Cadets

Fourth Sunday of Lent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Over the past ten or so years, the Michigan State Police has re-vamped its Cadet Program as a way to get young men and women connected to the State Police while still college-aged.  Part of the expectation is that they use the time (for which they get paid) to make sure they are physically fit enough to be admitted to recruit school.  Recently I was present when a few cadets, including our two cadets at the Flint Post, did a baseline assessment of their physical fitness.  They had to do 32 sit-ups and 30 push-ups (each within a minute), do a vertical jump and reach at least 17.5 inches from their vertical arm extension, and do a half-mile shuttle run in 4:29.  Most cadets don’t simply do this physical test cold: they work at surpassing the standard before they take the test.  But if they don’t pass it at first, they have more opportunities before they are accepted to reach the physical standard and hopefully enter the 20-week academy to become a Michigan State Police Trooper.
    Just as the cadets have to keep their eyes on the goal of becoming a Trooper, the Church sets before us today the goal of making it to heaven.  For the gradual today we pray Psalm 121: “I rejoiced when they said to me: let us go to the house of the Lord.”  For the tract we heard Psalm 124: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, that stands forever.”  And we will return to Psalm 121 at the Communion Antiphon, as we hear: “Jerusalem is built as a city, strongly compact.  It is there that the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord.”  Of course, while the psalmist had the earthly Jerusalem in mind, God, the divine author, had the Jerusalem above in mind.  We rejoice because we go on pilgrimage through life towards heaven.  And when we trust in the Lord, nothing can shake us, because we are like heaven, which endures even as the ages pass.
    St. Paul, in his epistle to the Galatians, also references the Jerusalem above, which is like Isaac, whereas Sinai, the mountain of the law, references the earthly reality.  The Apostle challenges us not simply to look to the rules, but to the freedom that comes from allowing God’s grace to transform us, and the freedom that comes from conforming our wills to God’s.  During our Lenten pilgrimage, we do well to keep this in mind.  Our goal should not just be not eating meat on Fridays, or certain extra prayers, or generosity to the Church and the poor through almsgiving.  Those practices, like the law, do not save in and of themselves.  But when we utilize those penitential practices to live a life more like Christ, that is, allowing those practices to put to death in us anything that does not come from God, we gain freedom because we live as God created us: in accordance with His will.
    It can be so easy to keep the law mentality that St. Paul critiques in the epistle.  We set out penances for ourselves and presume that they will save us.  We take on a Pelagian mentality that we earn our salvation by the good works we do, and God simply approves of our struggle and rewards us for it.  But our penitential practices, like the law, does not save.  Christ saves us; we do not save ourselves.  But we follow God’s eternal law and we chastise ourselves with Lenten practices in order to discipline our flesh and realize that all too often we live more like an animal, by instinct and drive, than like a child of God, living by following the will of God and the higher ends of the spiritual realm.  
    We don’t teach, like the Manichaeans, that the body is evil, but we do know that it operates under the weight of sin and concupiscence, and desires things we should not desire, or desires things at inopportune times.  We strive to live, not just by bread, but by the Word of God.  We pray because we need communion with the Father to ignore the temptations of the devil.  We give alms because generosity with others, especially those who will not return payment, makes us more like our heavenly Father who makes the sun shine on the good and the bad, and makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust.  

    And just like the cadets not only have to work out to be able to do their push-ups, sit-ups, and run, but also have to eat well to stay in shape, we hear the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish in today’s Gospel, which starts out the famous Bread of Life discourse, which is St. John’s treatment of the Eucharist (rather than the synoptic Gospels which focus on the Eucharist at the Last Supper).  The Eucharist is the spiritual food that we need, not only to help us during our Lenten penances, but also to help us on our pilgrimage to heaven.  When we receive Holy Communion in a state of grace, God strengthens our souls to more easily choose the good and reject the bad.  He gives us the Body and Blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, to transform us and make His will our own more and more.  
    We are all cadets, not striving to be Michigan State Police Troopers, but striving to be the saints that God called us to be in Holy Baptism.  To do that, we have to keep our mind on our heavenly goal, and eat the right spiritual food that will strengthen us towards our divinely-appointed end.  May our Lenten practices and our worthy reception of Holy Communion keep us in good spiritual shape so that we can appear, without trepidation and with a clear conscience, at the judgement seat of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.   

God's Timing

Fourth Sunday of Lent–Second Scrutiny

    Why did it take so long?  A person might ask this question under any set of circumstances.  Maybe a person asks this question when he or she finally finds the right person to marry.  Maybe a person asks this question after discovering how to put behind harmful habits or patterns of behavior.  Maybe a person asks this after a particularly long train finally clears the railroad crossing.  Maybe it’s a seminarian after 8 or 10 years of seminary on the eve of his ordination to the priesthood.
    This question came to mind when reflecting on the healing of the man born blind, which we heard today in the Gospel.  We don’t know exactly how old the man was.  But he was old enough to give testimony to the Pharisees, which likely means that he was probably at least in adolescence.  But his parents were still alive, so he wasn’t exceedingly old.  For argument’s sake, let’s say he was around 20 or 25 years old.  So, why did it take 20 to 25 years for God to heal him?  Jesus said, “it is so that the works of God may be made visible through him.”  
    When we think about how things should go, we do so with our own vantage point and our own assumptions of how reality should be.  We can be like Samuel who presumes that God’s reasoning will be like ours.  But as the choice of King David showed, and as God Himself told Samuel, He does not see things the same ways we do.  Samuel thought that the best looking son should be king.  But God saw David’s heart, how devoted David was to God, and so chose the least-likely son of Jesse to be king.
    If you were to ask a seminarian, he would probably gladly eliminate a year, or two, or six from seminary formation, which can be academically rigorous and often pushes a man beyond what he thinks he can do.  But, of course, in the eight to ten long years of formation, the seminarian learns very important theology and how to best serve the people of God,  as well as how to celebrate the sacraments.  If you would have asked me in my second of eight years of seminary, I probably would have said I was ready enough to become a priest.  But I learned a lot about God, the Church, pastoral guidance, and how to be a good priest in the six years that followed.  Not every part of seminary was enjoyable, and sometimes not everything was even useful, but it helped form me into the priest I am today.
    It seems odd to think that it was not better for God to heal the man born blind earlier.  But who knows how receptive the man would have been to believe in Jesus later if God had healed the blind man earlier.  But because the healing happened at that point, not only did the blind man come to believe in Jesus, but it also helped the disciples to believe that Jesus is God.  
    Sometimes we might wonder about God’s timing.  We might think that something should have happened earlier, or that a different result should have happened.  And maybe in our mind our reasoning even makes sense.  But God sometimes sees things differently than we do.  And while it may seem cruel at times, God’s ways are always for our salvation and holiness and are made out of love.  God cannot do otherwise than act out of love, because God is love.  Anything else would be a contradiction of God’s nature.  
    Admittedly, this takes great trust and faith.  Because God is infinite and we are finite, we only get glimpses into His will, permissive or directive.  But when we trust in the love of God and His plan, we can accept timing that doesn’t make sense to us.  Sometimes the good is simply the growth in virtue that can only come through struggle.  A child often thinks that a parent is cruel when the child has to eat vegetables instead of ice cream.  But it’s not cruel, but rather helps the child eat food that will help it develop healthily.  We are God’s children, and our loving Father sometime wants us to develop differently than we want to develop.  Sometimes we would rather not grow in virtue, but God wants us to grow in virtue.  So we are allowed to go through crucibles which help us, by God’s grace, to grow in virtue and further our trust in God.
    My dear elect: as we celebrate the second scrutiny, you might have asked yourself on this or other occasions why God allowed you to wait until now to discover the truth and become a child of God and open your pathway to heaven.  I wish I could give you each a detailed answer, but what I can say is that, in Divine Providence, now was the perfect time so that the works of God might be made visible through you.  You see, when a person is baptized, especially adults, the faith of other Catholics is reinvigorated.  And perhaps other non-Catholics might decide to investigate becoming Catholic more because they see you becoming Catholic.  Who knows?  Maybe someone here needed your witness, your desire for baptism, to bolster his or her own faith.  If you would have come to faith earlier, perhaps that person would have lost out on what he or she needed.  But only God knows that.  We can only trust that, for you, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation, as St. Paul says.

Bl. Solanus Casey

    There’s nothing wrong with wondering, ‘Why now?  Why not earlier?  Why not later?’  But, on this side of eternity, we will never know exactly why.  Still, today God invites us to trust in His loving will, His Divine Providence.  After we ask this question, our response should be, “God, I may never know why you chose to allow things to happen as you did.  But I praise you, God, for your will and how it moves me closer to the end you desire for me: eternal happiness in heaven.”  To quote Bl. Solanus Casey, “Blessed be God in all his designs.” 

A Fragrant Aroma

Third Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When we think about powerful senses in humans, the sense of smell may not immediately come to mind.  Sure, for dogs like bloodhounds we might think about the sense of smell as powerful, but human noses aren’t always the most sensitive, especially if you had COVID.  But, in reality, the sense of smell, while not as strong as in other animals, has a certain power to it in humans.  Even though my grandparents have been dead for almost six years now, I can still imagine the smell of their houses, and sometimes if I smell the perfume my grandmothers wore, it brings them immediately to mind.  Or have you ever noticed that schools tend to have the same smell, even after decades have passed since you attended classes there?  Or there’s something about the smell of a roast in a crockpot that just makes you feel at ease.  
    St. Paul, in the epistle today, tells us to be imitators of God and live in love, “as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.”  We probably don’t think about this, but when Jews offered sacrifices in the temple, there was probably a nice smell in the air: the smell of roast lamb, or beef, or even grains and wine cooking.  I’m sure among pagans, people imagined that the gods enjoyed the smell of roasting meat just as much as they did, and that the smell would appease their gods.  Even Genesis 8:20-21 says: “Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and choosing from every clean animal and every clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar.  When the Lord smelled the sweet odor, the Lord said to himself: Never again will I curse the ground because of human beings.”
    So what is this odor or aroma that pleases God?  Sometimes in the church we talk about the odor of sanctity, though in other speech we tend to use the word odor for a negative smell, which is probably why we use the word aroma when we mean a positive smell.  To me, the smell of holiness would probably smell like Sacred Chrism, which is olive oil with a balsam perfume added to it, or the smell of nice incense.  
    But, of course, St. Paul is not talking about an aroma that our noses can pick up, but rather that we offer ourselves as a sacrifice to God, and that our sacrifice pleases God, like the smell of roast lamb pleases many people.  And the thing that dies in our sacrifice to God consists of our sinful self, while our holy self rises to God like a pleasing aroma.  No longer are we roasting lamb or oxen or birds, nor do we burn up grain, wine, or oil, but we offer ourselves to God the Father, united to the cross of Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  We don’t destroy stuff in order to appease God, but we ask God’s grace to destroy in us all that God does not find worthy.  
    In Isaiah 1:11, God says, “What do I care for the multitude of your sacrifices?…I have had enough of whole-burn rams and fat of failings; In the blood of calves, lambs, and goats I find no pleasure….To bring offerings is useless; incense is an abomination to me.”  But in the same chapter in verses 16-17 God says, “Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil; learn to do good.  Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.”  The point of sacrifice was not simply to cook something for God.  God intended the sacrifice to remind the people that they had to destroy that which was evil in them, and live for what was good, especially caring for those who could not care for themselves: the unjustly condemned, the orphan, and the widow.  

    All the sacrifices of the Old Testament pointed to the one efficacious sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the truly unblemished Lamb of God.  But what pleased God with the sacrifice of Christ?  That He willingly gave up His entire self to God, trustingly putting Himself in the providential arms of the Father.  Psalm 50, the Miserere, anticipates this when it says, “For you do not desire sacrifice or I would give it; a burnt offering you would not accept.  My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn.”  Or Psalm 39: “Sacrifice and offering you do not want; you opened my ears.  Holocaust and sin-offering you do not request; so I said, ‘See; I come with an inscribed scroll written upon me.  I delight to do you will, my God.’”
    God does not want sheep or goats or oxen, or even bread, wine, or oil.  What He wants is us: all of us.  But unlike animal or food offerings, when we give them to God, we lose nothing.  In fact, when we offer ourselves to God, we gain everything.  It’s like the exchange in the Eucharist: we give God bread and wine (which is truly meant to represent ourselves), and He transforms it by the power of His grace into the Body and Blood of Christ, a gift we could never achieve on our own, and which strengthens us to give ourselves to the Father by joining us to the one perfect sacrifice of Christ on the cross, though we celebrate it in an unbloody manner.  
    This Lent, we should recommit ourselves to smelling good.  Not because we have showered and washed off the grime of the day; not because we have put on deodorant to mask our body odor; not because we use cologne or perfume to make ourselves smell manly or womanly.  But we should seek to have the odor of holiness, a virtuous life of grace, the fragrant aroma of a life offered entirely to the providential love of the Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Hope that Doesn't Disappoint

Third Sunday of Lent–First Scrutiny
    St. Paul says today in the second reading: “we boast in hope of the glory of God.  And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  We probably associate hope more with Advent.  Or maybe when we think of hope we think of campaign slogans.  But Lent helps us to focus on hope, the theological virtue that draws us to have confidence in our salvation.
    Most of the time we use hope merely to denote a wish: I hope I win the lottery; I hope that cop didn’t see me speeding; I hope the Lions win a Super Bowl before I die.  None of those will likely happen.  But hope is more than just wishful (or maybe even delusional) thinking.  Hope draws us to God and enables us to trust that what He said would happen will happen.
    The Chosen People in the first reading today demonstrated the opposite of hope: despair.  God had promised the Chosen People that they would gain their freedom from slavery in Egypt, and that He would return them to the land He promised Abraham.  To put today’s reading in context, it comes after the Ten Plagues, including the death of the firstborn Egyptians; after the Jews had left Egypt; after they had gone through the Red Sea and the Egyptian army had been drowned.  And still, because they are thirsty, they cry out, “‘Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?’”  Even though God had proved He was trustworthy, they doubted God to do what He said He would do.  But even then, God further proved that they could trust Him, and provided them with water in a miraculous way.

    The Samaritan woman, too, was a woman bereft of hope.  We probably missed the short sentence that St. John gave as a clue of her hopelessness: “It was about noon.”  We’re used to driving to Meijer’s or Costco to pick up whatever we need at almost any time of the day or night.  But in the time of Christ, to draw water during the hottest part of the day meant that you did not want to be around others, or maybe that they didn’t want you to be around them.  She’s living with a man who is not her husband, and her five previous husbands have left her.  She likely relied on the generosity of others to survive, or possibly worked in an unsavory occupation just to feed herself.  To the Samaritan woman, God seemed far away, and probably not worthy of trust.  But God comes to her, in the Person of Jesus, to give her hope, living water that gives eternal life.  
    As we sit here on this third Sunday of Lent, do we hope in God?  Do we trust that He will fulfill His promise?  God has promised that if we follow Him daily, eternal life is the consequence.  We cannot see eternal life right now, beyond slight glimpses.  But as we choose what God has revealed is good for us, do we do so with the confidence that as our actions show that we want God more, He will not leave us hanging and dash our hopes against a rock, like the Lions always seem to do?  
    Especially during Lent, when we focus on the price of our salvation–the death of Christ, we might struggle with despair a bit.  We might wonder if the abstaining from meat on Fridays, the fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and our daily Lenten penances make any difference.  Or we might think about just what pain Christ suffered for us, and think that we are not worth it.  But God comes to us, like He came to the Samaritan woman, to tell us we are worth the price He paid, and that the little ways that we turn aside from our own will in order to focus on doing God’s will can prepare us for heaven, even if it’s happening a little at a time or even if we struggle to do our penitential practices.  Through our penitential practices, we are meant to allow the grace of God to open up our hearts even more so that they can receive more of the love of God the Father through the Holy Spirit whom God gave us at Holy Baptism.
    And you, our elect, chosen for the Easter sacraments: as we celebrate this first scrutiny, God comes to you to strengthen your hope and help you to persevere.  Christ came to you when you needed Him, and gave you the desire for the living waters which give eternal life, the saving waters of baptism.  He didn’t avoid you because of your past sins, whatever they may have been.  He came to you who did not have the hope of eternal life, which God ordinarily grants through baptism, and gave you hope to live forever with Him if you follow Him for the rest of your life and grow in love of Him.  Maybe you, like the Chosen People, have doubted if God will really do what He has promised.  At Easter, as you pass through your own Red Sea as the water is poured on your head, and as the paschal candle, the pillar of fire, leads you from darkness into light, you will see that God does fulfill His promises, and will give you new life.  You need only hold on to that hope that He inspired in you.
    Hope does not consist in mere wishing.  Theological hope holds on to the promise that God will give us eternal life if we are baptized and follow Him to the best of our ability after baptism.  That hope does not disappoint, because it is grounded in the one who loved us so much that He gave us His only Son, who suffered and died for us because He did not want us to live in despair, but wanted us to have eternal life with Him in heaven.  Allow the Holy Spirit to continue to pour hope into your hearts so that you can reach the true Promised Land, eternal happiness with God in heaven.  

Christ's Friends and Ours

Second Sunday of Lent
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  One of the great blessings of friendship consists in having someone who can urge you on when you’re being a wimp, or console you when things are legitimately difficult.  Sometimes, on our own, we don’t recognize how much we can do, until someone pushes us beyond our comfort zone.  Sometimes, on our own, we don’t realize that we don’t have to carry a burden alone; others stand by to assist us.  

    As we hear the familiar Gospel account of the Transfiguration, the Gospel we always hear on the second Sunday of Lent, I want to focus this year on the two people our Lord has beside him on Mount Tabor.  While Christ is sui generis, a unique individual because He is both God and Man, Moses and Elijah certainly assist Christ with their witness as Christ prepares for His impending Passion.  I’m not saying that Christ needed Moses and Elijah to learn something, because as God Christ had access to every piece of knowledge and bit of wisdom that He needed.  But still, it helps to have friends to urge you on towards that which is difficult.
    When we look at Moses, we see someone who carries the entire Chosen People in their exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land, from slavery to freedom.  Moses’ experience shows that, while the goal is good, people don’t always move towards what is in their best interest, and do not always trust in God.  From the very beginning, as Moses tells Pharaoh to let God’s people go, the people grumble against Moses because the change isn’t happening quick enough or easy enough.  Even after they leave Egypt because God had struck down the firstborn, they still doubt God’s ability to save them as they come to the banks of the Red Sea with the Egyptians pursuing them behind.  And even after God saves them through the waters of the Red Sea, and destroys the Egyptian army by the same waters, the Chosen People still doubt that God will provide food and water for them.  As much as Moses shows the people God’s fidelity, they still doubt.  And Moses ends up interceding for the people numerous times as God threatens to start over just with Moses.  
    When we look at Elijah, we see a prophet zealous for the Lord who works mighty deeds.  And yet, the political leadership, King Ahaz and Queen Jezebel, still promote foreign deities for the Chosen People to worship.  We think of the great religious showdown on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the prophets of Ba’al, the pagan god.  While the prophets of Ba’al fail to get the pagan deity to consume their sacrifice, Elijah pours water on his sacrifice, but fire from heaven still consumes the sacrifice and evaporates the water around the altar that Elijah had built.  Elijah then destroys the foreign prophets, but has to flee because the monarchs seek Elijah to kill him.  Elijah runs first to a broom tree and hides there, but an angel encourages him to eat so that he has enough strength for the mission.  Elijah then goes to Mount Horeb, and experiences God, not in the powerful phenomena of thunder or earthquake or fire, but in the silence of a whisper.  He feels alone, since he was the last remaining prophet of the true God at the time.  
    Christ has similarities in His mission to Moses and Elijah.  Like Moses, Christ carries the entire people, not just the Jews, who trust when they see amazing signs and miracles, but then doubt shortly after the miracles come to an end.  Christ is the one Mediator between God and men, whose blood saves not just the firstborn, but all those born of water and the Spirit through Holy Baptism.  He takes death upon Himself, in order that God’s justice against sin might be satisfied.  Like Elijah, Christ is also zealous for the Lord, and puts to death not the false prophets, but the false gods themselves, the kingdom of Satan and his minions.  Still, as the only-Begotten Son of God, He, like Elijah, stands alone as the local political leaders, like King Herod and the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, will seek to put the Lord to death, like King Ahaz and Queen Jezebel before them sought Elijah.  
    So who are our friends who push us on and console us with their experience?  Who are our Moses and Elijah?  In one sense, we can look towards good friends we have who can push us onwards despite our trials and tribulations.  These are the true friends who see the virtue we want, who see how much we might have to struggle for that virtue, but don’t let us give up on ourselves.  Or they might be the friends who see the pain and the suffering we endure, and help us to know that we’re not alone, and that others do truly care for us.  We may not have many friends like this, but even just one or two can make all the difference in the world.
    But, also important to consider are our friends who are saints.  Maybe it’s the saints from the Scriptures, who stories remind us of how God works with those who struggle for righteousness, and how God consoles those who struggle through difficult times, saints like Moses, Elijah, Job, the Apostles, the Holy Women, and others.  If we read Scripture regularly we can understand more adeptly how God works and how we can make it through difficult times.  But we also have the saints who have come after the Death and Resurrection of Jesus who help us by their example and their intercession.  When we’re struggling, do we pray to our patron saints like our name saint, our Confirmation saint, or a saint associated with our vocation or profession?  When we’re sad and feel the weight of the world, do we turn to our Blessed Mother or other saints whose lives inspire us to persevere in the midst of difficulties and struggles?  
    God made us for communion: with Him and with others.  God Himself said about Adam that it was not good to be alone.  Especially during Lent, but even during the entire year, may we rely on good friends, both those on earth and those in heaven, who will push on on when the times get tough, and comfort us when we feel down and out.  May we recognize that we are not alone, but that myriad of witnesses surround us, encouraging us towards the heavenly homeland to which we hope to return.  [Where Christ reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen.].