Clogging the Drain

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Growing up, my dad and I were outnumbered, three females to two males.  One of the practical realities of having three women in the house was that hair could be found everywhere.  In most places it was just an inconvenience (like on couches, countertops, etc.).  But, when it came to bathroom sinks and tubs, it had a more significant impact.  Yes, men also shed hair a little, but when long hair starts going down drains, it has the tendency to clump up and block the drain, creating a blockage that can slow or even stop water flowing down the drain, requiring Drano or snaking the drain, if it gets bad enough.
    Pride is like the clumps of hair that blocks the drain of God’s grace.  Pride puts up an barrier (the Latin word is obex) to the flow of God’s life that He gives through the sacraments and the sacramentals (like the Rosary, daily devotions, reading of Scripture, etc.).  The opposite of pride is humility, which comes up in all our readings today, if not explicitly, implicitly.  
    What is it about humility that makes it such a great virtue?  Our own times don’t seem to value humility, and probably would see humility as a denigration of our self-esteem.  We live in a world where, if I think it, it must be true.  That’s the logical reasoning behind the phrase, “live your truth.”  It makes the individual the judge of reality, rather than starting with reality and adjusting to what reality gives us.  Imagine for a second that your truth is that gravity doesn’t exist.  You will quickly learn that “your truth” doesn’t really matter as you try to walk off a cliff.
    Humility does not primarily consist, however, in self-deprecation.  Humility is, according to such saints as St. Thomas Aquinas, whose feast day we celebrated last Wednesday, and St. Teresa of Avila, the acknowledgment of the truth.  Pride goes above who we are; self-deprecation does not give ourselves enough credit.  The truth stands in the middle, where we recognize who we truly are and who we are not.
    So how does humility mean a clean pipe, not filled with clogs of the hair of pride?  Humility allows our hearts to be open to God’s grace because it recognizes that we stand in need of God’s grace.  And then, when God’s grace flows, it allows us to accomplish what God wants and what will truly make us happy.  If I don’t think I need God because of my pride, or if I don’t think God would ever want to work with me (self-deprecation), I close myself off to God’s grace, and therefore close myself off to the power that allows me to do truly great things, which are only possible by God’s grace.  If I act as if I am God, why would I open myself up to God’s help?  If I don’t think I have anything good or worthy in me, I wouldn’t think that God would send His grace to me anyway, and would miss out on those opportunities.  
    God chooses the humble because He knows He can work with them.  The people “humble and lowly” from the first reading receive refuge and safety from God because they know they need Him, rather than trusting in political power, whether of themselves or of neighboring kingdoms.  The ones the world considers fools, “the lowly and despised of the world” from our second reading, God elevates because His power can work through them.  If we could have saved ourselves we would have done it.  But we couldn’t.  Even the best couldn’t open up heaven, because pride is exactly what closed it off.  Adam and Eve wanted to be gods on their own terms, even though, when they didn’t try to be gods God walked with them and provided everything they needed.  They had a healthy love of God and each other, as well as the creation entrusted to their care.  Only when they strove to be gods on their own terms did they begin to hide from God and hide their bodies from each other, and eventually even the animals started to avoid them.  

Church of the Beatitudes in the Holy Land

   The Beatitudes of the Gospel show us ways to be humble.  The poor in spirit are those who know that they need God; those who mourn know that all true comfort comes from God; the meek do not strive after things beyond them; those who hunger and thirst for righteousness know that it cannot come merely from their own efforts; the merciful recognize they are not perfect and need to receive and show forgiveness; the clean of heart understand that not all their desires should be followed; the peacemakers aim for the peace that comes when people receive what is their due; those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness know that they do not always have to restore right order on their own, but that true righteousness comes from God; those who are injured for the sake of Jesus understand that vengeance belongs to God, and He will repay, either through allowing repentance or in the justice which only God can perfectly give.  Those are tall orders, but when we live opposite the beatitudes, we clog our souls with blockages to God’s grace and we live in the misery that is the opposite of beatitude.  
    As we get closer to Lent, perhaps now is a good time to think of how your Lenten practices can help you grow in humility.  I know I still have a long ways to grow in this virtue that allows me to be a conduit of God’s grace.  May God, especially through the Sacrament of Penance, snake our souls with His mercy so that we can live a humble life, and allow God to do powerful things through us by His grace. 

Buddy and Jesus

Nativity of the Lord–At the Vigil Mass/At Night

    One of the newer Christmas movies that has become a staple of most people’s Christmas movie watching is “Elf” starring Will Ferrell.  It’s hard to believe, but it came out in 2003!  For those who are not fans of Will Ferrell and didn’t watch the movie, “Elf” follows Buddy the Elf, a human child who was raised by elves at the North Pole, even though he is much larger than they, and Buddy’s quest to find his real dad, who works for a publisher in New York City.  Buddy goes from the innocence of working with the elves for Santa to the Big Apple and all that New York City entails.  One of the many classic lines from the movie is said by a narwhal who looks like the animals from the 1964 Christmas movie, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,”: “Bye Buddy, hope you find your dad!”  
    In many ways, Christmas is the opposite theme of “Elf.”  Instead of humanity, represented by Buddy, searching out his dad, the true meaning of Christmas is that our heavenly Father, through the Incarnation of His Beloved Son, sought us out.  God did not abandon us, like Buddy’s father, Walter, did.  Instead, we ran away from God by sinning.  Adam and Eve rejected God in their pride and by their disobedience, and created a chasm between us and God that only God could close.  Throughout the centuries God our Father sought us out in love, and showed us ways that we could approach him and reject sin.  But time and time again we returned to sin because it felt better, or because, in our own pride, we didn’t want anyone else telling us what to do.  God gave us the Law to teach us, and the prophets to clarify how God had created the world and how to live justly.  But we disobeyed the law, and ignored or even killed the prophets so that we didn’t have to hear the voice of God.  But God did not leave us to the death that comes from sin.

    God came to us in a way that would disarm our pride: through a tiny baby.  Jesus took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and was born for us [tomorrow,] Christmas Day, as the beginning of the way that God the Father would reconcile us to Himself.  Buddy the Elf, though naïve, did not always endear himself to Walter.  Christ, born in the humblest of conditions from the humblest of parents, was not naïve, but truly innocent, and, especially in His infancy, we couldn’t help but love Him.  Throughout the rest of His life, He would show us just how much the Father loves us, even to the point of shedding His Precious Blood on the cross to remove the chasm between God and us and open for us eternal salvation in heaven.  There is no greater love that God could have shown than humbling Himself to take on our human nature, and then, though innocent, laying down freely his life for us so that we didn’t have to endure eternal death in Hell.
    But while the Incarnation, God-made-man, is the greatest Christmas gift of all, we still have to accept that gift.  And like the Central Park Rangers who try to stop Santa, there are those who don’t want to see us accept the gift of eternal salvation, within and without us.  Outside of us, there are fallen angels who do not want to see us reunited with God.  They send us temptations and try to get us to fall into the same trap Adam and Eve fell in as they rejected God’s rules because they wanted to do it their own way, and disobey God.  Inside of us, even after we’re baptized, we still have concupiscence, that drive to disobey God.  We would rather be our own boss, our own god, even, than serve the true God.  Whether from within or without, when we tell lies, even small, white lies; when we skip Mass out of laziness or lack of interest; when we fail to pray every day; when we allow our desires to take control of us; when we use others as means to an end, no matter how good our intentions, we show God that we do not want Him as our Father.  We show God through our actions that we don’t want to receive the best Christmas gift ever: the gift of eternal life.  And God, because He loves, us, respects our free will; He will never force His salvation on us.
    But, as a loving Father, He will also never stop searching for us, seeking to draw us to Himself.  And even if we do claim God as our Father and avoid rejecting Him through mortal sin, He works each day to draw us closer and closer to Him, through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can receive all the good things He desires for His children.  
    So today let us recommit ourselves to our heavenly Father.  We don’t have to travel from the North Pole to New York City to find Him.  He is right here, in this church, offering His love for us.  Accept that love that so wanted you that He humbled Himself and truly became for us a little baby.  And show that acceptance by the choices you make each day, the love you give back to God through obedience and love to Him, which is the only gift He desires from you.  O come, let us adore Him. 

Peace

Solemnity of Pentecost

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  One of the most striking parts of Pope Leo XIV’s election (aside from the fact that the cardinals elected a pope from the United States) was his first greeting.  As he stepped out on the loggia, and we saw him for the first time, he said, “La pace sia con tutti voi,” which, translated into English, means: “Peace be with you all” or simply, “Peace be with you.”  What struck me is that these were the words of the risen Christ when He appeared in the Upper Room after the Resurrection, which we heard in today’s Gospel.  This 266th successor of St. Peter made his own, as his first words, the words of Christ to the troubled disciples.  His desire, as that of Christ’s was that His followers might have peace.
    Peace is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, whose descent upon those same disciples at Pentecost fifty days after the Resurrection of Christ we celebrate today.  We list peace as a fruit of the Holy Spirit, based upon Galatians 5:22-23, a list of the virtues that one should exhibit when the Holy Spirit dwells in a person.  Peace should be a hallmark of our lives as followers of Christ, those who have received the Holy Spirit first through Holy Baptism, and then through Holy Confirmation.  
    Often when we think of peace, we think of it as something external, concerning countries and their relationships with other countries.  I daily pray for peace in the Holy Land, and what tends to be on my heart is the cessation of violence and war in the land where the Prince of Peace walked.  But peace is not meant only for over there.  Peace starts right here, in our lives: in our souls and in our hearts.
    Peace goes beyond stopping violence or war.  The Biblical meaning of peace, or shalom in Hebrew, It means a wholeness to the person, a reality of fulfillment in God.  It recognizes that we have nothing to fear because, as St. Paul says in his first epistle to the Corinthians, “all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.”  Or, to say it more simply with the words of a campy, devotional song, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.”  
    While nations can break peace between themselves by starting fighting, the peace that comes as a gift of the Holy Spirit no one can take from us.  If we lose peace in ourselves, we gave it away.  We allowed something to enter in and pushed aside the peace that the Holy Spirit wants us to have, the peace that allowed martyrs to suffer for the faith serenely, even though it involved great amounts of pain and suffering.  It is, as St. Teresa of Avila said: “Let nothing disturb you, / Let nothing frighten you, / All things are passing away: / God never changes. / Patience obtains all things / Whoever has God lacks nothing; / God alone suffices.”  When we recognize who God is and what He does for His beloved children, then nothing need worry us or try to convince us to give away our peace.
    Do we ask for this fruit of the Holy Spirit?  Do we seek out peace and desire it to fill our lives and demonstrate itself in our lives and our interactions with others?  Or does the lust to dominate seem more attractive to us?  Would we rather lack peace and seem to have more control over others than they have over us?  Because there is always a bigger fish.  There is always someone else who will lord over us as we have lorded it over others.
    To have peace within ourselves means that we seek to order our lives in the way that God intends: our bodily desires subject to our reason; our reason subject to our souls; our souls subject to God.  Adam and Eve lived this sort of life before the Fall in the Garden of Eden.  But when they decided to disobey God, they shattered that order that brought them peace: their souls were no longer subject to God, their minds were no longer subject to their souls, and their bodies were no longer subject to their minds.  So they had to cover themselves for fear that the other would seek to dominate and take advantage of each other’s body, though they were of one flesh.  They quickly blamed each other for the fault to which they both assented, because they were afraid of the other having some priority of spiritual power over each other.

    So how do we have peace?  How do regain that which Christ gave to us at Easter?  Though we have received the Holy Spirit in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, we still recognize that our interior and exterior lives do not always fall into order.  If we wish to have peace, then starting with ourselves, we have to live in a rational way, not simply giving in to the desires of our body.  And to do this, we practice bodily asceticism like fasting or abstinence.  By denying ourselves from some bodily good temporarily, we remind our bodies that they are subject to higher goods that our minds perceive.  We also make sure that our minds are formed properly by truth, and not by falsehood, or even by conjecture or conspiracy.  We should watch how we form our minds, and what we allow in.  Does our intellectual diet include solid foods of truth, or is it simply the candy of gossip and jumping to conclusions?  Lastly, we subject our souls to God through obedience to what He has revealed, especially when it is difficult or doesn’t come naturally.  The Church is a sure guide of knowing the will of God, and helps us to order our life in the way God originally intended through its moral teachings.  
    Pope Leo XIV reminded us in his first words as pope that Christ wants us to have peace.  The gift of the Risen Christ is peace, which is given as a fruit of our reception of the Holy Spirit.  May this same Holy Spirit, who descended upon the Apostles, the Blessed Mother, and the disciples at Pentecost, give us peace at all times, the peace the world cannot give, the peace that comes from ordering our lives to God: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Battling the Liar

Dedication of St. Michael the Archangel
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I tend to quote country songs a lot, and given that country songs have been described as “three chords and the truth,” it’s not surprising that they can draw one closer to God and His truth.  One such song that connected with our celebration of St. Michael the Archangel today is by a country artist who recently gained Genesee County connections: Jelly Roll.  
    The song he sang is called “Liar” and to me it speaks about the voice of the one against whom St. Michael fights: the devil.  Jelly Roll sings about how he let the devil “drive around my mind” and “played me like a fool.”  Some of the lies that the devil tells are: “Drink another whiskey / Pop another pill / Money makes you happy / Heaven isn’t real / You won’t find nobody to love / Because your heart’s too broke.”  But he recognizes those lines for the lies that they are, trying to keep him down in the suggestions in his head, in the dreams he has at night, promising to be his friend, but the devil’s just “blowin’ smoke” because he’s “nothing but a liar.”  

Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome

    The work of St. Michael is precisely to foil the lies of the devil.  He fights for Christ, who is the Truth, and works to cast Satan and the fallen angels away from us, who can sometimes be so susceptible to the lies of the prince of this world.  The tempter often has cunning lies that seem like they’re the truth, preying especially on our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities, our wounds.  He did the same thing with our first parents, Adam and Eve, when he tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, telling her that she wouldn’t die if she ate the forbidden fruit, but that she would be like God on her own terms.  On the one hand, it may be hard to believe that Eve would buy into that lie.  She had perfect earthly happiness, communion with God and with nature around her, and lacked for nothing.  Why would she give into the lies of the ancient serpent?
    Why do we?  We may not have perfect earthly happiness, or perfect communion with the natural world which gives us fruit without effort, but we have God Himself who enters into us!  God not only walks with us in the cool of the evening, as He did with Adam and Eve, He humbles Himself to enter into us the Most Holy Eucharist, to fill us spiritually with His presence.  And yet, how often do we turn away from God, disobey His commands, and listen to the lies that the devil feeds us?
    Maybe it’s not excessive drinking, or drugs.  Maybe it is for some of us.  But I am willing to bet that each of us has had moments where money became our God and we thought if we just had enough of it we would be truly happy.  Or maybe we doubted whether there’s anything beyond this world, if all the rules that we follow and the ascetical practices we do will amount to anything, or if death will be the end.  Or maybe we have bought into the lie that no one could ever love us because we’re so broken that we’re not worthy of love.
    When we have those lies in our head, we should turn to St. Michael the Archangel, or our guardian angel, or our patron saints and ask them to bring the light of Christ to cast out the darkness of temptation and sin.  Pope St. Gregory the Great, while preaching a homily, said that St. Michael’s name in Hebrew means, “Who is like God,” and, “Whenever some act of wondrous power must be performed, Michael is sent, so that his action and his name may make it clear that no one can do what God does by his power.”  Whereas Lucifer, the light bearer angel, sought in his pride to contend with God, St. Michael allows God to be God and work His power through whomever God chooses.  
    And that can be a lesson for us when fighting evil.  From time to time, we might even be tempted to think that we are powerful enough to fight the devil and his fallen angels on our own terms.  But that is pride, and leads to our downfall.  Yes, we have a higher dignity than the angels, since Christ became man.  But angels are more powerful than we are, and we should not seek to fight them on their own terms.  Rather, rely on God’s helpers, whether angels or saints, and especially the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph, to allow God’s grace to cast down any evil spirits who seek the ruin of our souls.  Follow the example of Michael and not try to grasp at power, but allow God’s power to work through them and through us.
    There are many lies that the devil tries to get us to believe.  Some of those lies we may have recognized in Jelly Roll’s song.  Some of the lies the devil tells differ from those, but are no less powerful.  But Christ is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, and if we wish to come to the Father, we must hold fast to the truth, name the lie that the devil tells us as false, and run towards St. Michael and the saints to help us stay connected to the truth.  May St. Michael and all the holy angels defend us always and keep us united to God–the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Filling Up What is Lacking

Tenth Week in Ordinary Time-First Scrutiny Readings
    Mia, your preparation for baptism, which will happen at the end of this month, is so important that the Church has us take a break from the usual progression of readings and has us focus on thirsting for God, thirsting for Christ, especially as we heard about in the first reading and the Gospel.

    In the first reading, the people thirst for water because they have not yet arrived at the Promised Land.  And even though they complain and say that slavery seemed better, God gives the people water after Moses strikes a rock.  In the Gospel, the Samaritan woman thirsts for water because the town ostracizes her, and she has to draw water at the hottest time of the day, when no one else in their right mind would have drawn water.  But Jesus shows her that she truly wants something more than physical water.  She desires God.
    In both the first reading and the Gospel, the Chosen People and the Samaritan woman want someone to take care of them.  They want someone to provide them with water, but they don’t see how that can happen.  They don’t trust that God will care for them.
    In your life, you have come to acknowledge that your life lacks something.  Like so many times in life, it is an encounter with another who helps us to recognize what we are missing in our life.  And through your continued friendship with the Pietras family, you explored what might be lacking in your life.  You attended Mass with them, and eventually worked up the courage to acknowledge that you needed God, just like the Israelites did in the first reading; just like the Samaritan woman did in the Gospel.  
    But while you were thirsting for God like a deer that longs for streams of water, as Psalm 42 says, another thirst also existed.  When we have these readings we often focus on the person who will undergo the scrutiny, the time of prayer and acknowledgment of sin, and the thirst of that person.  But God also has been thirsting for you.  He has desired that you come to Him and discover the soul-saving relationship that He wants with you.  He wants you to become His child, not just because you are human and are made in His image and likeness, but by Holy Baptism, which configures you to Christ and makes you a child of God by grace, so that Christ can truly become your brother by adoption, and you can become a joint-heir to heaven and eternal life with Christ.
    That thirst of God comes from Jesus’ very lips as He was dying on the cross when He said, “‘I thirst.’”  St. Theresa of Calcutta, whom we often refer to as Mother Theresa, connected deeply with those words and wanted to satiate the thirst of Christ for souls by serving the poorest of the poor.  But it was also present in the first reading.  God wanted the Chosen People to trust in Him, to trust that He would provide for their every need.  God didn’t want the Israelites to doubt His love, or to think that their foreign masters cared for them more than He, their God and husband, did.  All they had to do was ask, and God would satisfy their every necessity.  
    It was also present in the Gospel, as Jesus drew out from the woman her desire for a savior, her desire for the Messiah.  The Samaritan woman had tried to plaster over that desire with physical desires, with liturgical arguments, and even with multiple marriages.  But none of them satisfied.  And Christ could cut through all of that to name her true desire, for God, and let her know that He could provide for what she needed.  
    Today, the Lord invites you to trust in Him, and allow Him to satisfy your every necessity.  Trusting is not always easy.  And the ancient enemy wants you to think that you have to take care of yourself.  He tempted our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the same way, and got them to doubt God’s care for them when He told them they could not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Adam and Eve doubted that God would give them what they needed, so they disobeyed Him, and they lost everything: they lost the innocence that was theirs so that they had to cover up their nakedness; they lost the ease of the garden providing for their every need so they had to toil for the food they would eat; they lost the painlessness of giving birth so that new children could only come through suffering; and they lost paradise, as God cast them out from the Garden of Eden.  That all happened because they did not trust God to provide for them.
    Today, over these next three weeks in particular, and for your entire life as a Catholic, God will invite you to trust Him.  Yes, we can cry out to God in our need, but He invites us to trust that He will provide for us.  Satan will try to get us to doubt God, but do not give in to those temptations.  Whatever ways you have doubted God before, trust in all the more now.  Thirst for His love; satiate His thirst for your love by trusting Him.  You are being led to the waters of new life, which when you drink from them you will never thirst again.  May your preparation for Holy Baptism strengthen your trust in God and in His will for the rest of your life!

Vigils

Vigil of the Nativity
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When I was in college, it was just starting to become academically “enlightened” to stop labeling time with the abbreviations BC (for before Christ) and AD (for Anno Domini, meaning Year of the Lord), to BCE (for Before the Common Era) and CE (the Common Era).  I’m sure some person thought it quite “diverse” to remove religious terms like “Christ” and “the Lord” from the way that time was measured.  However, a few minutes of critical thinking would have helped them to realize that the reference point for the change in marking time was still religious.  What was common about the Common Era is that time was measured from the birth of Christ.  No matter what you call it (and as Catholics we should continue to use BC and AD), time is measured as happening before the Incarnation or after the Incarnation.  Our measurement of time points to that one, unique, universe-altering experience of God-made-man.

Statue of David from Jerusalem

    As St. Paul opens his epistle to the Romans, he references that the Good News, the Gospel that God became man and took our sins away was promised beforehand by the prophets.  All the Old Testament, in some way, shape, or form, pointed to the moment when God took flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary.  Even from the very beginning of humanity, after our first parents had rebelled against God, God promised to send a descendant of Eve who would strike at the head of the ancient serpent who led Adam and Eve astray.  Melchizedek, the King of Salem or Jerusalem; to whom Abraham gave a tenth of his spoils; who as priest of God Most High offered bread and wine, pointed to the true King of Jerusalem, the only true Priest who offers Himself to us under the appearance of bread and wine.  Moses prophesied a prophet to whom the Chosen People must listen, and which pointed to the Incarnation.  David, the King of Israel after God’s own heart, to whom God promised an heir that would reign for ever, pointed to the Incarnation.
    The prophets, too, also spoke God’s word that He would come among us.  Isaiah especially prophesied the virgin who would be with child, whose name would be Immanuel, God with us; and the flower from the root of Jesse (David’s father); and the gifts of gold and frankincense brought from the nations to worship the new king.  Micah prophesied that a ruler would come forth from Bethlehem. 
    Even the secular history was preparing for this moment.  After the disruptive civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey in 49 BC, and then Caesar’s assassination by Brutus in 44 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, also known as Octavian Augustus, would establish a certain peace throughout the Roman Empire which would help the spread of the Gospel.  It was Augustus who called for a census, which led Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem (though it also led to no vacancy at any of the places they wanted to stay).
    Today we celebrate the Vigil of the Nativity of the Lord.  Many Catholics use the word vigil to mean the night before.  But in the traditional calendar, it was the entire day before (the Saturday evening Mass is not technically a vigil, it’s an anticipatory Mass).  And the vigil day was a day of preparation.  Often, though not on Sundays, it was a day of fasting or abstinence.  But the idea was to get ready for the joyful celebration on the following day.  The prayers were different, the readings were different, and often extended.  We still retain these extended readings and prayers, for example, in the Vigil of Easter and the Vigil of Pentecost, though both are celebrated at Mass during the evening or night. 
    But it also recalls the waiting and anticipation that occurred before that actual day arrived.  As I said earlier, humanity had been waiting for the promised redeemer since it had broken away from God at the Fall of Adam and Eve.  And God had, though it wasn’t always understood until after the Incarnation, prepared for a redeemer and prophesied a redeemer throughout the preparation of the Chosen People for the millennia before Christ was born in Bethlehem. 
    I know that this sense of anticipation and waiting is hard today, as many (myself included) put up Christmas decorations much earlier than today.  Many stores started celebrating Christmas the day after Thanksgiving (or even after Halloween!).  I have enjoyed listening to Christmas music since Thanksgiving.  And in less than 4 hours, I’ll be celebrating the first of four Christmas Masses.  Some of my fondest Christmas memories are going to my maternal grandparents on Christmas Eve and celebrating with them, before going to the evening Mass. 
    But it helps us to remember that every generation had hoped that theirs would be the one where the Messiah came and revealed himself.  Their eyes were attentive, their ears open to the possibility that God had come to save them, even if they weren’t always looking for salvation from sin, but from their foreign oppressors. That’s why, when St. John the Baptist appears, the Pharisees ask if he is the Christ, or at least Elijah, who would come before the Christ, or the Prophet that Moses prophesied in Exodus.  They were waiting and watching.  And today, to the best of our ability, so should we.
    Because tomorrow, December 25, we remember the day that changed everything.  Not only the transition from BC to AD, but we came to be able to see our Savior, and know that God loved us so much that He took flesh to be able to be with us, walk with us, touch us, in a way He hadn’t before, not even in the Garden of Eden.  Waiting is hard, but may we be attentive these last eleven or so hours so that we may fully celebrate the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.

Hearing or Listening

First Sunday of Lent
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  There would come times my youth when I was sitting on a Saturday morning, watching cartoons and eating cereal, and my mom would be talking to me, letting me know what chores I had to do that day or any special events that were happening later in the day.  I was sure I could do two things at once, so I would try to hear what she was saying while also not missing key plot points in my Saturday morning shows.  She would (often correctly) not believe that I was listening, and would ask, “Did you listen to what I said?”  “Yep,” I would reply, to which she would continue, “Then what did I say?”  My answer would betray whether I was simply hearing or whether I was listening.
    The Gospel we heard today, hopefully to which we listened, deal precisely with those two aspects of receiving sound: hearing and listening.  Maybe that was not clear, but as we heard about the temptations of our Lord, we could garner an important lesson about the difference between hearing and listening.
    To start, though, we should go back all the way to the Book of Genesis, to the beginning, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden [as we heard in our first reading].  God had told them that they could have any good fruit to eat, except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Perhaps Adam and Eve were listening to God when He was speaking thus, or perhaps they were not fully giving the attention that listening requires, and just responded, “uh huh.”  In any case, Eve certainly did listen to the serpent, the Devil, who asked, “‘Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’”  Eve seems to know what God says, but she has already agreed to listen to the Devil, and so she gives in to the temptation to disobey God.  She then brings Adam into her disobedience, and since Adam represented all humanity, all of humanity fell in Adam’s disobedience (as St. Paul states in his epistles).  
    Hearing means receiving the auditory stimuli.  Listening means understanding what is being said, and taking that understanding to heart.  Look to the Gospel today, and Christ, the new Adam, hears the Devil tempting Him, but does not listen.  The Devil three times tries to get our Lord to listen, by tempting Him with sins against temperance (a disordered desire for food), against trust (putting God to the test), and against humility (putting someone or something else in the place of God).  Our Lord certainly hears what Satan is saying, but pays no more attention to it than a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons when mom is talking.  What Christ does listen to is the Scriptures, as He is able to respond with God’s Word: “‘One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.’”; “‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’”; “‘The Lord, your God, shall your worship and him alone shall you serve.’”  The Savior had not only heard what God said, but understood its deeper meaning and took it to heart, which allowed him to recognize the lies of the enemy, and to let them run off his back like water on a duck.  

    Temptation is hearing what the devil says to us, and we cannot help but be tempted, because the devil and his fallen angels so frequently do their best to draw us away from God.  He might say, “It’s not that bad”; or “it’ll feel so good”; or “no one will get hurt”; or even, “What you want is good, so go for it however you can.”  Those are the lies that seek to pull us away from God.  If we only hear them, then there is no sin, just as our Lord did not sin when Satan tempted Him.
    However, if we believe those lies, if we listen to Satan, that is when we act on those temptations, and that is when we sin.  Parents, teachers, coaches, and others probably told us when we were younger that we can only listen to one thing at a time.  When it comes to the spiritual life, that is true.  We either listen to God and take in what He tells us, or we listen to the devil, and take in what he tells us.  If we’re listening to God, we may hear the devil tempting us, but we don’t fall away.  If we’re listening to Satan, we ignore the voice of God in our hearts, what we call the conscience, which helps us know what to do and what not to do.

Tomb of St. Benedict in Monte Cassino

    Listening is so important in our spiritual life.  In fact, the first word in the Rule of St. Benedict is “Listen.”  The full sentence is: “Listen continually with thine heart, O son, giving attentive ear to the precepts of thy master.”  Again, listening means taking something into the heart, and making it our own.  To what should we listen?  To the precepts of our master, the laws of God our Father given to us through the Scriptures, and the laws given to us by our Holy Mother, the Church.
    Lent is the perfect time to work on our listening.  What messages do we take in to our lives each day and each week?  To whose voice are we more attentive?  One of the great ways to make sure that we listen to God is to read His Word.  Yes, Satan could quote Scripture, but when we’re familiar with the entire story; when we take into our hearts the message that God has for us in the Bible, we can better recognize the lies that the devil tells us.  In fact, sometimes I’ll counsel people in the confessional that when they feel tempted, they should, whether outlaid or to themselves, simply say, “That is a lie.”  I use this sometimes in my own spiritual life when I am undergoing temptation.  I’ll say, “That is a lie,” or “That is not from God,” and often times the temptation flees away immediately.  Sometimes I have to repeat it a few times.  But the key is that my mind and my heart are able to block out the sounds of Satan, but hold fast to the Word of God.  Yes, I may have no choice but to hear the temptations, but I do not have to listen to them and give them credence.
    This Lent, let’s work on our listening.  Be attentive to “every word that comes forth from the mouth of God,” so that we do not “put the Lord, your God, to the test,” and do worship and serve him alone [through our Lord Jesus Christ, his Son, who lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen].

Charlie Brown and the Meaning of Christmas

 Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord

    I’m pretty sure my mom’s favorite Christmas show is  “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”  I’m sure we’re all familiar with the story: Charlie Brown wants a great Christmas, there’s a school Christmas play, Snoopy has decorated his dog house over the top, and the tree that Charlie Brown picks is a small, pitiful tree that barely has any needles left on it.  The play is falling apart, Lucy is being her usual self, and nothing seems to be going right.  Enter Linus, who, responding to Charlie Brown’s query if anyone knows what Christmas is about, says:
 

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

There is so much that goes on at Christmas, so many things that we prepare for, so many parties to attend, presents to buy, houses to clean, that sometimes we forget what Christmas is all about.  And we’ve celebrated it so many times, that perhaps it has lost some of its newness and power.  Perhaps we have become numb to the real meaning of Christmas, what Christmas is all about.
    To properly understand the real meaning of Christmas, we have to start at the beginning.  Adam and Eve had offended God by disobeying Him and seeking to be God on their own terms.  They were sorry.  God accepted the apology, and sought humanity out time and time again, but humanity kept distancing itself more and more away from God.
    Christmas, then, is about God making the ultimate move of reconciliation.  We could not approach God on our own.  We were hopeless that anything could be done to fully restore what we had broken.  And knowing that we had caused the pain, knowing that we had done wrong, we stayed to ourselves.  But God didn’t leave us to ourselves.  He sent us someone who could reconcile us to Himself, and someone who could do so without shaming us.  Christ was and is one like us, but without sin.  He took on our human flesh so that we could be comfortable in the presence of God again.  God became man so that man might become God.  Rather than seeing us continually suffer by our separation from Him, He came to us so that we could be healed.
    And He came in a way that utterly disarmed us.  The Incarnation was like the Trojan Horse, because how could we not accept one so tiny and fragile?  How could we not smile at a cute baby, whose face looked like ours, but was truly the face of God?  It would be like being estranged from a dear friend or family member, not knowing if we could ever be amicable with them again because of the pain that we caused, but then that dear friend sends us a little gift, something that we treasure, as a way of restoring that relationship.  We certainly did not earn that gift, and would never have expected it, but that friend sent it anyway, and the healing could commence.  

    The real meaning of Christmas is God’s love and mercy for us doing the unthinkable: lowering Himself beyond all expectation, just so that we could be reunited with Him.  The snow is beautiful (though you may think otherwise having driven in it to get here); the glimmering trees and the presents that often are under them give us passing happiness; the favorite and timeless songs that we sing give our hearts a certain levity.  But all those things will pass, and will be put away for another twelve months.  The love and mercy of God will remain, long after the snow has melted, after the trees have dropped all their needles and the presents are forgotten or broken, after you can only find Christmas songs on YouTube or Spotify.  
    Are we willing to embrace that mercy?  Are we willing to accept the love of God offered to us to restore us to friendship with God?  It seems like a silly question, but sometimes, after we know we have done something wrong, we fear even accepting an offer of mercy and love, because we so define ourselves by our faults and failing.  We think that the broken relationship cannot be made whole again.  Or we are afraid that, having restored that friendship, we will break it off again once more.  
    As the angel said to the shepherds in the field at Bethlehem, “Be not afraid.”  We are not the sum of our failings, as Pope St. John Paul II once said.  God can make what is broken whole again.  And yes, we may offend God again, but God, through Christ, will reach out His hand again when we turn back in sorrow for our sins, and will not reject any who come to Him, even if our sins were like scarlet.  And he will not do so begrudgingly, but with great haste and intention, because He would rather lower Himself and take on human frailty; He would rather die than have one of His beloved be separated from Him.  So great is the love of God that He will go to any lengths He can to save us.
    That is what we see at Christmas.  That is what we experience in the Incarnation.  That is what we celebrate today, every Sunday, and even every day as the priest, and the people united with him interiorly, offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  God loves you so much that He became like you.  Accept that great gift of love and mercy, and allow it to transform your life today, tomorrow, and all the tomorrows that you will have.  We broke off our friendship with God, but God has given us the opportunity to be His adopted sons and daughters in the Incarnate Son of God.  That is the real meaning of Christmas.  That is what Christmas is all about.

Waiting

First Sunday of Advent

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.].  Advent, I would argue, is a time that is particularly good for our current culture.  I say that, because Advent is a time of waiting.  And we are, as a culture, really bad at waiting.  We are bad at waiting because, more often than not, we don’t have to wait for anything.  If I want to know something, I do a Google search or ask Siri, and almost instantaneously get a response.  If I want food, I pre-order it on my app so that it’s waiting for me when I arrive.  I spend the money for Amazon prime so that I can get almost anything I want within two days of ordering it.  If I need to send a message I can get it to the person immediately by email or texting.  We really don’t wait for that much in life anymore.
    There are obvious exceptions.  We generally still wait for weddings (though even those are happening much more quickly these days, as people, sadly, decide not to get married in the church).  We wait for babies to be born (though as a man, I’m not sure I can truly appreciate the desire of a woman, especially in the last weeks of her term, for the baby to exit the womb).  Those two precious events necessitate waiting, but the wait is worth it, as the joy of celebrating is even greater after the weeks and months of desiring that momentous event.
    Advent’s wait is primarily twofold: the remembrance of the waiting of the Chosen People for their long-awaited Messiah, and our waiting for that same Messiah, Jesus Christ, to return to us in glory.  The waiting of the Chosen People began before they were even a people.  Adam and Eve, after their fall, heard God’s promise of a redeemer, as God told the snake who had led to the Fall: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head while you strike at his heel.”  Even then, at the beginning of creation, God promised a redeemer, the offspring of Eve, who would strike at the head of the serpent.
    Fast-forward some centuries to Abraham, our father in faith.  Scripture scholars estimate that Abraham lived sometime between 2100 and 2000 BC.  When God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans, God promised that Abraham would become a great nation, and a source of blessing for “all the communities of the earth.”  Of course, that happened through our Savior, the son of Abraham, but it took some over two thousand years for that promise to come true. 

From atop Mt. Nebo, where Moses recounted the Exodus for the Chosen People

    Fast-forward to around the 1400s BC to Moses, reminding the Israelites of all that had happened to them since they left Egypt.  Moses prophesied, “‘A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you among your own kinsmen; to him you shall listen.’”  The Gospel according to St. John makes clear that some believed our Lord to be “the prophet,” the fulfillment of Moses’ prophecy.  But they had to wait almost a millennium and a half.
    Fast-forward to around the year 1000 BC and King David, resting from all his enemies, desiring to build a temple for the Ark of the Covenant.  God promises David, as the prophet Nathan tells him, “‘I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins, and I will make his kingdom firm.’”  Christ is the Son of David.  As our Lord entered Jerusalem for His Passion, the people chanted, “‘Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”  And Christ even asks the Pharisees, “‘Whose son is [the Messiah]?’  They replied, ‘David’s.’” 
    Fast-forward to 445 BC, and the composition of the Book of the Prophet Malachi, the last prophet in what we call the Old Testament.  Through Malachi, God promises to send a messenger to prepare the way, and to send Elijah before the day of the Lord, and even that “there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek.”  But even this was 445 years before our Lord was even born!  If you put the average age of a person at 45, that’s nine generations between Malachi and the Nativity.  Or, to put it another way, if you were around at the time of the first Christmas, the prophecies of Malachi were at the time of your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather.  That’s a lot of waiting!!  And you thought waiting for Michigan to beat Ohio State in Columbus was long!!
    And we have been waiting almost 2,000 years for Christ to return in glory.  God continues to speak to us through His Church, and we hear about, and maybe even experience, miracles by which God reinforces His presence and love for us.  But we can become complacent, and think and act like Christ will not return.  He, Himself, tells us in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, that it will be like in the days of Noah, where Noah had prepared the ark according to God’s command.  Sill, there was some waiting before the rain fell, and people probably thought Noah was nuts.  But once the rain came, they had wished they had prepared. 
    Christ also tells us, in the Gospel according to St. Luke, that when we see the signs, we should be ready for the His return.  Those signs have been with us each century, which is Christ’s way of telling us to always be ready, because He could return at any time.  Our wait could be over in a heartbeat.  Have we given up on waiting because it’s been so long?  Or are we ready each day for Christ to return in glory? 
    It can be difficult to wait so long.  It can be difficult to live as we are supposed to when we don’t get what we want immediately.  The works of darkness can seem so tempting when we think we have time.  Instead, God calls us to put on the armor of light, to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.  

What God Will Do For Us

 Second Sunday of Advent

    Last week I preached about how we prepare during Advent, both for Christmas and for the second coming of Christ.  We should still have that attitude of preparation in mind as we continue into this second week of Advent.  Our prayer, sacrifices, and almsgiving should be increased from usual so that we can be ready when Christ returns and when we celebrate His birth.  
    This week our readings remind us of what God is going to do.  God has begun a good work in us, and desires that, cooperating with Him, that work is brought to completion in Christ Jesus.  God desires that our love “increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that [we] may be pure and blameless,” as St. Paul said in our second reading.
    We can often think that we are the ones who are doing most of the work.  And while our cooperation with God’s grace is necessary (we are not simply passive spectators in the process of our salvation), God does most of the work, and without God, holiness is impossible.  Without God we cannot be free from sin; without God we cannot hope to enter heaven; without God we cannot be the saints that He desires us to be.  God is always giving us what we need so that we can live as disciples of Jesus.
    First, God desires that we take off our robe of mourning and misery, and he puts on us the cloak of justice.  We heard this phrase in our first reading from the book of the prophet Baruch.  Baruch worked with the prophet Jeremiah.  He saw the destruction of Jerusalem, including the magnificent temple of Solomon, in 587 BC.  That would certainly be a reason to mourn and be miserable.  He also saw many of the Israelites be deported from Judea to Babylon, while others who were allowed to stay in Judea, despite God’s warning to the contrary, fled to Egypt.  Again, mourning and misery.  
    But God promises through Baruch to bring the people back, even carried like on a royal throne.  He promises to return them to the Promised Land, and to lower the mountains, and raise up the gorges.  This connects directly with our Gospel, where we heard about St. John the Baptist, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” the one about whom Isaiah prophesied who would prepare the way for the Lord, make straight his paths, lower every hill and mountain, and raise up the valleys.  And, importantly, Isaiah concludes, “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  
    While God did fulfill the promise through Baruch to bring the people back to their home after the Babylonian Exile beginning in 538 BC.  But this prophecy was meant for more than simply a literal reading.  God gives it a spiritual meaning which applies to us even today.
    First of all, what is the robe of mourning and misery?  It is sin.  We chose, in Adam and Eve, to disobey God and to cover ourselves in sin.  We usually think of Adam and Eve covering themselves up after they sinned, because of their shame of their own nakedness, and their lustful desire for the other.  So they sew fig leaves together for clothes, which were not that comfortable.  But Genesis also says that, after God explained the consequence of their sin, He also made them leather garments for clothes.  He gave them something much more comfortable and durable, even while it still hid their nakedness.  
    When we sin, we cover ourselves in uncomfortable clothes.  But God wants to give us a cloak of justice, clothes which take away our sins and restore us to right relationship with God, which the word justice connotes.   That is our baptismal garment, the white cloth which represents our purity before God.  It’s not simply hiding our sins, but God takes away our sins and gives us His holiness, which we are free to keep wearing, or to throw off when we sin.  Sin is uncomfortable clothes, and causes us grief, and yet, we still sometimes choose to abandon the cloak that God made for us for clothing that doesn’t protect us from the elements.
    The hills are the struggles that we have in the spiritual life, the trials and tribulations that are difficult in life.  It can be a bad break-up of a relationship or friendship; the death of a loved one, especially during this time between Thanksgiving and Christmas; the loss of a job, or an unexpected bill.  These events and realities make life seem like nothing but an uphill climb.  But in the place that God has prepared for us, our true home in heaven, all these challenges have been leveled off so that we don’t have to experience them anymore.  
    The valleys are all the easy ways that we slide into sin.  It can be talking about an annoying co-worker or boss; too much time spent on social media; the white lies we tell so that we don’t have to tell someone something unpleasant; lust in thought, word, and/or deed that looks so enjoyable but leaves one empty.  God promises to fill those in for us so that we don’t coast into a life that pushes Him away.  In heaven, there won’t be those easy temptations that can so quickly lead us astray.
    And lastly, in heaven, we see the full and complete salvation of our God, as Isaiah promised.  If we’re in heaven, we’re there for eternity, and we spend eternity basking in the love of God, who created us to be with Himself.  St. Paul says that right now we see dimly, as is a mirror (mirrors were not as clear then as we have them now), but later we shall see clearly.  Our goal of preparing with God’s grace is so that we can be with God forever.  Because for us, as Catholics, the Promised Land is not a place on earth, but our true home in heaven, where God wants to lead us after this exile through the valley of tears.  He gives us glimpses of heaven in this liturgy, where we gaze upon the same Christ who saved us by His Death and Resurrection, and who saves us each day whenever we cooperate with Him in living a holy life.  That helps us to stay on the narrow path that leads to salvation, and avoid the valleys of easy sins, and gives us strength to climb the mountains that inevitably arise in our lives.  
    But, as we continue to prepare for Christ’s return in glory and to celebrate the Nativity, God promises good for us.  He promises to clothe us in holiness, garments that do not merely cover our sins, but transform us from sinners into His adopted children.  He promises to assist us with grace to climb the difficult mountains and avoid the easy valleys of sin.  He promises to do everything He can to help us see the salvation that He desires for us, which is only possible with His help.  God has set forth for us the goal of our Advent preparations.  He has shown us what He desires for us.  Will we accept His offer?

"Mawwiadge"

 Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
 

The "Impressive Clergyman"

   As a child of the ‘80s, every time I hear the word marriage, I think of the scene from “The Princess Bride” where the “Impressive Clergyman” (that’s the name given him in the credits) is uniting Princess Buttercup to Prince Humperdinck in marriage.  It’s one of the great scenes in a movie that is filled with them.
    But marriage is quite a serious business.  It’s serious business because it’s so beautiful, and we take extra care with those things that are so precious.  I may not care about the paper plate, or even the usual dinner plate that I use for eating, but I take really good care of the fine china that I use.  
    At an Orthodox wedding that I attended at the end of August in Traverse City, the Orthodox priest said that God was creating something new at the wedding, as the couple began their married life together.  Our Catholic understanding of marriage and the Orthodox understanding of marriage are slightly different, but I thought that was a beautiful image of what happens at a wedding: the two become one; something new, a family is created that never existed before.  God, in His love, creates, just as He created in the Garden of Eden.  
    This new creation is meant to be an unbreakable bond, as were Adam and Eve.  They were the perfect helpers for each other.  No other could be a perfect helper: only the woman for the man, and the man for the woman.  And that is part of why Catholic cannot accept homosexual so-called marriage, as Pope Francis recently reaffirmed.  In Adam and Eve we see the original plan for marriage, which is itself a creation by God.  And since God created it, no other, not even a government, can change what God created.  
    This also goes to the indissolubility of the marriage, that was noted even in the Book of Genesis, and reaffirmed by Jesus Himself in our Gospel today.  Because God has created something that is new, because the two are no longer two, but one flesh, no human being can separate that which God has joined.  And so Jesus teaches that if a man were to divorce his wife, or the wife to divorce her husband, and either of them were to remarry, they would be committing adultery.  
    This seems harsh.  I am willing to bet that we all, in our families, have couples who have divorced.  Sometimes we see that the marriage is very unhappy, and sometimes one or both spouses can even be abusive towards each other, in words and, sadly, sometimes even with physical violence.  Certainly, we would say, God does not want the couple to remain together and risk emotional and physical pain, and sometimes even death.
    In those circumstances where a couple cannot (and sometimes should not) remain together, the Church offers the option of separation, where the couple remains married, but has no common life together.  Or, the Church offers the possibility, where appropriate, of a Declaration of Invalidity, and annulment, that looks at the marriage to see if one of the necessary parts of marriage was absent from the beginning, even if it looked like it was there at the time.
    But this also reminds us of the importance of preparing for marriage.  When a society, as a basic part of its culture, helps men and women understand how to love for each other, care for each other, support each other, and promote each other’s dignity, marriage prep is, we might say, something in the water.  But in our current times, that’s not the case.  The scourge of pornography affects men and women across the board, and instills in those who use it the idea that the other simply exists for use and sexual gratification.  Our digital age, too, does not help people develop true friendships, but makes each person easily jettisoned the minute they challenge an opinion we have as we unfriend and unfollow that person.  And even our consumerist mentality creeps into marriage, as we throw away things that don’t work, rather than working on fixing them.
    All this makes a proper understanding and catechesis in marriage all the more necessary for Catholics.  Our diocese is trying to do more with marriage prep, in order to make sure that people understand what they are getting into when they say, “I do.”  We can no longer take it for granted that Catholics understand the Catholic view of marriage.
    But, we also need to support marriages after the wedding.  Weddings have become like baptisms: a big ceremony and celebration, and then you don’t see the person again in church.  Part of that is our (the church’s) fault for not providing more for couples after the wedding.  I know Deacon Mark wants to be active in marriage enrichment, and I would also like to be able to offer times when couples can come together for a date night which also gives them tools to improve their marriage, even if there’s nothing wrong with it.
    Marriage is so important, because it’s the bedrock of any society.  Marriage is so important for Catholics because it is meant to be an icon of the love between Christ and His Church.  It is a new creation of God that needs to be cared for and nurtured, just like the rest of God’s creation.  Let’s commit ourselves today to praying for married couples, and assisting them, to the best of our ability, to live that beautiful vocation as Christ desires.

Adjusting Our Seating Chart

 Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I saw a meme on Facebook that said something to the effect of: When I was 18, my father didn’t know anything.  When I turned 30, I was surprised to see how much he had learned in twelve years.  I later learned that this was based upon a quote by Mark Twain, who said: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.  But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”  No matter how you say it, they are both very clear examples of the hubris of youth.
    Today our Lord talks about humility in the Gospel.  He teaches us that everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted, using the example of a seating chart at a wedding.  Pride is one of the most ancient sins.  In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas says that Original Sin is truly a sin of pride, since Eve (and then Adam) seek to take the place of God and have what God told them they did not need.
    And how familiar is it that we feel we know everything when we are young!?  I remember in college seminary feeling like my classmates and I had the answers to all the Church’s problems.  I think I still felt that way in Major Seminary, and probably even in the first year or so of my priesthood.  The passage of time, the (hopeful) gaining of wisdom, and the increased responsibilities of being a pastor have tempered my own youthful hubris.  
    But pride does not necessarily cease as one takes more and more trips around the sun.  Pride is the temptation lurking like a roaring lion in the grass throughout our life, against which we need to be on guard.  
    Pride is the elevation of our self above others, up to and including God.  We end up making ourselves a false god, the one who determines all things, or around whom the universe needs to rotate.  Again, going back to Adam and Eve, they wanted to know good and evil even though God had told them they did not need to.  St. Thomas Aquinas calls this a coveting of a spiritual good above measure.  Satan’s own words tells Eve that she will be as God.  And into this temptation first Eve, and then Adam, fall.  
    In the parable of the wedding, the person is seeking the higher place, the place of greater honor, which is exactly the sin of pride.  The person, and how many times does this apply to us, thinks he is better than he truly is.  In response to this, our Lord invites the person to take the lower seat, so that, should that person be worthy of higher honors, another will recognize it.  Now, this isn’t some backwards way of achieving the goal of looking better than everyone else.  If we treat it that way, then we’re still falling into pride.
    Instead, our Lord invites us to humility, to think not that we are better or more worthy of honors than others.  Humility is not undervaluing ourselves, but valuing ourselves rightly.  We talk about false humility when we talk about not recognizing gifts or talents that we have.  Indeed, Christ condemns not using our talents and investing them in another parable.  But humility gives an estimation which is accurate, not inflated or deflated.  
    It is so easy to overvalue ourselves, or even to undervalue ourselves.  But if we had to choose the most likely, it is probably overvaluing ourselves.  We live in a world where the ego rules supreme.  I am always right.  My wishes and desires are the most important.  You need to agree with me.  We see this in our inability to dialogue with others, whether on a local or even a national and international scale.  If someone questions our point of view (whether it be our opinion or based upon facts we know), we immediately write that person off and no longer have anything to do with them.  We see it in school systems which no longer provide a wide-education of many disciplines (what we have called liberal arts), but where we only teach one thing to people, and that’s what they want to do.  Unfortunately, so many feel that if they are experts in one area of life, then they are experts in many or even all areas of life.  
    I have seen this happen first hand in the parishes in which I have served.  Every city where I have served as been the home to a university of college.  And there are people who are much smarter than I am when it comes to non-theological disciplines.  But those same people sometimes think that they are experts in the faith, when they haven’t actually studied the faith beyond a few articles from their favorite religious magazine each month.  
    And I can even struggle to avoid those same temptations from seminary days, to think that I know best how to run things on a diocesan, national, or even worldwide level.  Certainly, I have studied the faith.  And even as someone who has been pastor I have gained some very practical experience.  But I am not qualified to second-guess decisions that include information to which I am not privileged, nor do I have the charism to lead a local, national, or international church that is given to bishops at their ordination.  Does this mean that bishops always make the best decisions?  No, and good bishops, like our own, will admit that they make decisions based upon their own experience and the information that they have at the time.  We can certainly dialogue (either externally or internally) about whether or not we think that decision was wise and/or prudent.  But how often do we immediately jump to the conclusion that we know best and Bishop So-and-so or the Pope is automatically wrong?  We’re taking the head of the table at the wedding party, and it’s very likely that we’re going to get moved back a seat or 5.  We are exalting ourself, and so we will be humbled.  

Bishop Carl Mengeling

    Bishop Mengeling, our bishop emeritus, has said a few times that humility is a virtue that often requires others to help us.  Those are our humiliators (in a good way).  They remind us that we are not always right, and that we are not God or the best at everything we do.  They are the equivalent of the slave riding in the chariot of the great Roman general in his triumph through the streets of Rome whispering, “Memento mori,” “Remember you will die.”  Generally, we do need to go looking for our humiliators; they usually make themselves known.  In case you’re wondering, I have mine, and I’m pretty sure I don’t need any more, though I know I always have people ready to step in in case I short a humiliator or two.  
    But we shouldn’t be afraid of being humbled, as it helps us grow in holiness.  And as we are humbled, God looks upon us in love, and exalts us in His way, which, more often than not, is not the way we would be exalted.  Still, stay humble; don’t seek the place of honor or to put yourselves above others.  Humble yourself, that God the Father may raise you on high, where with the Son and the Holy Spirit, He reigns for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Re-discovering the Joy of the Resurrection

 Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    There is nothing so jarring to human existence as death.  Whether it’s the suddenness or the finality of it, death simply seems wrong.  It feels so wrong when it’s a young person, when a parent has to bury a child.  But even with a person who lived a long life, and who went through a prolonged illness, death still hurts and seems like it doesn’t belong.  And it doesn’t.
    Our first reading reminds us that “God did not make death.”  That hearkens back to Genesis, where God, the source of life, breathes His life into Adam and Eve.  But then, after they rebel against God and are banished from the Garden, God puts a limit on mortal life.  In one sense, this was a mercy, as God did not want us to live forever in a fallen state, always subject to the reign of sin.
    But then in our Gospel, we hear a kind of undoing of death in two ways: in an older woman, and in a younger child.  You may have missed the part about the older woman, but she had been suffering "with hemorrhages for twelve years.”  I’m no doctor, but a hemorrhage is a flow of blood.  Blood, to the Jews, was life, so if she was “leaking” blood, she was, in a sense, dying; the life was flowing out of her.  So both were, at least in one sense, dying.  And Jesus brings them both back to life.
    The Resurrection of Jesus is part of the good news that is at the heart of being Catholic.  And it’s good news because death is not, despite our experience, final.  It is the answer to a question that sits on every human heart.  Every human experiences death, and senses the wrongness of it.  As we sit in the funeral home with the casket in front of us, greeting family and friends, crying at the loss, laughing at favorite memories, we know it’s not supposed to be that way.  Jesus helps us to know that it no longer is that way, because He rose from the dead.
    Jesus’ Resurrection wasn’t like the new life that He gave to the woman with hemorrhages, or the daughter of Jairus, or the son of the widow of Nain, or even Lazarus.  They still died again.  But Jesus will not die again; His death was once for all.  Death was the poverty that Jesus took upon Himself, because Jesus is Life.  It’s like light becoming darkness, or gold becoming clay.  But Jesus did so because He knew that darkness cannot conquer light, and He wanted to make us who were clay into gold.  St. Augustine talks about this as the admirabile commercium, the wonderful exchange.  We gave Jesus death, which He willingly took upon Himself, and He gave us life.  
    So how do we get this deal?  How do we participate in this exchange?  Baptism begins this, as we die with Jesus in the waters of baptism, and rise to a new life of grace.  But it’s more than baptism.  Baptism is only the beginning.  What is meant to follow is a day-by-day deepening in our friendship with Jesus, and giving Him our death, and receiving His life.  
    The woman with the hemorrhages and Jairus, the father of the young girl, are beautiful examples of this exchange.  They have faith in Jesus, and so they go to Him.  Jairus goes to find Jesus, and the woman approaches Jesus as He walks in the crowd.  How often do we truly seek after Jesus, rather than fatalistically figuring that what is going to happen will happen?  How often do we take our death to Jesus to receive life?  It’s as simple as asking.
    But we also have to be willing to receive.  The life that Jesus wants for us is not the life we gave to Him.  We give Jesus a fallen life, a life of sin and death, and He wants to give us life.  But in order to receive life, we have to give up sin and death.  We have to do our best to put behind us those things that we want to do because of the fall, because of our concupiscence, our desire to do evil and avoid good, rather than doing good and avoiding evil.  Too often, we want to give Jesus our death, but we’d like to hang on to it a little, because, while deadly, it’s also familiar, and sometimes even a bit of fun.  But if we hang on to death, we cannot have life.  It’s not so much a punishment, as simply the way things work in the spiritual realm.  If our hands are still clenching onto what we have, they are not open to receive what Jesus wants to give.
   

As Catholics, we need to reclaim our faith in the Resurrection.  We need to reclaim our faith that death is not final, as troubling as it is.  Death is meant to be the last thing that we give Jesus, our last bit of life, so that He can give us His life.  Start engaging in the great exchange today.  Be in the habit of giving Jesus your all, especially your sin and daily deaths, so that He can give you His life.  Come to Jesus, and live.

Living Icons of the Trinity

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

    You might think that it’s strange that the most fundamental part of our faith, the belief that God is a Trinity–one God, three Divine Persons–can’t really be explained.  Our modern mind tends to think that if something is fundamental, then it should be the easiest to explain.  The more advanced, less necessary things are usually harder to explain.  That's certainly true for math.  Addition, like 1+1=2, is much more fundamental and much easier to understand than calculus.  And yet, think about something that is most fundamental in life also can’t really be explained: love.  We can talk about what love is like; we can recognize love when we see it; but it’s often hard to explain precisely what love is.  Even Bishop Barron’s excellent definition, that love is willing the good of the other, itself calls for further understanding.  What does it mean to will the good of the other?  What is the good that we should be willing for the other? 
    And yet, while God in Himself is beyond our finite minds, He does not leave us without images and some understanding of who He is.  In fact, just as the Trinity is the fundamental teaching of our Catholic faith, so one image of the Trinity is the fundamental building block of society: marriage and family life.
    People often chide the Church for being backwards about marriage and the family.  Or they may say that the Church has too many rules for couples and families or couples who want to increase the size of their family.  But if marriage and the family is meant to be an icon of the Trinity, an icon of the most important, most fundamental teaching of our faith, doesn’t it make sense that the Church would go to extreme lengths to help her children be the best icons and examples of the Trinity that they can be?
    How is marriage and the family an icon of the Trinity?  Well, to begin with, the Trinity is a communion of Persons.  God revealed His oneness through the Old Testament, and that oneness was guarded carefully by the Chosen People, especially living in the midst of pagan cultures that often had many gods or goddesses.  But even in the beginning, God gave hints about the fact that His oneness was not a solitary existence, but an existence of communion, an existence of union with others.  In the first chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we hear, “‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ […] God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them (emphasis added).”  If we go ahead to the next chapter, we see that Adam is not meant to be alone, and that animals, pets, are no substitute for human love.  God gives Adam an equal partner, Eve, to be his wife, and to live as a communion of persons. 
    We read in St. John’s first epistle in the New Testament that God is love.  Love, of its very nature, is not inward facing, but outward facing.  To love is an action that requires another.  And so, if God is love, then God, who is one, still mysteriously has an outpouring of that love.  And, of course, that love is eternally poured out to His Son, Jesus.  From all eternity, God the Father pours out everything that He is, except His identity, which cannot be given away, to God the Son.  And God the Son receives all of that love, and also, eternally, pours out all He is, except His own identity, back to the Father.  Isn’t that what love is supposed to be like between a husband and a wife?  Aren’t they supposed to give all of who they are, except their identities, to the other, and receive that full gift of love from the other?  Don’t we see problems with married couples precisely when someone holds something back: a secret one keeps; a lie someone tells; a grudge someone holds onto?  I often tell people: love isn’t 50/50.  Love is 100/100.  Divorce is 50/50.  The image is not the reality; the Trinity is not a sexual communion.  But the image still holds that a man and a woman in marriage are called to give entirely of themselves to the other, as a living icon of the Trinity.
    But, even love does not stop between the two.  The eternal love of the Father and the Son is so strong that it eternally breathes forth a Divine Person, the Holy Spirit.  The communion between the Father and Son is not closed in on itself, but, as a true relation of love, is open to the other.  Again, this is where words fail us, because the Holy Spirit is not “other,” but the same one God.  Still, we talk about the Holy Spirit as an eternal reality of the love between the Father and the Son. 
    So with marriage: to truly be an icon of the Trinity, the couple must be open to that love creating a new person.  That doesn’t mean that Catholics have to have as many kids as possible.  But it does mean that, if couples are truly loving, they responsibly cooperate with the procreation of new life in accord with how God has made the male and female body and do not turn to artificial means either to achieve or to restrict procreation.  Openness to life is part and parcel of Catholic marriage because we do not believe in a “binity,” only Father and Son, but a Trinity, a communion of Three Divine Persons.  As with marriage as an icon, the family of the icon is not a one-to-one correlation.  You can’t stop being open to life after you’ve had one kid because there’s only Three Divine Persons.  And even senior couples who marry, or couples who find that they cannot conceive, can still be open to life (even though their bodies cannot express that openness), by not keeping their love to themselves, but allowing it to overflow either by adopting or fostering children, or by acts of charity in the parish or community. 
    When one considers that marriage and family are icons of the Trinity, living reminders of who God is in Himself, it is not a surprise that the Church works so hard to encourage couples and families to live that vocation out in particular ways, to better communicate what they are imaging.  We do not understand the Trinity in itself, and we never will.  But thanks be to God for families who remind us of who God is, a communion of love!