Same Event, Different Experience

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

    It was fun last Sunday to see the Detroit Lions dominate the game offensively.  No matter what Washington did, they could not seem to stop Detroit’s offense, with the worst results for most of the drives of the game being a field goal and only three points rather than the usual seven points for a touchdown and extra point.  After some rough games this season, it was good to see a strong Lions team again.
    But imagine for a second that you were cheering for the Commanders.  Sunday was not a day you really wanted to remember.  The things that made it so great for the Lions made it pretty horrible for the Commanders.  In any contest, what is good news for one is bad news for the other.
    In this penultimate Sunday in Ordinary Time before we begin Advent, our readings focus us on the end of time.  And the Prophet Malachi, in particular, presents us with this idea that the same event, the day of the Lord, will be bad for some, but great for others.  For some it will be a day of pain and suffering, with the proud and the evildoers burning up like stubble in a field.  For those who fear the name of the Lord, the sun (s-u-n) of justice will heal with its rays.  As Catholics we know that Christ is the true Sun of Justice because He is the Son (s-o-n) of God and Son of Man.  We look for the same event, Christ’s return in glory, but it will not seem the same for everyone.  For some it will appear as a day of joy, for others a day of wailing and gnashing of teeth.
    When we come to this time of year, the Church traditionally puts before us, as she did at every funeral in the old rite, the hymn Dies Irae.  The title means “Day of Wrath.”  And the first verses focus on what the return of Christ will be like for evildoers:
 

Day of watch and doom impending!
David’s word with Sibyl’s blending,
Heaven and earth in ashes ending!

Oh, what fear man’s bosom renders,
When from heaven the Judge descendeth,
On whose sentence all dependeth.

That certainly gives us a wake-up call for what the end could be like if we do not give our hearts over to God and open ourselves to His grace which transforms us.  
    But, it continues:

Faint and weary, Thou hast sought me,
On the Cross of suffering bought me.
Shall such grace be vainly brought me?…

Guilty, now I pour my moaning,
All my shame with anguish owning;
Spare, O God, Thy suppliant groaning!

Through the sinful woman shriven,
Through the dying thief forgiven,
Thou to me a hope hast given.

With Thy sheep a place provide me,
From the goats afar divide me,
To Thy right hand do Thou guide me….

Lord, all-pitying, Jesus blest,
Grant them Thine eternal rest.
Amen.

While not pretending to be blameless, the return of Christ for those who love the Lord means a time of salvation and the rectification of all that evil has ruined, so that the souls of the just can have eternal rest.
    The key, then, is what team we are on?  Not Team Edward or Team Jacob (you’re welcome, “Twilight” fans), but Dies irae-Day of wrath or spem dedisti–a hope given.  Because the end will mean suffering.  Our Lord outlines the things that will precede the end: wars, insurrections, powerful earthquakes, famines, plagues, and persecution of the followers of Christ.  Those who work against Christ will think that they have won.  They will try to get Christ’s faithful to abandon their virtue, to abandon Christ, and will offer apparent ways out of the tribulations that may even mean less or even no suffering in the short terms.  But for those who remain faithful to Christ, who persevere, the time of sorrow and suffering will lead to a day of hope and victory in Christ, who will reward those who remained true even when turning away seemed easier and more enjoyable.  
    [Ava & Wade: you are choosing to follow Christ today, and Christ receives you as His catechumen.  This means that Christ already recognizes you as a follower, even if you have not yet become part of Him through Holy Baptism.  You are abandoning the logic of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and striving to live according to the logic of the Logos, the Divine Word, who helps us understand how God has truly created the world.  You are choosing hope in place of wrath, and for that we give thanks to God and promise you our prayers.]
    The end comes, seemingly ever faster.  We find ourselves closer to the return of Christ in glory today than we were yesterday.  This time of year reminds us to take stock of our choices, which do not only have consequences in time, but have consequences into eternity.  Christ will return in glory, and how we view that day will depend on how we lived each day before that: for or against Christ.  May the words of Dies Irae apply to us as the just so that, “When the wicked are confounded, / Doomed to flames of woe unbounded, / Call me with Thy saints surrounded.”

Waiting

First Sunday of Advent

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

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

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

Watching for Jesus to Return Together

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

So, ad orientem.  You’ve noticed that there have been no differences thus far.  But as I wrote in my bulletin, we’re only doing this for this weekend.  Still, the differences you’ll see are only during the Eucharistic Prayer.  But why ad orientem?  Is this simply another crazy Fr. Anthony idea?  Is it old stuff for the sake of old stuff?

For probably at least 1800 years, the Church celebrated Mass this way, and as my bulletin article says, there are hints that it’s still pre-supposed, as one of the instructions on the Mass will say, “”The Priest, turned towards the people…”.  But we celebrated Mass this way for a reason.  And that reason coincides with what we celebrate today: the Ascension of the Lord.  The Apostles, the Blessed Mother, and the disciples see Jesus ascend into heaven.  The site of Jesus’ Ascension is on a hill to the east (ad orientem) of Jerusalem.  And ever since then, we’ve been waiting for him to return.  This year, we celebrate 1,986 years of waiting for Jesus to return as He promised.  The orientation (which comes from a word that means east-facing) of the Church since Jesus left was looking for his return.  Honestly, that’s hard to do, especially after 1,986 years.  Nowadays, we get frustrated in the ten seconds it takes Siri to give us an answer.  We can forget that our Lord is coming back, “‘in the same way as you have seen him going to heaven,’” as the angel said in our first reading.

So our Mass has always reminded us that we’re waiting on Jesus.  Scott Hahn, a noted Biblical scholar and writer, speaks about how Tertullian, who lived form 160-220, already writes about Christians (and at that time there was really only one type of Christians, Catholics) facing east during our worship.  St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil the Great, and St. Augustine also all speak of this practice.  One of the early house churches in Syria, dating from 233, is arranged so that priest and people faced east, with an altar against the east wall.  St. John of Damascus in the 7th century also speaks of this practice.  

Scripture itself talks about the importance of the east.  In addition to our first reading, we can also look to Malachi, who prophesies Christ as the “Sun of Righteousness” (and the sun rises in the east); to Zechariah in the Gospel according to Luke who refers to Jesus as “‘the dawn from on high’” (and dawn comes from the east); and Jesus’ own words in the Gospel according to Matthew, who says, “‘For just as lightning comes from the east and is seen as far as the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be.’”  

But all of these things point to the face that we’re waiting for Jesus to return from the sanctuary not made with hands, heaven itself, and restore not only Israel, but the new Israel, the Church.  And the way that we face reminds us in our worship of God to be ready for His return, to be like the wise virgins who are ready, or like the homeowner prepared at all times so that he is not robbed.  That’s why we’re doing this, for this weekend only.  

And there is something very unifying about this.  When I celebrate Mass facing you (as is common and allowed), it can seem like it’s a performance of sorts for you.  Your eyes probably naturally focus on me.  But if you notice, in order to highlight that we’re waiting for the Lord, I almost never look at you during the Eucharistic Prayer, unless I’m speaking to you.  I look towards the heaven, to God, whom I’m addressing most of the time during that holiest part of the Mass.  The common orientation can easily become a me versus you scenario.  When Mass is celebrated ad orientem, we are all united, facing the same direction, facing our Lord in the tabernacle and waiting for his return.  Yes, I’m still at the head of the assembly, leading us all to Jesus, but I’m also a part of you, not disconnected.

The common response is that my back is turned towards you.  But Pope Benedict XVI aptly wrote in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, “The common turning toward the east was not ‘a celebration toward the wall’…it did not mean that the priest ‘had his back to the people’….  For just as the congregation in the synagogue looked together toward Jerusalem, so in the Christian liturgy the congregation looked together ‘toward the Lord’…They did not close themselves into a circle; they did not gaze at one another; but as the pilgrim People of God they set off for the Oriens, for the Christ who comes to meet us.”  Again, it all goes back to waiting for Jesus to return, to keeping our eyes fixed on him, to reminding us to be ready for the Second Coming.  

And this even remains uninterrupted in both Catholic and some Jewish cemeteries.  There is a large Jewish cemetery to the east of Jerusalem on the hill that leads up to the place of the Ascension.  It’s packed full, and it’s the prime cemetery, because the Jews also believe that the Messiah will come from the east of Jerusalem, and they want to be the first to greet him when he comes (of course, we know that He has already come, and will come again).  And in our own New Calvary Catholic Cemetery, and in every Catholic cemetery I’ve visited, when people are buried, they are facing the east, so that they can be ready to greet Jesus, the Dawn who comes from on high.  

But, as I mentioned, I have no plan to extend this practice here beyond this weekend.  And it’s not about turning back the clock, or about doing something traditional, and certainly not about turning my back on my people.  No, it’s about facing the Lord, being focused on him, and being ready for his return.  

Glorifying God and Lifting Burdens

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

This week is the week the Church in the United States focuses on promoting vocations to the priesthood, diaconate, and consecrated life, and it’s called National Vocation Awareness Week.  That may seem odd, because our first reading from Malachi and our Gospel passage sound pretty rough on priests.  God the Father, speaking through Malachi, has some harsh words for priests: “If you do not listen, if you do not lay it to bear, to give glory to my name, says the LORD of hosts, I will send a curse upon you.”  God the Son, Jesus, also is critical of the scribes and Pharisees, who were not necessarily priests, but who were leaders of the Jewish communities in their day: “‘The scribes and Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.  Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.  For they preach but they do not practice.  They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.’”  It doesn’t sound like God the Father or Jesus has much love for priests and religious leaders!

  But, on the contrary, God the Father and Jesus both love priests, but they both also hold priests to a very high standard, because they are acting in God’s Name and are called to reflect who God is.  As Jesus says elsewhere, “To whom much has been given, much will be expected.”  God through Malachi chastises the priests because they are not leading the people in giving glory to God’s Name.  And Jesus does not condemn the priests for what they are teaching, but for what they fail to do in terms of helping God’s people.  Sadly, in our own country, a few priests have not led the people in glorifying God, and they have not helped God’s people, but have hurt them, sometimes in horrific ways.  

So what is the solution?  Should we get rid of priests?  Should we close down the seminaries and become Christian communities who do not have priests because a small group of priests have not lived up to their vocation?  To do so would be not put ourselves as masters of the Church, and as I preached a few months ago, it is not our Church; the Church belongs to Jesus; She is His Bride.  Instead, we need better priests.

People often ask me what I do each day (usually right before someone else chimes in that priests only work for an hour or two on Sundays).  And I can say that no two days are exactly the same.  There are some common things, but you never know what will happen on any given day.  The most important part of my job is to do what Malachi said: to lead you in giving glory to God, and that happens most perfectly, most eminently, in the Mass.  The Mass is the high point of my day, as I offer to God the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, the one, acceptable sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross for the salvation of the world.  And in that, I hopefully draw you in, not to glorify ourselves, not to focus inward on how great we are, because we are not great, but rather, to glorify God and so focus on serving God first in the Mass and then after the Mass in our daily lives.  That is the key to a priest’s life: the Mass; the Eucharist.

Outside of that, I try to do what Jesus condemned the scribes and Pharisees for not doing: practicing what I preach, and lifting burdens from people’s shoulders.  Practicing what I preach means treating ever parishioner the way I would want to be treated, and treating them according to what the Church, sitting on the Chair of St. Peter, has taught, never giving special consideration because a person is famous, gives a lot, or is a friend.  Each day I also try to lift the burdens of the people in my parish, as I talk to them about their marriages, as I hear their confessions and offer them God’s mercy, as I try to help our school students see how much God loves them and help them to mature as Catholic young men and women.  Does it take a lot out of me?  Certainly.  Being a priest is about giving of oneself, in a similar way to how marriage is about giving of oneself (without the sex part).  But that is why the Eucharist is so important, because it is the source of the strength and wisdom, without which a priest would quickly burn out and become useless.

The reality is that we need more priests.  We need courageous, adventurous men who are trying to live according to God’s law to become priests.  We don’t need sissies; they won’t make it.  The priesthood calls for a man’s man; not a man with machismo, who is all about his own strength, but for a man who seeks to glorify God and care for the people entrusted to his care, even when the people don’t want the care that he knows God wants for them.  You don’t have to be perfect to become a priest; I’m living proof of that!  But you do have to want to follow God as perfectly as you can, so that God can be glorified, and His people can be cared for in love and truth.  

Happy Anniversary!!

Solemnity of the Dedication of St. John Church

           

1958 Original Church

Ordinarily, we would be celebrating the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord today and closing out the Christmas Season.  That is what our parishioners who today attended our St. Thomas Aquinas site celebrated.  But for us at St. John the Evangelist, this day is a special day of a different kind: an anniversary.  55 years ago today, this Church was dedicated to the glory of God under the patronage of St. John the Evangelist.  55 years ago today Bishop Joseph Albers, first bishop of Lansing, celebrated the Rite of the Dedication of a Church, initiating this place as a temple of the true God.  55 years ago today, prophecies were fulfilled: the oracle from the Book of Malachi, that “From the rising of the sun to its setting…Incense offerings are made to my name everywhere, and a pure offering”; the oracle from the Book of Isaiah that we heard this morning: “foreigners who join themselves to the Lord…To love the name of the Lord, to become his servants…Them I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer; Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”.  In this place a pure offering is made.  In this place we, most of us Gentiles, that is, non-Jews, who have been joined to the Lord through Baptism so that we can love the Lord and be His servants, we have been brought to this mountain, represented in the raised sanctuary, and our sacrifices, joined to the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, made present for us in sacramental signs in the Eucharist, are accepted by God.  This place is a house of prayer for all peoples.  Brothers and sisters, to quote David in Psalm 118: “This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it”!!!

            Now, we believe that God exists in all places.  He cannot be contained because of his immensity and transcendence.  And yet, we have this place, this building, which we have set aside for the worship of God and the edification, the building up, of His People.  Why?  For one, we also believe that God, whom the heavens and the earth cannot contain, chose to limit Himself and take flesh, born of the Virgin Mary.  God chose to be contained as the Divine Nature was united to Human Nature in Jesus.  As we say in the Creed, “by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.”  God chose to make a temple for Himself as He joined Himself to us in the Incarnation.  Secondly, we are people who operate by our senses.  Everything we know comes through our senses.  And so we build a place that becomes for us a physical reminder that God dwells among us.  We set aside a place where we can come and offer worship to God: to thank Him for His goodness; to ask for His blessing; to lift up in prayer our brothers and sisters. 

This building becomes a symbol, a sensible reality that points to an invisible reality.  This building is a special kind of symbol, a sacrament.  I don’t mean that we’re adding sacraments to the seven Sacraments instituted by Christ to confer grace.  But it is a sacrament in the sense that it is a physical reality that gives us the opportunity to receive grace, because as we enter the nave of the church and enter our pew, or go to light a candle at the Holy Family corner, or pass some time in prayer at the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, we can receive God’s life, what we call grace. 

This building also is a type of sacrament because it is meant to represent us.  We are the living stones that are being built up into the temple, as St. Peter reminds us in the second reading today.  God desires each of us to be part of his heavenly temple.  He is crafting each of us into an individual stone that will fit perfectly into the New Jerusalem in heaven.  Each of us has a different role to play in the building.  Christ Jesus is the cornerstone, with the twelve apostles making up the rest of the foundation of the heavenly temple.  And we build on that foundation, and add to the structure and beauty of the temple as we are chiseled so that we can fit into the place God has set aside for us.  But, unlike stones which are inanimate, we the living stones, can also form ourselves, and hopefully we cooperate with God in being formed into the right stone for the right place, rather than forming ourselves to our own standards, and risk being thrown out of the construction of the heavenly temple because we have made ourselves have no place in the temple of God.  But, if we let God cleanse our temple, our soul and body, as Jesus did in the Gospel, then we know we can have a place in the building up of the temple not made by human hands, but made by the hand of God.

Our prayers remind us, too, that we are the temple of God, and this building symbolizes what we are called to be.  The Prayer over the Offerings says, “Recalling the day when you were pleased to fill your house with glory and holiness, O Lord, we pray that you may make of us a sacrificial offering always acceptable to you.”  And our preface continues the theme: “For in this visible house that you have let us build and where you never cease to show favor to the family on pilgrimage to you in this place, you wonderfully manifest and accomplish the mystery of your communion with us.  Here you build up for yourself the temple that we are and cause your Church, spread throughout the world, to grow ever more and more as the Lord’s own Body, till she reaches her fullness in the vision of peace, the heavenly city of Jerusalem.”  May we truly be stones that are fit to be a part of the heavenly temple, to which God calls us through Baptism.  Because, as Bishop Albers said about the students (though it applies to all of us) as he dedicated this church on 12 January 1958, “The greatest possession they have today or ever will have in their entire lives is that of their Faith.  Should this be lost, everything will be lost.  And no matter what material success they may attain later on, before God their lives will be a failure.”

I wish to close with words of gratitude, again quoting Bishop Albers: “I wish to use this occasion to express my appreciation to everyone who has helped in the realization of this building whether through contributions, advice, planning, counseling or other ways.  I am especially grateful to the many thousand donors who have given of their means…I am confident that Almighty God will reward them with an increase of Faith and a greater love and devotion to Him and to souls, for their generosity in providing these means to care for the young men and women here at Michigan State University.”