The Greatest Love Story

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  As a kid I disliked today’s Gospel and the Gospel we’ll hear on Good Friday, both of which are Passion Narratives (today’s from St. Matthew and Friday’s from St. John).  I disliked them because they are so long, and I already knew what happened.  The Lord celebrates the Last Supper, goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, gets arrested, goes through a sham trial, is turned over to the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, carries His cross to Golgotha, and dies.  

    As an adult, the Passion Narratives are still long.  And I still know the story.  But it’s the story of how God showed His love for us.  It’s like “The Princess Bride” or “Band of Brothers.”  I know what happens; I can probably quote a fair amount of lines.  But I return to them because they speak about the deepest meanings of life: love and sacrifice.  But as much as “The Princess Bride” and “Band of Brothers” talk about love and sacrifice, the Passion Narratives tell us about the greatest love and the greatest sacrifice.  The greatest love because God’s love for us is infinite; the greatest sacrifice because God, the source of all life, experienced death so that we, who deserved death, could return to the source of life and enjoy eternal life in heaven.
    In “Band of Brothers,” the early focus, and a theme throughout, is “Currahee,” a Cherokee word which means “we stand alone together.”  In Christ’s Passion, He stands alone.  And yet, we stand with Him now.  We stand alone together as Christ suffers for us and pays the price for sin, death, though He had no sin.  Life contends with death, as we will hear on Easter Sunday in the sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes: Mors et vita duello.  But we know that life will win.  As Westley says in “The Princess Bride”: “Death cannot stop true love.  All it can do is delay it for a while.”  Nowhere is that phrase more true than in Christ, whose heart stopped beating after He died on the cross, but whose love never stopped and will never stop for us.
    We know the story.  We know what happens.  But we need to hear it again, however long it takes, because all time comes back to this one week when the Son of David and Lord of David entered into His city with shouts of joy, and was led out of His city by a foreign government, which was cajoled to act by His own religious leaders and people, and He backed up the words He spoke at the Last Supper with action: “Greater love has no man than this: to lay down his life for his friends.”  This is the greatest love story, the greatest sacrifice story of all time, greater even than “The Princess Bride” and “Band of Brothers.”  But it’s not just a story; it’s the truth.  And the truth has set us free from sin and death.  [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]

"Jesus Our Brother, Kind and Good"

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord
    Merry Christmas!  One of the non-theological things that I enjoyed most about seminary was the fraternity.  Now, when we think of fraternity and college students, our minds probably turn to John Belushi and rowdy houses filled with boys in men’s bodies, drinking, debauching, and the like.  But I mean fraternity in the sense of brotherhood.  I have two younger sisters, so going from that to a seminary with 80-110 young men my age was a big, but welcome shift.  It was good to have other guys with whom I could play the board game Risk or the video game Call of Duty, share the joys and struggles of the very fast-paced and filled-to-the-brim activities of preparing for the priesthood, play ultimate frisbee, and watch “Band of Brothers,” not to mention enjoying an adult beverage once we had come of age.  

    So, as we celebrate Christmas, my mind this year turned to Christ our brother.  This is part of the great news of Christmas and the Incarnation.  Jesus became our brother.  He took on our human nature, though without sin.  I’m sure the neighbor kids at Nazareth–where the Savior spent His youth after His family fled Bethlehem for Egypt, and then moved to Nazareth after leaving Egypt–played games with the young Messiah, talked about their joys and sorrows, and took time to enjoy His company.  
    But beyond the very human daily activities, Christ chose to stand in solidarity with us, to be united with us in all the things that made us great, and even took upon Himself all the sins that are the worst of us.  [That’s why we read the entire genealogy tonight, which I usually don’t do: to show that] Jesus became our brother, a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a son of King David, and even joined with us in the darker parts and stories of our human family, names like Tamar, the wife of Uriah, Manasseh, whose wickedness led to the Babylonian Exile.  Christ was our brother with all the holy men and women who came before Him, and Christ was our brother with all the evil men and women who came before Him.  
    And because He is our brother, this gives us a certain familiarity.  This is certainly true for priests who are ordained to act in His Name.  One of my favorite lines of prayer comes from the Preface for the Chrism Mass: “…with a brother’s kindness he also chooses men to become sharers in his sacred ministry through the laying on of hands.”  But it’s also true for all the faithful, not just priests.  We hear it in the devotional Christmas carol, “Jesus Our Brother, Kind and Good,” whose title is the first line of the song.  We hear it in the third verse of the Christmas carol, “O Holy Night,” as we sing, “Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother.”  We read it in the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2, verses 11-12: “Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them ‘brothers,’ saying: ‘I will proclaim your name to my brothers, in the midst of the assembly I will praise you.’”  
    But the mystery of the Incarnation is not simply about a fellow human who did some amazing things and lived a holy life.  The Redeemer is not only our brother; He is also our God.  He is not just a good man; or a good teacher; or a person who live an exemplary life.  He is the Eternal God, Son of the Eternal Father.  If He were only our brother, He could not save us, anymore than Abraham, Moses, or Elijah could save us, though they were holy and upright and allowed to work great deeds in God’s Name.  But, if He were not our brother, we would not feel the camaraderie with God that God desired us to have, like He had with Adam and Eve when He walked with them in the cool of the evening, as Genesis 3:8 says.  In the Messiah, the divinity of God, whom we cannot approach and before whom the proper response is to fall on our needs (again quoting “O Holy Night”), comes to us in a way that we can accept and feel comfortable, so that we could imagine, as the country singer Thomas Rhett does, having a beer with Jesus.  It all comes together in Christ, so that we can sing another great hymn, though not specifically about Christmas: “Jesus my Lord, my God, my all / How can I love thee as I ought?”  
    That is why our hearts are moved with great love and tenderness as we think on the Christ Child, lying in a manger, but also why I bowed before that same manger, and why we will all genuflect today as we profess our faith that, “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”  In Jesus Christ, we encounter both our Lord who frees us from the bonds of sin and death, and our brother who shares with us in all that is truly good.  
    Today, as we come to receive Him in the Sacrament of the Eucharist at Holy Communion, we approach our Lord and our brother.  Probably, we each emphasize one or the other, but both are equally true.  Our goal as followers of Christ is to live both in balance.  If we tend to focus on Jesus as Lord most of the time, then perhaps allow a little more familiarity in your life with Him, and make it a point to remember that, aside from sin, He did not deem it unbecoming to take on all that it meant to be human: from soiling His diapers, to enjoying a good meal, to sitting with friends and just talking about life.  If we tend to focus on Jesus as our brother most of the time, then remember that our brother created all the heavens and the earth, and is our King, whom the angels dare not even look upon out of reverence and awe.  Both Lord and Brother come together in Christ, and are present with us here tonight, in you, the People He has made His own; in His Word, proclaimed to us and alive for us; in me, His brother who, despite my unworthiness, He chose to act in His Name and with His power; and most especially in the Eucharist, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of our Lord and our Brother who shares with us all that it truly means to be human and redeems us from all the fallen realities that were not supposed to be part of being human, but which we introduced into the world through our disobedience.  On this Holy Night/Day, may we remember and put into action in our lives the reality that Christ is both our Lord and our Brother, through the words of the hymn:
 

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is our Lord!  O praise His name forever!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!

No Spirit of Slavery and Fear

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  A week or so ago I felt a little overwhelmed with all the stuff that had to get accomplished, and frustrated with things that I wanted to go a particular way and didn’t.  As I sometimes do, I called up my best friend to vent a little bit and hopefully get a little sympathy.  After I had finished my pity party, and explaining how tough my life was at that point, my friend said something to the effect of: “You act like life is supposed to be easy, and that you’re supposed to be perfectly happy on this earth.  Life is a fight until we hopefully make it to Purgatory or Heaven, and then we can rest easy and not have to struggle.”  What my friend lacks in empathy, he makes up for in straightforwardness.  
    I thought of that as I prepared my homily because of this line from St. Paul: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but a spirit of adoption, through which we cry out, Abba (Father).”  When we look at the state of the world, and even sometimes the state of the Church (or at least parts of the Church), it can be very easy to give in to this mentality of “woe is me!”  We live in a fallen world, and so many things are not the way that they should be.  Further, as the world turns more and more away from Christ, the battle for us intensifies and calls for more fortitude to be loving but firm witnesses to the Gospel.  We also have to deal with others’ sinfulness and sinful actions (just as others have to deal with our own sinfulness and sinful actions), and it gets tiring.  And then there are simply the things that don’t go according to plan, not because of any ill will, but simply because our world is fallen and things don’t always go the way we intend or hope.

    How easy to wallow in the mud of self-pity!  And yet, we did not receive a spirit of fear, but a spirit of adoption, which gives us courage to keep fighting.  God does not call us to cower, but to fight on, each day, for His kingdom.  To return to the “Lord of the Rings,” which I reference all too often, we are each Frodo, carrying a heavy burden to Mount Doom, so that the world can be made right and evil can be vanquished.  And sometimes we say to Sam (those walking with us to Mount Doom) that we’re tired, that we can’t make it.  Sometimes Sam even has to carry us.  But in the end, Frodo finds strength to complete his task.
    Or, to reference another set of DVDs I own, I think back to EZ company in the HBO series, “Band of Brothers.”  Their task was monumental.  Nazi forces were well-positioned all throughout Europe, and fortified against external attacks.  Europe seemed lost.  But the men of EZ company decided to jump out of planes that were going to flying into Nazi-occupied France so that the men who would be storming the beaches of Normandy that following morning would have a better chance to establish their own foothold, from which they could liberate Europe.  EZ company had great victories, like on D-Day, but they also had epic failures, like Operation Markt Garden in Holland.  Days stretched into weeks which stretched into months which stretched into D-Day plus 336 days.  They sometimes didn’t have enough ammunition, were surrounded, lost friends, had to train new paratroopers, and even had to put up with bad leaders.  But they never gave up.  They never surrendered.  They kept fighting on.

    While we can apply this analogy aptly to the world, it also applies to our own spiritual life.  Our own souls are often battlefields, or have paths that lead to attitudes or habits that are contrary to God.  It seems like we all-too-often try to root out the same sins, sometimes taking two steps forward and one step back, or even one step forward and two steps back.  Opening ourselves to God’s grace to allow Him to sanctify us seems like a path that will never end, and fatigue can hit us after trying so hard and not always achieving the success we desire.
    In the midst of that, keep that phrase that we heard today in your mind: “God did not give us a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.”  In Confirmation, the Holy Spirit gave us many gifts, including the gift of fortitude.  Fortitude is the virtue which helps us to keep pressing on when something is hard, to continue to fight in the face of danger, to stand up for what is right, no matter the cost.  If today weren’t a Sunday, we would celebrate St. Apollinaris in the 1962 calendar.  He was a disciple of St. Peter, and traveled with him from Antioch (where Peter founded a local church) to Rome.  He was then made the bishop of Ravenna, and preached the Gospel, while enduring many persecutions.  The pagans locked him in prison and exiled him.  St. Apollinaris died by being beaten to death in AD 79.  St. Apollinaris, like all of the martyrs, are great witnesses to us of what our acceptance of the gift of fortitude can look like if we seek it.  In those early days of the church, not much went as the Christians hoped.  Many rejected their message of the Gospel.  Those who did accept it often struggled with leaving their old life behind (as we especially hear from St. Paul in his epistles to the Corinthians).  Some converts tried to mix their pagan beliefs in with the Gospel (which is where Gnosticism starts to appear).  And more often than not, being a public follower of Christ meant imprisonment or exile at best, and, very likely, execution in a horrible manner at worst.  But they kept it up.  Not because it was easy; not because they were as successful as they wanted to be; not because everything went well, but because they had the spirit of adoption as sons and daughters in the Son of God.  And they knew that remaining faithful as God’s children was worth any punishment or seeming failure that could happen.  
    So today, recommit yourselves, as I also will do, to bringing the light of Christ into a world that prefers darkness.  Recommit yourselves, as I also will do, to staying faithful to Christ when so many walk away from Him.  Do not give in to the spirit of slavery and fall back into fear, but stand strong in the spirit of adoption as co-heirs with Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

"Tonight is the Night of Nights"

Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter

    On 5 June, 1944, as the 101st Airborne Division waited anxiously in England, Paratrooper George Luz of Easy Company read aloud a letter from the Col. Robert Sink, at first even imitating his voice: “Tonight is the night of nights.  As you read this, you are en route to the great adventure for which you trained for over two years.”  The next day, 6 June 1944, D-Day, they would jump into Nazi-occupied Normandy, and begin to change the tide of World War II, which, up to that point, had favored the Nazis.
    As we listened to the Old Testament readings, all seven of them, God took us back to all the ways that He had trained us for this night, the true night of nights, “when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld,” as the Exsultet proclaimed.  Even from the very dawn of creation, God was pointing us to the moment when His Incarnate Son would redeem the world that would fall at our hands, and forever destroy death and sin.
    We heard about Abraham and Isaac: how Isaac, the beloved Son, willingly walked up the mountain to be sacrificed, though God stayed the hand of Abraham and gave him a ram instead to sacrifice.  We heard how God led His Chosen People from slavery in Egypt, and how the Chosen People passed through the Red Sea safely with God’s help, while the forces of evil who pursued them were destroyed by the waters.  We heard from Isaiah how God would marry us to Himself, and how He would give us water to drink and food to eat that would truly satisfy us.  We heard Baruch prophesy how we had walked away from the Lord, but God brought us back, and has made known to us how we truly may be happy.  And lastly, we heard Ezekiel tell us that, though we had profaned God’s holy Name, He would display His power and holiness among us, and give us a new spirit so that we could be faithful to our covenant with Him, and be His holy people.  Not for two years, but for two thousand years, God was training us for the Resurrection.
    We have also been training over these past 40 days through our Lenten observances.  We took upon ourselves little “deaths” so that we could be prepared for the new life of the resurrection.  We recalled that even the enjoyable things of life are dust, and that we are called to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.  We fasted and abstained; we engaged in prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  
    And you, my dear Elect and Candidate, and those who will receive sacraments tonight: you, too, have been training for weeks and months, preparing to open yourself up to become children of God, to become members of the Church, and to grow in your own initiation in the Catholic Church in which some of your were baptized.  You prayed over how God had led you out of the darkness of sin into the light of this night, and how He will walk with you, helping you to be His faithful follower, not only united to Him but also bearing witness to Him by word and deed.  
    You, like Easy Company, are being dropped behind enemy lines.  The fallen world, though Christ has conquered sin and death, still fights against Him.  But, like the Israelites and the Egyptians, with God on your side, you cannot be conquered.  God will crush your true enemy, Satan and all his fallen angels, and protect you through the waters of Baptism, which some of you are receiving tonight.  Through Confirmation, you will receive the Holy Spirit, who will go before you like a pillar of fire to light your way, and will give you the strength to witness to Christ by what you say and what you do.  And through the Most Holy Eucharist, the blood of the truly unblemished Lamb of God will be painted over the lintels of your lips, so that the angel of death will not smite you, but you will pass-over, unharmed by eternal death because you have received eternal life within you.  
    You, too, as with every person here, each have your own part to play in winning other souls for Christ and conquering the enemy.  Not everyone is expected to be a general, or a medic, or a radio tech.  But God has equipped each of you with certain gifts which will help His victory be spread and eternal life be shared with others.  From this point on, you cannot sit on the sidelines as a spectator.  You are an integral part of God’s mission to conform the entire world to Himself, which really means helping each person find true happiness by living like Christ in total obedience to the Father.  You have found the pearl of great price in Christ.  Do not hide that same treasure from others who desire it.  
    I close my homily with excerpts of the words of Col. Sink, which though written about the impending invasion of Normandy, are also aptly written about the victory Christ won tonight by His Resurrection: “Tomorrow throughout the whole of our homeland…the bells will ring out the tidings that…liberation has begun.  […] Imbued with faith…let us annihilate the enemy where found.  May God be with each of you….  By your actions let us justify His faith in us.”  Christ has liberated us from sin and death.  Filled with faith in him, let us put down the works of sin and death.  May our response to God’s grace be for the glory of His Name, and confirm the name that tonight we all will share: Catholic Christian.

Nuts!

 Sunday within the Octave of Christmas
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Probably my favorite mini-series is the HBO story, “Band of Brothers,” about the Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Paratroopers in World War II.  Episode 6 deals with the Battle of the Bulge, and there is a scene of the paratroopers at Christmas, pinned down and surrounded at Bastogne.  The soldiers have dug foxholes, as best as they can, in the cold, hard ground, with snow all around them.  There is not enough ammo.  And while there is tree cover, the Germans continue to pepper the Army paratroopers with mortars that blow the tops of the trees from their trunks.  Many of the soldiers lack adequate winter gear.  It was not a great situation.
    In one scene, Col. Sink addresses the men of Easy Company: “Men, General McCauliff wishes us all a Merry Christmas.  What’s merry about all this, you ask?  Just this: we’ve stopped cold everything that’s been thrown at us, from the north, east, south, and west.  Now, two days ago, the German commander demanded our honorable surrender, to save the USA encircled troops from total annihilation.  The German commander received the following reply: ‘To the German commander: nuts!’”

Col. Sink addressing Easy Company

    As we are assembled on this Sunday within the Octave of Christmas, perhaps, honestly, we’re feeling like the men of Easy Company.  It certainly has been an interesting year.  I know that early in the year there were inquiries about, and even a possible visit from, the Institute of the Good Shepherd providing future sacramental needs for those who attend this Mass, and then Bishop Boyea announced that some guy, unknown to most, if not all, here, was going to become the new pastor.  What was this priest like?  Did he celebrate the Extraordinary Form?  Was he kind?  Was he orthodox?  What did this mean for St. Matthew as a part of the Catholic Community of Flint?  Maybe you’re feeling like the jury is still out on this new pastor.
    And then we had the infamous Traditionis custodes.  I know that it was a time where we wondered what would happen.  We heard about some dioceses where the Extraordinary Form was cancelled entirely and immediately.  Or some had one last celebration before being shut down.  I know it was tough to wait, but our bishop lovingly allowed us to continue to celebrate according to the usus antiquior, and even came out to celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation for us.
    And then last weekend we had the responsa ad dubia from the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments.  That seemed like another bomb, and right now Bishop Boyea has said that we’ll keep to the status quo while he further reviews the document.  And that’s just on the worldwide scale.  In our own daily lives we have attacks and frustrations with which we have to deal, sometimes even from family and friends.  Maybe we feel like Easy Company, surrounded by enemies, not having adequate amounts of ammunition or winter clothing, with trees exploding to the left and right.  Sometimes it probably feels like friendly fire, instead of from the enemy.  So what do we do?
    First and foremost, this is a time of great spiritual benefit.  Whenever things are most difficult and frustrating, there is the opportunity for the greatest spiritual growth.  Yes, our Lord did many great things (healings, exorcisms, even raising people from the dead) while He was ministering around Judea.  But His greatest accomplishment was achieved through His Passion and Death, and subsequent Resurrection.  We can choose to capitalize on this time, or we can let it go to waste.  Do we let these struggles draw us closer to the Cross of Christ, or do they push us farther away from Him?  Do our challenges encourage us to embrace Holy Mother Church all the more, or do we look for consolation in those who have walked away from the Church of Christ, which is necessary for salvation?  Just as St. Catherine of Siena and St. Bridget of Sweden, or St. Theresa of Avila and St. Robert Bellarmine became great saints that proved the holiness of the Church even in the midst of schisms and heresies, so we have the opportunity to become great saints today.

    Secondly, the saint who would be celebrated today except that his feast day is on a Sunday, St. Stephen, is a great example of the power of prayer to change hearts and situations.  Recall that St. Stephen was one of the first deacons of the Church, appointed by the apostles themselves.  St. Stephen starts preaching Christ immediately in Jerusalem, and getting into debates and arguments with the chief priests and scribes.  Even though Stephen encounters many attacks on the identity of Jesus, Stephen counters their arguments at each turn.  This infuriates others so much that he is put on trial, and then condemned to be stoned to death.  His death, in the Acts of the Apostles, is very similar to the death of our Lord.  
    Standing at his death, and consenting to it, was a man named Saul.  No doubt the Church in Jerusalem was nervous about their future.  This man Saul was starting to round up the disciples of the Lord and imprison them for heresy.  No doubt, as they came together for Mass, they implored the Lord to save them from their enemies.  They likely fasted and prayed that their persecution would come to an end.  And it did, in the most likely way ever: Saul was converted, and became the greatest missionary in the history of Catholicism.  This was probably not what the Church in Jerusalem had in mind; but it was much better.  And I like to imagine that St. Stephen, in heaven, was pleading with the Lord to give Saul that extra bit of grace that would change him from a persecutor to a promoter of the faith.  
    There has been no small amount of blogposts written, and Facebook articles shared, and opinions expressed, some from true experts, some from those who only claim to be experts.  Imagine if those same people, instead of being Social Media warriors, used that time for prayer and fasting for Holy Mother Church (and, I imagine, some of them do).  Imagine what great graces could be accomplished, in us or in others.  We could be the Stephens imploring God’s grace upon the Sauls of our day.
    The reality is that we are at battle, but most of all with the world, the flesh, and the devil.  We are surrounded, and we often don’t always think that we have the equipment that we need to be successful.  But we do have the food which sustains our souls, which pushes us to be the saints God calls us to be in the times God calls us to be, and that is the Eucharist.  In the Eucharist we find the sustenance to keep fighting, not to surrender, and to suffer through some devastating attacks.  But just as the men who made up Easy Company and who braved the cold of Bastogne for a cause greater than themselves, so we, men and women, can brave these times, remaining in the loving embrace of Holy Mother Church, and become a Greatest Generation of our own in the Church.  
    At the end of Episode 6 of “Band of Brothers,” explanatory notes are given.  They read: “On December 26, 1944, General Patton’s Third Army broke through the German lines, allowing supplies to flow in and the wounded to be evacuated.  The story of ‘The Battle of the Bulge’ as told today, is one of Patton coming to the rescue of the encircled 101st Airborne.  No member of the 101st has ever agreed that the division needed to be rescued.”  God will help supply us with all we need.  Sometimes, no matter how exhausted we are, we have to keep fighting.  He has given us the victory already, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Currahee!

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Why such difficulty to enter heaven?  Jesus says that the way to heaven is narrow, and many are not strong enough to enter.  Certainly, the easy answer is that our fallen human nature tends towards things that it should not want.  We call this concupiscence.  But I think that there’s a larger point that Jesus was making, and it didn’t really occur to me until around midday this/Saturday morning.
    For those of you who don’t know, I had been training to run the Crim, and had signed up to do the full 10-mile race.  I had never run 10 miles in my life (and this may be the only time I do so).  I knew I had to train, and in May asked one of the Powers graduates who ran cross country, Ethan Hamilton, for advice.  He suggested that I try to run 5 miles 3-4 times per week, and 7.5 miles once per week.  Because of my parish and State Police responsibilities, and especially never knowing when I would be needed for an emergency, I ran around the edge of the parking lot.  So you’re aware, the edge of our parking lot is about four-tenths of a mile, so I was running a little bit more than 12 laps for 5 miles, and around 18 laps for 7.5.  It was not the most entertaining path to run.  I trained pretty well in May, really well in June, and then in July things started to taper off a bit as my resolve wavered, and in the past few weeks, I did not run as much as I should, and I had only done one 7.5 mile run in probably 2 months. 
    So, I trained, and yesterday morning, I ran the CRIM.  I was nervous (I don't know why; it’s only running and I didn’t have a goal for time, I simply wanted to finish and try not to walk any of it).  One of our parish families helped me navigate getting to parking and getting around before the race began.  And then the race started.  My parents had come (they have both run marathons, including Boston) to support me, as well.  As I ran the race, there were people lining the streets, cheering everyone on.  But what I noticed is that, when I saw parishioners, or when I saw Troops from our Flint Post who were working traffic, I got an extra boost. 
    I had been warned about the dreaded Bradley Hills, the steep inclines on Bradley Street that occur around miles 5-6.  Honestly, and I don’t say this to brag, but they weren’t that bad for me.  And part of the reason was a word that I said when running up them (and all the hills): Currahee.  I learned the word from watching “Band of Brothers,” an HBO miniseries on Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division of the Army in World War II.  Currahee was the name of a hill they had to run up and down at Camp Toccoa for training.  And the word Currahee is a Cherokee word which means, “We stand alone.”  That word connected me to the heroes who worked hard to be prepared so that, when they landed behind enemy lines the night of D-Day; when they were surrounded and short of ammo in the snowy forest of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge; as they ran up Eagle’s Nest in some of the last holdouts of Nazi Germany; they could conquer any force that came their way.    I mention the CRIM because I realized that I was able to accomplish what I did because of others.  If I would have tried the CRIM alone, and had no support from parishioners and Troopers, I hope I would have finished, but maybe I would have walked, and maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all. 

    Salvation is hard, getting to heaven is hard, because we so often try to go it alone.  If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob couldn’t get to heaven on their own; if Moses and Elijah couldn’t get to heaven on their own, then we probably don’t have much of a chance either.  Heaven is only possible when we support each other.
    The most important support in salvation is, of course, Jesus, without whom salvation is impossible.  Without Jesus, we can do nothing that will get us to heaven, no matter how many “good deeds” we do.  But how often do we try to make it on our own good deeds and best behavior?  And how often do we not even live up the weak standards we set for our behavior?
    It’s also important to work with each other to get to heaven.  Again, without Jesus, no matter how many supporters we have, we can’t get there.  But maybe we need to focus more on helping each other get to heaven.  It’s the reason the Church exists: as a band of brothers (and sisters) who help each other get to heaven.  Coming for Mass is the chance to root each other on, as well as to partner up again with Jesus through worthy reception of Holy Communion.  Confession is saying sorry for the ways that we tried to make it on our own, and weren’t successful.  But we need each other.  It’s not simply me and Jesus.  Jesus has a Mystical Body, and that Mystical Body is the Church, where we are assembled to help each other on the way to salvation.  That’s my mission as your pastor: to help you get to heaven.  I hope your mission as parishioners is to help me get to heaven.
    St. Paul compares life to a race.  He says in his second letter to St. Timothy: “I have competed well; I have finished the race…From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me.”  In the CRIM today I was given strength by the parishioners and Troops who waved and cheered as I passed them by.  I was able to finish (my official time was 1:34:58; not bad for a first-timer) my race because of others.  Heaven is not necessarily hard because of the moral demands that Jesus makes on each one of us.  It’s hard, and many fail to enter, because they try without Jesus, and without their brothers and sisters in the Church.  Don’t run alone; you’ll never make it.  Run with Jesus; don’t simply focus on yourself; help others get to heaven.  It will make the race much easier.