Christ's Friends and Ours

Second Sunday of Lent
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  One of the great blessings of friendship consists in having someone who can urge you on when you’re being a wimp, or console you when things are legitimately difficult.  Sometimes, on our own, we don’t recognize how much we can do, until someone pushes us beyond our comfort zone.  Sometimes, on our own, we don’t realize that we don’t have to carry a burden alone; others stand by to assist us.  

    As we hear the familiar Gospel account of the Transfiguration, the Gospel we always hear on the second Sunday of Lent, I want to focus this year on the two people our Lord has beside him on Mount Tabor.  While Christ is sui generis, a unique individual because He is both God and Man, Moses and Elijah certainly assist Christ with their witness as Christ prepares for His impending Passion.  I’m not saying that Christ needed Moses and Elijah to learn something, because as God Christ had access to every piece of knowledge and bit of wisdom that He needed.  But still, it helps to have friends to urge you on towards that which is difficult.
    When we look at Moses, we see someone who carries the entire Chosen People in their exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land, from slavery to freedom.  Moses’ experience shows that, while the goal is good, people don’t always move towards what is in their best interest, and do not always trust in God.  From the very beginning, as Moses tells Pharaoh to let God’s people go, the people grumble against Moses because the change isn’t happening quick enough or easy enough.  Even after they leave Egypt because God had struck down the firstborn, they still doubt God’s ability to save them as they come to the banks of the Red Sea with the Egyptians pursuing them behind.  And even after God saves them through the waters of the Red Sea, and destroys the Egyptian army by the same waters, the Chosen People still doubt that God will provide food and water for them.  As much as Moses shows the people God’s fidelity, they still doubt.  And Moses ends up interceding for the people numerous times as God threatens to start over just with Moses.  
    When we look at Elijah, we see a prophet zealous for the Lord who works mighty deeds.  And yet, the political leadership, King Ahaz and Queen Jezebel, still promote foreign deities for the Chosen People to worship.  We think of the great religious showdown on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the prophets of Ba’al, the pagan god.  While the prophets of Ba’al fail to get the pagan deity to consume their sacrifice, Elijah pours water on his sacrifice, but fire from heaven still consumes the sacrifice and evaporates the water around the altar that Elijah had built.  Elijah then destroys the foreign prophets, but has to flee because the monarchs seek Elijah to kill him.  Elijah runs first to a broom tree and hides there, but an angel encourages him to eat so that he has enough strength for the mission.  Elijah then goes to Mount Horeb, and experiences God, not in the powerful phenomena of thunder or earthquake or fire, but in the silence of a whisper.  He feels alone, since he was the last remaining prophet of the true God at the time.  
    Christ has similarities in His mission to Moses and Elijah.  Like Moses, Christ carries the entire people, not just the Jews, who trust when they see amazing signs and miracles, but then doubt shortly after the miracles come to an end.  Christ is the one Mediator between God and men, whose blood saves not just the firstborn, but all those born of water and the Spirit through Holy Baptism.  He takes death upon Himself, in order that God’s justice against sin might be satisfied.  Like Elijah, Christ is also zealous for the Lord, and puts to death not the false prophets, but the false gods themselves, the kingdom of Satan and his minions.  Still, as the only-Begotten Son of God, He, like Elijah, stands alone as the local political leaders, like King Herod and the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, will seek to put the Lord to death, like King Ahaz and Queen Jezebel before them sought Elijah.  
    So who are our friends who push us on and console us with their experience?  Who are our Moses and Elijah?  In one sense, we can look towards good friends we have who can push us onwards despite our trials and tribulations.  These are the true friends who see the virtue we want, who see how much we might have to struggle for that virtue, but don’t let us give up on ourselves.  Or they might be the friends who see the pain and the suffering we endure, and help us to know that we’re not alone, and that others do truly care for us.  We may not have many friends like this, but even just one or two can make all the difference in the world.
    But, also important to consider are our friends who are saints.  Maybe it’s the saints from the Scriptures, who stories remind us of how God works with those who struggle for righteousness, and how God consoles those who struggle through difficult times, saints like Moses, Elijah, Job, the Apostles, the Holy Women, and others.  If we read Scripture regularly we can understand more adeptly how God works and how we can make it through difficult times.  But we also have the saints who have come after the Death and Resurrection of Jesus who help us by their example and their intercession.  When we’re struggling, do we pray to our patron saints like our name saint, our Confirmation saint, or a saint associated with our vocation or profession?  When we’re sad and feel the weight of the world, do we turn to our Blessed Mother or other saints whose lives inspire us to persevere in the midst of difficulties and struggles?  
    God made us for communion: with Him and with others.  God Himself said about Adam that it was not good to be alone.  Especially during Lent, but even during the entire year, may we rely on good friends, both those on earth and those in heaven, who will push on on when the times get tough, and comfort us when we feel down and out.  May we recognize that we are not alone, but that myriad of witnesses surround us, encouraging us towards the heavenly homeland to which we hope to return.  [Where Christ reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen.].

Getting the Right Message

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Perchik from "Fiddler on the Roof"

    Sometimes you can get the wrong message from a story.  In the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” which I just mentioned two weeks ago, there is a scene where a student, Perchik, from the university in Kyiv, is teaching Tevye’s daughters how to read from Biblical stories.  One day he says, “Now after Jacob had worked for Laban for seven years, do you know what happened?  Laban fooled him and gave him his ugly daughter, Leah.  So to marry Rachel, Jacob was forced to work another seven years.  So you see, children, the Bible clearly teaches us you can never trust an employer.”  Not perhaps the message God tries to convey through the account of the patriarch Jacob in the Book of Genesis.
    I feel like the first reading and Gospel passage that we heard today can also be misinterpreted if we don’t approach it well.  From the first reading we might think that we just have to do the right thing and keep the right action up in order to win, as the Israelites win whenever Moses’ hands are raised.  From the Gospel we might think that if we pester God enough by asking him again and again, like the widow from the parable, then God will give us whatever we want.  But I don’t think either of those are what God wants to communicate to us.
    Because the first approach is basically magic.  Magic seeks to control the physical and/or spiritual world by our own efforts.  If I say the right words or do the right things, certain actions have to follow, as if they’re in causal relationship like adding baking soda to vinegar.  I can manipulate the results if I do the prescribed actions.  Magic is an offense against the first commandment, because we seek to take control rather than let God be in control.  
    The second approach is arrogance and pride.  If we ask God for something and we don’t get it, clearly God must have a different plan.  To presume that we know better than God is the ancient vice of price, seeking to elevate us over and against God, rather than submitting to His will and Divine Providence.  God is not a parent that we, like a toddler, can wear down if we just keep pestering Him, so that we eventually get what we want.

    Instead, the message, or at least a message, that God wants to communicate is a phrase my spiritual director says to me almost every time we meet: patient perseverance.  In our relationship with God, we need to approach God with confidence that He hears our prayers, even if they’re not answered immediately, and as long as they are truly what God wants.  St. Monica had to pray around 30 years before her son, Augustine, received the Sacrament of Holy Baptism from St. Ambrose.  God certainly wanted St. Augustine to become an adopted son of God in Jesus Christ and a member of the Church and have original sin washed away, but Monica had to persevere in asking God for that gift.  St. Augustine also had to be open to that gift, as conversion requires the free response to God’s grace that is given for conversion.
    We put forward our best work according to what we believe is God’s will.  We ask God to bless our work, whether it be an earthly or a spiritual endeavor.  But then we have to wait for God to grant it, all the while asking for it to happen, if it is God’s will.  It’s like the distiller who puts together what he thinks is a good mash bill, based upon what he thinks people want to drink.  He ferments the grains with the yeast, purifies the distillate to remove any harmful impurities, then puts it in a barrel to age in a good location in the rick house.  He waits for years, maybe four, eight, ten, twelve, or even twenty or twenty-three, praying that his hard work pays off and produces a tasty bourbon that people will enjoy.  But there is a certain freedom in patience, commending the endeavor to God’s providence.
    All too often, though we don’t begin by asking for God’s input as to whether we should even start something.  I know in my own life I can struggle because I have something I want to do, and I don’t ask God if it’s part of His plans, and then sometimes get frustrated when it turns out they’re not part of His plans, and I don’t find the success I wanted.  Before we begin any action, especially any new undertaking, we should ask God if this is part of His will.
    If we sense that God wants something to happen, that’s when we patiently persevere.  We continue to pray to God to give success to the work of our hands, to paraphrase Psalm 90.  And we wait until God answers that prayer in some way, shape, or form.  We don’t meddle, as if somehow our work can outdo the plan of God.  We don’t act like a toddler and keep asking, “Can I have it?  Please?  Please?  Please?  Please?”, hoping to wear God down.  We patiently, persistently bring our request before the throne of grace and lay it before the feet of God for Him to decide how and when to grant our prayers.  And we do it as a child who trusts his or her father.      Don’t misunderstand the readings we had today, as Perchik did with the story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel.  Don’t pretend that we are in control and God has to do what we want if we just say the right words or do the right thing.  Let God be God, submit to His will and Divine Providence, and trust that what needs to happen will happen, according to the plan of our loving Father.  

How We Name God

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Growing up my name has progressed a bit.  I was born and baptized Anthony John.  But very early on my family called me Tony, the natural nickname for Anthony.  However, in kindergarten there was another Tony in my class.  And so, rather than going by Tony L. (my classmate) and Tony S., I decided to switch to TJ, Tony John.  That name stuck all throughout elementary and middle school, until I went to Lansing Catholic High School.  Sometime 27 years ago, as I tried out for the soccer team, the coach asked my name.  I said TJ, but then said, “actually it’s Anthony, but everyone calls me TJ.”  The coach must have heard Anthony clearly enough and J clearly enough, but did not catch TJ.  So he started to call me AJ.  And since I wanted to make the team, and didn’t think correcting a coach would help, I went by AJ.  That worked until I applied to seminary.  I introduced myself to Bishop Mengeling (God rest his soul) as AJ.  He asked me, “What does the A stand for?”  I answered, “Anthony.”  He said, “That’s a great name!  You should use it!”  And, as I didn’t want to disagree with the bishop, I started going by Anthony starting my senior year of high school, continuing to the present (though I know a number of you feel more comfortable with calling me Fr. Strouse, which is fine).  Back before cell phones, I could always tell from which period in my short life a person came based on who they asked for on the phone: Tony; TJ; AJ; or Anthony.  And, for the record, I don’t go by Fr. Tony, Fr. TJ, or Fr. AJ.
    How do we address God?  This might seem like an odd question for a homily at Mass, but the way that we address a person, be it a human or Divine Person, says something about our relationship with that person.  As we consider how we address God, it, too, changed through the centuries.  For the longest time during the ages of the Patriarchs, God was simply the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  God chose to be known as the God of a particular family, whom God had called to leave modern-day Iraq to the Promised Land (even though they were enslaved in Egypt for some 400 years).  
 

  It was not until the burning bush, when Moses asked the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob how He was to be called, did God reveal Himself with His more personal name: “I AM WHO AM,” or, even more simply, “I AM.”  This Sacred Name God reveals, but then it is never to be used, and, in Hebrew, even though there was a word for it, the Jews would always say, “Adonai,” which means Lord.  Only the High Priest on Yom Kippur while in the Holy of Holies could utter that sacred name of God to which Adonai referred.
    Of course, there were other terms for God in the Old Testament, too: Elohim, which means simply “God”; El Shaddai, which means, “God Almighty”; Immanuel, which means “God with us”; El Elyon, which means “God Most High”; Adonai sabaoth, which means, “God of hosts” (and in the Sanctus we keep that title, not even translating sabaoth).  But in the end, God’s Sacred Name was not said, and He was simply referred to as Adonai or Lord (and in the Bible, when you see Lord in small caps, that is the way of saying that this word Lord refers to the Sacred Name of God).
    But then Christ in the New Testament gives us a new way to address God: Abba.  No, not the 1970s band with such hits as “Dancing Queen,” “Mamma Mia,” and “Fernando,” but the Aramaic word which is probably best translated as “Daddy,” or a very familiar word for father.  St. Paul reminds us that, through baptism, we have become adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can call on God as Abba.  But this was radical.  In John 5:18, the Evangelist writes, “For this reason the Jews tried all the more to kill [Jesus], because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father.”  
    It is one thing to address God as simply God, or Almighty, or Most High, or God of Hosts.  And maybe even we soften it a little with Immanuel, God with us.  But to call God Abba was to acknowledge a very close, personal, even intimate relationship with God that the Savior had by nature and we share by adoption.  It’s the difference between having a dad in the military and calling him Major or calling him Daddy.  The first is for those he commands; the second is for those he loves.  
    This might seem even more strange as we use a foreign language, Latin, to address God.  And in the English translations of this Mass, and even in the English translations of the Missal of Pope St. John Paul II, we use very formal language to address God: “Bestow upon us, O Lord, we beseech Thee….”  I don’t go to Chick-Fil-A and say, “Bestow upon me, O server, the three-piece chicken strip meal, I beseech thee.”  If I did, I might end up in a padded room.  We use very formal language for God in the Mass.
    Though, this is probably a good time to say that not everything in the Mass is so formal.  When we hear Thee and Thy, we tend to think formal.  However, in English, Thee and Thy are actually more informal than you and your.  We get this from the Dutch/Flemish who say, “je” or “jouw” when speaking informally, while “u” and “ur” are used for formal speech.
    But this just goes to show how both are proper and necessary in our prayer.  If we only treat God as a far off King, for whom we are servants, than we are missing out on the familial relationship into which God brought us through Holy Baptism.  And this is especially true in our personal prayer when we should fling our arms around our loving Father with the confidence and ease of a a child with its father.  However, if we only treat God as a close family member then we are missing out on the fact that He is also utterly transcendent, His ways are not always our ways, and we are not His equals.  A way of expressing this would be to say, “My father, the king.”  He is both family and ruler, familiar and otherly.
    We probably each have different ways that we address God based upon our personality, or maybe even simply the season of life in which we find ourselves.  But may we always remember both that God is our King and Lord of the Angelic Army who will vanquish evil without a struggle, but also, through Holy Baptism, our Father who loves us and gives us every good gift that we need through our Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen.   

The Old Man and the New Man

Second Sunday of Lent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Not long before Toby Keith died, a little more than a year ago, I heard a song that he released in 2019 called, “Don’t Let the Old Man In.”  While the song sings of death, personified by an old man, for us Catholics, the old man is Adam, our fallen, sinful self, while the new man is Christ, raised from the dead and sinless.
    And as we hear the readings today, we get the comparison between the old man and the new man.  St. Paul lays out one of the sins that is part and parcel of the old man: lust and fornication.  St. Thomas Aquinas defines lust as seeking sexual pleasure not in accord with reason.  And fornication, in its simplest form, is sexual relations between an unmarried man and unmarried woman, though more broadly it can refer to adultery (where at least one person is married) and other sexual sins.
    There is no doubt that the sexual passions are strong.  The old joke is told of a man asking a priest when he would no longer have to worry about lust.  The priest answered, “Five minutes after you’re dead.”  Our bodies, when they are not subjected to the soul, tend towards their own desires.  Especially in youth, they operate as if the propagation of the human race depended entirely upon one’s self.  And while one can have a legitimate desire to seek sexual pleasure that is in accord with reason (indeed, the gift of sexuality is a great gift from God), the old man, whose body, mind, and soul are not ordered properly and subjected in obedience to God, seeks simply to satisfy those desires whenever and however he wants.  
    And this is true even beyond lust and sexual desire.  The old man, the disobedient Adam, always seeks his own will over and against God’s will, no matter what the subject matter.  The old man spends money as he wants, without any reference to God; eats whatever he wants, without any reference to God; pursues whatever he wants, without any reference to God.  In all these cases and more, God is, at best, an afterthought, and, at worst, not considered at all in one’s actions.  The old man, St. Paul says, is earthly, and was addressed on Ash Wednesday: Remember, man, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  

    But the Gospel we heard today, the Gospel of the Transfiguration, shows us what the new man can be.  Christ receives transfiguration from the Father to show the three great Apostles what will happen after the Passion and Crucifixion.  But that foresight connects to obedience, obedience to the Father’s will, no matter where that leads, even if it leads to the cross.  Moses, who appears on Mount Tabor with the Lord and Elijah, also received a much smaller gift of transfiguration when he beheld God.  His face radiated, so much so that people would have him cover it up because they were put off by it.  Moses would only remove his veil when he entered the presence of God.  But, St. Paul also says that it was a radiance that faded.  Whereas the radiance God desires for us in heaven will never fade away, just as the radiance of Christ never fades away.
    That radiance comes when we stop living like the old man, doing it “my way,” and when we, by the grace of God, open ourselves up to God’s transforming grace, His life, so that it begins to change us from the inside out.  We start to transfigure when we do it God’s way.  Sin blocks the light of Christ that we received at Holy Baptism from shining through us.  Repentance, especially through the Sacrament of Penance, cleanses us from the mud of sin so that the light of Christ can shine through us and glorify God.
    As far as our sexual passions go, living the life of the new man means treating our gift of sexuality as the precious gift it is, rather than simply a physical relief from stress or loneliness.  Since we live in a GM city, the image of the gift of sexuality I use is like a new corvette.  Most would care for it, protect it from misuse, and make sure no one is eating or drinking in or around the car.  Misusing it would be to take it on two-track roads in a forest, or let kids eat ice cream in the back seat, or drive it through bogs.  When we view things we shouldn’t, or try to simulate the sexual act on our own, or engage in acts of affection which are proper to marriage, or even engage in sexual acts as spouses that are not open to life (and I’m not talking about NFP, which cooperates with how God has made the human body to achieve or delay conception), we run our corvette through the mud.  The more we put ourselves into temptation regarding our sexual faculties, the harder it is to get out of the mud.  So we want to make sure that we are not allowing our sexual desires get the better of us as much as we can.
    But, as I said, living a transfigured life isn’t only about sex.  It’s also about being kind to a co-worker who puts us down; or being a friend to someone who is friendless, even if they are a little off; or not seeking undue attention and puffing ourselves up by bragging about our achievements; or treating even our enemies with human dignity and respect.  Living the life of the new man is about asking what God wants us to do in this moment.  And the more we practice it, the easier it becomes.  As we think about the saints, for many of them towards the end of their life, living a Christ-centered life didn’t require as much effort, because they had trained themselves to think with the mind of Christ and love with His Sacred Heart.  
    We don’t have to live like the old man.  We don’t have to fall to our passions and let them rule us.  That is the precious gift we were given in baptism.  So, to quote the last verse of Toby Keith’s song: “When he rides up on his horse / And you feel that cold bitter wind / Look out your window and smile / Don’t let the old man in.”  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Don't Let the Old Man In

Second Sunday of Lent

    Not long before Toby Keith died, a little more than a year ago, I heard a song that he released in 2019 called, “Don’t Let the Old Man In.”  While the song sings of death, personified by an old man, for us Catholics, the old man is Adam, our fallen, sinful self, while the new man is Christ, raised from the dead and sinless.
    And as we hear the readings today, we get the comparison between the old man and the new man.  St. Paul speaks about those whose “minds are occupied with earthly things.”  These are people to follow their passions, whatever they might be.  They live more like animals than humans.  And because they do not live up to their human potential, they become “enemies of the cross of Christ,” tending towards destruction by following whatever desires they may have.  This is the description of the old man, the first Adam, who gave up happiness with God out of pride and gluttony.
    The old man, the disobedient Adam, always seeks his own will over and against God’s will, no matter what the subject matter.  The old man spends money as he wants, without any reference to God; eats whatever he wants, without any reference to God; pursues whatever he wants, without any reference to God.  In all these cases and more, God is, at best, an afterthought, and, at worst, not considered at all in one’s actions.  The old man, St. Paul says, is earthly, and was addressed on Ash Wednesday: Remember, man, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  

    But the Gospel we heard today, the Gospel of the Transfiguration, shows us what the new man can be.  Christ receives transfiguration from the Father to show the three great Apostles what will happen after the Passion and Crucifixion.  But that foresight connects to obedience, obedience to the Father’s will, no matter where that leads, even if it leads to the cross.  Moses, who appears on Mount Tabor with the Lord and Elijah, also received a much smaller gift of transfiguration when he beheld God.  His face radiated, so much so that people would have him cover it up because they were put off by it.  Moses would only remove his veil when he entered the presence of God.  But, St. Paul also says that it was a radiance that faded.  Whereas the radiance God desires for us in heaven will never fade away, just as the radiance of Christ never fades away.
    That radiance comes when we stop living like the old man, doing it “my way,” and when we, by the grace of God, open ourselves up to God’s transforming grace, His life, so that it begins to change us from the inside out.  We start to transfigure when we do it God’s way.  Sin blocks the light of Christ that we received at Holy Baptism from shining through us.  Repentance, especially through the Sacrament of Penance, cleanses us from the mud of sin so that the light of Christ can shine through us and glorify God.
    St. Paul mentions those who treat their stomach as a god, who follow their appetite at all costs.  During Lent we often hear critiques about fasting and abstinence.  People will say that they like fish, or that going to Red Lobster hardly seems like a penance.  But part of the abstinence and fasting is that we humble ourselves in observing obedience to a church law.  I read an article recently about whether one could eat an Impossible burger on Fridays during Lent, since it’s not meat.  The response was that, if one is simply trying to find a loophole to not eating meat, then it would probably not be ok to do.  But, if one truly saw eating the Impossible burger as a penance, then it could be ok, since it is not meat.  And, for those who feel it’s easy not to eat meat on Fridays, do it throughout the year.  Because of my fallen will, the times I want meat the most are the times I’m not allowed or supposed to have it.  Or try following the Ember Days, which are four times a year of additional abstinence and fasting.  The old man will probably start rearing his head and crying out for attention, trying to pull us away from penances that we want to do to bring us closer to God.
    We demonstrate the transfigured life of the new man when we display kindness to a co-worker who puts us down; or when we show friendship to someone who is friendless; or when we do not seek undue attention and puff ourselves up by bragging about our achievements; or when we treat even our enemies with human dignity and respect.  Living the life of the new man is about asking what God wants us to do in this moment.  And the more we practice it, the easier it becomes.  As we think about the saints, for many of them towards the end of their life, living a Christ-centered life didn’t require as much effort, because they had trained themselves to think with the mind of Christ and love with His Sacred Heart.  
    We don’t have to live like the old man.  We don’t have to fall to our passions and let them rule us.  That is the precious gift we were given in baptism.  So, to quote the last verse of Toby Keith’s song: “When he rides up on his horse / And you feel that cold bitter wind / Look out your window and smile / Don’t let the old man in.” 

What's in a Name?

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Shakespeare famous wrote in his play, “Romeo and Juliet,” “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  Today as we celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus, we may fall into the same nominalism error that Shakespeare seemed to espouse, that names don’t really make any difference.  But names contain power and access.
    When God first reveals His Name to Moses in the theophany at the burning bush, God reveals Himself as “I AM WHO AM,” or, more simply, “I AM.”  This doesn’t sound like a name to us.  But that’s on purpose.  When we know someone’s name, we have a certain power over that person.  When I stand in a crowded room with my parents with a fair amount of noise, I might say “dad” numerous times without him hearing me.  But, if I were to say “Robert,” it would likely gain his attention.  Or, when a pope dies, to make sure he is dead, they tap him with a decorative small mallet and whisper his baptismal name, figuring that he would respond to the name his parents called him.  When we know a name, we have power, as that person’s attention is turned to us.  But even God did not grant His Chosen People to have power over His Name.  He promised to be with them and to turn to them whenever they called upon Him, but they could not say His name.  In fact, they would simply use the Hebrew word Adonai, which means “Lord,” instead of using the Hebrew word for I AM, which is abbreviated by the consonants YHWH. 

Pope Benedict XVI, of happy memory, asked Catholics not to use this sacred name in the Mass, out of respect for our Jewish brothers and sisters.  Only one time, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, would the high priest, standing before the ark of the covenant, utter the sacred Name of God.
    When our Lord, at least once, in the Gospel of John, referred to Himself as “I AM,” He taught us of His unity with the Father in divinity.  And the people recognized this.  They rise up to stone our Lord for blasphemy.  While some of the I AM statements in John work grammatically and could be interpreted simply as indicative statements using metaphors, the one that stands out is when Christ says, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  That sentence makes no sense, unless Christ is identifying His oneness with the Father.  
    But, just as the prohibition against making images of God changes with the Incarnation, so does the relationship between God’s People and His Holy Name.  Part of the humility of the Incarnation was that God had a name that the people could freely use.  The name of Jesus means “God saves.”  It does, in a sense, define Him, as our Lord is the salvation of God.  No longer is the name not to be uttered at all, but it can be called upon freely in times of need.  Peter and John will heal a lame man “in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean.”  The people come to believe at this great act and Peter’s preaching, such that Peter and John are arrested and stand on trial before the Sanhedrin for what they have done.  That’s where our epistle comes in.  St. Peter proclaims that there is no other name by when men can be saved other than Jesus, a teaching the Church has continued throughout the centuries.  It is the name at which, as we heard in the Introit from St. Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, every knee should bend, whether those in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, because Jesus Christ is Lord.  Again, Lord was the term that a Jew would have used for God, so St. Paul is affirming the divinity of Christ through His Name.
    The custom of preaching during the Mass is not to use the name of Jesus too often.  I refer to Him as the Lord, or the Savior, or the Redeemer, or simply Christ.  But we should not be afraid to call upon the name of our Savior in time of need, because He has given us His name so that we can receive help.  In the Orthodox Church, there is a practice of simply saying the name, “Jesus” as one breathes in and out.  This beautiful prayer can calm us when we are anxious, and rely on the strength of the Holy Name to cast aside anything that seeks to harm us.  When exorcists cast out demons, they do so with the power of the Holy Name, at which the demons have no choice but to obey, because the power comes, not from the priest, but from Christ Himself.  
    So names are important.  The Holy Name of Jesus is the most important name, because it identifies who God is and what He does.  Whereas in the Old Testament, the name of God was used only rarely, our Lord invites us to call upon His Holy Name whenever we are in need, whenever we are giving thanks, whenever we pray as a church.  May the Holy Name of Jesus protect us from all assaults of the enemy, and may we receive salvation through the Holy Name of Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Never Could Have Imagined

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    For whatever reason, once you reach a certain age, there is a requirement that you tell younger people how passes more quickly the older you get when they say that they can’t believe how fast time is going.  As a youngster and on the receiving end, I never really appreciated how true that statement could be.  After all, time, at best, seemed like a constant, and it seemed like it just dragged on.  But, as I approach my forty-first birthday next week, I appreciate more the reality that time really does go faster the older you get.
    When Moses asked the rhetorical question to the Israelites, “what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God is to us whenever we call upon him?”, the Chosen People certainly could think of the closeness of God.  Ever since their departure from Egypt, God had accompanied them by a column of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.  He had stopped the flow of the Red Sea for them.  He had appeared in trumpet blast and storms on Mount Sinai.  He traveled with them in the Ark of the Covenant.  There was no question that God sojourned with His People.  But they didn’t appreciate how close God would get to us.
    Centuries later, King Solomon built a temple to God to be a resting place for the Ark of the Covenant, which King David had previously moved to the new capital city of Jerusalem.  In the great temple, with all of its gold and silver beyond value, all of the fine wood and decorations of the different courts for different groups of people, leading up to the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary where God dwelt, God could be approached.  He had a physical footstool on earth, a place where the people could draw close to Him at any time they wanted.  While the Chosen People had spread out over the Promised Land, they could come to God to give thanks or to ask for blessings.  God no longer seemed itinerant, but had a home fit for the King of Kings.  But still they couldn’t imagine how close God would get to us.

    Centuries later, in a village called Nazareth, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to a young virgin named Mary.  Gabriel asked Mary if she would become the Mother of God, and would carry the Son of God and Son of David in her womb for nine months.  Mary said yes, and suddenly, God’s presence was again itinerant, but this time not in cloud or fire, but in the Incarnation, the union of God and man in the Person of Jesus Christ.  Mary gave birth in Bethlehem, and suddenly people could not only see God from afar in the cloud and smoke; people could not only visit God in a particular place; the shepherds could now gaze loving on God, who looked like a little baby.  The Magi could offer their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the little Christ Child.  And that child would grow, so that people could see the face of God, which before not even Moses could do, as God warned it would kill him.  But not only could you see the face of God, you could touch God, hear His voice, and experience His love in a way previously thought impossible.  But still, they couldn’t imagine how close God would get to us.
    Because while Jesus Christ, God-made-man, walked this earth and helped people experience God in ways unthought of before, while He walked this earth He limited Himself to being in one place, at one time.  The Lord of all creation who created time and space became subject to time and space.  Until He gave us the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, His Body and Blood, given to us under the appearance of bread and wine, which would prolong His presence with us, not through his limited Body, but through His glorified Body, which now reigns at the right hand of the Father in heaven.  You don’t have to go to the Holy Land to see Jesus.  He comes to you at each Mass, so that you only have to travel a short distance to see Him, not fly over oceans and seas and other continents.  And God enters into us, into our very person, so that He is closer to us than any other person could ever be.  We can say, in a way Moses probably never imagined while he was on earth, “what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God is to us whenever we call upon him?”!
    What a great gift God gives us!  How could we ever repay God for His generosity, for His proximity to us?  St. James tells us a way that we can repay, however humbly, the great gift God has given us: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.”  The best thank you we can say to God is to worship Him, to open ourselves to His grace, and to do our best to conform our lives to the pattern God has given us, especially by loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.  
    I could never have imagined how fast time continues to pass in my own life.  Moses could never have imagined how close God would come to us through the Eucharist.  But it is true.  God has come to dwell with us.  Come, let us worship!

Vigils

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

Statue of David from Jerusalem

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

The Sound of Silence

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Around 8th grade, I was given a basement bedroom that my dad created so that my sisters could have separate bedrooms (so that they didn’t kill each other).  And in that bedroom was an old stereo system that had radio, two cassette decks, and a turntable, with storage area for records at the bottom.  One of the records that my dad has was “Simon and Garfunkel: The Concert in Central Park.”  It was a great set of records, and included on of their more famous songs: “The Sound of Silence.”  The title of the song itself is something that tickles the brain, as we usually don’t associate silence with any sounds.  And yet, if we reflect upon silence it does almost have its own unique sound to it.
    Today in the first reading, we hear the well-known story about how Elijah was at Mount Horeb, another name for Mount Sinai.  Elijah was fleeing from Queen Jezebel, who had threatened to kill Elijah after he had put the prophets of the false god, Ba’al, whom she followed, to death on Mount Carmel.  This was the mountain where God had revealed Himself in the dark cloud, in thunder, and trumpet blasts as Moses approached the mountain.  This was where the finger of God wrote out the Ten Commandments.
    But as Elijah is there, while he hears wind strong enough to crush rocks, feels the earthquake under him, and sees fire, Elijah only comes into contact with God through a tiny whisper, which could only be heard in the silence.  It was if God revealed Himself to the prophet Elijah in exactly the opposite way that He revealed Himself to Moses, himself also a prophet. 
    Silence confuses modern man, who so obsesses himself with activity and noise.  But if we don’t make time for silence, if we are always busied about with actions and sounds, then we lose one of the ways that God communicates with us.  Yes, like with Moses, God sometimes reveals Himself in the truly awesome, that which fills us with awe, due to magnificent displays.  But, like with Elijah, God sometimes reveals Himself in ways that we can only appreciate if we practice silence.
    Silence is meant to be a part of the liturgy, of the Mass.  Bishop Boyea, in one of his challenges in The Road to Emmaus, part of our activity during this Eucharistic Revival, was to arrive to Mass 15 minutes early for silent prayer.  Did you do that?  Did you even attempt it?  Or was talking to your friends before Mass more important that spending time with God?
    Besides a beautiful way to prepare for what happens at the Mass, silence is also supposed to be a part of the Mass.  There are different times when the Church calls for silence.  Why?  Cardinal Sarah, former head of the now-Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and originally from the Africa, had this to say:
 

When we encounter the sacred, when we come face to face with God, we naturally fall silent and kneel in adoration.  […] We await His Word, His saving action, in awe and anticipation.  […] If I am so full of myself and of the noise of the world that there is no space for silence within me, if human pride reigns in my heart so that it is only myself of whom I am in awe, then it is almost impossible for me to worship Almighty God, to hear His Word or to allow it space to take root in my life.”

Silence can be so difficult to us because it forces us to acknowledge that we are not God, and that God cannot be summoned to respond to us like a genie from a bottle.
    Do you notice the times of silence in our Mass?  The first is during our recollection of sins during the Penitential Act.  After I ask us to acknowledge our sins, “and so prepare ourselves to celebrate these sacred mysteries,” I give us time in silence to think about the ways that we have fallen short of following Christ in our daily lives.  I’m not lost; I’m not catching my breath.  I’m giving myself and you time to think about the sins for which we need to ask for God’s mercy.
    The second is after the homily.  After we have heard God speak through His Word in the readings, the Psalm, and the Gospel, and after we have heard how that Word is to be applied to today (however good or poor the homily may be), we need time to be silent with God and let that Word sink into our hearts, and challenge us to repent and change our lives.  Otherwise it is like seed that falls on the path which the birds come and eat up.
    The third is after Communion.  After we finish singing the Communion chant, that is especially your time, not to watch me purify the vessels; not to prepare your exit strategy from the parking lot so you don’t get caught by Sunday drivers.  That time is for you to thank Jesus for offering Himself for our salvation, and giving us a way to connect with that salvation through our worthy reception of the Eucharist.  Communion is God’s greatest gift to us.  Do we even say thank you, or are we waiting until some more noise can fill our minds?
    The Gospel talks about recognizing Jesus amidst the waves and winds.  This reminds us of the chaotic, noisy times of life.  And it is important to recognize God at those times, too.  But we will all-too-often mistake God’s voice for that of our own during chaos if we have not made time to listen for the voice of God during times of calm and silence.  “Do not be afraid” of the silence.  As you are able each day, make some time for silence, and don’t just turn on music or the TV to have background noise.  Because if our life is filled with noise and distractions, we will likely miss many opportunities that God desires to be close to us and remind us of His love and His truth.

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.  

Lunatic, Liar, or Lord

Passion Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  
 

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse….You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come up with any patronising [sic] nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to."

These words come from the great Anglican writer, C.S. Lewis in his work Mere Christianity.  And though Lewis never swam the Tiber, he certainly was a man faith in Christ.  

C.S. Lewis

                    Our Gospel and Epistle today lay out how our Lord is different, not just in His style of preaching or even His content, but categorically different than everyone who came before, or anyone who would come after Him.  As Lewis writes, we cannot simply refer to Him as one of a great line of human teachers.  To do so is to ignore the witness of the Gospels and the other New Testament revealed texts.
    The author of the “Letter to the Hebrews” starts by contrasting the sacrificial system of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the sacrifice of Christ in the Heavenly Jerusalem, the temple built without hands.  The Aaronic priests would offer sacrifices throughout the year of many types: atonement, peace offerings, grain offerings, thanksgiving sacrifices, votive sacrifices (those connected to vows made), etc.  Goats, sheep, bulls, lambs, grain, wine, oil: all these things would be offered according to what God revealed through Moses and the sacrificial system expressed in the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  And these did bring about ritual purity: the cleansing of the flesh.
    But our Lord offered Himself not with a dumb animal’s blood, but with His own Precious Blood, the blood of a truly unblemished lamb.  And His sacrifice, made once for all, did not only cleanse the flesh, but cleansed the conscience, the soul.  All sacrifices were meant to bring a person into right relationship with God.  They were vicarious ways of saying that the person offering was giving up his life to offer it to God.  Christ’s sacrifice was not vicarious, though, in the sense that He offered something else.  He offered Himself, and in Him all who would be united to Him.  And it wasn’t only to temporarily bring us into right relationship with God, but to change us to be like Christ, adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God, which opened for us eternal union with God in heaven, the ultimate goal of right relationship with God.  
    In the Gospel, too, our Lord distinguishes Himself from all others who came before Him in Judaism.  And the Jews notice it.  They ask if Christ is greater than Abraham and the prophets.  And through the back and forth, the Lord affirms that He is greater, leading up to the climactic phrase of this passage, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  This hearkens us back to the great Theophany to Moses on Mt. Sinai, when God reveals His Name to Moses, “I AM WHO AM.”  And the Jews recognize this, because they immediately pick up stones to stone the Lord to death, the penalty for blasphemy.  Christ claims not simply to be a great rabbi who authentically interprets the Law and the Prophets, but the one about whom the Law and the Prophets referred, the source of their power and authority.  
    What does this have to do with us?  Well, while we’re all here, so we must acknowledge in some sense that Christ is different than any other religious leader, it is very easy in our mind and practices to treat Him simply like another guru.  It is easy to think simply of laws that we need to follow and prayers we need to say, without recognizing the adoration that we owe to the Lord and that we are not simply listening to another faith teacher, but dealing with the Lord who made all the universe.  
    It is also very easy to pick and choose the religious leaders and minds to whom we want to listen.  We like this cardinal versus that one; this author more than another; give one blogger more credence than a different blogger.  And faith always come through someone else, so others participate in fostering our faith.  But we can so often get caught up in lower-level rules and practices, without having any real reference to Christ and what He specifically teaches.  Especially as Americans, we have recently tended to read religious leaders and what they promote through a political lens.  Do we go back to what Christ reveals, He who is God, and evaluate religious leaders and authors by those standards, rather than the ones with which we are more familiar and likely more comfortable, that is, how does this match up with my view of life and my political outlook?  In other words, to what do I give more weight: the Gospels or my favorite blog?
    Jesus is not just another religious leader.  He’s not only qualitatively different, but categorically different because He is the one who shares Divine Revelation as well as the source and content of Divine Revelation Himself.  May we be most concerned with the One who simply reveals Himself as “I AM”: God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Actions & Consequences and A Freely-Given Gift

 Fourth Sunday of Lent

    When I was growing up, if we were flirting with trouble (mostly my sisters, because I was a perfect angel, of course!), my parents would say things like: if I have to pull this car over…; don’t you even think about it…; or other such tried and true methods.  They were not cruel, it was just a very direct form of discipline.  As all of us kids turned our pretty well, I’d say it worked.  But my sister Amanda, the only one with kids right now, often uses the phrase, “Make good choices.”  I’d call that the softer approach, but my nieces are also pretty well-behaved (at least, as far as I know), so that approach apparently can work, too!
    One major aspect of raising children is to help them to understand the consequences of their actions.  If you draw on the wall with crayons, you get time-out.  If you touch the hot stove, you get burned.  If you don’t do your homework, you don’t get to play outside (nowadays it’s more likely play video games or play on your phone).  If you break curfew, you’re grounded.  These small lessons about actions and consequences are meant to help young people understand that if we make good choices, there are, generally, good consequences.  If we make bad choices, there are, generally, bad consequences.
    We see that in the first reading today, and even, to an extent, in our Gospel.  The Books of Chronicles of the Old Testament are the abridged versions of the Books of Kings, explaining the actions of the kings of Judah and Israel.  The lesson at the end of the Second Book of Kings, our first reading today, is that the people made bad choices.  They worshipped foreign gods, they mistreated the poor, they trusted earthly riches and powers more than God, they did not live as God’s Chosen People.  God sent them messengers to tell them to make better choices, but they never listened.  And what was the consequence?  The Temple, the great house of God, was destroyed, and the people were exiled into Babylon.  To echo Bishop Barron, there’s a sort of spiritual mathematics going on.  If you add sin upon sin, you get death, like 2 + 2 = 4.  Notice, that death doesn’t only come because of sin (we see that in other books of the Old Testament), just like 4 can be added to with a few different combinations.  But certain actions have certain consequences, or, to put it in St. Paul’s words, “The wages of sin is death.”  
    Jesus, too, and John the Evangelist, give us this same idea in the Gospel.  “Whoever believes in [Jesus] will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned.”  Again, the spiritual mathematics of the importance of believing in Jesus.  Or, later on, John continues that evil means darkness, whereas God means light.  If we do evil things, we envelope ourselves in darkness.  If we do good things, we are surrounded by light.  This is part of the push to the New Evangelization.  We who have received the light (which will be powerfully demonstrated at the Easter Vigil, as we enter into a dark church, at first only illumined by the Paschal Candle which represents Christ), have a responsibility to share it with others.  And we should not prefer darkness to light, because otherwise we’ll find condemnation.
    But this can tend us to the idea that, if we just check off the right boxes, then we’ll be good.  It makes us the author of our salvation, rather than God.  It pretends that we have what it takes to save ourselves.  If that were so, certainly Abraham, or Moses, or Isaiah would have been in heaven as soon as they died.  But they couldn’t be in heaven without Jesus' saving Death and Resurrection.  Even those just men and women of the Old Testament couldn’t get to heaven on their own.  They, and we, are saved by grace, by the gift of God; it is not earned.
    But Fr. Anthony, you may be saying, you just got done saying that good choices lead to good consequences.  Yes, I did.  But all the good choices in the world couldn’t open up heaven.  It was the consequence of the death of Jesus on the cross that allowed us to enter heaven.  His good choice led to our good consequences.  “God, who is rich in mercy,…” says St. Paul, “brought us to life with Christ….For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God.”  Try getting to heaven without Jesus; it’s impossible.  You might be able to get halfway there every day, but you’ll never get all the way there.  Jesus is the only one who makes salvation possible.  And He’s the only one who gives us what we need to accept that gift of salvation.  If those in other religions are saved, the Church says, it’s still only because of Jesus.  Moses does not save people (nor did he claim to).  Mohammed does not save people.  Buddha does not save people.  Only Jesus does.  And anyone who is saved, is saved only through the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus.  
    God invites us to salvation.  He invites us to open the gift that He has prepared for us.  But, as with any gift, we can choose whether or not to accept it.  In that way, we’re back to actions and consequences.  If we accept God’s free gift of salvation, heaven is for us.  How do we know that we have accepted that gift?  By the way we live our life; by the good choices we make in response to that gift, because of our love for God.  We can’t earn it, but neither can we receive it without responding to it.  God did not come to condemn us; He sent Jesus to save us.  But the way that we can grab ahold of that salvation is to respond to the gift, to live as Jesus invites us; to make good choices when presented with the free gift of salvation.

Listening

 Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fr. Jim Rolph

    Last Sunday I went to a family’s house for dinner, a family that I have visited before.  When I visit, the adult children in the family like to tease me and say how much more they like Fr. Jim Rolph, the chaplain at Powers Catholic.  So during dinner conversation last Sunday I was talking to someone else at the table, but one of the kids interjected and said something, but all I heard was “in Flint.”  At first I just let it pass and figured it wasn’t anything important, but then young man started laughing, and realizing it was connected to what I had missed, I said, “Wait; what did you say?”  He started laughing and said, “I wondered why you didn’t react.  I said, ‘After all, Fr. Jim is the best priest in the Flint area!’”  
    Sometimes our attention is divided, and we don’t hear what’s going on.  And because we don’t hear, we miss something that we would want to know.  It’s not such a big deal when a young man is poking fun and saying that a brother priest is better than you (for the record, Fr. Jim and I are good friends, and I respect him greatly!).  But if it’s not teasing, but the voice of God, it’s much more important to pay attention and listen.
    In our first reading, Moses prophesies that God will send another prophet, like Moses, to whom the people need to listen.  This prophet will have very important messages to communicate.  Of course, we know that Jesus was the fulfillment of all the prophets, and was a prophet Himself, since He spoke for God.  But He didn’t even speak like the other prophets, but spoke with authority, authority that came from Himself, since He is God.  The people listening to Jesus recognize this, and they recognize “a new teaching with authority.”  
    Part of this authority is that Jesus, unlike the other rabbis of His time, would not appeal to an earlier rabbi.  That was the way the interpretation of laws and teachings worked for the Jewish people.  If you were a rabbi, people wouldn’t necessarily believe what you were teaching or interpreting.  But if you could appeal to an earlier rabbi who was well-respected, then your teaching took on more authority.  And the closer you could get to Moses, the more authority you would have.  
    But Jesus did not appeal to any other rabbi.  He simply spoke as if it were true.  Think back to Matthew chapter 5.  Jesus keeps saying, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…”. He teaches as one who is authentically interpreting God’s will, authentically speaking for God, like Moses, but even more authoritative than even Moses.  And even unclean spirits respond to the words that Jesus speaks.  It’s not even a contest about who has authority; Jesus speaks and they have to obey, because He is the Creator, and they are mere creatures.
    It is with this same authority that the Church, when teaching on faith or morals, speaks.  Because the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and because Jesus has given His authority to the pope and bishops who lead His Church (remember that Jesus said to the apostles that whoever listens to them listens to Him), the Church can say that, to be in union with Jesus, you have to believe this, or you can’t believe that.  The Church can also say with the authority of Jesus that, in order to be living as a disciple, you should do this or you shouldn’t do that.  It’s not simply the opinion of some old men who wear pointy hats; it is Jesus Himself teaching.
    Our psalm today encourages us: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”  How often do our hearts harden when someone tells us something that we have to do, especially in the area of faith (what to believe) or morals (how to live).  It’s almost like an instantaneous reaction that someone tells us what to do and we automatically want to do the opposite.  That’s our fallen human intellect and will.  When the Church says we cannot support abortion, or we need to assist the poor, we have a responsibility as followers of Jesus to obey.  When the Church says that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Jesus, or that marriage is only between one man and one woman, to be loyal to Jesus we conform our lives to that teaching.  Sometimes it’s hard.  Sometimes it’s very hard, and may even seem counterintuitive, but God asks us to listen to His Son, who will never lead us astray if we follow Him.
    But besides the struggles to listen to Jesus as He speaks through His Church, it can also simply be hard to listen to Jesus.  Our age is filled with cacophony, which comes from the Greek meaning “bad sounds.”  We often surround ourselves with noise, and in doing so, drown out the God who likes to speak to us like He spoke to the Prophet Elijah: in the whisper in the silence.  Hardening our hearts can include not making time for God in daily prayer.  Maybe the only time you have is five minutes; maybe it’s turning off the radio in your car; maybe it’s coming to a daily Mass, or spending time in adoration.  But in order to hear God, we have to carve out time for Him, especially in silence, not only speaking to God, but listening to how God responds.  Sometimes silence can be scary, but God will, in His way, in His time, speak to us.  All we have to do is pay attention and listen.
    Don’t miss the conversation God wants to have with you.  Don’t miss out on how God teaches us to follow Him and to find true happiness.  Listen to the Church when it comes to faith and morals.  Make time for silence with God each week.  You will find the happiness for which you long.

Corona and the Well

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent
    Probably at least in the back of your mind, and very likely in the front of your mind, is COVID-19, the Coronavirus.  I saw a meme the other day that said something to the effect of: Did you ever wonder what it was like to live in the 14th century?  Well, we have two popes and a plague.  Obviously, the spread of this illness is not really a laughing matter.  But the fact remains that it’s on our minds, even here in church.
    As a reminder, if you’re feeling ill, we ask you, as an act of charity, not to come to church.  Wash your hands frequently.  We’re not holding hands during the Our Father (just fold them in a prayer position), nor doing the exchange of peace, and, for the time being, we’re not going to distribute the Blood of Christ at Mass (recall that, even if you only receive under one species, you receive the entire Jesus).  We also have hand sanitizer at the main entrance that you can feel free to use.
    Sometimes people will take the opportunity to say that large bad events are punishments from God.  Whether it’s a new virus, a hurricane, an earthquake, or any natural disaster, some are quick to pile on the idea that God is punishing us for something.  This isn’t really a Catholic view of how God works; there is rarely a one-to-one correlation between something bad happening and God being unhappy (just look at the Book of Job, or especially at the suffering of Jesus).  But, in times like these, we can take the opportunity to see what we value, and in what or whom we place our trust.
    Because, throughout the history of the Church, saints have pointed out that bad things happening are a reminder to us that God is in charge, and we are not.  Again, not that God sends us calamities, but when they happen, they remind us that, even with all our technological advances, we are not the masters of the universe, or even of our own lives.  God can certainly use disasters and outbreaks to turn back to Him and act in our life in a way that we recognize that God is God, and we are not.
    But something like the outbreak of COVID-19 also tells us where our top priorities are.  I will admit, I wanted to watch Powers Catholic boys basketball play in the District Championship last Friday.  I’m sure there are many more who wanted to see the Big Ten tournament or the NCAA tournament, even just on TV.  As I write this, I just saw that the Master’s Tournament, a tradition unlike any other, was postponed.  School won’t be back in session until 6 April.  Certainly, there’s the disappointment of buying tickets (sometimes very expensive tickets) and the loss of the expense of traveling, but is that the most important thing in our life? 
    And where do we look to as far being the base of our hope?  While we certainly need to be prudent as far buying supplies to last us if we get quarantined, how many rolls of toilet paper do we need?  Are we looking to the government to save us?  The government certainly has a role in protecting us and advising us on best practices, but our hope is not in supplies, or a 401K, or even the government.  Jesus invites us to make Him our only hope.
    And that is where the readings tie in.  In the first reading, the people do not put their hope in God.  They’re tired, worn out, and thirsty, and they complain that God is not taking care of them enough.  Massah and Meribah becomes in Jewish Biblical talk the signs of a lack of trust in God.  But God does provide for them, all throughout out their sojourn in the desert. 
    Or the Samaritan woman.  She’s in a desperate situation.  Drawing water in the middle of the day was a sign of being a social outcast, much like having a cough right now.  She’s an outcast probably because of her multiple husbands.  She put her trust in other men.  But when she encounters Jesus, He invites her to put her trust in Him, so that she can have living water and never thirst again.  It takes Jesus talking with her a while to get her to that point, but she gets there, and realizes that Jesus is the answer to the questions of her life.  The same is true for us now.  While fear and panic is common, natural, we may even say, we are called to the supernatural, to trust in God, even as we follow best practices for good hygiene.  God invites us to trust in Him.
    Illnesses are also scary because they remind us of our mortality.  Especially in our culture, we avoid death like the plague, if you’ll pardon the expression.  We fight it with pills, creams, injections, and anything else we can think of.  But, for a faithful disciple, we need not fear death.  It is a transition to, our hope tells us, new life in Christ.  The saints often remind us to keep death before our eyes daily, not to be dour or depressed, but to make sure that our choices reflect with whom we want to spend eternity.
    Let’s be prudent in our choices to avoid contracting or spreading COVID-19.  But let’s also not fear or act out of panic.  May we come to the well of God’s wisdom, and draw the living water that Jesus promises to provide us.  May our hope not be in any thing or comfort that the world says it can provide, but in Jesus Christ, our true hope and joy.