For Such a Time as This

Feast of Christ the King

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “‘Who knows–perhaps it was for a time like this that you became queen?’”  Mordecai speaks these words to his cousin and adopted daughter Hadassah, who also went by the name Esther.  But God also speaks these words to us today: perhaps it was for a time like this that you became a king or queen.
    For while we celebrate Christ as our King today, on this day that we also celebrate the thirty-seventh anniversary of the foundation of the Flint Latin Mass Community, we also remember that, through Holy Baptism, we also have been given a royal dignity inasmuch as the Holy Spirit has united us to Christ, the one true King.  While this royal dignity does not find expression in the prayer at the anointing with Chrism in the older rite of Baptism, the new Order of Baptism clearly states: “[Christ] now anoints you with the Chrism of salvation, so that you may remain members of Christ, Priest, Prophet and King, unto eternal life.”  This teaching comes from, among others, Pope St. Leo the Great, who wrote:
 

In baptism the sign of the cross makes kings of all who are reborn in Christ…So,…any Christian who has the gifts of rational and of spiritual understanding knows he is a member of a kingly race…For what could be more royal than a soul which by subjecting itself to God becomes ruler of its own body?

We are all kings and queens in Christ the King, given a royal dignity and ruling, in accord with God’s will, our bodies, rather than being slaves to our passions and to the fallen powers of the enemy.

    But do we demonstrate our royal dignity?  In each generation, God raises us up to participate in saving His people, just as He raised up Queen Esther to save the Jews from the wicked Haman, the Persian prime minister of Ahasuerus.  God allows us to cooperate with Him in extending salvation to the world, not because we have conquered sin and death on our own, but because we share in Christ’s rule that saved all creation for all time by His Death, Resurrection, and Ascension.  
    The Preface of today’s Mass describes how that kingdom is supposed to look: “aetérnum et universále regnum…regnum veritátis et vitae; regnum sanctitátis et grátiae; regnum iustítiae, amóris et pacis.”;  “an eternal and universal kingdom, a kingdom of truth and life; a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.”  All those who participate in Christ’s kingdom demonstrate those attributes, whether fully, because they are in heaven, or to the best of their ability, because they still struggle on earth to fully accept that kingdom.
    So we can ask ourselves today about each of those adjectives of the Kingdom of Christ.  First: eternal and universal.  Does my life point to eternity?  Or am I only concerned with the things of earth, each of which will fade away at some point.  Do I truly believe that Christ’s kingship should embrace all people, regardless of race, gender, political party, sexual orientation, etc., or do I cut people off from salvation, or sharing the Gospel with them because they are not like me or do not fit into the cookie cutter of what I feel it means to be Catholic?
    Second: truth and life.  Do I share in the kingdom of the truth, or do I lie?  Does my yes mean yes and my no mean no, or do I purposefully deceive others by uttering falsehoods because telling the truth would make me uncomfortable?  Do I speak the truth with charity, or do I try to assault people with the truth and cause them further harm?  Do I promote life in all its stages, from natural conception to natural death?  Does my support of life not only concern infants in the womb and elderly in hospitals and nursing homes, but also the dignified way we treat the poor, the mentally handicapped, those who suffer from mental illness, and those who entered the country illegally?  We don’t have to pretend like a mental illness is healthy, or support open borders, but do we treat all people with the respect we want to receive?
    Third: holiness and grace.  Do I seek to live a life dedicated to God and fit for the temple?  Do I try to avoid behaviors and actions that stem from the darkness and choose behaviors and actions that spread the light?  Do I recognize that I cannot earn my salvation, but that God freely grants salvation to those who desire it?  When I am unaware of mortal sin and in a state of grace, do I try to stay there?  Or if I fall into mortal sin, do I strive to return to a state of grace as soon as I practically can?
    Lastly: justice, love, and peace.  Do I give others their due, or do I hold back what others deserve because of fear or greed?  Do I cheat my employers or employees from what they deserve from me as a member of the company?  Do I truly will the good of the other first?  Do I demonstrate the attributes of love that the Apostle enumerates in 1 Corinthians 13: patience, kindness, humility, etc.?  Or am I narcissistic, first concerned with my own desires and rights, seeking to dominate the other and insisting on what I think I’m owed?  Am I apathetic and simply lack proper concern for those around me, beginning with my family, but extending into the different orders of love?  Could God call me a peacemaker?  Or do my words and actions cause chaos and pain in my home, in my office, among my friends?  Do I protect others from violence and harm as I am able, or do I shrink in cowardice when God calls me to stand up against evil?  
    God has called us to have a royal dignity in a time such as this, in 2026 in Michigan in the United States of America.  God has called us to promote, “The kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,” to quote the Hallelujah Chorus.  The kingdom which is eternal and universal, a kingdom of truth, life, holiness, grace, justice, love, and peace.  May we live up to our royal dignity, given to us in Holy Baptism, and thus participate in the kingdom won by the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Today

Easter Sunday

Today.  We use the word so often that it can sound like a small, insignificant part of conversation: how are you today? what are you doing today? what is the weather supposed to be like today?  But for the Church, the word “today” or the phrase “this day” has power with it, a power that helps us understand what is happening today.

Our opening prayer today, the Collect, said, “O God, who on this day, through your Only Begotten Son, have conquered death and unlocked for us the path to eternity….”  The preface, the prayer that anticipates the Eucharistic Prayer, begins, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, at all times to acclaim you, O Lord, but on this day above all to laud you yet more gloriously when Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.”  There is something about this day.  But what is it?

Of course, the easiest and most common answer is that today, this day, is Easter, when we celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection.  But this is more than the annual commemoration of a past event.  When the Church prays using the phrase “this day,” she means to remind us, as a loving Mother, that the redemption achieved by Christ in the Resurrection, is not removed from our present, but is, or should be, a part of our lives today.  Today, in our midst, eternity breaks into time, and the power of the Resurrection is given to us for new life.  This day, 27 March 2016, is the day that the Lord has made, the day that we rejoice and are glad in it.  This day Christ has risen from the dead, hell and Satan and death are defeated, and Christ appears in our midst to offer us His peace.  

We have forgotten about today, so often because we are plagued by what happened yesterday, or anxious about what will happen tomorrow.  We do not live in the present, but constantly oscillate between the past and the future.  But the Church invites us to live in today, because it is the day of the Resurrection, and Jesus Christ wants to offer us new life.

We need new life; all of us.  We need a today where Christ shows us that death is ended, sin is conquered, and hell is no longer our destiny.  We need this day to refresh us and inspire us to be the new creation we are called to be as Christians.  We need to be resurrected.  It is too easy to live as zombies, the walking dead, who go day-to-day without thinking about the death of sin that is so prevalent in our own lives.  We need the new life that Jesus gives us, a life free from the shackles of those sins.  Our old selves, which look upon others, or even ourselves, with distrust, disdain, and despair, need to die, so that our new selves, alive in Christ, look upon others and ourselves with love, respect, and hope.  You need new life; I need new life; Adrian needs new life; the United States need new life; our whole world needs new life.

That new life is accessible, because the resurrection is today; it is this day.  The resurrection was not only accessible almost 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem; it is accessible today.  And you can take hold of it and make it your own.  And, as Christians, those who follow Jesus who is not dead, but alive, we recall each eighth day of the week, each Sunday, to grab ahold of the resurrection and bask in the glow of new life, a new life which transforms us into the people God has called us to be.  From the very beginning of the Church, those who followed Jesus gathered on the eighth day, the Lord’s Day, the dies Dominica, because they realized that the Resurrection made everything different, and was a chance to recall and receive the new life Jesus had given them.  It wasn’t Saturday (that was the Jewish Sabbath); it wasn’t Wednesday.  The day for Christians was Sunday, and it was a day that they put on the back burner all other commitments, even sports, and all assembled to worship God, to give Him their death (their sins) so that they might receive back their resurrection.  

If we truly want to be great again, then it starts with going to Mass every Sunday, except in cases of ill health, extreme distance from a church, or dangerous weather conditions, and being renewed in mind, body, and spirit by the power of Jesus’ Resurrection.  Only by taking hold of the gift of new life that Jesus offers us and putting aside the old self, the old leaven, will this world be transformed into the place that God has created it to be.  This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Today Christ Jesus has risen from the dead; may His Resurrection transform us into the saints we are called to be by our baptism.

Keeping up the Intensity

Third Sunday of Advent

            I’ve been mentioning at each set of Masses that I have in this new liturgical year that I want to shift my focus a little bit in the homilies I preach.  Last year I tried to focus on the gift of faith and spreading the Gospel.  That certainly will still come up in my homilies, as it is a perennial aspect of our faith.  But this year I want to focus more on the prayers of the Mass and help us understand how they connect to our readings, our faith, and especially the Christian life beyond these walls.

            In our Advent preface, the prayer that precedes the Holy, Holy, Holy, and which has been prayed for these past two weeks, we ask God that, “we who watch for that day may inherit the great promise in which now we dare to hope.”  As Christians, we are meant to be ready, watching and waiting for Jesus to return.  We should live our lives in such a way that should Jesus come back at the end of this Mass, we would be ready to welcome Him, and not afraid of what our judgment would be.  We shouldn’t need a few days to clean up our act and prepare for judgment, but should be ever ready for Christ to judge us.  But we can struggle with this.  After 1,980 years of waiting, perhaps we second-guess ourselves about Jesus really coming back.  Maybe we don’t live life always ready for Jesus to return.  Maybe our faith starts to falter, and we question a life as a faithful disciple, ever obedient to the commands of the Lord.

            We’re not alone.  St. John the Baptist did the same thing as he was sitting in prison.  He had pointed out the Lamb of God, and prepared people by repentance to follow Jesus.  He had even seen the Spirit descend upon Jesus in the Jordan, and had heard the voice of the Father say, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  And now there he was, sitting in prison, and nothing seemed different.  “Maybe it was a mistake,” he thought, “maybe I got the wrong guy.”  And so he sends messengers to ask Jesus if He truly is the Messiah.  The Kingdom hadn’t been ushered in the way John wanted, and so he doubted.

            The early Christians also questioned.  Many of them expected Jesus to come back within their lifetime.  They would pray each Sunday, “Maranatha!  Come, Lord!”  And yet, after all those years of praying, He still had not returned.  That is why St. James tells them in the second reading, “Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord…Make your hearts firm…Take as an example of hardship and patience…the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.”  In the midst of suffering (and there were plenty then), St. James encourages them to stay the course and not back out because Jesus has not returned on their timetable.

            Maybe we’re not as concerned with Jesus’ second coming as the first century Christians; maybe we don’t expect the Messianic reign in the same way that St. John the Baptist did.  But it’s easy to question our faith when our lives are not going the way we want them to, and we feel like Jesus is not living up to His promises.  Maybe our prayer is dry, and it feels like just going through the motions.  Maybe there is great suffering in our life due to illness, a broken relationship with a friend or family member, or maybe we are doubting that we will really be rewarded for being a follower of Jesus. 

            Jesus responds to John that the signs of the Kingdom are different than what was expected: “‘the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.’”  That may not have been what was hoped for, but Jesus is instituting His Kingdom in His way.  Jesus responds to us, too, “‘blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.’”  In other words, blessed are those who allow me to work in the lives in the way Jesus wants, not necessarily the way we want.  Maybe the dryness in prayer is actually a vehicle to desire God all the more.  Maybe the illness is a reminder that life is short, and a call to repentance and to join in the sufferings of Christ to alleviate past sins.  Maybe a broken relationship is an opportunity for us to acknowledge how our personality and temperament can sometimes drive people away.  Maybe the doubt is an opportunity to go deeper in trust of Jesus. 

            It can be difficult when we’re waiting to keep up the same intensity throughout a long period of time.  It can be difficult when Jesus does not work on the timetable that we want.  But each Advent we are reminded that Jesus will return again, and that we need to make sure that we are ready to welcome Him back.  I hope we never grow tired of saying with our hearts and voices, “Maranatha!  Come, Lord!”