All Are Welcome, but We Need to Prepare

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

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

An Easy Yoke, A Light Burden

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

Mural from Bethany, where Christ began his entry into Jerusalem 

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

Our Surpassing God

Third Sunday of Easter

Grand Tetons National Park

    About halfway through 2020, and about 5 months into “14 days to flatten the curve,” I decided to travel to a national park.  I was sick of being cooped up in Flint, and needed to get away to destress from all the new stress of COVID that we pastors had to deal with as we learned how to shepherd people during a pandemic.  While I knew a flight was not going to be great, I did look forward to going somewhere far away where I could enjoy the outdoors and not have to wear a mask.  So I looked to our national park system, and decided to visit Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks.  I had looked forward to being less encumbered by COVID protocols, but the views I had from the two national parks out west were spectacular and far surpassed any expectations I had for parks I had heard about, but never visited.
    In both our first reading and our Gospel, we hear about expectations that God far surpassed.  In the first reading, St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, tells the Jews that Jesus has fulfilled the prophecy of David, but did so in a very unexpected way.  And in the Gospel, Jesus Himself enlightens the disciples on the road to Emmaus about the ways that God had foretold the Messiah.
    For David, God had made a promise that his descendants would always sit upon the throne of Israel.  And I’m sure David considered this promise as a guarantee that his sons would always rule over Israel as earthly kings.  That was exciting enough.  But David, too, prophesied in the psalms that God would not abandon David to the netherworld, nor let his holy one (perhaps David used this title to refer to himself) undergo corruption.  But God far surpassed what David expected.  God made one of David’s children, Jesus, an eternal king in heaven whose reign would never end because Jesus has a kingdom which lasts forever.  And God did not let the truly Holy One, Jesus, undergo corruption, nor let Jesus remain in the abode of the dead, but raised Him to new life.  David thought that what God would do was glorious enough from an earthly standpoint.  But what God really was going to do would have blown David’s mind.
    Likewise, for the disciples on the road to Emmaus, they knew the prophecies about the Messiah, David’s son.  They knew that Moses prophesied about a future prophet to whom the Chosen People must listen.  They knew that God would provide a Davidic king who would trample Israel’s enemies and restore glory to the Chosen People from their oppressors.  But again, they thought of the Messiah in earthly ways.  They wanted a king who would throw out the Romans and restore an earthly kingdom to Israel.  But God did better: He destroyed the true enemy of Israel, sin and death, and established a heavenly kingdom that could never be conquered by any power in heaven or on earth.  And in that kingdom swords would be changed into plows, and spears into pruning hooks, and the lion and the lamb would lie down together and dwell in peace.  Those who heard these prophecies of Isaiah probably thought them to be hyperbole, but God intended it much more realistically, where, in God’s reign, there would be no more war, death, sorrow, or disease, and harmony would be the hallmark of God’s kingdom.
    When we think about what we think God wants, our earthly vantage point often limits us.  We have something good in mind, but perhaps it’s not all that great.  It may have a certain excellence from an earthly point of view, but God wants much more than our limited minds could ever hope for or anticipate.  His plan excels ours as much as diamonds excel fools gold.  But we get stuck in our ways and our views and so do not see, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, what God really can do and has done for us.  When our measly projects don’t come to fruition the way we wanted, we, too, can become downcast.
    In the midst of our dashed earthly hopes, we should turn to the Lord and ask Him to enlighten us with His plans and what He has done, which is far greater than our own plans and expectations.  We do this through reading the Word of God, through daily prayer, and through our worthy reception of Holy Communion.  We come to Christ, like the disciples, and let Him know that we don’t understand what God is doing, and ask Him to show us the way, to show us the great things that He has done, so that we can appreciate them.  And God–the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit–will open our eyes to His plan and His great deeds in our lives and the lives of others, which accomplish far more than we could ever hope for or imagine.
    In August, 2020, I wanted to get away and live a freer life, without social distancing, without masks, without living like a prisoner in my own home.  I went out west, thinking that at least it would allow me to accomplish those goals.  But as I toured through Grand Tetons National Park and Yellowstone National Park, I experienced such natural beauty and grandeur, that it not only refreshed my body, but even lifted up my mind and my soul as I stood in wonder and awe of what God had made, and what He allowed me to experience as part of my inheritance as a citizen of our great country and an adopted child of the God who made such magnificent mountains and grand geysers.  God surpassed my hopes, and He wants to surpass yours.  Do not let your hearts droop down when our limited goals and desires do not come to fruition.  Bring them to God, and see the great things He wants to do for us, things that surpass our hopes and dreams.

Sacramentum Unitatis

Mass of the Lord’s Supper

    In 1971, the Hillside Singers released their version of a British popular song by Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway.  In the “Hilltop” version, as it was called, the producers of a Coca-Cola commercial used the song to promote their own pop, and suggested that if everyone would sing this song and buy each other a Coke the world could live in perfect harmony.  This commercial stood in the context of the on-going cold war with Communist Russia and the Vietnam War.
    Some 55 years later, wars still rage and the world and our country desire unity.  It seems like every election comes down to a slim majority determining the track of the country for the following years.  We equate compromise with cowardice.  Citizens in our country operate on very different philosophies about the human person and how society should operate, even including how to define men and women (if a person even admits that such a definition is possible).  We are a divided nation, perhaps not this divided since the Civil War.
    Our church, too, seems ever divided.  Some, even those who hold sacred office, seem to want to change unchangeable Church teaching.  Bishops and Cardinals sling verbal attacks at each other.  It seems we fight our own ecclesial war between progressivism and traditionalism, even if most of the soldiers are keyboard warriors.
    But singing a jingle and buying Coke (the drink, not the drug) will not bring unity.  The unity that we seek cannot come from our own making, though we do have to cooperate with it.  The unity we seek finds its source in Christ, not in us.  And as God assembles us tonight to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate the Sacramentum unitatis, the Sacrament of unity, and the one priesthood that our Lord established.

    The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity because it unites us with the one head of the Church, Jesus Christ.  When we receive worthily Holy Communion, unlike other food that becomes part of us, we become part of the Body of Christ, which we have just received.  Through the Eucharist, Christ brings together all those who believe in Him to be one with Him and one with each other.  The Didache, a second-century Greek ecclesial text talks about how many grains are gathered together to make the bread that becomes the Eucharist.  The many grains, ground into one batch of flour, join to each other through the water of baptism, and then bake in the fire of the Holy Spirit to become bread, which becomes the Body of Christ.  Likewise, many individual grapes are pressed through suffering to become juice which ferments over time to become wine, used to become the Blood of Christ.  Unity comes from diverse individuals, but all united through Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit, and suffering, which joins us to Christ.  
    But unity with Christ can only come when we submit ourselves to Christ.  The reason why the non-baptized, and even the baptized who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church, cannot receive Holy Communion is because Christ is the ruler for unity, not us.  And Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  We cannot reject parts of the truth that Christ has revealed, and then claim unity with Truth Incarnate.  That would be a lie.  Unity does not come from rejecting what we know to be true until we get to a lowest common denominator of truth, but from embracing the truth has Christ Himself has revealed it through His teachings in the Scriptures and in the Church.  
    Both the Eucharist and the priesthood bring about unity because they find their source and power in the one Jesus Christ.  When we conform our lives to Him, we find the true unity because we can join ourselves, diverse as we are, to Him.  He brings us together as different parts of His Mystical Body to cooperate with each other and do what we cannot do on our own.  I do some things well, but other things not as well, or even poorly.  You do other things well, but not maybe the same things I do well.  When we bring our gifts to Christ, He allows them to work together so that we support each other, rather than combatting each other or each trying to do everything on his or her own.  
    Coca-Cola won’t bring us unity, catchy jingle or not.  Politics will not bring us unity, no matter who has the executive and legislative branches and how many laws they pass.  True unity, the unity that we desire, can only come from Christ, who both instituted the priesthood and the Eucharist tonight.  May our worthy reception of Holy Communion, made possible by my consecrated hands, but through no worthiness of my own, unify us so that we can find the peace and harmony we all desire.

Cadets

Fourth Sunday of Lent

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

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

A Fragrant Aroma

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

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

Following Christ May Not be Easy

Septuagesima
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One would be forgiven for thinking that, once one truly believes in Christ, everything goes easily.  We have a desire for doing right, and we want that desire and those righteous actions to carry with them the consequence of ease.  And certainly, even Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics points to how the truly virtuous person exhibits virtue without too much struggle.  A person who truly has the virtue of courage will exhibit courage, rather than cowardice or rashness, in his or her actions, and will not need to think about it much, because a virtue is a stable disposition or habit to choose a particular good.  
    At the same time, a person who exhibits every virtue is rare.  And so there is a kind of struggle that takes place as that person seeks to life a fully virtuous life.  A man may never struggle with remaining faithful to his wife, but he may struggle with telling the truth, or displaying magnanimity (greatness of soul), or tempering his desire for food.

    St. Paul talks about striving for self-mastery and living a virtue, and compares it to running a race.  He notes that only one person wins a prize for first place, and says that we should run so as to win, rather than simply seeking a participation trophy.  He even says that he competes and subjects his body to penances, in order that he might also win.  
    He then also talks about how all the Jews received a sort of baptism in Moses, whether through the cloud or through the sea, and all participated in a foreshadowing of the Eucharist through the spiritual food and spiritual drink that was Christ.  But the Apostle notes that most of them did not please God.  
    What we can understand from this is that just because we are baptized; just because we receive the Eucharist, doesn’t mean that we can rest on our laurels.  While both are important sacraments that, respectively, make us adopted children of God and give us spiritual strength to live as children of God, receiving sacraments doesn’t mean that the graces work in us necessarily.  The fault lies not with the grace that God gives, but with our receptivity to those graces: with how we allow the grace to operate in our lives.
    We refer to these two aspects of the sacrament with two Latin phrases: ex opere operato, and ex opere operantis.  Ex opere operato means “from the work having been worked,” and refers to the objective reality that the sacraments have, as long as they are celebrated as the Church intends (the right words, the right stuff, and the right minster).  Ex opere operantis means “from the work of the one working,” and refers to the subjective reality and fruitfulness that the sacraments have, which is based upon the holiness of the minister and the recipient.  The former steers us clear of the heresy of Donatism, which stated that an evil minister could invalidate a sacrament, even if he did everything else correctly, and the latter steers us clear of magic, which takes the approach that, no matter what, just say the right words and do the right things and a change takes place, no matter whether a person opens him or herself up to the graces that God wants to convey.  

    This helps us understand why some baptized Catholics do not live up to their call to be saints.  Did the baptism not take?  Of course it did (as long as the minister celebrated it validly)!  But that recipient might be putting up a block to those graces through personal sin after the fact, or maybe the minister gave bad catechesis and treated baptism like an empty ceremony that doesn’t accomplish anything.  
    This helps us understand why, after we receive the Eucharist, sometimes we still want to sin.  The joke is that in the church we’re all pious and grateful for the Body and Blood of Christ, but then as we try to pull out of the parking lot we lose our temper and act like heathens who do not know Christ’s command to love one another and be patient.  
    And this is why we do our penitential practices, especially in the upcoming season of Lent.  We don’t do penance to earn salvation; we can’t earn salvation.  That’s the heresy of Pelagianism.  But our penances help discipline us to open ourselves to the graces that God wants to give, because our sin puts up obstacles (the theological word is obex) to the fruitfulness of God’s grace.  When we fast, when we abstain, when we give alms, we recognize our need for deeper conversion and to rely on God, rather than on ourselves or the goods of the world.  We make more room for God so that the spring of grace He has given us in baptism flows unobstructed, and so that the sacramental grace transforms us from the inside out.  
    Some get this from the beginning, like the workers whom the master hired at the beginning of the day.  For others it takes a long time, like those who only worked for the last hour.  But if we allow God’s grace to transform us into the saints He wants us to be in baptism, even at the last moments, then our hope of eternal salvation can be strong.
    We all likely have ways that need to grow in virtue, and our upcoming Lenten season is the perfect time to open ourselves up more to God’s grace so that we can grow in virtue.  May we run so as to win the prize, knowing that it is God who makes any good work possible and completes any good work that we began by His inspiration: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Drawn to Christ and Changed

Epiphany of the Lord

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  I remember my first time I traveled to Rome, when I was a seminarian in the fall of 2004.  My classmates and I had flown from St. Paul, Minnesota, and arrived in Rome in the morning.  We took a train to Termini (the main train station), and then took the Metro to a stop near the convent we had to stay at because our rooms were not ready yet at the study abroad house.  The convent was just on the other side of Bernini’s colonnade at the Basilica of St. Peter.  I remember walking up the Via della Conciliazione and being amazed at the magnitude and beauty of St. Peter’s.  I thought the US Congress building was large; St. Peter’s is so much larger!  And then I walked inside, and though so exhausted from jet lag that I would soon start falling asleep while standing during the Gospel at Mass inside St. Peter, its beauty forever changed me in recognizing just what man could do to honor God and the saints.
    In many ways the Solemnity of the Epiphany also follows a similar pattern, at least with the wise men.  They are drawn to a far-off land, perhaps a land they had never seen before.  But when they actually encounter the goal of their journey, the young King of the Jews, they are not the same.  The Gospel relates that an angel warned them not to return to their country by the same way because of King Herod, but encountering Christ also made them go back not just on a different road, but changed.  
    Hopefully this rings true for us as well.  Christ always draws us closer to Himself.  Whether we are baptized as an infant and grow up in the Catholic faith, or whether we joined the Church as an adult, Christ draws us to Himself.  He drew the Magi by a star, because that is how they would come.  When Christ calls us, He does it through means that, more often than not, appeal to our natural predispositions.  Maybe we’re hurting and we recognize in Christ a source of healing.  Maybe we’re looking for meaning and we recognize in Christ a way of life that will satisfy us.  Maybe we’re reaching out for something greater to whom we can pledge our life, and we recognize in Christ the God who is worthy of all our loyalty and dedication.  Whatever way it is, Christ calls us to Himself.  And He often does it through means that we can accept.
    But this draw also continues throughout our life.  Accepting Christ means a great deal, but it’s not a once-and-done encounter.  Each day, each week, each month, each year Christ wants to draw us closer.  Until we get to heaven, we can always grow closer to Christ.  And the closer we get, the easier and harder it is.  Easier, because we have a solid foundation and at least can intellectually know that God will truly satisfy every need in our life.  Harder, because we sometimes have to walk away from things that also delight us, however less, and sometimes it is hard to let go.  But no matter how much we accept, or how much we delay and hedge our bets, Christ always calls us closer to Himself.
    When we have encountered Christ, whether for the first time or for the myriad of times after that, the encounter should change us.  Change is easier to note when it comes to monumental moments in our life, like when we were baptized or confirmed.  Whether we felt it or not, the power of the sacrament changed us from a pagan to a Christian (baptism), or from a mere follower to a soldier of Christ and proclaimer of the Gospel (confirmation).  Ontologically, which means at the level our being, God changed us.
    But we don’t always experience that change in our day-to-day life.  Even when it comes to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, which we receive at Mass, we don’t always recognize the change it has in us.  That can either be because it’s hard to notice little changes day by day, or because of lack of fruitfulness, which means that, while the Eucharist wants to change us, we’re putting up some sort of block because of our sins or our will that does not allow the change that God wants to affect in us.  God never forces His grace on us, so if we don’t want to accept the change that He wants in us, it will not happen.  
    But we can also experience God through means other than the sacraments, like daily prayer, reading Scripture, serving the poor, etc.  And sometimes we notice the change, but sometimes we don’t.  Sometimes we notice the change after months of our sacramental or devotional practices, like a virtue exhibited when earlier we would have given in to vice.  Patience is not a virtue at which I always excel.  I have noticed some growth though, and can appreciate it when I notice that earlier I would have chewed someone’s head off for some stupid thing, but now I’m more understanding.  I’m still growing, and wouldn’t call myself a paragon of patience, but I have noticed growth that has happened since I started working on being more patient.  

    Like the Magi, God draws us closer to Himself, not just once, but each day.  Like the Magi, God doesn’t want us to return to the same sinful habits and patterns, or even simply the same way of life that we lived before drawing closer to Him.  God leads us down a different road, even when it’s within the same vocation.  Follow Christ, the Morning Star each day, and allow your encounter with Him to change you, so that the glory of the Lord can shine upon you[: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen].

Repaying God

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    For many young people, what got them through the COVID pandemic and the isolation that came with it was the sitcom “The Office.”  In one episode, Dwight, the Assistant to the Regional Manager, decides that he wants people to owe him, so that he can get his office frenemy, Jim, fired.  In the ubiquitous one-on-one interview with the camera crew, Dwight says, “Can’t a guy just buy some bagels for his friends so they’ll owe him a favor which he can use to get someone fired who stole a co-manager position from him anymore?”  Unfortunately another salesman, Andy, hates to be in debt to anyone.  So he starts finding ways to return the favor, thus not owing Dwight and thwarting his plans.  In Andy’s interview, he says, “You give me a gift, BAM! thank you note…You do me a favor, WHAM! favor returned.  Do not test my politeness.”  They both then go back and forth trying to give and return favors in pretty comical ways.
    In our first reading and Gospel we hear about people giving thanks for what God has given them.  Naaman receives healing from God for his leprosy, and one of the ten lepers whom Jesus healed returns to Jesus to thank Him.  Naaman even goes so far as to take with him “two mule-loads of earth” so that he can offer sacrifice to God on holy ground, even back in his home country of Assyria.
    While we’re not quite at the Thanksgiving holiday, God reminds us today that we owe Him thanks.  He reminds us, not as a Catholic guilt trip, but because He made us and He knows that we have a built-in desire to thank those who have given us gifts, and most especially the one who has given us everything.  Gratitude helps us live up to our potential as humans.
    But so often we pretend as if what we have comes from our own doing.  Yes, we do cooperate in our own excellence, but all that we have comes as a gift from God.  It starts with our life, which we do not arrange.  Even if a couple seeks to conceive a child at a time when they suspect conception could happen, it only happens by God’s will.  Then our family forms us, but they are also a gift from God.  And we naturally have some gifts and talents, which are also from God.  Some of those we choose to develop, but our ability to develop them is also a gift from God.  And we often take advantage of certain opportunities that come our way, but that also is a gift from God.  The only thing that God does not give us is sin; that is only from our making.  Everything else is either given to or allowed for us from God.  But do we thank God for those things?  Do we thank God not only for the big events and opportunities in our lives, but also for the things that we so often take for granted?
    Our attendance at Mass on Sunday is one way that we give back to God.  The word Eucharist, the sacrament which Mass makes possible, comes from two Greek words meaning “to give thanks well.”  In the Mass we give thanks to God for all the natural things He gives us, but especially for the supernatural gifts He gives us, like the possibility of salvation, and the grace to say yes to His will and live in a way that make us truly happy and prepares us for heaven.  God, strictly speaking, owes us nothing, and yet gives us all we need for eternal happiness.  Certainly that deserves some means of thanks.  
    The virtue of religion, the virtue by which we offer service to the Divine (to use the definition from the Roman writer, Tully), is the acquired habit, the repeated purposeful good act, of giving back to God for all He has given to us.  St. Thomas Aquinas notes different etymologies of the word religion, but connects it to the Latin word religare, to bind together (think of ligaments which bind bone to bone), and quotes St. Augustine who writes, “May religion bind us to the one Almighty God.”  God binds us to Himself, not because of any need, but because of His great love and generosity.
    And yet, how our sinfulness and ingratitude manifests itself when it comes to attending even just weekly Mass, which is part of the way that we fulfill the third commandment to keep holy the sabbath.  Obviously, you are all here.  And yet the numbers are pretty atrocious in the general Catholic population counting those who attend Mass each Sunday and Holyday.  How sad that so many cannot give one hour to the God who has given them everything, and even gives them the Body and Blood of His Son (presuming they’re in a state of grace) to sustain their spiritual life!
    But let’s go deeper so that we’re not just pointing out the splinter in our neighbor’s eye or casting stones at others when we ourselves are not innocent.  How do we treat the Mass?  With young children this can be difficult, but do we try to arrive five or ten minutes early for silent prayer with God?  Do we look forward to Mass as my opportunity to spend time with God, or do we begrudgingly go so we don’t go to Hell (and yes, you can go to Hell simply from skipping Mass on Sundays and Holydays)?  Do we do our best to pay attention and participate interiorly and exteriorly through silent prayer and responding when appropriate?  Are we upset if Mass is one second longer than the usual Sunday 60 minutes?  Do we leave Mass, having just received the Sacred Body and the Precious Blood of our Lord, and think to ourselves, ‘I didn’t get anything out of that Mass’?  Living the virtue of religion goes beyond simple attendance.  God deserves our best each Sunday, which, granted, is slightly different for everyone.  But there are probably ways that we can all grow deeper in gratitude to God.
    God has given us everything, even those things that we cooperate with God’s grace and the talents He gave us to earn.  Are we like Naaman and the Samaritan leper who insist on thanking God?  Or are we like the nine lepers who walk away without any acknowledgement of the one who gives us gifts?  God grant that we thank Him, not only with our voice on Thanksgiving Day, but with our voice, mind, and heart each day of our lives and especially every time we come to Mass.

Seeing the Risen Jesus

Solemnity of Easter

The entrance to the aediculum

   [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  One of the most memorable things that I experienced when I went to the Holy Land for the first time in 2007 as a seminarian was attending Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus died and rose from the dead.  At the place where the tomb was, there is a small building inside the church called the aediculum, and inside that aediculum is where a slab of stone rests that held the dead body of our Lord.  The Franciscans gave us permission to have Mass there one day.  The way Mass works in that space is that the Liturgy of the Word/Mass of Catechumens happens outside the aediculum.  For the Liturgy of the Eucharist/Mass of the Faithful, the priest enters the aediculum and says the Eucharist Prayer inside there, which you can hear, but not see, because of how small it is inside.
    The great moment is when the priest gets to the point where he says, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” because the priest leaves the aediculum, and, holding the Body of the Lord above the chalice says, while showing the Eucharist to the people.  Part of the power is that this is the same risen Lord, coming from His tomb, alive for us to see, though of course under sacramental signs.
    As we celebrate Easter today, we remember the event that changed the course of human history.  While the Prophet Elisha had raised a person from the dead in the Old Testament, and our Lord had raised the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus from the dead, the resurrection was altogether different.  Our Lord’s Body no longer suffered under the restrictions of the physical world, as we will hear next Sunday when we hear about Him entering a locked room through the door.  While the Body was certainly His, and bore the marks of His crucifixion, in a glorified state there was something different about it.  I often imagine it as having a slight glow to it, though maybe that was not the case.  It was different enough that the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize Christ as He walked with them, until He broke bread in a room with them.  
    But that event that changed everything, starting really with Good Friday and culminating with Easter Sunday, we celebrate and enter into each Sunday in particular, and each time we come to Mass more generally.  At the Mass, we begin by acknowledging that we are sinners and that Christ suffered for us and because of us.  We stand at the foot of the Cross and nail our sins there with Christ so that they can be forgiven.  We offer our lives–the joys and sorrows, pain and comforts, work and leisure–since the last time we attended Mass united to the perfect offering of Christ to His heavenly Father on Calvary.  We stand there at Calvary and hear God’s word proclaimed to help us understand what work God does in our lives.  And then, during the Eucharist Prayer/Canon of the Mass, we enter into Christ’s offering of Himself on the cross, and His burial in the tomb.  In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church references how the altar, besides being symbol of Christ Himself and the Cross, also symbolizes the tomb.
    And that is perhaps a bit clearer as we celebrate Mass facing the Lord together, or ad Dominum.  During the three days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Christ’s Body laid in the tomb, unseen by all others.  After the elevations which follow the words of institution, the words that Christ Himself spoke (“This is my Body”; “This is my Blood), Christ is not seen by the faithful in the pews until the priest shows the Body of Christ while saying, “Behold the Lamb of God.”  This is, as it were, Christ breaking forth from the tomb, and appearing before His disciples after the Resurrection.  The same experience I had in Jerusalem, of seeing Christ in the Eucharist come forth from His tomb you can experience as I remove the Body of Christ from the tomb of the altar and He rises so that you all can see Him and His glorified Body, which is not limited in the way our bodies are limited.
    And the Lord does not just show Himself from afar as I show Him to you.  At the time for the reception of Holy Communion, He comes near to you, as He came near to Mary Magdalene at the tomb or as He came near the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples in the Upper Room.  He stands right before you, and then even enters in to you to bring that power of the Resurrection into your individual lives.
    And what is our response, then?  The same as the disciples who realized that Christ was risen: they had to tell other disciples, and, after Pentecost, everyone.  Knowing that Christ had died, but that He was truly risen, they could not remain silent, but shared that joy and the transformation of their lives that the Resurrection made.  Death no longer had the last say.  Sin no longer could hold them in slavery.  They could not contain the joy of that revelation, but had to tell others.  And so should we.  The joy of this day should cast away all sorrow and fear and lead us to greater holiness of life.

Inside the aediculum

    Christ has risen from the dead.  It is not just a past event, but a reality that we get to join every Sunday, which the Church calls a “little Easter.”  May we recognize the Risen Christ as we see and receive Him in the Eucharist, the Lamb of God, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, live and reign for ever and ever.

Getting the Bigger Picture

Easter Vigil
    I know someone well who is very smart.  His mind is a well-oiled machine.  When faced with different data points, he can put it together to make sense, and anticipate challenges and/or opportunities, and adjust expectations or actions as necessary.  Because of this, he is very gifted at administration.  When it comes to friendships: he struggles a bit more.  Because his mind tries to get to why a friend didn’t tell him something, or why did a friend use the words he did, and is that friend trying to communicate something subtly that he doesn’t want to say directly.  And then anxiety kicks in and his brain goes into overdrive trying to make sense of it all, and often reading into things that are much more innocent.
    I try to help him by reminding him to consider other facts that he knows to be true that will put his mind at ease.  I encourage him to expand the amount of data that his mind is analyzing to include more positive facts and input, and not just the negative ones to which his brain so easily goes.  While it takes work, seeing the bigger picture can help calm his fears of rejection and realize that he really does have good friends who aren’t looking to get rid of him.
    Maybe you don’t have an analytical mind, but with what has happened over the past few days, starting on Holy Thursday, there’s a lot to process.  In this one grand liturgy that began with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we entered into the model of service in the washing of feet; the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist at the Last Supper; and the agony in the garden at the altar of repose.  On Good Friday we joined with Christ in the fruits of the betrayal by Judas and our God, Savior, and hope dying in the most horrible way possible.  Earlier today we just waited, joining with the apostles who had all likely lost hope and were wondering what they should do now that their Master was in a tomb.  And now, tonight, we celebrate that hope did not die, but that God raised His Son from the dead and conquered sin and death forever.  If we take these events seriously, they should make us wonder what God did and what it all means.  We may not get anxiety, but it calls for a deeper reflection on more facts, more data to understand God’s plan.
    And that’s why we had all these readings tonight.  We heard about how God created life to be good and an expression of His love.  We heard about Abraham almost sacrificing his beloved son, but God providing a ram to take Isaac’s place.  We heard about the Egyptians being put to death in water, which was also the way that God’s chosen people were saved: through water.  We heard the Prophet Isaiah talk about how God would take us back, though we had abandoned Him, and how God would give us the good things of life and renew His covenant with us.  The Prophet Baruch encouraged us to follow the ways of the Lord and so receive light and favor.  And we heard God tell the Prophet Ezekiel that God would give new life to His people, cleanse them from their sins, and lead them back to their promised inheritance.  
    These are all realities we all need to hear tonight, to better understand God’s plan.  But especially you, Dylan and Isaiah, need to hear these as you prepare to become Catholic through your baptism, confirmation, and reception of the Holy Eucharist.  You will go through water which will destroy all that is fallen in you, but will give you new life in Christ.  God will send His Spirit upon you to help you live the new law of grace.  And God will prepare for you the “rich fare” of the Eucharist, the food which is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, which will help join you to Christ in the closest union you can have with anyone while on earth.  Your stories–what brought you to this holy night, your path of conversion–now becomes a small part of the larger story of salvation, by which God gives us a greater gift even than the Garden of Eden, which He created for us, the people He has made in His image.  God made Eden for Adam and Eve, who lost it by their disobedience.  God opens heaven to you, greater than any earthly paradise, and you can receive it by your life of obedience to God.  

    The price of this great gift of heaven was costly indeed: the death of the Son of God.  But Christ accepted it lovingly as the will of the Father and because it meant you could go to heaven and be united with Him for all eternity, which is exactly why God created humanity in the first place: for union with Him.
    So do not only consider the drama of the past few days.  Do not fix your minds on what causes anxiety.  Consider all of salvation history, and how God, who created you in love, has redeemed you in love, and now welcomes you into His family of love, the Catholic Church, and now shows you the straight and narrow way to enter into eternal love in heaven.  

God Getting Dirty Hands

Fourth Sunday of Lent–Second Scrutiny

The Strouse House

    Though we didn’t have a farm growing up, we did live in the country.  There were farms not far from our property, including pigs and cows (which made for interesting smells in the summer time).  We understood, early on, where meat came from.  We did have a little garden in the summer to grow corn, tomatoes, and zucchini.  And we would be responsible for planting the seeds, by hand, watering the ground, and picking the weeds.  We weren’t afraid of getting a little dirty, unlike some city folk I have known who imagine that food just magically appears at the grocery store each week.
    Our Lord wasn’t afraid of getting a little dirty as He healed the man who was born blind.  Jesus spits on the ground, makes a kind of mud, and then puts it on the eye of the man, and tells him to wash the mud off in the Pool of Siloam.  And in the first reading, God chooses David to be the new king.  Now, the reading describes David as “ruddy,” which I have heard numerous times, but had to look up, as it’s not a word we often use.  Ruddy means “a healthy, red color.”  The reading also describes David as handsome, but notes that he worked with sheep.  Sheep are not the cleanest of animals, nor the brightest.  So David, even with his handsome, healthy appearance, also probably had a bit of dirt on him.
    God uses earthy things to communicate.  Dylan, in a few weeks you will be washed, not in the Pool of Siloam, but in the font of baptism.  You, like David, will be anointed with oil on your head.  And while both things come from the earth, and spiritual reality will be accomplished through the earthly substances.  
    Through the water being poured on your head, God will remake you, just as He remade the man born blind.  Water is already a natural means of cleansing, but through the water blessed at the Easter Vigil, you will receive cleansing from original sin and adoption into God’s family.  It may feel no different from other water, but through this holy water, infused with the Holy Spirit, you will die with Christ and rise with Him to new life.  
    Likewise with the oil.  The oil, the Sacred Chrism, is just a mixture of olive oil and a special perfume.  But because of its consecration by Bishop Boyea, it will have the ability to give you the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that rushed upon David at his anointing by Samuel.  It will smell different than the oil that you cook with, but it will look the same.  Still, by that oil, you will become an anointed of God, with the ability to offer the sacrifice of your life to God as a priest in the common priesthood of the baptized; the ability to speak for God as a prophet in union with the Church; and the ability to govern yourself to follow God’s law as a king in the kingdom of Christ the High King.  All of that will be accomplished through simple, earthly things which we dedicate to God for His use with our cooperation.
    Today, in the second scrutiny, you will again ask God to prepare you for these earthly and heavenly realities mingled together.  We will pray for you that God will continue to remove any blindness from your life to the sins that hold you bound now, but from which you will be freed at baptism.  We will continue to pray that God will make you ready to rise from the dead, so that “‘Christ [may] give you light.’”  

    And all of that will culminate in your reception of Holy Communion.  God will receive the simple bread and wine that we offer, and, through the power of the Holy Spirit and my ordained priestly ministry, will transform it in the Body and Blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.  That spiritual sustenance will give you what you need to follow Christ each day and continue on your pilgrimage to heaven, along with the rest of us.  Through your reception of Holy Communion, you will be closer to Christ than you could be in any other way on earth, in anticipation of being united to Him in heaven.  Again, God will use ordinary, earthly things to communicate His life, His grace, to us, as He does with all the sacraments.
    Our response, then, is to walk in the light of truth and be faithful to Him, even when we are challenged by others, as the man born blind was by the Pharisees.  Those who are not enlightened might see just simple water, or oil, or bread and wine.  But you will know that the Holy Spirit will be present in each, and that the bread and wine will be the Body and Blood of the Savior.  And your job, as with all of us who are confirmed, will be to help others to also see the spiritual realities that are communicated through earthly things.  You will use that new life, the Holy Spirit, and the spiritual sustenance of the Eucharist to help you help others know how God works among us, even now.  May God, through these scrutinies, help you to see more clearly in preparation for your baptism, confirmation, and reception of the Holy Eucharist.  And we all also receive clearer vision, and give you an example of those who were blind, but now see, and share the good news of life in Christ.

A Relationship with the Truth

Third Sunday of Lent-First Scrutiny

    In high school I was on our own Quiz Bowl team (yes, I was a nerd).  And Lansing Catholic High School participated in the PBS TV station televised games called “Quiz Busters.”  I remember being in the championship game one year, with a one-year tuition scholarship to MSU on the line.  We were in the final Lightning Round, with either team in a position to win, and the question was asked, “In the Sistine Chapel, what color smoke…” to which I buzzed in and yelled “White!”, anticipating the rest of the question, which answer was right, and helped us win the “Quiz Busters” Championship against another school which was much larger than Lansing Catholic.
    I like to have the right answers, and there is something good about knowing the truth.  But having the right answers isn’t all there is, as we see in the Gospel today, this long Gospel that we use each year that we have an elect, a catechumen chosen by the Bishop for baptism at Easter.  The Samaritan woman has the right answers, at least most of them.  She knows that Jews do not drink from the same containers as Samaritan women, because the samaritans were pagans and it could render the Jew unclean.  She knows that to have water, you have to have a bucket to draw it out.  She gives a technically right answer when she says that she doesn’t have a husband.  And she says that Jews and Samaritans don’t agree on how and where to worship.
    But the Lord isn’t only looking for right answers.  He is looking for a relationship with her.  Now, Jesus also identifies Himself as the Truth.  So I’m not trying to say that the truth doesn’t matter.  It does.  But the truth comes in the context of a relationship with Truth Incarnate.  Jesus is trying to give the Samaritan woman eternal life, and all she can focus on is trying to give correct answers and trip Jesus up in theological debates.

    The Samaritan woman, upon entering into relationship with Jesus, recognizes that He knows her.  She says, “‘Come see a man who told me everything I have done.’”  Jesus knows her, more deeply than anyone else, though He just met her at the well.  The Samaritan woman heard Him say that He is the Christ, the Messiah, who will let everyone know what they are to believe and how they are to worship.  
    Dylan, as an elect, God already knows you.  But over these past months He has drawn you in to know Him better.  He knows everything you have done: the good, the bad, and the ugly.    But He wants to be in a relationship with you.  You have learned many important things over the past months about what it means to be Catholic and how we Catholics are called to follow Christ in our daily lives.  Being a friend of Jesus, and even more than a friend, a sibling with Jesus, means doing things that will strengthen your relationship with Him and avoiding anything that would harm that relationship with Him.  
    Through Holy Baptism, Confirmation, and reception of the Eucharist, the love of God will be poured into your heart, as St. Paul said in our second reading, “through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  You will become an adopted son of God the Father, and God will dwell within you as in a temple.  
    As God prepares you for this, He draws you closer and closer to Himself.  The Samaritan woman changes the way she addresses Jesus as the conversation develops: she starts by calling Him “a Jew”; then, “Sir”; then “the Messiah.”  You, too, have come to know Jesus more deeply in the passing weeks and months, to be at a place where you are almost ready to profess Him as God and Savior.  
    And sometimes, like with the Samaritan woman, some of what Jesus the Savior has revealed has been painful.  I’m sure the Samaritan woman wasn’t too pleased when Christ said, “‘You are right in saying, “I do not have a husband.”  For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.’”  But Christ reveals our brokenness because He can heal us, and wants to heal us.  
    But this process of growing in relationship with Christ won’t end with your reception of the Sacraments of Initiation.  All of us here hopefully try to grow in our relationship with Christ each day.  Yes, we try to know the right answers, but we also try to be a good brother or sister of Christ and son or daughter of the Father.  Sometimes we miss the point, like the Samaritan woman.  Sometimes the Lord needs to convict us of sin, or sinful habits.  But everything the Lord does gives us the opportunity to grow closer to Him.  May we not squander the opportunities the Lord gives us to deepen our relationship with Him, especially this Lent, but drink from the living water which flows from the wounded side of Christ. 

Stewardship

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

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

"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!