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.   

Hope that Doesn't Disappoint

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

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

Clogging the Drain

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

Church of the Beatitudes in the Holy Land

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

More Than Rules

Second Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  The Church Fathers have consistently taught that the Gospel we heard today, that of the Transfiguration, allowed Christ to assuage the distress of the announcement of His Passion, so that the Apostles could know that, after the Passion, the glory of the Resurrection would follow. 

    The Transfiguration also demonstrates what Christ desires to happen to us if He joins us to Himself through Holy Baptism.  The glorification of the head also means the glorification of the body.  God does not keep His glory to Himself, but shares it with those whom Holy Baptism joins to Himself and those who, through a holy life, keep that union strong. 
    And during our Lenten observances, as we discipline ourselves and “waste away” from fasting and abstaining, it is good to keep our eyes on the prize and realize for what God made us.  Because God did not solely destine us for this earth and all of its fallenness.  God made us so that we could live with Him eternally in heaven, and the glory that He has by nature He would share with us by grace.  We, too, are meant to be transfigured.
    So often Catholicism is simply presented as rules to follow.  St. Paul today tells us not to give in to fornication and not to give in to lust, as do the pagans.  And in this way, St. Paul tells us, God will make us holy.  Certainly, many people think about the Church’s teaching on sex as “don’t do [fill in the blank].” 
    But the Gospel reminds us that Catholicism is not, at its heart, about rules.  Catholicism is about letting God transfigure us to be more like Himself, which is how He made us.  Rules can often seem very external, but God desires that His grace not only affect our actions, the externals, but also affect our entire being, both externals and internals.  The chief complaint from the Lord about the Pharisees was that they only cared about the externals, so He calls them cups where only the outside is washed, while the inside remains dirty, or white-washed sepulchers, finely decorated on the outside, but full of death on the inside.  The catch-word for Lent, repent, comes from the Greek 𝜇𝜀𝜏𝛼𝜈𝜊𝜀𝜄𝜏𝜀, meaning a change of mind or a change of being. 
    And as we hear St. Peter say that it is good that they are at Mt. Tabor, and should stay there in three tents, even he, in a sense, thinks only about the externals.  Christ allows His divinity to shine through, and Peter is awe-filled.  But it doesn’t require any change of his own life.  He can simply watch the Lord and bask in His brilliance.  But a disciple is not just about “me and Jesus,” to use a common Christian phrase.  Following the Lord means that we allow God to transform our life, which pushes us out to share that new life with others.  When we conform our lives to God, we conform them to love, which is diffusive; it wants to be shared with others, not kept to ourselves. 
    This transformation cannot only be on the outside.  St. Paul, elsewhere, talks about the glory of the law, which pales in comparison to the glory of righteousness.  Moses, the Apostle writes, had this glory, but the glory faded, which is why Moses covered his face: so the Israelites didn’t see the slow fade of the glory.  The Law had some transfiguring effect, but not a total transfiguration.  Moses could give the law, but grace and truth came through Christ, as we hear in St. John’s prologue at each Mass. 
    It is all too easy to “do the right things.”  It is easier to simply do the external things that we are told that we need to do than to allow those things that we are supposed to do change us, both outside and inside.  But the point of the externals is to change the internals.  God does not only want us to look good, He wants us to be good.  And so those things that we do should change our interior dispositions to be more like Christ.
    So as we engage in our Lenten disciplines, ask yourselves: is this discipline opening me up to the grace of God so that I can be transformed?  Or is it only an outward action that does nothing to my interior spiritual life?  And if we’re not being transformed, it’s not that we stop our penances.  We can’t simply eat meat on Fridays because we don’t experience how abstaining from meat on Fridays transforms us to be more like Christ.  What it does mean is that we have to examine how that practice, or any others that we undertake, can make us more receptive to God’s grace.  Maybe by not eating meat by choice, I ponder those who cannot choose what they want to eat because they have no money.  My heart grows in love for the poor, and I am led to consider how I can help them according to my own state in life.  I no longer see them as “others” who annoy me, but as beloved of Christ, and even Christ Himself, as He says in Matthew 25, for whom I have a responsibility to care. 
    I know I preached about externals and internals on Ash Wednesday, but the Gospel of the Transfiguration reminds us that Christ did not come only to change religious practices.  Christ came to make us more like God, not on our own terms, like what Adam and Eve tried to do when they disobeyed God, but on God’s terms, with a transformation that shines more brightly.  May our Lenten practices not only discipline our bodies, but also help us to be more like Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

No Backsliding

Second Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When I was a child, I usually gave up chocolates and sweets for Lent (even though I didn’t really like chocolate, and didn’t eat that many sweets because my parents didn’t really buy us any on a regular basis).  But it was the thing to do.  Then, on Easter morning, the Easter Basket would have lots of sweets in it (we also often did the chocolate bunnies), and I would go to town, seeming to make up for all the sweets I didn’t have over the past 40 days by indulging in those sweets the first few days of Easter (the sweets rarely made it beyond Easter Tuesday).
    Perhaps this is a familiar story to you.  Perhaps this is your own experience of Lent and Easter.  And to a certain extent, there’s nothing absolutely wrong.  I know some people gave up meat for Lent, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a nice steak as a way of celebrating Easter.  Or others, through Exodus 90, gave up warm water for their showers, so maybe Easter Sunday the hot shower was a little longer than usual.
    But one of the points of Lent is that we are growing closer to Christ, facilitated by those penances we take upon ourselves.  But Easter doesn’t mean that we move farther away from Christ, now that Lent is over.  In fact, each year God desires that we grow in holiness, even if in small ways, so that we don’t start at the same point in 2024 that we did in 2023.
    So how are you doing in living your Easter life?  Are you still growing closer to God through your prayers, weekly ascetical practices, and working on the virtues?  Or has it been more of the, “Phew! Thank God Lent’s over!  Now I can get back to all those bad habits that I used to have!”? 
    God wants us to follow Him closer and closer, like a sheep who not only hears the voice of the Good Shepherd, but stays closer and closer to Him in the pasture, and allows Him to lead us around, rather than having to chase after us and bring us back to the fold.  Because the closer we are to Christ, the less likely it is that we are going to feed on bad grass (i.e., bad doctrine, vicious habits), or be injured by wolves and other creatures that wish us harm (giving in to the temptations that the demons whisper in our ear). 

    Of course, none of this is possible by ourselves.  Christ, the Good Shepherd, laid down His life for us, His sheep.  He sacrificed Himself so that we could have live.  As St. Peter said in our epistle, “By his stripes we were healed.”  And because of that, we can die to sin and live in the virtue of justice.
    So what are the ways that you are growing your relationship with our Lord, and growing in your understanding of the faith?  You don’t have to take graduate-level courses, but are you engaged in what our parish offers for faith sharing groups and Bible studies?  We have a wonderful study on the Eucharist in the Scriptures that will start in May.  Have you checked to see if you can participate in it?  Or maybe you have a desire to study something else.  There are many online courses (some for free) that will guide you, like Fr. Mike Schmitz’s podcast “The Catechism in a Year.”  Or maybe it would be helpful for you to share your joys and struggles with others who are in similar situations, like various mom groups that we have in the parish and in the area, and see how God is helping you to be the best mom or dad, wife or husband, that you can be.  Or, if you’re younger, maybe try a new devotion in your life, like the Litany of Trust, or maybe organize a group of your friends to gather for prayer and a meal, or maybe prayer and some sporting event, or, if you’re of age, talk about your faith together at a local watering hole (with moderation in beverages, of course). 
    Lent is a time that is meant to turn us away from our sinful passions, and draw us closer to Christ.  And while it’s very appropriate to celebrate during Easter, we shouldn’t backslide, but should try to keep that strong relationship with Christ for which we worked so hard during Lent, so that when we come to Lent next year, we’re in a better place, and can work on getting rid of other sinful passions and drawing even closer to Christ.  God not only desires that we be in the same pasture with the Good Shepherd, but that we get closer and closer to Him, so that we can not only hear His shouting about remaining with Him, but even, like St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, lean upon His chest to hear His Sacred Heart and what He wants to whisper to us as His beloved.  May our Easter joy include the joy of being closer to our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.

"Tonight is the Night of Nights"

Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter

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