Keeping the Past in the Past

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In the spring of my senior year of high school, my friend group decided to go out to breakfast after our last final exam of high school.  The exam started at 8 or so, and finished by 10.  The restaurant we decided to frequent wasn’t far from the school.  We all got in our cars and drove there individually.  For whatever reason, even though I knew where I was going, I followed another car that did not.  It was able to get over into the far right lane of a four lane, one way highway and turn into a parking lot to go back on a perpendicular street.  I, however, was in the second lane from the right, and panicked a little.  So, without much thought and without looking, I just decided to make a right turn into a parking lot from my current lane.  I heard the screeching of tires, the honking of a horn, and my adrenaline rushed through my body.  Somehow, no doubt due to my guardian angel who was working extra that morning, the car I had just cut off did not hit me, and I was able to turn back towards the restaurant and arrive safely, albeit with a heart rate that was more congruent with sprinting a 200-meter race.

    We all have things we’re not proud of in our past, things that we would do differently if we could.  St. Paul was no exception.  He wrote to the Corinthians that he was the least of the Apostles and not even worthy to be called an Apostle because, before his conversion, he persecuted God’s holy Church.  If we think back, the Acts of the Apostles makes very clear that Saul of Tarsus–who started going by Paul after his conversion, especially with his work among the Greeks, since Saul was a very Jewish name and Paul was more Gentile–consented to the stoning of St. Stephen, and had been arresting Jews for proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ.  He was, to use a mafia term, the enforcer for the Pharisees, and was a Pharisee himself.
    But, St. Paul, whom St. Thomas Aquinas does and we can refer to as the Apostle, continued: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.”  Paul did not ignore his past, but neither did he let it define his present.  He acknowledged his past, but recognized that the grace of God had changed him, and he was no longer that man from his past.
    We all have a past.  Maybe it’s bad driving, like in my example from the beginning of this homily.  Maybe it’s something not that bad.  Maybe it’s something far worse.  We cannot change the past, but we shouldn’t live in the past, either.  God does not want us to allow our past sins to control our present and our future.  If we repent from them and convert, that is, turn towards God, our past can remain and education for us, rather than a life-sentence of guilt.  

Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate Hearing

    Of course, the first step is acknowledging our past sins.  Forgiveness and conversion only happen when we acknowledge that we have done wrong.  If we pretend like we’re perfect, God’s mercy finds no room in us, and so it cannot change us.  St. Paul, when writing to the people of Corinth didn’t say, “On the advice of council, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” like Dr. Fauci did at the Senate Hearing on 29 July.  Paul acknowledged that he persecuted God’s Church, God’s people, with whom God so identifies that Christ said to him on the road to Damascus, “‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’”  But Paul didn’t stay in his past.  He then also acknowledged that God’s grace had done a mighty work, which allowed Paul to preach the Gospel.
    So if we have acknowledged our sins and confessed them, we don’t forget them, but we don’t live in them, either.  The enemy often likes to remind us of our past sins.  But if our sins our forgiven, then in God’s eyes, the sins themselves are gone.  Might there be consequences for those sins that come with us into the present?  Sure.  But the sins are gone.  As King David sang in Psalm 102: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.”  If we have made a good confession, God’s not coming back to us to remind us of all the bad things we have done.  We will have to deal with the temporal effects due to sin, either on this earth (which the saints say is much preferred and much easier) or in Purgatory (which is still not bad, because Purgatory always leads to heaven).  But the sins themselves are gone. 
    We, though, have to accept that forgiveness.  Some scholars say that the sin against the Holy Spirit is not being willing to accept God’s forgiveness, which is why it is the only unforgivable sin.  If we don’t accept God’s mercy, then God won’t force it on us, which leaves us in sin, rather than restoring us to grace, as God desires.  
    We cannot erase our past, much as we would like to at times.  We should learn from our past, especially when we have sinned and done wrong.  But we should not drag our past into the present, at least not when we’ve given those sins to God through sacramental confession.  That is a yoke too heavy to carry, a yoke the Lord does not desire for us.  He desires us to carry His yoke, which is mercy, a burden truly light and easy.  Open yourselves up to God’s mercy and live in the freedom of those forgiven by God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Keeping our Eyes Fixed on Jesus

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    What is it about car accidents, or even simply a car stopped by the police, that makes us want to stare at it?  Whether I’m driving my own car, or doing a ride along, whenever a car is stopped on the side of the road, for whatever reason, people can’t help but stare.  It’s even so ubiquitous we have a term for it: rubbernecking.  

    While staring at a traffic stop or car accident is not a good thing to do, we should keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.  When we do, anything good is possible.  Take Peter today: at the Lord’s command and keeping his eyes fixed on Jesus, Peter walks on water.  But as soon as he takes his eyes off of Jesus and notices the storms around him, he starts to sink.
    The life of holiness consists in keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.  Obviously I don’t mean our physical eyes, but I do mean our attention.  Most of us are good at multitasking.  Moms, in particular, seem to have a charism for it.  Or there are the funny videos of dads at a baseball game somehow holding on to their young child and a beer, and yet catching a pop fly or a foul ball.  And certainly when we keep our eyes on Jesus, we will also have to be going through life at the same time.  But it’s a matter of keeping the Lord involved in everything we do, not setting Him off to the side and taking our eyes off of Him.  
    When I look at someone, and not just look in their direction or have that thousand-yard stare where you’re really looking past someone, they become part of what I do.  So, if I look at Jesus, if I keep my mind on Him as I’m watching the kids, going to work, doing the laundry, cooking dinner, sitting on a beach on a hot, Michigan summer day, or whatever I’m doing, I’m keeping Jesus in mind and I’m more likely to do things now as He would do them, or letting Christ live in me as St. Paul the Apostle says.
    However, if I, like Peter, take my eyes off of Jesus; if I start to pay more attention to the world and its troubles, I give up that attention on Christ, and start to live according to my own rules or desires, which do not always match those of Christ.  That’s where we fall into sin.  While there are numerous definitions of sin, one good one that I recently heard is: sinning is taking our eyes off Jesus.  When we take our eyes off the road, either through texting while driving, or feeling drowsy, or trying to reach back to get something or to tell the kids to stop fighting with each other, we run the risk of getting hurt.  The same is true for taking our eyes off of Jesus.  
    This doesn’t mean that the storms around us stop if we keep our eyes on Jesus.  Christ bade Peter walk on water in the midst of the storms.  Our patron, St. Matthew, writes, “But when [Peter] saw how strong the wind was he became frightened.”  Christ didn’t change the circumstances to make it easier for Peter to walk on water, He empowered Peter in the midst of the storms to do what seemed impossible.  So for us, focusing on Christ doesn’t mean that all temptations go away.  We praise those who do not give in to temptations, not those who never undergo temptations, just like we praise the courage of those who have been in scary situations but still overcome their fears, not the person who fears nothing.
    God calls us to be attentive to Him, because He is present in every present moment of our lives.  No matter where we are, God is there.  But sometimes He’s not where we expect Him to be, just like, for Elijah, God wasn’t in the strong and heavy wind, the earthquake, or the fire.  He was in the tiny whisper.  So when you’re caring for your kids at home; or at work, however energizing or boring it might be; or driving to a practice; or on a vacation in Pure Michigan; God is there.  We just have to pay attention to Him, rather than giving our attention only to so many other things.
    One way to do this is the Jesus prayer.  The Jesus prayer is: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  In the eastern Christian tradition, both Catholic and Orthodox, you can practice saying the first half when you breathe in, and the second half when you breathe out.  And if you practice it enough, you end up saying it throughout the day.  Or maybe just the short phrase: “Jesus, I love you,” which were Pope Benedict’s last words before he died.  Or maybe, like St. Peter, we learn to say, “Lord, save me!”  
    But notice what comes next.  Jesus immediately reaches out His hand.  When we turn to the Lord, the Lord has already been waiting for us, and immediately reaches out to help us.  Without a pause or any delay, God is there to help us.
    So stop rubbernecking, but start putting your attention on Jesus throughout the day.  Say short prayers throughout the day to keep your focus on Jesus.  Keep Jesus before you eyes as much as you can each day.  He won’t let you drown, even when that seems to be what would happen, and you may even find yourself seemingly walking on water.

Gifts From God

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost 
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  On 13 July 2012, while running for re-election in 2012, President Barack Obama said in Roanoke, Virginia, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”  The former president and I probably disagree on more things than we agree on, and I know that many (including a restaurant owner who is a friend of mine) saw this as an attack on entrepreneurs.  But there’s a way to read this phrase that is helpful for us as Catholics (which may be one of the very few helps Catholics received from the Obama administration).
    We all have gifts and talents.  The Holy Spirit has given us certain things that we can do that others cannot.  But God gave them as gifts; we didn’t create these abilities on our own.  Yes, personal effort was required in developing our gifts, but it’s not as if we created ourselves.  The Holy Spirit, God, gave gifts to us for the building up of the Kingdom of God.  St. Paul the Apostles lists gifts like wisdom, knowledge, healing, miracle-working, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues.  But they all, and so many other gifts, come from the Holy Spirit.  

    But our tendency is to be like the Pharisee and presume that all the good things we do come from ourselves.  The Pharisee did good things: he fasted twice per week, gave tithes, did not extort people, rendered to people what they deserved, and keep his libido in check.  But he told God in a way that he was responsible for those good things.  Pride ruined all the good things the Pharisee was doing, whereas humility made up for the bad things the tax collector or publican did.
    In the spiritual life, it’s so easy to feel like we’re the ones doing all the work.  And we do have to put in work.  The Apostle says, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”  Pelagius, a 5th-century British monk, probably used that phrase to defend his belief that we alone choose to be holy or to be sinful, which led to him to deny original sin.  This was condemned as the heresy Pelagianism.  Most heresies don’t go away for too long; they simply go dormant for a while.  And Pelagianism, even with the impact of our Protestant brothers and sisters who talk about salvation through faith alone (though faith alone is not, ironically, in the Bible), is still alive and well.  We like to tout how we do things on our own, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and achieve the American dream by our blood, sweat, and tears.  But when it comes to our spiritual life, any good we do comes only from God.  It is, as the Collect for the First Sunday after Pentecost prays: 
 

O God, the strength of all who hope in Thee, 
kindly be present to our invocations; 
and, because our mortal weakness can do nothing without Thee, 
bestow the help of Thy grace: 
that in carrying out Thy commandments, 
we may be pleasing to Thee in will and action.

St. Augustine, much beloved here at St. Matthew because of the Augustinians who served here, fought hard to combat Pelagianism, which was formally condemned by the Council of Carthage, a local council, in AD 418, and yet Pelagianism continues like a cockroach which never seems to die, but only scurries away.
    So how do we live in a non-Pelagian way?  Does this mean that our good works mean nothing?  Our good works mean something, but only because of God’s generosity.  We call this congruent merit, when we do something with God’s grace that God has promised to reward.  The reward surpasses the work we do, but because God has said that if we do this work, we shall be rewarded, we can expect it.  But again, notice that this is only due to God’s generosity, or a gratuitous gift.  Only Christ can truly merit anything as a matter of strict justice (which we call condign merit), because all of His works, in every aspect, are good.  
    One of the traps, even of those who find the freedom of virtue, is to attribute to ourselves the goodness of the act, which usually means we fall into sin shortly thereafter.  God can allow us to experience the weakness of our nature when not supported first by His grace to show us how little we can do.
    And yet even the little we can do, and even though it has to have God as its source, God desires.  God justified the tax collector who could not brag about anything he had done, but only asked for God’s mercy.  The tax collector acknowledged how much in need he was, which opened up the possibility for God’s grace to do its work.  So in our own lives, as we come before God, it’s good to acknowledge that we cannot do good on our own, but need God both to inspire the good, strengthen our good actions, and bring them to a good completion in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Much like Schrödinger’s cat, we both didn’t build it (because every good thing we can do comes from God) and we did build it (because we do have to cooperate with God’s grace as we choose good actions).  
    Nothing good happens without God.  When we think that we are so good and do so many good things, we forget that it is the Holy Spirit who gives us every good gift and talent, and we fall into the trap of the Pharisee who thinks he can justify or save himself.  Instead, even while we seek to cooperate with God’s grace through good deeds, we should be like the tax collector and realize that we need God’s mercy because we so easily choose lesser goods and choose not to use the gifts the Holy Spirit has given us, who with the Father and the Son is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.  

All Are Welcome, but We Need to Prepare

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    How wonderful to receive an invitation!  I don’t mean the incessant invitations to subscribe to this, or buy that which we seem to receive every day through email or text.   I mean invitations to some celebration or to become a part of a group or club that means something.  Invitations make one feel desired, appreciated, even treasured.  Especially when not everyone can join, due to cost or space, invitations have a way of stroking the ego in a healthy way.

    And so our Liturgy of the Word, the first main part of our Mass today, begins with an invitation.  “All you who are thirsty, come to the water!  You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!”  And when paired with our Gospel and the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, we certainly understand this banquet to point towards our Eucharistic celebration, the Mass.  I’ve mentioned before the beautiful mosaic at Tabgha at the place of the miracle in the Gospel, where there's a chapel, and underneath the altar is a mosaic with two fish and four loaves, signifying that the fifth loaf is the one on the altar, and that the miracle points to the Eucharist.
    What we see in both the prophecy from Isaiah and the miracle that we hear from Matthew, but which is in all four Gospels, is that everyone is welcome.  God invites everyone to come to him to receive proper drink and food.  And Christ feels compassion for the crowd of 5,000 people who have nowhere to go without being quite hungry.  They were certainly all disciples, as they stopped to listen to Him for an entire day, but we don’t get a sense that they were equally knowledgeable of Christ, or faithful to Christ.  Some may have simply been curious and become quite intrigued with the words Christ spoke.  Others may have been dragged there by friends and simply didn’t want to be rude and return home without the host who brought them.  So we see a certain universal call, a call to all people, to Christ’s banquet where He feeds them.
    However, Isaiah’s prophecy and the feeding of the 5,000 are not the Mass, even though they point to it.  We don’t use bread and wine and milk in the Mass.  Nor do we use bread and fish.  Milk doesn’t really agree with my digestion (though I’ll suffer through it for ice cream, pizza, and lasagna), so I’m glad we don’t use milk.  And imagine trying to keep fish and distribute it at Mass: we’d have to use incense just to mask the smell of aging fish!
    So even within the universal call to the banquet of Christ that we hear issued, which, in some sense, is true of the Mass, we also have restrictions on who partakes of the banquet.  In another parable, Christ speaks about how he invites the unlikely to the wedding banquet after the original invitees demure and do not come, but how the master expects the guests to come to the banquet in proper clothing.  So a universal invitation and guidance on how we carry ourselves in responding to that invitation is not foreign to the Gospel.  Imagine thinking that because your friends invited you to their wedding, you could show up in your pjs, because that made you feel the most comfortable.  Your friends may not mention your attire to your face, but I assure you everyone would be talking about it.
    So how do we come to this Eucharistic banquet to which we were invited?  I know it was vogue to say that clothing doesn’t matter when you come to Mass, but that’s simply not true.  I’m not saying everyone has to be in suit and tie or best dress, but there’s a reason why we call certain attire “Sunday best.”  Your Sunday best may be different than others, but do we give our best and show that this banquet means something to us, at least as best as we can muster as a college student, or parents with an infant, or established adults, or senior citizens?  Again, as long as we can say we’re giving our best to God, that’s what counts, not as much of what type of clothing we wear (though, if you’re over the age of 5, pjs should never be considered one’s best).
    Another consideration on the invitation to all is what we believe.  St. Justin Martyr, writing in the mid-second century, says that only those who have been baptized and believe in what the Church teaches receive the Eucharist.  That’s why we generally don’t have intercommunion, even for baptized non-Catholics, because they don’t believe in the fullness of what the Catholic Church teaches.
    Likewise, in order to receive the full graces of the banquet, we should prepare for receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  If we are aware of grave sins, like skipping Mass, using God’s Name in vain, improper use of our sexual faculties, etc., we need to go to confession first.  If we receive Holy Communion in a state of grave sin, we add the sin of a sacrilegious communion to our previous list and damage further our relationship with Christ.  We fast from all food and drink except water and medicine for one hour before receiving Holy Communion in order to prepare even our bodies, which are united with our souls, to receive Christ into us.  We might even, on Saturday or earlier in the week, read the Sunday readings ahead of time so that we’re more ready to hear them proclaimed at Mass, or if our kids are distracting us, as kids do, we still know what God is saying through the Scriptures for that day.  This doesn’t mean God doesn’t want you to come at all to His banquet, but that while attendance is open to all, the full participation in the banquet does require certain actions and forbids others.
    There is room for everyone in God’s kingdom and at the wedding feast of the Lamb.  God invites each of us to union with Him and attendance at His banquet because of His great love for all of us.  But He expects that we will prepare ourselves for the banquet, because it is such a joyous occasion, just like we prepare ourselves for a wedding.  Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb!

Five-Letter Word

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of my morning routines is to play Wordle, an online game in which you have 6 chances to guess a five-letter word, based upon being shown if the individual letters of words are in the correct space, or maybe belong in a different space.  For example, my starter word is always “crate,” which will tell me if there are any cs, rs, as, ts, or es in the word, and if those letters are in the right place for the mystery word of the day.  Recently, the word was “pshaw,” which is a real word (and which was very difficult to guess).  The word “pshaw” expresses contempt, impatience, or disgust, and has been used in English since the early 1600s, even if we don’t really use it much today.
    Another word we don’t use very much, except when it comes to the commandments, is another five-letter word St. Paul used today at the beginning of the epistle: covet.  The Apostle to the Gentiles encourages us not to covet evil things.  Probably the other major context of covet is the ninth and tenth commandments, forbidding us from coveting our neighbor’s wife (the ninth commandment) and our neighbor’s goods (the tenth commandment).  But what does it mean to covet?
    The Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, tells us that to covet is to immoderately love the possession of someone or something.  Our English word come from the Latin, cúpere, which means to desire.  Obviously we all desire things.  When I haven’t eaten in a while, I desire food.  When I am too hot I desire air conditioning.  So the key to distinguishing coveting from simple desiring is the immoderate desire or love of something, or a desire for something not in accord with reason.  I might want some food when I’m hungry, but I can covet food by wanting more food than I need, or a certain quality of food that goes beyond reason.  I might desire air conditioning when I’m not, but I can covet air conditioning by wanting it to be 60 degrees inside, or to spend money I don’t have on installing a new air conditioner.  
    The ninth and tenth commandments help us to govern the good things we want, because sometimes we want them when we don’t need them.  We’ve all had moments where we said we needed something that we truly only wanted.  Or we’ve said aloud or in our head, “Give me a break!” when a child claims to need something that is altogether unnecessary.  But we all have little children inside of us claiming to need things that we don’t truly need.  When it comes to the ninth commandment, it’s the desire for physical affection.  When it comes to the tenth commandment, it’s the desire for some material thing.  
    I would also say that coveting goes beyond the simple, “That would be nice to have.”  I might see a nice car and admire it, and say to myself, ‘Oh, that would be cool to own that car,’ without actually coveting it.  Or, especially while one vacation, you might notice an attractive person of the opposite sex and recognize objective beauty.  But coveting goes beyond the first glance and then turns to the desire to possess the person or object observed.  It really turns a person into an object, and the object into a god, so that we put other things in the first place that only God is supposed to occupy.  
    The prohibition against coveting does not mean that you can’t want better for yourself.  We should always strive to do better than our parents.  But what are the intentions of my heart?  Why do I want what I want?  A trooper can say, “I want overtime,” but might want it because he simply wants more money to buy more things (that would be coveting), or because he wants to provide for his family and maybe get them some special food for a birthday or other celebration.  
    Coveting is not restricted to those who don’t have much.  A rich person can covet things, even if she has a large house, the best car, the most expensive jewelry, etc.  On the other hand, a rich person might have a lot, but not covet her possessions, and instead exercise generosity and detachment from her material wealth.  A poor person might covet more goods, beyond what he needs for survival and basic thriving, or a poor person might be content even with the little he has.
    Likewise, when it comes to coveting people, it’s not just for single people.  A married person can covet a woman other than his wife, or might even covet his wife.  If the husband treats his wife simply as an outlet for his lust, he could even fall into the sin of coveting her.  On the other hand he might recognize her beauty, but not to possess, but to serve and lay down his life, and express that love in the marital act when she is open to expressing that love in a full gift of herself.  Or a single woman might covet a strong, handsome man and gawk at him and use him to feel some kind of way, or she might simply notice that he has well-defined muscles and good proportion of body, but not dwell on him and think lustful thoughts.  The issue is not what one has or does not have; or whether one is single or married.  The issue is whether we are the masters of our desires, or if they master us.  
    While we don’t use the word covet much anymore, it is no less prevalent and no less a temptation.  But God has given us the grace not to desire immoderately, but to govern our desires so that we only act on desires which are in accord with Divine Law or reason.  May we call upon God to cleanse the temples of our hearts of any inordinate desires that exist there, so that our souls may not be a den of thieves, but a house of prayer for the worship of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Include God in the Little Things

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    What do our hearts desire most?  Of course, sitting here, we probably would naturally say God.  But if we give time to that which is most important, how much time do we spend thinking about God?  I’m willing to guess that in an average weekday, your mind might focus on: what do I have going on today?; what am I going to make or have for lunch or dinner?; where do the kids need to be?; how much is gas?; what did President Trump say or tweet now?; when will the weekend be here?; does the grass need mowing?; am I going to get the parasite if I eat at Taco Bell?; why does Canada let it get so smoky?  I could go on.  But in any of those, were our thoughts directed toward God or not?  How much time did we spend thinking about God?  What does that say about God’s place in our life?
    All of those things are normal things to think about.  In some cases, you have a responsibility to think about those things.  You can’t ignore the need to feed your family and use an excuse that you were spending the day in prayer.  You can’t tell your bank that you didn’t have time to pay the mortgage because you were too busy giving God the time He should have.  So how do we both take care of our responsibilities and live in a world in which we have to make plans, but also make God the most important thing in our life: the treasure in the field or the pearls of great price?
    We make God the most important by getting in the habit of including God in all of those questions and considerations that happen in our daily life.  I’m not saying that we need to wait to hear a message from the heavens on what we should eat, but include God in the consideration: “God, what would be a good thing to have tonight for dinner?”  Or, “God, please help me remember all the practices I have to get my kids to and not forget them when practices end.”  Or, “God, I’ve got a lot going on today and this week.  Please help me to be patient when I am stressed out, and give me enough time to care for my family and my home.”  Or even, “God, please get me to the weekend before I snap!”  
    It seems like such a simple thing, but it’s a great way to show the importance that we give to God and include Him in our life.  God doesn’t feel needy for our friendship.  He is the source of all wisdom and wants to share that wisdom with us, as he promised Solomon.  God’s desire for us to include Him stems from His knowledge of how we operate the best and how we can not just survive by thrive and be saints.  Including God shows Him how much we want Him to be a part of our lives.
    I often use marriage as an analogy, and that works well here, too.  Imagine you never talk to your spouse about what you will cook for dinner, or when you will mow the lawn, or who will get the kids to and from practice, or how work went, or all those other daily things of life.  Your marriage probably wouldn’t be so great.  If your spouse only knows about the major things going on in life, but you tell the smaller things to someone else, you have inserted another person into your relationship who holds more importance to you than your spouse.  It doesn’t mean you can’t share that same information with anyone else, but there should be a priority in who knows what happens in your life, and your spouse shouldn’t be the last to know.
    [My dear parents, as you have Jack baptized today, you are committing to helping him develop his relationship with God.  In baptism, he will become a child of God, in addition to being your child.  And your role will be to help him to know how to love God and keep God as the most important part of his life.  This means teaching him to pray, that is, to speak to and listen to God on a daily basis, as well as learning what we believe and how we Catholics live.  But you are not alone.  You will have the assistance of Jack’s godmother, your family and friends, and your parish community to help you.  By your life and the choices you make, you will show Jack and his siblings whether God is important, and whether we live according to His will or our own.  This also requires communication with God to make sure that you are living up to the commitment you make today through baptism.]
    We all have a lot going on.  Whether we’re a young child, an adult, or a senior citizen, life can get busy and we can face numerous questions and choices throughout our day.  Don’t answer those questions alone; don’t make choices based solely on your wisdom.  Turn to God for His guidance; ask Him even about the little things in life.  God desires your good, and will show you the best way forward.  And even if He doesn’t seem to answer every little question, He loves that you involve Him and will give you ways of knowing His will.  Train your hearts to desire God above all else.  Practice speaking and listening to Him even about the small matters of life.  If you do, you will be prepared for the kingdom of heaven and eternal happiness with God.

Sons and Brides

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Today St. Paul reminds us that we are the sons of God and joint heirs with Christ.  While we often speak about the moral life and the requirements of following Christ as His disciples, there is something that comes before morality, and if we miss this, we often see the demands of a relationship with Christ as merely laws imposed on us from without.  What comes before morality is identity.  Or, to put it another way, being precedes doing.  You have to exist before you can act, and any action you take or can take flows from what and who you are.
    Now, we might think that St. Paul should have said that we are sons and daughters of God.  Certainly in the age we live in, we can demonstrate more inclusivity and not simply reference masculine identity.  But the Apostle to the Gentiles carefully chose his words, words that God Himself inspired.  So how can we disciples, both males and females, understand what St. Paul meant when he called us all sons?  

    Our identity, ever since baptism, connects to Christ.  At Holy Baptism, we receive a new identity, and that is of Christ.  In Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit mystically joins us to the Body of Christ, so that we are members of Him.  And in that sense, all of us are sons.  Or, to put it another way, we can speak of ourselves as sons and daughters in the Son of God.  This identity cannot be overstated.  When God looks at us, He doesn’t ignore who we are.  He created us as males and females, different, and yet complimentary.  Even our bodies tell us something about ourselves that is not accidental (this is where those who promote gender dysphoria get it wrong; having a male body or a female body tells us something about ourselves, even if it doesn’t exhaust our identity).  And yet, as soon as we die with Christ in the waters of baptism, the Holy Spirit configures us to Christ so that, already and yet in potential, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, as St. Paul also says.  When God sees us He sees us as individuals, but also sees us as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, as His Beloved Son.
    And because God joins us to His Son, we can also call ourselves heirs of God “and joint heirs with Christ.”  All the riches that God has for His Son belong to us to, not by nature, but by adoption.  In human adoption, the child has no claim to anything from a parent not his own until that parent chooses the child, which opens up the claim to support from the parents to the adopted child.  So with us, as adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God, everything that God has for Christ, God offers to us as well.  As God Himself says in the second psalm: “‘You are my son; today I have begotten you.  Ask it of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and, as your possession, the ends of the earth.’”  God withholds nothings good from us, including eternal life and a seat at His right hand, provided we stay in God’s family and remain connected to Christ.  What good thing could God withhold from Christ?  He will not withhold it from us, either, because we are in His Son and part of Him through Holy Baptism.  Eternal life?  Ours.  Power?  Ours.  Grace to resist all temptations and never commit mortal sin?  Ours.  As St. Paul says in his first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 3: “all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.”
    So often we think only of what we have to do, but we ought to first think of to whom we belong and our identity.  When I know I belong to God, Catholicism no longer consists of rules to follow from without, but a means of fully living according to how God has made me and how He has configured me to Christ, so that I can be ready to receive my full inheritance as a son of God, rather than spending it elsewhere like the prodigal son.

My sister and brother-in-law at the their wedding reception

    But, lest you ladies feel like the struggle is only yours in thinking of yourselves as sons, we, all of us, are also brides.  This is where men have to struggle.  Throughout the Old and New Testament, God uses bridal imagery to describe His People.  In the Book of Hosea, Israel is compared to a wife, though an unfaithful one.  The Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah speak about God as our husband.  And the Song of Songs allegorizes the Chosen People to a bride and God as the husband.  Likewise, in the New Testament, our Lord speaks of Himself as the Bridegroom for whom the virgins must keep watch.  In St. Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, marriage is a mystery which refers back to Christ and the Church.  And in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse of St. John the Apostle, he describes heaven as a wedding feast of the Lamb of God, and the New Jerusalem is a bride adorned for her husband.
    Saints have long described the soul as a bride of Christ.  Not just the souls of women, but the souls of men.  Why?  Because there is meant to be a certain subordination of the wife to the husband, always out of love, and trusting in the husband laying down his life for the wife.  So we, the Church, Christ’s bride, should receive Christ’s law of love and obedience as a wife receives her husband.  That is why the Church has no authority to change the teachings of Christ, as so many of our Protestant brothers and sisters have tried to do, because we are not the masters of revelation, but simply the recipients and stewards of it.  The Church can develop those teachings and understand them more deeply through the centuries, but we cannot reject the ones we don’t like or find uncomfortable or inconvenient.  This is our challenge as men, who like to take charge and be in control: to give control over to the husband of our souls and submit to His rule, rather than to our own.
    Being precedes doing.  Before we do anything, we are sons of God and the Bride of Christ.  Starting with our identity makes actions much more intelligible.  The moral life no longer seems like barriers to our freedom, but ways to fully live out who and whose we are.  God wants to give us every good thing as our inheritance.  But to receive that great gift, we first must recognize that we are sons and daughters in the Son of God and our souls are the Bride of Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  

Zeal and Patience

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    For priests in the Diocese of Lansing, 1 July (or around there) is a special day.  It’s new pastor assignment day, meaning that priests who are moving into a new parish (whether as the first pastor assignment or from a transfer of assignments) usually start on or around that day.  As with any change, it can be stressful, both on the priest and on the people. What is the priest like?  What are the people like?  What is the staff like?  Social media has added a new dimension to the whole process, as future parishioners can “Facebook stalk” their new priest and see what they can learn from his pictures and posts.

After the Easter Vigil at my first pastorate in Adrian

    One of the many questions when a parish receives a new priest is how much he will change.  From a priest’s perspective, the question is how much he feels he needs to change, and when to make those changes.  From the people’s perspective, the question is basically the same, but perhaps with a bit more trepidation.  And different priests will give different advice on how fast a new priest should move on changes.  On the one hand, some priests say don’t change anything for the first year.  On the other hand, people often are prepared for some things to change when getting a new priest, so it may be easier to make changes right at the beginning, rather than waiting to change.  And, of course, it depends on what the new priest wants to change, and if it is a sacred cow to parishioners.
    Stereotypically, young priests in their new pastorate want to change a lot, and they often want to move quickly.  They may have good reasons and good intentions.  But, having been a pastor a few times, my advice is to move slowly on changing things that can wait, and only change things quickly that are of the utmost importance, though I will admit I’m not sure I’ve always followed my own advice in the past.  And we hear that general theme of patience in the Gospel today, though not precisely aimed at new pastors.  
    Christ again and again urges patience.  Whether it’s weeds growing among the wheat, or the growth of the mustard seed, or the rising of dough from yeast, all these require patience.  The master allows the weeds to grow so as not to harm the wheat.  The mustard seed starts small but grows large, as long as one has patience to let it grow.  The yeast mixed in the dough rises, but you have to wait over night or throughout the day.  As I have become known as the “Bourbon Priest,” I will admit that I associate yeast more with distilling than baking, but that’s just me.
    Impatience leads to problems.  I’m a fan of pita bread, but if you want sourdough bread, you can’t rush things without ruining the batch.  You can’t rush a tree growing.  And if you pull up the weeds too early, it might destroy your crop, and then you have nothing to show for all your work.  But, of course, the main point is not agriculture; it’s souls.
    Haste makes waste.  Too much zeal, especially if applied without patience, can turn people off from the Gospel.  Patience allows others to develop their faith, even if certain corrections are required from time to time.  Zeal is a good thing, as it drives us to seek the truth and help others live that truth.  But when zeal is misapplied, it can destroy progress made.  Now, perhaps we are sometimes too patient with others and give too much time, but we shouldn’t go from one extreme to the other.  Virtue stands in the middle.  Not too much, not too little.  Like Goldilocks, we need just the right amount of zeal and patience.
    And while we often think about zeal and patience with others, which is good, we should also exhibit both zeal and patience with ourselves.  Do we push ourselves to be more open to God’s grace and follow His teachings?  But do we also allow for the fact that we won’t do so perfectly?  So often we go to extremes with others but also with ourselves.  We might be overzealous and expect unrealistic change or growth in our spiritual life in a short period of time.  We have conversion of mind and commit ourselves to living in the truth, or encouraging others to live in the truth, but then when we fall short, as we often do when it comes to change and lofty goals, we crash and give up.  Or, we might be over-patient and figure that Christ is so merciful and understanding that we don’t really need to worry about the fact that we keep falling into the same sins and vices and never seem to make any progress.  In reality, Christ calls us to set lofty goals for our spiritual life, and to seek His grace to get us there, but to be patient if we don’t reach that goal perfectly.  

    [This is certainly true for you, my dear Catechumens.  You have experienced a call from Christ to follow Him.  You have recognized the parts of your life that need to change to be configured to Christ.  But perhaps you have also experienced some discouragement because you’re not there yet.  That’s ok.  Don’t slack, but don’t give up, either.  There’s a reason why we ask you to wait around a year before we baptize you.  We want you to know what you are doing, and to be able to commit to the new life of a disciple, rather than rushing in with too much zeal, and then backing out after baptism because you changed your mind or don’t feel like you can live the Gospel.  God calls you to deepen your relationship with Him, but He is patient with you as you walk away from your sinful past and walk towards holiness with God.]
    Zeal is good.  So is patience.  Both are necessary for real and long-lasting spiritual growth.  Don’t be too zealous and turn others or yourself away from slow, but real change and growth.  Don’t be too lazy and miss out on real changes and growth that will help you be a better disciple.  Be zealously patient with others and with yourself.

Good Soil and Good Fruit

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

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

St. Anthony of Padua

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

An Easy Yoke, A Light Burden

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

Mural from Bethany, where Christ began his entry into Jerusalem 

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

War and Peace Begins with Us

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Pope Pius XII

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

Living and Dying

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

St. Pier Giorgio Frassati

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

The Struggle Is Real

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

Prophet Jeremiah

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

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

Changing our World

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

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

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