Gifts From God

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

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

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

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

Sons and Brides

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

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

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

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

The Work of the Spirit

Pentecost

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  When it comes to bourbon distilleries, most people have the mentality that the older a distillery is, the better bourbon they produce.  I guess the thinking goes that if you’ve been distilling America’s native spirit for a long time, you must have learned something along the way about how to make good bourbon.  For example, my beloved Buffalo Trace claims that they are the oldest continuously operating distillery in America, as there are records that distilling began on the site we now know as Buffalo Trace in 1775, one year before the US gained its independence, and continued to sell bourbon with a special medicinal license during Prohibition.  Evan Williams claims that it is the first commercial distillery in Kentucky, beginning commercial distilling along the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville in 1783.  Old Forester claims the title of oldest continuously sold bourbon and family-owned distillery in the US, going back to the first bottled bourbon in 1870 by George Garvin Brown.  And even if you don’t have longevity, you try to latch on to the “old” mystique.  Bulleit Bourbon brands itself as “Frontier” bourbon, evoking images of the wild west in the 1800s.  But Thomas E. Bulleit, Jr. founded the company in 1987.  

    As we celebrate Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we see a similar trend in the Church.  Everyone wants to claim that the Holy Spirit, God, is on their side.  And usually that means that they want divine support for something new that they create.  After all, the Holy Spirit, as we heard in the Acts of the Apostles, so excited the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples in the Upper Room to spread the Gospel, that as the Jews heard the Gospel proclaimed in numerous languages, they thought those proclaiming it were drunk.  When the Pharisees drag in the Apostles for proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and tell them to stop saying that salvation comes from Christ, Peter says, “We must obey God rather than men,” a line that Jan Hus, a Bohemian heretic, would use to justify his teaching that no one had to listen to the Church or the pope, only what their interpretation of Scripture was.  Other later protesters like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and others who founded breakaway ecclesial communities would claim that the Holy Spirit was the impetus behind their rejection of Catholicism.
    In our own days, we see the unity of the Church and its commitment to fidelity to Christ’s teaching stretched.  On the one hand, some, including members of the Church hierarchy seek to make Church teaching subject to current cultural norms and majority rule (even if the majority is only a vocal minority).  Even while the Holy See said that marriages not recognized by the Church cannot formally be blessed and that ordination is reserved to men, some want simply to change those teachings, and those upon which they are founded, and they appeal to it being a work of the Holy Spirit.  On the other hand is the Society of St. Pius X, which Pope Benedict XVI tried to to reconcile by lifting the excommunications issued by Pope St. John Paul II; and even Pope Francis tried to bring them more into the fold by granting them authority to celebrate Catholic weddings.  The Society now seeks to consecrate their own bishops without a papal mandate, which Rome has clarified would be an act of schism and those who participate and even those who obstinately hold fast to their errors, would be excommunicated.  The Society appeals to the work of the Holy Spirit throughout the ages, to which they believe they are holding firm, while denying that the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council was truly a work of the Holy Spirit.  
    But how do we know what the Holy Spirit does?  Can we have any surety?  Our surety comes from the fact that the Holy Spirit continues the work of Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church, which Christ set up in a particular way, with certain members having authority to speak in Christ’s name, as we hear in John, chapter 20 and elsewhere.  If Church teaching was determined by majority rule, none of us would believe that Christ is consubstantial with the Father, as that heresy, Arianism, was much more popular than true or orthodox Catholicism, which followed the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea.  But, the same authority that grants Nicea I validity, also means that when Pope St. John XXIII convoked Vatican II, and all the bishops gathered in union with him; and when Pope St. Paul VI continued the council after Pope St. John’s death, and confirmed its decrees, we also hold fast to what it teaches dogmatically.  Theology and liturgy cannot be frozen in time, nor can theology and liturgy simply blow in the winds of the spirit of the age.  
    So how do we know that we have the Holy Spirit, given to the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples at Pentecost, and given to all followers for two millennia afterwards?  We hold fast to the one Church that Christ founded, which has the Holy Spirit as its catalyst and protector.  Has the Catholic Church always implemented its teachings well?  Has she always been clear in particular statements by the popes or even the holiness of every pope?  No.  In many ways, the implementation of Vatican II, or maybe better said, the hijacking of the implementation of Vatican II, has led to much confusion, even among those who have the charism of helping to lead the Church.  But Vatican II did not teach error or heresy.  If she did, then we ought to leave the Catholic Church, because Christ’s promise to St. Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church has been broken, and a God who claims to be the truth but breaks a promise is not worth following.  Likewise, Church teaching is not a political program that can change when a “new party” gains power.  What has been revealed as dogmatically true is true for all the ages, no matter how unpopular or how difficult following Christ becomes in a particular age.  If Church teaching can change with cultures, then it would be better not to be a part of the Church and just do whatever we felt right moment by moment.  
    But neither of those positions are the work of the Holy Spirit.  How do I know?  Because the Catholic Church has clarified both of those positions as outside what it means to be Catholic.  If the Society of St. Pius X goes forward with its illicit, albeit valid, consecrations of new bishops, to join with them is to participate in schism and jeopardize your immortal soul.  If priests or even bishops encourage ordination of women and/or blessings of unions which the Church does not recognize as marriage, and you join with them, you jeopardize your immortal soul.  The Holy Spirit pushes the Church, and the work of God sometimes does surprise us, just like Pentecost surprised the followers of Christ and the Jews in Jerusalem.  But the Holy Spirit does not work against the Church.  We must obey God rather than men.  But make sure it’s God you’re following, and not just your own will, or the will of other men.  [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]

Can I Get a Witness?

Sunday after the Ascension
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  While the official version of the Bible for Catholics is the Nova Vulgata, the New Vulgate, which is Latin, the Gospels themselves were written in Greek.  I took one year of Biblical Greek in Major Seminary, which has helped me with clues as to the meanings of words.  While I can’t really read Greek, certain words still stick out.  Today’s Gospel is a great example.  The Latin, which we heard, talks about testimonium, which in English we translate as “witness.”  But in the Greek, our Lord says that the Apostles (to whom He is speaking in the Upper Room) 𝜇𝛼𝜌𝜏𝜐𝜌𝜀𝜄𝜏𝜀.  Now, some of you are joking that this is Greek to you (in fact, it’s Greek to everyone; it’s Greek).  But that word is connected to the Greek word, whence we get the English word “martyr.”  To be a witness, in Greek, was to be a martyr.  We now associate martyr with the shedding of blood, but the original meaning simply connected to telling the truth as a witness.
    But Christ does not only call the Apostles to be martyrs.  He calls us, all of us, to be martyrs.  Certainly, most of the Apostles, with the exception of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, did shed their blood it witness to the truth of Jesus Christ and His Gospel.  But dying for the faith was the consequence of their earlier martyrdom, their earlier witness by the spreading of the Gospel by word and by deed.  And God calls us, too, to witness to the Gospel, whether it means the red martyrdom of shedding our blood, or the white martyrdom of dying to our own wills to live for God and bring others into the truth that Christ revealed.  
    We cannot, however, live (or die) as martyrs on our own power.  We need the Holy Spirit to strengthen us to witness to our faith in the Lord.  Without the Holy Spirit, weakness could easily take over, and we could walk away from Christ rather than stay strong in the face of adversity.  And Christ clearly says we will experience adversity.  He tells His Apostles that others will kick them out of synagogues, and even will kill them.  And those who kill them will think they are doing God’s will.  We take for granted that Catholicism separated from Judaism.  But at this point, at the Last Supper in the Upper Room, the Apostles knew nothing other than Judaism, and did not realize fully that Christ would call them to be the foundation of His Church, His new assembly (the Greek word is 𝜀𝜅𝜅𝜆𝜀𝜎𝜄𝛼), the fulfillment of what God had promised the Chosen People.  

    So do we pray to the Holy Spirit?  I’m not only talking about these nine days between the Ascension of the Lord and Pentecost, the first novena which the Apostles and Blessed Mother and other disciples prayed.  But outside these days, do we ask for the strength, wisdom, and other gifts of the Holy Spirit?  There was a heresy in the Church in the fourth century called the pneumatomachianism.  Pneumatomachians did not believe that the Holy Spirit is truly God.  This teaching was condemned by the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in AD 381.  But are we closet pneumatomachians?  
    How often do we pray to the Holy Spirit?  Do we treat Him as God, or simply an extra add on that we don’t really need?  Each Sunday we profess in the Creed that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life (Dominum et Vivificantem).  Those are divine titles, as “Lord” is the acceptable way for the Jews to say God rather than saying His sacred Name, revealed to Moses in the tetragrammaton.  We profess that with the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit is adored and glorified (Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur).  But I think that sometimes we fear reaching out to the Holy Spirit.  We see charismatics, both those in and outside the visible Church, and we become uneasy, because we’re not used to speaking in tongues, or having words of prophecy, or raising our hands when we pray.  And while the Holy Spirit can still move people to speak in tongues, or reveal prophetic words, or even have us raise our hands in prayer at time, those are special gifts which are meant to build up the body of Christ, not the usual gifts that the Holy Spirit always gives: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
    We do need the Holy Spirit to help us to explain to others the truths of our faith, especially in ways that will convince them, which can vary from person to person.  And just because someone knows the truth, does not mean that they will accept it.  The Holy Spirit helps us go beyond head knowledge to having people accept in their heart as well that Jesus is Lord and that His life leads to happiness and heaven.  The Holy Spirit gives us the courage or fortitude not to cheat our boss or our employees, to use words that befit our Christian dignity, and to love others as Christ loves us, to the best of our ability.  Those are the ways that we live as martyrs, as witnesses.
    You don’t have to know Greek to be a martyr.  You don’t even have to shed your blood to be a martyr.  To be a martyr is to be a witness, and it is a vocation for all those who follow Christ.  But martyrdom, of the red or white variety, is only possible with the strength of the Holy Spirit, given to us in Baptism, and strengthened through Confirmation.  Make it your goal, not only this week, but especially this week, to ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, so that you can be a martyr, a witness, to Christ.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Clarifying Confirmation

Sixth Sunday of Easter
    When it came to my own reception of the Sacrament of Confirmation in 1998 as an eighth grader, I think I had a fairly faulty understanding of what the sacrament really meant.  I remember reading facts about the gifts of the Holy Spirit (not a bad start) and a book that had examples of the saints who lived out the faith in more modern times (also, not a bad thing).  But I seem to remember some sense that Confirmation meant that I was choosing to still be Catholic and become an adult in the faith.  
    In my experience as a priest, I know that this mentality continues to this day.  Not as much here at St. Matthew, but in previous parishes young men and women would tell me, when asked what Confirmation meant, that they were choosing to be Catholic for themselves, since their parents had made the decision for them when they were baptized, and they were becoming adults in the faith.  But the choice to be Catholic happens when one is baptized.  Certainly, one can choose (sadly) to walk away from the faith after baptism, but that person will always be Catholic.  And an eighth grader, or a young high school student is far from being an adult, though they certainly can make more adult decisions than a younger child.

    So what does Confirmation mean?  Is it, as some have said, a sacrament in search of a theology?  We hear about a kind of confirmation today in the first reading, when the Apostles Peter and John go to Samaria and lay hands on those who had previously been baptized so that they could receive the Holy Spirit.  We do receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, but Confirmation gives us a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  And, in the Latin Rite, it is most often bishops, the successors of the Apostles, who still confer the Sacrament of Confirmation.
    But what is that sacrament about?  Why have it?  All sacraments draw us ever closer into the inner life of the Blessed Trinity.  They bring us closer into the love that is shared between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  All sacraments make the Blessed Trinity present to us to remind us that God has not left us orphans, but dwells within us.  Through Confirmation, we grow in our union with Christ, who gives us union with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  
    But, even while we grow in the life of the entire Blessed Trinity through the Sacrament of Confirmation, we receive a seal, a character, an indelible mark that gives us access to the Holy Spirit as our Advocate.  While we don’t use the term advocate as much anymore, the understanding of an advocate, or a Paraclete (the Greek word) is a defense attorney who pleads our cause.  The Holy Spirit pleads our cause before the Father, and defends us against the accuser, the devil, who seeks to separate us from the Father.  
    But the advocate also gives us strength and defends us as we encounter other humans who either are curious about the Gospel or antithetical to it.  The Holy Spirit gives us words to explain our faith.  He helps us to “be ready to give an explanation…for a reason for your hope,” as St. Peter said in our second reading.  The Holy Spirit strengthens us to share why following Christ makes a difference.  That is why, in the old rite, Confirmation was described as making young men and women “soldiers of Christ.”  They were to win the world for Christ by word and deed, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
    But St. Peter also helps us understand that the Holy Spirit gives us the grace to suffer for the Gospel.  Sometimes following Christ means that we will suffer.  We might lose out on promotions, or not be able to engage in certain social events, or maybe not play on all the sports teams we want to, or maybe even lose friends or family because they don’t accept our Christianity in general or our Catholicism in particular.  In addition to physical suffering, those situation are also suffering for the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit gives us courage “to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God.”  
    God gives us the sacraments to give us more of His life, His grace, to observe the commandments which Christ gave us, as the sign that we truly love God.  In particular, God gives us the Sacrament of Confirmation to strengthen what we received in Holy Baptism.  May God stir up the flames of the Holy Spirit in our hearts to witness, by word and deed, to the joy of the Gospel, and the true love of the Trinity, into which God drew us first through Holy Baptism, and into which we are called to delve more deeply each day of our life.   

Not About Me

Memorial of St. Barnabas-15th Anniversary of Ordination Mass

    Before I begin my homily, I want to thank all of you for coming here this evening to celebrate my 15th Anniversary of priesthood.  At the risk of leaving people out, I do want to try to mention the different groups here today.  First, my parents and one of my two sisters, Amanda, and her family; secondly, my brother priests and deacons, including one of my classmates from Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Fr. Craig Giera from the Archdiocese of Detroit; third, my current parishioners from St. Matthew parish, who are graciously putting on this dinner, as well as former parishioners from other parishes going back to when I was a seminarian; fourth, priests of the Orthodox Church here in Genesee County and their wives; fifth, Knights and Dames of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, who are papal knights and dames and who bring great honor by their presence; sixth, members of the Michigan State Police, including command officers, troopers, and fellow chaplains; I appreciate the friendship of all of you and your presence here tonight.  Five years ago I had planned a celebration of my 10th Anniversary, perhaps a more normal number to celebrate, but that was June of 2020, and I didn’t want to put my Troopers in the odd spot of having to arrest me for violating executive orders, so we just cancelled it.
    There’s a lot of focus on me today.  Some may question celebrating an anniversary with others.  After all, we’re celebrating doing what I am supposed to do: be a priest and continue with my commitment to those promises.  And, in that sense, there’s not much noteworthy in doing what we’re supposed to do.  Our Lord Himself tells his disciples: “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’”  When we do what we say we will do, that should be normal, whether it’s the promise a priest makes at his ordination, the promise a couple makes to each other and to God when they get married, or the promise a Trooper makes when he or she takes the oath upon graduation from Trooper Recruit School.
    But, lest we pack up and just go home, rather than enjoying a tasty dinner after Mass, there must be something more.  Otherwise we’re just patting ourselves on the back.  And I think the something more is that we rejoice at God providing for His Church.  Christ promised His Apostles that He would not leave them orphaned; Christ promised His disciples that He would remain with them always, even to the end of the age, as they made disciples of all nations.  And in celebrating St. Barnabas, “a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith,” we celebrate God fulfilling His promise.  And St. Barnabas took under his wing this guy named Saul, who, after his conversion, also went by the name Paul, and proclaimed the Gospel not only to Jews but also to non-Jews, Gentiles.  “And a large number of people was added to the Lord.”  

    Throughout the centuries God remains active in His Church through the power of the Holy Spirit.  God chooses people to continue His work, especially choosing certain men to share in His ministry, as we will hear in the preface of the Eucharistic Prayer tonight.  Men like Ignatius of Antioch; Basil the Great; Martin of Tours; Dominic; Jordan of Saxony; Anthony of Padua; Thomas Aquinas; Pius V; Antoninus of Florence; Charles Borromeo; John Henry Cardinal Newman; Emil Kapaun; Solanus Casey; Vincent Capodanno; John Paul II; Benedict XVI; and many others who have made Christ Himself present by their preaching and their sacramental ministry and service to the poor.  They didn’t just remind people about what Jesus did some 2,000 years ago, though they did that, too.  They acted in His Name and with His power to bring people into relationship with God through Holy Baptism; to forgive their sins through Penance; to give a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit through Confirmation; to join a couple as a icon of the Trinity in Holy Matrimony; to anoint and heal through the Sacrament of the Sick; and especially to make Jesus’ Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist through their sharing in Christ’s priestly ministry which they received in the Sacrament of Holy Order.  
    They did so as the person God made them, with all the ease and challenges that came with it.  They did it in their time, adjusting, not the teaching, but the method of proclamation to the cultures in which they lived.  They did so with joy at serving so loving a Father; they did so with tears knowing their own sinfulness and unworthiness to exercise so great an office.  They were set apart, like Barnabas and Saul, for the work to which God called them.  And we celebrate them today because they were faithful to that work and never gave up, even when it meant, for some, giving up their lives.
    And so today, God reminds me that I’m not done yet, at least not today (we are never promised tomorrow).  Today, you remind me that I have a high bar for which to strive.  My name is not in that litany of saints that I just enumerated, but it’s supposed to be after I die, and it gives me something for which I can strive.  
    And your name is also supposed to be in the litany of saints, those holy men and women who, throughout the centuries, heard the Gospel and conformed their lives, whatever their vocation, to Jesus Christ, so that they could say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  The good news for you, and the good news for me, is that Christ does the heavy lifting.  His grace makes it all possible.  All we have to do is cooperate, not get in the way, and let God do the brunt of the work.  
    Today is not about me.  It’s about what God has done and what God wants to still accomplish through me, with me, and in me, not so much for me, but for the People He redeemed by the Death of His Son.  Pray that I will continue to know that I am an unprofitable servant, doing only what I was obliged to do out of the love I have for Christ.  Pray that I will help you to hear, even as I myself hope to hear, these words at the end of my life: “Well done, good and faithful servant….Come, share your master’s joy.”   

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.  

Waiting

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  When it comes to difficult times for most people, any time a person has to wait probably ranks towards the top.  Maybe it’s a child waiting for summer break to begin in the last days of May and the first days of June (or maybe a teacher!).  Maybe it’s a mother, waiting for her child to be born.  Maybe it’s waiting in a doctor’s office or in the lobby of a dealership to get the oil changed.  Maybe it’s waiting on the phone for a customer service representative to try to resolve whatever issue you may be having.  For me, one of the frustrating things is that there is nothing I can do to speed up the time when I’m waiting.  I have no control.

    So as we celebrate the Ascension of our Lord, we’re now in a long waiting game.  And if you think you were on hold for a long time with that customer service representative, we’ve been waiting almost 2,000 years for Christ to return, as the angels promised He would.  We know that God keeps His promises, but we also know that He chooses the right time to accomplish His will.  After all, He waited unknown centuries from the fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, to fulfill His promise to send a redeemer to restore them to friendship with God.  But that waiting wasn’t just sitting on their hands, doing nothing.  He prepared His People so that they could be ready to welcome the long-awaited Messiah, who was also His Only-Begotten Son.  They waited through the Great Flood; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; slavery in Egypt and their return and conquest of the Promised Land; the judges and kings; the prophets who corrected them when they went astray; and even through foreign occupation of their land, first by the Babylonians, then by the Greeks, and then eventually by Romans.
    So, in this time, we also wait, as we have from the year AD 33.  And our waiting is really twofold: waiting to celebrate the promised gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and waiting for the Parousia, the return of Christ in glory.  
    While we wait to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we should be asking the Holy Spirit to dwell within us more deeply, especially through the Novena to the Holy Spirit.  These days between the Ascension and Pentecost was the first novena, the first nine-days of prayer for a particular petition.  Granted, in most dioceses that’s now shortened to seven days, but that’s another story.  Still, even though we have received the Holy Spirit, especially through the holy sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, we can never have too much of the Third Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity, the one who is our Advocate, who strengthens us with gifts like wisdom and courage, and who gives us the fruits of love, joy, and peace, among others.  While waiting at a doctor’s office or waiting on the phone can seem very passive, where you can’t do anything else, waiting for the Holy Spirit is more like waiting for summer break, or even giving birth to a child, where there are preparations and things to be done so that, when the day comes, we’re ready.  It would be very sad to go into labor, knowing that we hadn’t started or completed the baby’s room or crib, or bought the necessary supplies to help the child thrive and grow outside the womb.  But, when it comes to Pentecost, how often does this happen, that we are not quite ready to receive the Holy Spirit?
    But beyond Pentecost, we wait for Christ to return in glory.  And this, too, is not a passive waiting.  This wait should be active.  Because at the end of time, Christ will put all things “beneath his feet,” as St. Paul says in his epistle to the Ephesians.  What is not of Christ will be cast down; what is of Christ will be raised up.  In this waiting time, we have the opportunity to participate in that reign of Christ already, even though it’s not yet fully known.  We have the opportunity to cast down all that is not of God, and focus on making sure we devote all of our words, actions, and thoughts to God so that God will raise us up, and will not have to cast us down, whether in totality to Hell, or even just parts of us in Purgatory, the parts that have to be burned up like chaff, or like the dross that is burned off to purify gold.  
    We know that Christ will return, but we don’t know when that will happen.  So, the best plan of action is to make ourselves ready at all times, or at least as ready as we can be.  And it’s not just a matter of looking the part (I remember a sign that said, “God is coming back; look busy.”).  Making ourselves ready is only possible by cooperating with God’s grace, and letting that grace transform us from the inside out.  We are not promised more time.  We are only promised today; God only gives us “now” to turn away from sin and turn back to Him.  If we passively wait, presuming we have more time, the day of Christ’s return, or the day of our death, could catch us off guard, and then perhaps we will be cast down because we had not allowed Christ to configure us to Himself.
    Waiting is difficult.  And it’s especially difficult when we see evil grow and be celebrated and good struggle to survive and be persecuted.  We might feel tempted at times just to give up, like our wait will never end.  But, like summer break for children; like the day of birth for a pregnant woman; even like when we’re waiting in a doctor’s room: the time will come when our hope will be fulfilled and our joy, which no one will be able to take from us, will be complete in Christ [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen]

Truth: Proposition and Person

Fourth Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Math is not my thing.  Math is good, but it’s not something I focus on or am drawn to in my life.  There were many days in high school that I wondered whether I would ever use what I learned in Algebra I, Geometry, or Algebra II later in life.  But today, at even if just in this homily, it seems like math is once again useful.
    The math that came to mind when reading over the Gospel was the Transitive Property of Equality.  This law states that if A is equal to B, and B is equal to C, then A is equal to C.  What does that have to do with the Gospel?  Well, our Lord states that when the Spirit of truth comes, He will teach us all truth.  But the Christ Himself also says, “‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’”  So the Spirit of truth will lead us to truth, but Christ is truth, so the Spirit will lead us to Christ.
    Pope Francis, may he rest in peace, emphasized this point in his weekly audience in May 2013, when he said:
 

Jesus himself told his disciples: the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all the truth”, since he himself is “the Spirit of Truth”.  We are living in an age in which people are rather sceptical [sic] of truth.  Benedict xvi [sic] has frequently spoken of relativism, that is, of the tendency to consider nothing definitive….And yet Jesus is exactly this: the Truth that, in the fullness of time, “became flesh”, and came to dwell among us so that we might know it.  The truth is not grasped as a thing, the truth is encountered.  It is not a possession, it is an encounter with a Person.

We often think of truths like we think of mathematical laws: propositions that explain reality.  But truth cannot be limited to propositions, but desires to be encountered in the Divine Person of our Lord.
    We can try to limit truth to mere propositions.  We might say: you must believe this fact; or you must live in that way.  But for Catholics, these propositions do not exist simply as Platonic ideas in a far away heaven.  For Catholics, our beliefs and our morality reveal to us who Christ is, which is important because Christ reveals who we can be to us.  Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council puts it this way: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light….Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”

    And the Church Fathers from the earliest times recognized this revelation of who God desires us to be so clearly.  At the end of this month, we will celebrate in this church, with our Orthodox brothers and sisters in Genesee County, the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.  At this first ecumenical council in the life of the Church, the 318 bishops affirmed that Christ is consubstantial with the Father (‘𝜊𝜇𝜊𝜊𝜐𝜎𝜄𝜊𝜍 is the Greek term; we say consubstantialem in Latin), rather than what the heretic Arius taught, which was that Christ was an exalted part of God’s creation, but merely a created being.  But the fathers recognized that if Christ was not co-equal God, then He could not save us.  As St. Athanasius said, “God became man so that man might become God.”     So Christ reveals to us, in this proposition of truth, that we are those saved by God Incarnate.  We encounter the mystery of God-made-man, which allows us to understand that we are worth saving, that God would come to us and take on our human nature so that our human nature could be united to God.  While there are propositions that are true, we can more easily reject cold axioms.  But if Truth is a Person, then our connection to that axiom becomes a relationship with a brother, an opportunity to love and be loved and become the fullest version of ourselves, revealed by the one who created us.
    And Truth in flesh calls us to go deeper than merely the recitation of facts or axioms.  This becomes clearer when you think about your spouse or your best friend.  I could tell you that my best friend has brown hair, is six-foot-something tall, is muscular, works for the State Police, is married with children, likes to joke around and poke fun at me for mediocre homilies.  You might know those facts, but if you haven’t met Anthony, you wouldn’t fully appreciate who he is and how he is.  I could list all the facts in the world, but the encounter with him gives a reality that stating facts never could.  The same is truth for our faith: we could give all the facts about our Lord, but until you encounter Him, you cannot truly love Him, and only in encountering Him can that love blossom so that it gives us the fullness of joy that God desires for us.

    Yes, the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Father and the Son to the Church, leads us to understand propositions and axioms of how God made the world and how we are to live in it to find happiness.  But the Holy Spirit leads us to so much more than that!  The Holy Spirit leads us to encounter the Truth that surpasses propositions, because the Truth is not an “it” but a “He,” a Person that loves us, has shown us how to be truly happy, and that desires our love in return, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  

Receiving the Holy Spirit

Sunday after the Ascension
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  St. Peter lays out some challenging admonitions for us in our epistle today: “be serious and sober for prayers…let your love for one another be intense…be hospitable without complaining…[use your gifts] to serve one another.”  Those are all things to which I hope we aspire.  But maybe we feel like we simply have to muscle through to get these things done.  And perhaps, as we try to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps, we get frustrated because in day to day life exhibiting these behaviors doesn’t always come easily, and maybe we even fail on a regular basis. 
    But God does not want us to muscle through or to try to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps.  God gives us a gift that will give us what we need to live as St. Peter exhorted.  That gift is the Holy Spirit.  He is the one who makes living as a disciple of Christ possible as the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, and gives us the power to live that truth daily.
    I know that sometimes as Catholics who love the traditional Latin Mass we can get nervous about the Holy Spirit.  Maybe we see charismatic Catholics whose outward appearance seems more like Pentecostals than Catholics in their devotions and even in their liturgies.  Or people equate the way Vatican II was implemented (which was often a hot mess) with the Holy Spirit who called Pope St. John XXIII to convoke the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.  So perhaps we are a bit skittish when it comes to this Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.
    But we do not believe in a Binity, only two Divine Persons of the Godhead.  We profess our faith each week in the Trinity, which includes the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life.  And without Him, we miss something of the full expression of our life in Christ.  Christ promised us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to help us to know the truth who is Christ, and to live that truth, even in the face of persecution and suffering.  And these nine days between the Ascension and Pentecost are precisely the days when our Lord asked the Apostles and the Blessed Mother to pray for that gift of the Holy Spirit, who would give them a new power from on high to evangelize and transform the world.

    So how often do we call upon the Holy Spirit?  When, if ever, do we ask the Holy Spirit to fill us?  Is it only in these nine days as we pray our Holy Spirit novena?  Or is it more frequently?  A local priest is known to invoke the Holy Spirit every time he loses his train of thought or is having difficulty expressing himself as he says, “Come, Holy Spirit.”  Though I still need to grow in my comfort and relationship with the Holy Spirit, I will ask for His guidance in the hiring process, or when I need to make a big decision. 
    But the Holy Spirit is not just for new hires or major changes.  I need to, and I encourage you to, make the Holy Spirit more of a daily part of my life.  The Holy Spirit is not just the closer you bring in towards the end of the ninth inning to help you win the game.  The Holy Spirit should be the starter, the reliever, and the closer, all rolled up in one.  And the more we condition ourselves to be attentive to His voice in our daily lives, the more even our small choices will be guided by the Holy Spirit so that we cooperate with God in the big and the small matters.  This is the way the saints lived.
    One of the primary ways the Holy Spirit guides us is through the conscience.  Again, most people act as if the conscience is some subjective voice which tells me what do to without any connection to anything else.  Basically, we can use the word conscience to justify simply following our feelings.  But the Holy Spirit, as our conscience, tells us how the moral law applies in various situations.  He does not make us a moral law unto ourselves, determining right from wrong, though many would like that to be the case, which is exactly what Adam and Eve wanted.  They wanted to determine right from wrong, rather than let God guide them.
    As a parent, and especially today as we honor mothers, the Holy Spirit helps you to know how to raise your children.  I do not envy you parents in trying to raise your children today.  On the one hand, kids are so often over-exposed to social media, to extreme violence, to lust, and to unkindness from others.  Yes, I got teased when I was a young boy, but I could get away from it when I went home.  Today, kids will mercilessly make fun of each other on social media, and you never seem to be able to find a place that is not connected to it.  I was first exposed to pornography in a magazine when I was in high school.  Today, due to phones and the internet readily available in most places, many kids see images they should never see in fifth or sixth grade and devices their parents give them (because every other kid has one), and it can affect their future relationships and their interactions with the opposite sex.  When I was growing up, we knew that boys and girls were different, even if some girls liked rough sports and GI Joes, and some boys didn’t appreciate those things as much.  Now, our national leaders can’t even say what makes a woman and woman, and kids are told that gender dysphoria is not only not an illness that needs therapy, but should be celebrated and protected. 
    On the other hand, you can’t just live in a bubble (at least most can’t).  Eventually, children will go out into a rough and morally dangerous world, and parents are tasked with preparing them to choose virtue even when vice seems more attractive and readily available.  Part of the vocation of a mother or father is to help their children be attentive to the voice of the Holy Spirit to know what behaviors will lead them away from God the Father, and which behaviors will lead them toward God the Father.  A mother or a father’s vocation is to help their children be able to interact with people who are different from them and love others who do not live as God invites us, but to be able to reject the behaviors of those who reject God’s laws and teachings.  That is only possible if parents are calling upon the Holy Spirit daily to help them know when to push towards freedom and when to pull back to safety.  The Holy Spirit can guide you to know how best to discipline with charity, and not simply out of anger or a lack of patience. 
    So not just in these nine days between the Ascension and Pentecost, but each day, may we all call upon the Holy Spirit to help us hear the voice of God in our hearts, which is really His voice, and to follow it, so that we can go where Christ has led and has brought our human nature with Him, the right hand of God the Father, who with Christ His Son and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from them both, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

The Holy Spirit Wants...

Solemnity of Pentecost

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]. When it comes to the different Persons of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the one with whom most Catholics are probably least familiar.  We learn much about the Father through the Old Testament and from Jesus, who is the revelation of the Father.  Christ, while revealing the Father, also helps us to know Him better through the Gospels.  But then He ascends into heaven, and leaves us the Holy Spirit, who works in the Church.
    For our part, we are probably used to invoking the Holy Spirit when we have an instinct to do something or not do something.  And certainly, the Holy Spirit guides our actions, whether sought out or avoided.  But sometimes it’s also simply our instincts pushing us towards or away from something.  And do you ever notice that every group seems to claim the support of the Holy Spirit?  Both those who advocate teachings contrary to the faith, like women’s ordination, as well as those who hold to the faith revealed to us by Christ will argue from the authority of the Holy Spirit that their course of action is what God wants.  
    Some see in the Gospel according to John, as John and Peter run to the empty tomb at the instigation of Mary Magdalene, a distinction between the hierarchical nature of the Church (represented by Peter, our first pope) and the charismatic nature of the Church (represented by John, the one loved by the Lord).  John (charism) arrives at the tomb first, but waits for Peter (hierarchy) to go in.  Throughout the history of the Church, these two groups have oscillated back and forth for more influence.  The Second Vatican Council, in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, states, “The Church, which the Spirit guides in the way of all truth and which He unifies in communion and in works of ministry, He both equips and directs with hierarchical and charismatic gifts.”  In other words, both the hierarchical and the charismatic are gifts of the Holy Spirit, all given for the salvation of souls.
    I mention this because the Holy Spirit is often invoked by some for pushing the Church to new realities, while others invoke the Holy Spirit as the one who brings order to chaos.  In reality, both are right: the Holy Spirit pushes us beyond our comfort zone, but also orders and unifies all of creation.  We see this in the Upper Room scene at Pentecost.  On the one hand, the Holy Spirit took those who probably knew only Aramaic, Hebrew, and possibly common Greek, to those who proclaimed the Gospel so that everyone present, from many different parts of the Roman Empire, could understand the proclamation of the Gospel in their own tongues.  The Holy Spirit pushed the disciples out of the comfort of the Upper Room, and eventually to lands as far as India to the east, down to North Africa and Egypt, over to Rome, and lands in-between.  It helped the Apostles discern that non-Jews could become members of the nascent Church without becoming Jewish and being circumcised.  
    On the other hand, the message that the disciples proclaimed was the one Gospel of Jesus Christ, the one message of salvation.  As the disciples traveled far and wide, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church expanded its influence, and began to rid the world of the worship of demons in the pagan religions.  The Holy Spirit united all those who wanted to follow the Lord to be united in faith and morals, as discerned by the Apostles and their successors.  
    Even before that, the Holy Spirit is the one who spoke through the prophets, who were often a bit…eccentric.  The prophets were often the outcasts of society, because they called society from its rejection of God back to fidelity.  The Holy Spirit inspired King David to dance with abandon before the Ark of the Covenant as it was brought into Jerusalem, which dancing David’s wife Michal mocked because it made David look too much like the common people.
    But the Holy Spirit also took the primordial chaos and ordered it into light and darkness, land and sea, different forms of animals, and was given to our first parents to give them the breath of life.  The Holy Spirit guided sacred authors to compose literary works to communicate God’s saving will, and guided the bishops to choose which works were, in fact inspired by the Holy Spirit, and which were simply the works of man that also told stories that involved God.  
    In our own lives, too, the Holy Spirit often pushes us beyond our comfort zone.  He fills us to continue the proclamation of salvation through Christ.  He sometimes puts us in situations we never expected, sometimes even dangerous situations.  But, as our Advocate, He pleads our cause and gives us words to respond to our attackers, as He did for St. Stephen.  
    But as He pushes us to new realities, He does so with the continuity of what has come before.  The Holy Spirit deepens our understanding of what God desires for His people, but without contradicting what came before.  For example: the Holy Spirit has revealed that the Church is meant to be led by the Pope, the Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter.  That is a truth that can never be rejected, without rejecting what the Holy Spirit has revealed.  At the same time, the Holy Spirit can guide the Pope to understand how to exercise that power in new ways.  The Holy Spirit has revealed that marriage is between one man and one woman for life.  That can never change.  But the Holy Spirit can give us new guidance on how to share that truth with those who have gone through a divorce, or those who struggle with same-sex attraction.  
    [Joshua and Halley: the Holy Spirit has led you here to this day when you will receive the fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit through the Sacrament of Confirmation.  You have come by different paths, but have come to this union of faith in what the Holy Spirit has revealed through the Church and her sacred teaching office.  The Holy Spirit will give you new ways to proclaim that one faith, and to witness to the life of Christ from this point on, and into the future, especially as you prepare for Holy Matrimony.  Be open to the Holy Spirit pushing you to spread the faith, but also stay faithful to that faith as revealed to us by God through His Church, which is still one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.]
    If we feel that the Holy Spirit is only keeping us in our “safe spaces,” then we are probably missing out on one aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit.  If we feel that the Holy Spirit is going against what has been taught infallibly before, then it’s not the Holy Spirit to whom we are listening.  Each of us will have different ways that the Holy Spirit operates in us.  No matter what, may we be open to the Holy Spirit, who with the Father and the Son is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Prayer's Jackpot

Fifth Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I hate to admit it, but I have, from time to time, asked God to win the lottery.  It wasn’t simply to get rich for myself, but because I would give money to the Church, probably help out some friends, and maybe set up trusts to support different charities even after I’m dead and gone.  In my ask, I always reminded God of how generous I would be, especially to the Church, as a way of helping Him to know that He could trust me with the responsibility of winning tens of millions of dollars.
    As our Lord talks about prayer and having confidence in what we ask of God, we may find it strange that I haven’t won the lottery yet (or maybe you have prayed the same thing and have not won the lottery, either).  “‘If you ask the Father anything in my name, He will give it to you,’” the Savior said in today’s Gospel.  And yet I can tell you that my request to God to win MegaMillions has not been answered.  So what gives?
    Of course, deep down we know that God will only give us what is good for us.  Elsewhere, Christ says, “‘What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish?  Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?’”  God does not give us something that will bite us or hurt us, even if we think the thing for which we’re asking is good.
    Further, our Lord presumes that, as disciples, we are following the pattern He set for us, and being obedient to the will of the Father.  If we truly want to be obedient to God the Father, as Christ showed us, then when we ask the Father, we do so knowing that sometimes our wills are not fully conformed to His, and we might not need to receive that which He is giving us.  Sometimes that will mean we don’t receive something that we want.  Sometimes that will mean that we receive something that we don’t really want.  Remember that Christ asked in the Garden of Gethsemane that the cup of suffering might pass by Him if there was another way to save the world.  But, He ended that prayer with, “‘But not my will, but yours be done.’”  The Father had answered the prayer of our Lord over and over again, working miracles among the people.  This was made evident especially at the resurrection of Lazarus.  But God the Father’s will was also that His Son would die on the Cross to save us from sin, a will which God the Son fully embraced, with all its pain and suffering.
    Or think of St. Paul.  He talks about a thorn in his flesh, which he asked God to remove three times.  But God told the Apostle that this weakness was a way to manifest that the power came from God, not from Paul.  And that thorn was not taken away.  St. Paul had to endure it, as far as we know, for the rest of his life.  Somehow, that weakness was part of Paul’s salvation and the proclamation of the Gospel.
    Part of receiving also connects to our confidence and trust in God.  When we pray for something good, and we do our best to conform our wills to that of the Father, we still need to trust that God can do what we ask Him to do.  Christ in His hometown did not work many miracles because of their lack of faith.  Do we trust the words of our Savior that we heard today, that God will give us what we ask if we ask in the name of Christ His Son?  Or is our faith fickle that like of our Lord’s hometown neighbors?
    I can testify to times when I prayed in the name of the Lord, and what I sought in prayer was given to me.  I’m not saying this to say that I’m a saint or have special powers.  I am a sinner, trying to be holy, but not always succeeding, and any power comes from God, not from me.  I am simply an earthen vessel, trying not to get in the way of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes these, what I consider, miracles, have been about serious issues, like a person’s health.  Other times they have been for the finding of more trivial things, like stolen golf clubs or a stolen moped.  In one case, I can remember praying for a couple I know, and my prayers seemed to have no effect.  I prayed with them again, and the effect they were seeking came to be.  Again, this is not to attribute anything to me as if I’m special; I’m not.  God wants to answer our prayers, according to His will, whether the request be for something we feel is very worthy, or even for things that don’t mean as much.

    And sometimes the answer is no.  It wouldn’t be a Fr. Anthony homily without some reference to country music, and what comes to my mind is the Garth Brooks song, “Unanswered Prayers,” in which he sings about a girl he knew in high school whom he prayed he would marry, but his prayers went unanswered.  Years later he met his wife, and they met this old flame, and he was glad that God didn’t answer those prayers.  Or Brad Paisley has a song called, “No,” where he talks about different prayers he said, but “sometimes the answer is no.”  Sometimes we think our will is aligned with God’s, but it’s not, and it’s not for our good, so God can answer our prayers with the opposite answer we desire.  It’s not that God doesn’t care or doesn’t love us, but that He answers our prayer with a response that is better for us.
    It is easy to hear how God answers prayers and think, “yeah, but that’s for other people.”  Don’t just hear, but live the word, be a doer of the word, and trust in God’s answers to your prayers.  Go to God with any need or desire you have.  Submit it to the will of God, and then trust that the answer you receive, either yes or no, will be good for your own salvation and the salvation of those you know and love.  God’s answers are a jackpot worth even more that a MegaMillions prize, because they bring us closer into the life of the Blessed Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Simple and Complex

 Feast of the Most Holy Trinity
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.].  How is it that the most fundamental part of our religion, the teaching that defines us as a faith–our belief in the Most Holy Trinity, one God and three divine Persons–is so hard to explain?  We often think of what is most basic as what is the simplest.  But, when it comes to our faith, that’s not quite right.
    Followers of Christ have struggled with this teaching from early on.  The heretic Arius, in order to uphold the oneness of God, held that Jesus was not really God.  Another heresy, pneumatomachianism, taught that the Holy Spirit was not really God.  Others failed when trying to explain the Most Holy Trinity, by saying that the different Persons were simply different phases of the one God, like water can be a solid, liquid or gas (that was the heresy of modalism).  Or another failure was that God was like the sun, where God the Father is like the sun itself, and Jesus is the the light, and the Holy Spirit is the heat (another version of Arianism).  Or there’s the heresy of partialism, which taught that the three divine Persons are each parts of the one Godhead.  Or (and I don’t know the name for this) the very vogue teaching that we can change the names of the Persons to be less restrictive (as in God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Sanctifier).  All of those are really intriguing ways that we have gotten the teaching of the Most Holy Trinity wrong.  
    So what we do believe?  We believe in one God, who is also three divine Persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–co-equal in glory, majesty, and power, yet not three gods, but One.  The Father is not the Son, nor is the Son the Holy Spirit, nor is the Holy Spirit the Father, and yet the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all one God.

    We struggle because we are finite–limited, while God is infinite–unlimited.  So we rely on what our infinite God has revealed to our finite minds.  We need the Holy Spirit, whom we celebrated last week and whom we celebrate this week.  And we stick to what the Holy Spirit has revealed, because the Most Holy Trinity is the foundation for all life, but especially for our life, and even more than that, for our salvation.  If we get who the Trinity is wrong, we get who we are wrong, and we mess-up our connection to salvation.  Recently, a handful of priests have been discovered to have done great damage by changing the way babies are baptized (most often, changing the words).  While some question why this matters, the Church asserts that words do matter, and if baptism is the beginning of our saving relationship with God (which it is), then if we get the beginning wrong, the rest of it cannot follow.  
    But The Trinity is not just the beginning.  It should be our day-to-day connection as well.  Our spiritual life should be connected to all three divine Persons if we are to live in the fulness of grace that God desires for us.  We often say “God” when we mean God the Father, and He is often the one to whom we address our prayers.  But we should also pray to and through Christ, because He is consubstantial with the Father.  And we should not forget to turn in prayer to the Holy Spirit, “the Lord and Giver of life,…who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.”  Our prayers at Mass often highlight this, as we most often pray to the Father, “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.”  
    How do we guide our life by the Trinity?  One easy way is to read the revelation of the Trinity in the Sacred Scriptures.  How has God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, spoken to us in an inerrant way through the Bible?  What moral laws has God revealed that help us to be the best person that we can be?  Whether it’s the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and what Christ taught in the Gospels, or the teachings of St. Paul in the New Testament about not being greedy, or making false gods for ourselves, or being sexually immoral, those are great guidelines to know whether or not we are living in the reality that the Trinity intends.
    Another way to live our life by the Trinity is by love.  St. John wrote in his epistle that God is love, and the applies to each divine Person.  God the Father is love, God the Son is love, and God the Holy Spirit is love.  If we are to live in the best way possible, we are called to love others.  And that love, as the Trinity shows us, is always about sacrificing for the other, and leading the other into truth.  Our Lord sacrificed Himself so that we could go to heaven, in the full out-pouring of Himself in love.  And the Holy Spirit, our Lord taught, leads us into all truth, so that our love is not merely delight or affection, but is grounded in what is most real and the way that the Trinity created the world.  If we are living like a toddler, who loves as long as he gets what he wants, then that’s not the love of the Trinity, the love that will save us and make us truly happy.  If our expression of love is only about what feels good, rather than sacrificing, even when it’s quite painful, then that’s not the love of the Trinity, which would never do anything to endanger the other person.  
    In a way, the Trinity is as hard to describe as love is, even though the Trinity and love are foundational to life.  But because of the love of the Trinity, we get glimpses of who God is in Himself, which helps us to understand how He made us, and how we are called to live and what will make us truly happy.  When our love is off, when we try to redefine love, then we are not living the Trinitarian life.  And when our understanding of the Trinity is off, when we try to remake God in our own image, the way we act will not be truly loving.  Ground yourself in the life of the Trinity: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.