were baptized, have original sin.  Original sin is an obstacle that following God as He desires.  But God has overcome that obstacle to invite you to follow Him by becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.  God met you where you were, but now He calls you deeper into relationship with Him, to put out into the deep waters that might be scary, and which take you way from anything in your past which is not of God.  But He doesn’t leave you alone as you put out into the deep waters. He goes with you, and we also, now that you are a catechumen, promise to support you, pray for you, and help you as you prepare for baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist.  
    We stand before you as those whom the Lord has also called, though we are sinners.  And we do not claim that we follow Christ perfectly.  But each time we fall, each time we sin, Christ reaches out for us again, and encourages us to put that behind us as He forgives us in the Sacrament of Penance, and strengthens us to say yes to Him and no to anything contrary to Him and His teachings.  He has called us, too, to deep waters, and sometimes we fear to go with Him, but He calls us, and we hope to follow as best as we can.
    Because the Lord doesn’t want us to wallow in our sins of the past.  He doesn’t want us going back there because our sins don’t give us life.  They don’t give us happiness.  They don’t allow us to be the people He has called us to be.  Only by following Christ, by making His life our own, by living according to what He has taught us through the Scriptures and the Church can we truly be happy and be fully ready for heaven at the end our life.
    So you, and we, are sinners.  And God has called you, and us, to leave that sinfulness behind.  He desires to burn away our sins like with the Prophet Isaiah; to open our eyes like St. Paul; to call us to leave behind our old way of life like St. Peter.  May you, and we, have the courage to answer that call, repent, and be faithful to the Gospel.

On Pilgrimage

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord/Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  On this past Christmas Eve, Pope Francis opened the 2025 Jubilee Year, choosing as its theme “Pilgrims of Hope.”  There are numerous opportunities to gain plenary indulgences during this Jubilee, including pilgrimages to our Cathedral in Lansing, to two of the three churches on the pilgrimage to Kentucky that we hope to do in June, or to certain churches in Rome and Jerusalem.
    We hear in our Gospel of the first pilgrimage of our Lord to Jerusalem for the two-fold purpose of celebrating the purification rites for a woman who had given birth, in accord with Leviticus, chapter 12, and the redemption of the first born son, from Exodus, chapter 13.  Our Blessed Mother offers the sacrifice for her purification, and our Lord is given back to God as the firstborn son, remembering how the angel of death passed over the Israelites who marked their lintels with the blood of the lamb.
    This idea of pilgrimage to the Temple, for various reasons, finds its root in the Old Testament, which our Lord fulfilled.  Generally, a good Jew would travel to the Temple each year at least for the Feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Booths.  The temple signified the dwelling place of God, and so all the people would travel to God’s home to be near Him and to thank Him for freedom from slavery and the life of the firstborn (Passover), for the blessing of produce and giving of the law (Pentecost), and the blessing of the harvest and exodus from Egypt (Booths).  But in each case, one traveled to be near God.

Simeon and the Christ Child

    In Christ’s first pilgrimage, the Holy Family did not, technically speaking, need to go to the Temple to find themselves close to God.  They had God with them at all times!  And yet, they still humbled themselves to obey the Law.  Yet, in that Law, God came into His temple in a new way, unlike even when He dwelt in the Temple of Solomon in His presence with the Ark of the Covenant.  By their humility, the Holy Family participated in the fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi that we heard in the first reading/epistle: “there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek.”  And in the fulfillment of this prophecy, another promise is fulfilled, that to Simeon, whom God promised would not taste death until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah, His Anointed One.  And from that fulfilled promise, Simeon also prophesies that Christ will be the rise and fall of many in Israel, and that a sword of sorrow would pierce Mary’s Immaculate Heart.  
    So how are we on pilgrimage to God?  Our life is meant to be a pilgrimage, not to Lansing, or Kentucky, or Rome, or Jerusalem, but to the heavenly Jerusalem, the Temple not made with hands.  Bethlehem to Jerusalem is a 5.5 mile walk.  You could easily get there and back in a day.  But Jerusalem was built on a hill, and so there were ups and downs.  This time of year in Jerusalem it is around 60 degrees, but there is also rain at this time of year.  So the Holy Family maybe dealt with sun or rain.  Likewise, in our life, which passes before God like a day, there will be ups and downs.  Some days trying to live as a disciple and love God and neighbor as He commanded will be easy; other days it will be difficult.  There will be sunny days where we are full of smiles while following the Lord and there will also be rain when we feel like God has absented Himself from our life, or like the cross He has allowed us to carry seems too heavy.  But you can’t get to the destination of a pilgrimage by stopping.  Sometimes little breaks may be necessary for rest, but the point of the pilgrimage is to keep moving.  
    And as we go towards the heavenly Jerusalem, we, too, should seek the purification of God.  Sin darkens our soul.  It makes us unworthy of temple worship, unworthy of being in God’s house because our actions have communicated that we don’t want to be with Him, and prefer our own ways to His.  It clouds our intellect so that we cannot understand what God wants us to do and how He wants us to love Him and others.  But God offers us purification through the Sacrament of Penance.  He washes us clean by His Precious Blood so that we can enter the Temple and bask in the warmth of His presence.  
    Pilgrimages are also based on hope.  We hope that we will arrive.  Nowadays, as we travel by car or bus or plane, or sometimes all three, our travel is less unsure.  But pilgrimages were historically a matter of walking, and you didn’t know where you might stop, or how safe the way was, or even if you would arrive.  So on our pilgrimage to heaven, we have to have hope.  We hope that God will protect us from anything that seeks to do us harm.  We hope that God will help us arrive at our final destination.  We go from what is seen, our starting point, to what is unseen, our destination.  In the end, until Christ returns in glory, only God knows who arrives safely, unless God grants the Church a knowledge that some have already arrived (our canonized saints).  But we hope that our loved ones are there, cheering us on, encouraging us not to give up, not to turn aside to other false gods or paths that lead away from God, and to persevere through the hills and valleys, the sun and the rain.  
    May this Jubilee Year inspire in us the hope that we will arrive in heaven someday, where Christ will welcome us all as parts of the Mystical Body of the Son redeemed in the Temple forty days after His Birth, the Light of Salvation for all peoples, Jesus Christ[, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen].

Audacity and Deference

Third Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  For my first assignment as a priest, Bishop Boyea sent me to St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing.  And people still remembered the second pastor of that parish, named Msgr. Jerome MacEachin, but more lovingly referred to as Fr. Mac, though he had died in 1987.  His favorite hymn, a hymn also near and dear to my heart, was “O Lord, I Am Not Worthy,” whose first verse comes primarily from the second half of the Gospel passage we heard today.

    We hear this familiar passage about the centurion asking our Lord to heal His slave, but then objecting to our Lord visiting his house, and having faith that the Savior could heal even from afar.  And as I reflected on this the readings, the person of the centurion rose to the top as a model for our interaction with the Lord.
    The first thing that we note about the centurion is his audacity.  The centurion did not practice Judaism.  He did not belong to the Chosen People.  Perhaps he admired Judaism.  Perhaps he had simply heard about a wonder-worker who could heal people, so he came to ask for a favor.  But though the Messiah was not claimed as the Messiah for the Romans, the Roman soldier asked for a great miracle.  
    His audacity reminds me, and perhaps you as well, of the audacity of Esther in the Old Testament.  When praying about the situation of her people who had been condemned to ethnic cleansing by a government official looking for more power and to get rid of those who did not follow his every whim, Queen Esther basically prayed that God would remember His promise to protect His people.  She acknowledged that God could raise up His people in some other way, but asked God that she could help save her people from utter destruction.
    Are we as audacious as they?  We have more claim to God’s attention than a Roman centurion, because we are His adopted sons and daughters in Christ.  We even have more claim to God’s attention than Esther, because though she was a part of God’s Chosen People, the Jews, we are part of His Son, our Lord, through baptism.  And so, as beloved children of the Father, we can go to Him with a certain confidence that what we ask the Father for in the name of Christ will be granted us, as long as it is part of His will, and helps us grow in holiness.  The Redeemer promised that whatever we asked in His Name, the Father would give us.  When we pray, do we have that confidence?  Or is our approach,  “Lord, if it’s not too much trouble, and I know I don’t have any room to ask, but if you wouldn’t mind listening to the prayers of little, old me…”?  
    On the other hand, we also see the centurion display great humility and deference.  He doesn’t consider Himself worthy of a personal visit by the Lord.  A Roman soldier could command almost anything, and expect to be followed.  In fact, our Lord preached in His Sermon on the Mount, “‘If anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.’”  This references the times that a soldier could demand that a Jew carry his gear for one mile, even if it was inconvenient for the Jew.  So the Roman soldier could have simply commanded our Lord to come to his house, and our Lord would have been expected to obey.  Instead, the Roman doesn’t even feel worthy to have the Savior go anywhere with him, so he demurs the visit.  
    We should also show this attitude in our prayer.  The Lord owes us nothing.  He has already given us more than we could dream in terms of salvation.  If He gave us nothing else than the opportunity to go to heaven, that would be a debt we could never repay.  Ours should also be the prayer from Luke, chapter 17: “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.”  

St. Gemma Galgani

    St. Gemma Galgani is another great example of this humility and deference.  St. Gemma was a virgin and stigmatist from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.  Even though she received mystical visions from our Lord, the Blessed Mother, St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, and her guardian angel, she would say, “Oh Jesus, do not let me do things that are above me.  I am good for nothing.  I do not know how to return all these great graces you have given me.”  She had been given so much, and yet did not expect anything from God.  
    This may seem like an odd balance to keep in prayer, but both are important.  We should approach the Father with confidence as His beloved children in Christ, but also recognize that God owes us nothing.  We know that whatever we ask the Father in the name of Christ will be given us, as long as it serves God’s plan and helps us grow in holiness.  We tend to favor one or the other.  Some may find it easier to approach the Father will confidence.  Some may find it easier to be deferential and not ask for anything because we cannot merit anything on our own.  In the end, that first verse of the hymn “O Lord, I Am Not Worthy” displays both attitudes of the centurion, audacity and humility, attitudes which are also important in our life: “O Lord, I am not worthy / That thou should’st come to me. / But speak the words of comfort, / My spirit healed shall be.”  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Our Mission Statement

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
    We are all used to mission statements in work.  Many business have some written mission statement.  As a parish, we have a purpose statement that is on the front of our bulletin each week: “Our parish purpose is to use beauty and truth to inspire and develop disciples to transform the secular order by the grace of God, for His glorification and the edification of man.”    We’re also used to it on certain TV shows.  For example Star Trek: “Space: the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.  Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”  

    In the Gospel today we hear both the purpose statement of St. Luke and the mission statement of Jesus.  St. Luke tells us that his purpose is “to write [a narrative of events] in an orderly sequence for you…so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.”  He writes his Gospel account in order to help us believe in what we have heard about Jesus, because he collected the information from those who knew the Lord.  He took his part in the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, by sharing in written form the good news, the Gospel, of Jesus.  
    Jesus, for His part, quotes the prophet Isaiah, as St. Luke tells us, as He explains in Nazareth, His home town, that He is the long-awaited Messiah.  He tells the people: “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.’”  And, in case there was any doubt about what He was saying, He tells the people there, “‘Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.’”  

    Perhaps this is from where the practice of bishops choosing a motto stems, though those are usually much shorter.  For example, Pope Francis chose Miserando atque eligendo, or “by having mercy and also by choosing.”  Or Pope Benedict XVI chose Cooperatores veritatis–cooperators of the truth.  Or Pope St. John Paul II’s famous motto, Totus tuus–Totally yours (referring to the Blessed Mother).  Bishop Boyea has In manus tuas–Into your hands, taken from Luke’s Gospel, as the final words of Jesus on the cross, which He quotes Psalm 31.  Even I have one for my coat-of-arms: In spiritu et veritate–In spirit and truth, which comes from Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman in St. John’s Gospel, and references how we are to worship.  In seminary as jokes, we would sometimes suggest mottos for our brothers when they were ordained, taking out of context other Scripture passages like, “Surely, Lord, there be a stench” and “And Jesus wept,” both from the account of the raising of Lazarus.  
    But it’s not a bad idea for us to have some Scripture that guides our spiritual life, even if it changes from year to year.  Because, like the Blues Brothers, we are all on a mission from God.  Our mission is generally the same, to bring others to believe in Jesus as well as to go to heaven ourselves.  But, as St. Paul reminds us in the second reading, we each have different parts to play in the Church, which does not diminish each person and their role, but helps each of us to shine in what God has called us to do.  Some are apostles; others, prophets; others, teachers; others do mighty deeds; others have gifts of healing or assistance or administration; others, speak in tongues; and other gifts, as well.  But God desires each of us to use the gifts that we have, which He has freely given us, to help us go to heaven and to help build up the Church.  
    Again, that role that we have may change over time.  Maybe at one point of our life we are really strong in apologetics; maybe at another time our role in building up the Church is raising a family as disciples of Christ; maybe at another time it’s helping with different groups in the parish; maybe at another time it’s bearing witness to the faith at work.  The list goes on and on.  But God desires that we, throughout our life and especially after we are confirmed, do what we can to share the Gospel and help the Church grow.
    So what would your motto or mission statement be?  What Scripture passage guides you at this time in your life?  You may not have thought of this before, so I encourage you this week to open up the family Bible (hopefully it’s not hard to find and isn’t simply collecting dust), and read through the Psalms or Gospel passages or the epistles of St. Paul to choose a Scripture passage that will guide you this year.  Maybe it will be part of what we heard in the Gospel today: “to bring glad tidings to the poor.”  Maybe it will be from our first reading: “rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength.”  Hopefully it’s not a joke, like the taken-out-of-context phrase from the second reading, “‘I do not need you.’”  Whatever Scripture passage you discern the Lord wants to guide you with this year, may it shape your activities in work and rest, and home and abroad, to help spread the Gospel and build up the Church, which continues the mission of the Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Stewardship

Second Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I either recently received a book on stewardship, or I recently rediscovered that I received a book on stewardship.  In any case, I’ve been reading a little each day (it’s a very thin book to begin with), but it struck me as I read the epistle today that a theme in this part of St. Paul’s epistle the Romans deals with stewardship.
    Now, I know that some use stewardship as a code word for giving money.  And, as we just finished our part of the Diocesan Capital Campaign, you might think that talking about stewardship is killing a dead horse.  But this is not such much about giving money, as you have all been very generous with the parish, as a reminder about important points that lead to fruitful stewardship of time, talent, and, yes, treasure.
    Because one of the first points this book makes is that stewardship comes naturally when we consider that everything that we have is a gift from God.  And that view does not come naturally to us because of our fallen reality.  We tend to grasp at most things like they’re ours, like we are responsible for them, and like we don’t want anyone else to have them.  We live with a scarcity mentality, as if when we don’t hold on to things, others may take them, and we might miss out on something we need.  Just think back to the beginning of COVID: we had plenty of toilet paper.  But someone got it in his head that we might run out, and no one wants to rely on leaves, so they started buying up all they could, such that there was a scarcity because people took what they didn’t need.  
    But when we recognize that everything is a gift from God, then we want to give back to God what He desires, which is everything.  Everything may not be much, but the Lord praises the widow, not for the amount of coins she gave (others gave more coins than she), but for the value of what she gave, which was her everything.  

    What does God do when we give Him everything?  Many times He gives it all back, or even makes it better.  Now, I’m not preaching the so-called “prosperity Gospel.”  I’m not preaching that if you just give 10% of your annual salary, God will give you 20% more money.  That’s not the Gospel.  But the Gospel from today does teach us the lesson that God is not outdone in His generosity, to paraphrase St. Paul.  The servants give our Lord water.  And they put them, not in the finest containers, but in the containers with which the guests would wash their hands.  But when the servants take the containers to the chief steward of the feast, he doesn’t taste water, but wine, which came about through the first miracle our Lord worked.  The Father does the same thing with what we offer Him in this Mass.  We offer the Father bread and wine, and not the best bread or wine, either.  It’s not like we’re getting the bread from crust or from Zingermans.  It’s not like the wine is a fine 2020 cab from Napa.  But we offer Him the bread and wine that He desires, and, by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the ministry of the priest, bread and wine offered to God become the Body and Blood of our Savior.  We can’t taste or see any different, but we know that it’s no longer bread and wine, but the Bread of Life and the antidote of immortality (as St. Ignatius of Antioch called the Eucharist).  We offer God what we have, even if it doesn’t seem like much, and God transforms it by His grace into something better.
    And when we receive that something better, and we recognize just how much God has given us, we want to share that gift with others.  And my gift is different than your gift.  But when we all make a return on our gifts, the whole Mystical Body of Christ works well and changes lives.  St. Paul write about that in our epistle, how some were given the gift of prophecy, or administration, or in ministry, or in teaching, or exhortation, or cheerfulness.  St. Paul doesn’t tell those who are good in cheerfulness that they need to start prophesying.  Or those who teach well need to start working on administration.  He asks everyone to use the gifts they have to the best of their ability so that the Gospel can be preached and the Church can be built up.  
    So, for example, I’m pretty bad a brainstorming.  This doesn’t mean that I’ve never had an original idea, but that’s not where I thrive.  I thrive in evaluating ideas and seeing what it would take to execute, or if execution is even a possibility or probability.  But I try to use that build up the Body of Christ.  Now, as a priest, I am called to do certain things, like preach.  I am not Venerable Fulton Sheen, but I offer God my meditation on the Scripture passage or the season, and the work that I put in, and the Holy Spirit does the rest.  Sometimes I think a homily is horrible, and then lots of people tell me how it touched them.  Sometimes I think a homily is great, but then no one says anything.  But no matter what, I am called to give my all to God, trusting that God will perfect my gift, and help it to multiply for the building up of His Church.
    So many of you are committed to this parish and to spreading the Gospel.  You give of your time, talent, and treasure to support the work, not just of St. Matthew, but of the Church in this Diocese, and the Church present throughout the world.  But the Lord reminds us today to continue to work at giving all of who we are to Him.  He never leaves us empty handed, even if we don’t necessarily increase in material wealth, but will always give us back better than received.  As the Blessed Mother encouraged the servants to do at the wedding at Cana, give what you have to Christ, who will never let you want for any good thing, and who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Sanctifying our Families in the Temple

Feast of the Holy Family

The Holy Family in flight to Egypt

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  As we come to this Feast of the Holy Family, we once again have the opportunity to reflect on how we can grow as holy families, whether our family is an individual, a couple, or a couple with children.  The Church sets before us a unique family as a model, as the mother is sinless, the husband and wife are celibate, and the child is God, but they show us the way to be like them, though we are not sinless or God.
    And this year what struck me was the Gradual, from Psalms 26 and 83.  In the English it reads: “One thing I ask of the Lord, for this I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life;” “Blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord, they shall praise you for ever and ever.”  As the Church has prayed, she has chosen to include these two verses from two psalms into the way we worship God and thank Him for the gift of the Holy Family.
    To be a holy family, our goal must be the house of the Lord.  The psalmist certainly thought about the Temple in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit inspired him to write this psalm.  And for a good Jew, to be close to God one had to go to the Temple, where His presence dwelt, especially in the holy of holies with the ark of the covenant.

    And so for us, no matter what our family looks like, we should strive to be close to God every day.  As a family that may include this temple, where God dwells in the tabernacle in a special way as our holy of holies.  But it also means being close to God throughout the day, even when we cannot make it here to this beautiful temple.  Because, as the Apostle reminds us, we are the temple of God since the Holy Spirit dwells within us through Baptism, Confirmation, and the other sacraments we have received.  
    This should give us comfort when we can’t make it to daily Mass, or even those times when we cannot come to Sunday or holyday Masses because we are sick, or we’re caring for a sick parent or child.  Even if we cannot physically be in a church, God is close to us, in fact, closer than we are to ourselves.  He walks with us each day, whether we go to work, or work at home with or without the kids, or enjoy the rest of retirement, or travel on vacation.  
    In fact, Solomon constructed the Temple to be like a new Garden of Eden.  There were pomegranates and leaves, animals, a bronze sea, lights from candles, and bread.  Genesis says that God accustomed Himself to walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening, and in the Temple one could have contact with God.  But since the veil of the Temple at the time of our Lord was rent, and the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost, we can find God, not only in a building, but also in our daily lives and in the silence of our hearts.
    But, the Temple also created a more stable meeting tent that the Jews traveled with in their Exodus, which God gave to Moses based upon heaven.  And so the Temple points us not only to the past in the Garden of Eden, but also to the future in the heavenly Jerusalem, the temple not made with hands.  And to be a holy family, we should keep our eyes and our attention on that heavenly temple, where we hope to worship God night and day with the angels and saints, singing “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts.”  Whether we are trying to keep our attention on heaven for ourselves, or trying to help our spouse keep his or her eyes on heaven, or trying to teach our children about how wonderful heaven will be and how we have to learn to make choices that get us closer to being there, to be a holy family means to keep our eyes on the prize and keep heaven in mind.  Our family Rosary, or going to Mass as a family, or learning and living out the virtues as a family all help us focus on being with God for ever in heaven, or at least that’s what they’re supposed to do.  It’s not just about the doing or the teaching, but about preparing our family, no matter its size, for the life that never ends, which we hope will be in heaven for us.  
    Keeping our eyes on heaven also means trusting in God, who supplies all of our needs in heaven.  And in that sense, it struck me that our Lord exhibited this in the three days that He was in the Temple area, as Mary and Joseph returned to look for Him.  Our Lord was twelve years old, and yet He survived in the Temple for those three days without parents to feed him.  I imagine he received some help from the teachers with whom He dialogued, but I know that Christ did not worry about what He was to eat or drink or wear, as He would later encourage us to not worry about such things in the Sermon on the Mount.  He was with His Father, and He knew His Father would take care of all things for Him.  So will God the Father do with us who are His adopted children through baptism: He provides, directly or indirectly, for what we need, and invites us to trust His will for our life, especially when it doesn’t match what we wanted to happen or what we thought should happen.  God may not will difficult times for us, but anything difficulties He allows help us to trust in Him and trust how He will take care of us even in the midst of our struggles.
    So, to be a holy family, focus on dwelling in the house of the Lord every day.  Maybe you can’t make it to Mass every day, but make time for God with daily prayer, especially silence, if you are able.  Sometimes it may be a simple sign of the cross as you care for your children, or a fervent prayer, “Jesus, help me!” when the chaos seems more than we can handle.  Or maybe its the less-than-five minutes to pray the Angelus each day at 6 a.m. and/or noon and/or 6 p.m.  Or maybe it’s a holy hour, especially during our Monday times of adoration.  But blessed are those who can dwell with the Lord each day, no matter where they are.  Those who seek to be with God will certainly be a holy family and will prepare themselves for the heavenly Jerusalem, where God–the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit–lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen. 

The Blessings of Baptisms

 Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Tate with his parents after his baptism

    One of the great blessings of being pastor of St. Matthew is all the baptisms we have.  Today, during this Mass, I’ll baptize Tate Matthew, and then after the 1 p.m. Mass I have three other baptisms.  Over the last three years I have averaged a little over 18 baptisms per year, which is the highest three year average I have had since Bishop Boyea ordained me in 2010, and that includes being in a parish of some 3,000 families.  Today, as we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, as well as Tate’s baptism, I wanted to reflect on baptism and just what a great blessing it is, not just for me as a priest, but for the whole Church and for families individually.
    To appreciate the blessings of baptism, we have to know what baptism is.  Baptism is the first sacrament by which we receive God’s saving grace which opens for us the possibility of heaven.  Until baptism, we only are connected to God through His will in letting us be conceived and existing.  After baptism, we become a son or daughter in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  We go from merely being the child of our parents to being a child of God.  
    I think that we’re used to hearing this phrase, but it really is quite powerful!  In baptism, God claims us as His own, and promises to support us with all we need to spiritually thrive, much as parents do when they conceive a child.  We could not earn this status as adopted children of God, anymore than a child could earn its parents’ love.  St. John puts it this way: “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.  Yet so we are.”  We are not simply called God’s children; we are God’s adopted children in Christ.  Islam sees itself as a slave of God, with the word islam meaning in Arabic, submission.  Through baptism, we rise above mere service to God to joining His family.  
    Because we are joined to God through His Son, we also become members of the Church, as the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ.  This is an extension of God’s family: all those who are configured to Christ in baptism.  It is the Church who helps us grow into the child our Heavenly Father wants us to be.  She dispenses to us from God all the graces He wants to bestow.  We see this especially in the other sacraments that God opens to us after Baptism: Penance/Confession/Reconciliation; Confirmation; the Eucharist; Anointing of the Sick; Matrimony or Holy Orders.  But she also helps us with sacramentals, things like blessings, or holy water, or medals of the saints, or the Rosary.  The Church helps us to be the saints that God calls us to be in baptism.
    Baptism also washes away any previous sins, including original sin.  St. Paul makes it very clear that, before we baptism joins us to God, we are at enmity with Him.  The dictionary defines enmity as being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something.  Before sin is washed away in the waters of baptism, it opposes God and His rule in our lives.  Even with the good that we can do without baptism, sin still works against that good and draws us toward evil.
    So baptism is such a great gift from the Father.  Our Lord showed us humility in being baptized, but by doing so encouraged us to receive baptism ourselves to be like Him, though He was already the Son of God, was already the Head of the Church, and did not have sin.
    But baptism is a great gift that calls for a continuous gift.  While it can only be received once, it’s not as if we can get baptized and then walk away from God and hope to enter into heaven, any more than a man could marry his wife, walk away from her, and then expect a big party for the 50th anniversary.  Baptism calls for us to respond each day to the greatest gift we could have, new life in Christ, not just get water poured on our head and then walk away from God.  As we heard in the second reading, baptism helps us to reject “godless ways and worldly desires,” and helps us to live “temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age,” so that we can be prepared for heaven.
    Because heaven, to which baptism points, is not a club where if you have your baptism card you get admittance, no matter what.  Heaven is a way of life that images Christ.  Heaven is the fulfillment of the sonship in Christ.  And we only enter there if we want to be there, which we make manifest in the choices we make each day.  The more we choose to live like Christ in obedience to the will of the Father, the more we ready ourselves for heaven.  The more we choose to live like the world where we do whatever we want and follow each desire, the more we ready ourselves for hell.  
    The French Catholic novelist Leon Bloy said, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”  What a sad reality it would be if we received the great treasure that baptism is, giving us everything we need to allow Christ to live through us, but did not act on those graces.  It would be like God giving us $1 billion each day, and all we had to do was invest it in particular companies who promised us significant returns, but we chose to waste that jackpot and ended up broke because we wanted to invest elsewhere, which squandered our investment and left us holding an empty bag.
    Baptism is a great gift, but one that we probably don’t always appreciate.  We live with it every day, but how often do we take advantage of the treasures God gives us through baptism?  We are blessed in our parish to celebrate baptisms frequently.  But the real blessing will be if we each allow baptism to give us the grace to live as Christ desires so that we are ready for heaven when we die, and share in the eternal life God desires for all His children.

What's in a Name?

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Shakespeare famous wrote in his play, “Romeo and Juliet,” “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  Today as we celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus, we may fall into the same nominalism error that Shakespeare seemed to espouse, that names don’t really make any difference.  But names contain power and access.
    When God first reveals His Name to Moses in the theophany at the burning bush, God reveals Himself as “I AM WHO AM,” or, more simply, “I AM.”  This doesn’t sound like a name to us.  But that’s on purpose.  When we know someone’s name, we have a certain power over that person.  When I stand in a crowded room with my parents with a fair amount of noise, I might say “dad” numerous times without him hearing me.  But, if I were to say “Robert,” it would likely gain his attention.  Or, when a pope dies, to make sure he is dead, they tap him with a decorative small mallet and whisper his baptismal name, figuring that he would respond to the name his parents called him.  When we know a name, we have power, as that person’s attention is turned to us.  But even God did not grant His Chosen People to have power over His Name.  He promised to be with them and to turn to them whenever they called upon Him, but they could not say His name.  In fact, they would simply use the Hebrew word Adonai, which means “Lord,” instead of using the Hebrew word for I AM, which is abbreviated by the consonants YHWH. 

Pope Benedict XVI, of happy memory, asked Catholics not to use this sacred name in the Mass, out of respect for our Jewish brothers and sisters.  Only one time, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, would the high priest, standing before the ark of the covenant, utter the sacred Name of God.
    When our Lord, at least once, in the Gospel of John, referred to Himself as “I AM,” He taught us of His unity with the Father in divinity.  And the people recognized this.  They rise up to stone our Lord for blasphemy.  While some of the I AM statements in John work grammatically and could be interpreted simply as indicative statements using metaphors, the one that stands out is when Christ says, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  That sentence makes no sense, unless Christ is identifying His oneness with the Father.  
    But, just as the prohibition against making images of God changes with the Incarnation, so does the relationship between God’s People and His Holy Name.  Part of the humility of the Incarnation was that God had a name that the people could freely use.  The name of Jesus means “God saves.”  It does, in a sense, define Him, as our Lord is the salvation of God.  No longer is the name not to be uttered at all, but it can be called upon freely in times of need.  Peter and John will heal a lame man “in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean.”  The people come to believe at this great act and Peter’s preaching, such that Peter and John are arrested and stand on trial before the Sanhedrin for what they have done.  That’s where our epistle comes in.  St. Peter proclaims that there is no other name by when men can be saved other than Jesus, a teaching the Church has continued throughout the centuries.  It is the name at which, as we heard in the Introit from St. Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, every knee should bend, whether those in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, because Jesus Christ is Lord.  Again, Lord was the term that a Jew would have used for God, so St. Paul is affirming the divinity of Christ through His Name.
    The custom of preaching during the Mass is not to use the name of Jesus too often.  I refer to Him as the Lord, or the Savior, or the Redeemer, or simply Christ.  But we should not be afraid to call upon the name of our Savior in time of need, because He has given us His name so that we can receive help.  In the Orthodox Church, there is a practice of simply saying the name, “Jesus” as one breathes in and out.  This beautiful prayer can calm us when we are anxious, and rely on the strength of the Holy Name to cast aside anything that seeks to harm us.  When exorcists cast out demons, they do so with the power of the Holy Name, at which the demons have no choice but to obey, because the power comes, not from the priest, but from Christ Himself.  
    So names are important.  The Holy Name of Jesus is the most important name, because it identifies who God is and what He does.  Whereas in the Old Testament, the name of God was used only rarely, our Lord invites us to call upon His Holy Name whenever we are in need, whenever we are giving thanks, whenever we pray as a church.  May the Holy Name of Jesus protect us from all assaults of the enemy, and may we receive salvation through the Holy Name of Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

The Light

Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  Probably most of the time when we think of the Epiphany, we think about giving gifts, especially the gifts that the magi gave to Christ: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  In some countries, Epiphany is the day that people exchange gifts more than Christmas.  And the Christmas carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” are actually about the twelve days after Christmas, and sing about giving gifts leading up the Epiphany.  

    And focusing on gifts at the Epiphany is well and good.  However, there is another aspect to the Epiphany that we probably miss: the theme of light.  The word epiphany finds its root in the Greek word 𝜙𝛼𝜄𝜈𝜔, which means to reveal or to shine.  We hear it in John 1:5 [every Sunday]: “the light shines (𝜙𝛼𝜄𝜈𝜀𝜄) in the darkness.”  We hear it in Isaiah, chapter sixty, our (first) reading: “the glory of the Lord shines upon you.”  And the star that the magi follow shines upon the place where they could find the King of the Jews.  We hear it in the Collect, the opening prayer: “O God, who on this day revealed your Only Begotten Son to the nations by the guidance of a star.”  Light is as big a part of this day as giving gifts.
    And as we think of Christ as He reveals Himself as the Light of the World, we see the light growing.  Think of Christ like a candle: first it was simply one light.  As the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived Him in her virginal womb at the Annunciation, her candle was lit.  As Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist in her womb recognized the Lord at the Visitation, their candles were lit.  At the Nativity, the angels shared the light of Christ with the shepherds.  And now, as the magi come to visit, seeking by the light of a star the new born King of the Jews, they receive the light of Christ, and then take it back with them to the east, whence they came.  
    The light allows us to see well.  So light is connected with truth, which helps us understand the way the world works.  When we know the truth, we speak of being enlightened.  And besides the visit of the magi, the Epiphany also celebrates Christ shining during His baptism as well as at the wedding at Cana.  In these three events, others come to know the truth that Jesus is no mere mortal: the magi as they bring their gifts of gold for a king, frankincense for God, and myrrh for one who is to be buried; the people at the River Jordan as the Holy Spirit descends and the voice of the Father is heard; the disciples and servants as they realize that Christ has changed water into wine.  Pope St. John Paul II, wrote an Encyclical called Veritatis Splendor, the splendor (or illumination) of the truth, which is also a definition of beauty.  
    So for us today, Christ invites us to receive His light.  When we are baptized, the priest lights a candle from the Paschal Candle, the candle that represents Christ, and are invited to walk in the light.  Christ shares His light with us, as He did with the Blessed Mother, St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist, the shepherds, the magi, and the Apostles and disciples.  “The light shines in the darkness,” and with each person who chooses to live in the light, in the truth that God has revealed through His Church, more people see more clearly how true happiness can be found.  
    It is like at the Easter Vigil, at the beginning rites called the lucenarium, the ritual of light.  At first the Paschal Candle alone shines in the darkness of the church.  Then the priest lights his candle from the Christ Light.  Then the rest of the people begin to receive the light, until the entire church shines with the light of Christ that He has shared with others, one by one.
    Our Lord tells us that people don’t light candles to put them under a bushel basket.  So we should not hide the light that Christ has given to us.  Christ invites us to share that light with others.  He gives us grace, a form of His life and light, to allow us to live holy lives and follow Him.  But He also wants us to share that grace with others by the way we speak to them and the way we treat them.  King Herod remained in darkness because He feared the Lord as a threat to his earthly power.  Herod plunged himself deeper in darkness as he tried to snuff out the Light of Christ as young child and killed numerous innocent children, which we celebrated on 28 December.  When we don’t live as a disciple, especially when we commit mortal sins, we also go deeper and deeper into darkness.
    Instead, though, Christ invites us to love others in word and deed, and to share the Gospel with them in word and deed.  Maybe it’s a donation made to a food pantry, or, even better, time actually spent with the poor at a food pantry, serving them food and talking with them as we would talk to Christ.  Maybe it’s hugging a person who had a rough day.  Maybe it’s asking someone to pray with them after they tell us about a family member who has gone on the wrong path, or a scary medical procedure, or even just when they are tired of doing their job.  Maybe it’s inviting a person to come to Mass with you, or sharing an important Gospel passage that helps you to make sense of life.  In these ways and more, we take the light that Christ gave to us at our baptism, and we share it with others.  Sometimes the other person won’t be accepting of the light of Christ, or their light will blow out due to the winds of fear, pride, or error, but at least we did our best to share it with them, and maybe it will take a few times for the light to catch, like it sometimes takes a few strikes before a match begins to burn.  
    So as we celebrate Epiphany, may we remember and put into practice the words of our Lord from the Gospel: your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.