Treasuring the Word of God

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Earlier this week I was speaking with a friend I have known for a few years now.  I wouldn’t say I know him really well, but continue to get to know him in the few times when we see each other throughout the year.  He asked me how St. Matthew was doing, and I mentioned how we’re growing.  He told me that he attends a Protestant community, but then opened up and told me that he was baptized Catholic, and even was an altar server.  He said that he never really liked going to Mass.  At this Protestant community he enjoyed the music, but then also mentioned how he really enjoyed the Bible study that the community puts on for adults and kids.  He then shared that he never remembered his dad ever opening up a Bible, and how strange that was, and how he makes sure that his children know the Bible well and he, as their father, shares that with them.  After he had shared this, he had to get to something else, but I said we should sit down and talk about his experiences more when he has a chance.  We’ll see if that ever happens or not.
    Are we familiar with the Word of God?  St. Jerome famously said, while commenting on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.  How familiar are we with the Scriptures?  Do you as parents, especially fathers, take leadership in sharing the Word of God and unpacking it for your children?
    The Bible is our book as Catholics.  The Catholic Church, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, decided which books would be in it.  Holy Mother Church chose to include the books that the Jews venerated as God’s revelation to humanity, and chose to include four Gospel accounts of the life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, letters from some of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse of Saint John, also called the Book of Revelation.  God didn’t send down a list on papyrus.  Those whom God called to act in the name of Christ and with His power, the bishops, discerned which writings were consistent with what Christ had revealed and the Apostles had passed down, and which were inconsistent, or even simply not necessary for salvation.  What a scandal that a Catholic wouldn’t feel comfortable with a big part of how God has revealed Himself until he left the Catholic Church!  

    When we starve ourselves from the Scriptures, we are like the young girl who is at the point of death, or the woman with the flow of blood.  We need Christ to heal us and raise us up.  If we are so near death from lack of familiarity with the Word of God, then sometimes it takes another to bring about the resurrection of our faith life.  In the Gospel it was the young girl’s father who pleaded with the Savior to heal his daughter.  Fathers, you often have an important role to play in reinvigorating the life of faith in your families, especially your children.  But I would also say mothers play such an important role in modeling familiarity with the Word of God as well.  
    Sometimes we can bring ourselves to Christ and the Scriptures, because we know they will bring us healing.  We have tried everything else, all the other doctors that are available to us.  We have tried every other kind of wisdom, but have found it lacking.  But in the Word of God, if we have faith in its power, as the woman had faith that she could receive healing even if she only touched the clothes of the Lord, we can find the healing we have desired that we have found nowhere else.  But we need to have faith in the power of God’s Word.
    Now, I know that Catholics often point out, and rightly so, that God’s revelation does not limit itself to the Scriptures.  The Bible itself is part of a greater revelation, because the Bible comes to us not from itself, but from the living Tradition of the Church.  And certainly we should also learn what the popes and bishops have taught us throughout the two millennia of the Church’s history, especially that which is part of the deposit of faith.
    But that deposit of faith always finds its roots in the Scriptures.  Not everything that the Church teaches explicitly connects to a particular passage, but everything at least implicitly connects to the Scriptures.  From our belief in the Trinity, our Blessed Mother’s immaculate conception and assumption, the seven Sacraments, and all that is part of Christ’s one Church, we find either direct or indirect evidence of it in God’s revelation through His Word.  The Church Fathers knew this all too well.  If you read any of the Church Fathers, they quote the Scriptures fluidly through their own writings.  The Bible was a story with which they were intimately familiar and through which they could understand the truths of faith.  One of the great fruits of the Second Vatican Council was a call to return to familiarity with the Scriptures that the Church had during the time of the Church Fathers.  We are still growing in that fruit of the Council, but it was a great blessing of the Holy Spirit, nonetheless.
    So many Catholic families need healing from the Word of God.  So many Catholic families are at the point of spiritual death because they do not read the Bible.  Today, reach out to the Lord to find healing in the Word of God.  Allow the Word of God to raise you to new life through its power and its wisdom.  May your children never say of you, as my friend did of his father, that you never opened the Bible for them and helped them know and love the Word of God, the loving communication of salvation from the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Doh!

Fifth Sunday of Easter

    When I was growing up, my parents did not let me watch “The Simpsons” because, I suppose, they thought it too crude and disrespectful.  So, of course, when I was in college seminary, and “The Simpsons” came on TV, I was definitely going to sit down and watch it.  And if you’ve watched “The Simpsons,” or even if you haven’t, you’re probably familiar with the character Homer Simpson, the lazy, glutinous, well-meaning, and sometimes philosophizing dad.  Homer has a quintessential word, or maybe grunt is a more appropriate word, that is associated with him: doh!  You might imagine Homer hitting his head while he says it, which gives it the proper context, a grunt and action of futility and frustration.
    If Jesus was Homer (and that comparison, obviously, is an absurd one), when St. Philip said, “‘Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us’”, Jesus would have said, “Doh!”  For three years Philip had been following Jesus each day, seeing the miracles, hearing the teaching, and now, at the Last Supper, Jesus is giving His farewell address before He dies on the cross.  Jesus comes to His great unveiling to the Apostles of His unity with the Father and says,  “‘If you know me, then you will also know my Father.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.’”  And what does Philip say?  “Jesus, just show us the Father and we’ll be good.”  It’s like the teacher saying, “2 x 3 = 6,” and then the student saying, “So wait: what’s 2 x 3?” 
    Jesus reveals the Father in everything He does.  Jesus is not the Father, but He is the revelation of the Father, so that we no longer have to wonder what the Father is like.  We see it in Jesus.  Jesus only heals at the will of the Father.  Jesus only teaches what the Father wants taught.    Jesus loves with the love of the Father.  Jesus only suffers because that is the will of the Father.  No one can truly come to the Father without the Son.  This is the basis of our claim, that, if not true, would be pure arrogance: Jesus is the only means of salvation.  He is, as St. Peter said the second reading, the “cornerstone,” upon which the entire heavenly kingdom is built.  Without the cornerstone, the whole building collapses.  Without Jesus, there is no heaven for us.  With Jesus, we have a place in the heavenly temple.
    But that revelation of the Father through Jesus continues in our day.  Bishop Barron is coming out with a new series on the sacraments, and I was able to get a sneak peak at episode one, about the sacraments in general and baptism in particular.  Bishop Barron quotes Pope St. Leo the Great: “What was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries.”  That last part of the sentence in the original Latin is: “in sacramenta transivit.”  Mysteries was another way of saying sacraments, and, in fact, in the Christian East, they still refer to the sacraments as mysteries.  But the point is that we see the Father through Jesus, and we see Jesus especially through the sacraments.  The sacraments are our opportunities to encounter Jesus in a powerful way.
    And yet, how often do we think: I wish I could just talk with Jesus?  I wish I could see Jesus?  I wish I could hear Jesus?  As Homer would say, “Doh!”  Through the sacraments of baptism, penance, the Eucharist, confirmation, holy matrimony, holy order, and anointing of the sick, we encounter Christ in a way that He gave us, and through our encounter with Christ, we encounter the Father.  The sacraments are not “church graduations” after we pass a class.  They are opportunities that we can encounter God, a new beginning of, and the fruit of, a relationship that we have with God.
    Why did Philip miss what Jesus was saying at the Last Supper?  Why was Philip confused after Jesus said, “‘If you know me, then you will also know my Father’”?  How Philip was expecting to experience the Father was not the way the Father was revealing Himself.  And maybe, more often than we’d like to admit, we miss it, too, because we want to experience the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit on our terms. 
    How often do we come to Mass expecting to be entertained, or to feel something, or to “get something out of it”?  We can equate those with encountering God, and sometimes we do encounter God in that way.  But we can want the Father to reveal Himself on our terms, in our ways rather than His ways.  I know watching Mass on live-stream, as great of a blessing as it is, brings with it even more challenges to paying attention, participating, and really offering ourselves to the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  But right now, this is how Jesus is revealing the Father.
    Like St. Philip, we all want to encounter the Father.  Like St. Philip, that happens through Jesus, and therefore especially through the seven sacraments which flow from Jesus’ Mystical Body, the Church.  May both you and I, no matter what, cling to Jesus and the ways that He reveals to us the love of the Father in heaven. 

We're Already in Heaven

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

One of the priests at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, who is now a bishop, once said about homilies, “If it’s not worth stealing, it’s not worth using.”  So allow me to steal a little material later on in today’s homily that will help us enter in to today’s celebration of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ.  After all, we can be tempted to remain at a superficial level about today’s solemnity.  We know that Jesus ascended, body and soul into heaven.  But, the next question easily becomes: so what? or who cares?  In all reality, what difference does it make if Jesus is in heaven?  Those are fair questions.

The difference that it makes is that we are, in one sense, already in heaven.  No, this isn’t heaven right here in Flint.  You probably don’t doubt that.  But here’s the thing: St. Paul reminds us that Christ is the head of the Body, the Church.  Our human nature is united to the one Person of Jesus.  Jesus even says at the end of today’s Gospel: “Behold, I am with you always,” and He can say that because we are united to Him through Baptism.  In that sense, all of us who have been united to Christ in Baptism by being united to His Mystical Body, the Church, are already in heaven, at least potentially speaking.  The Ascension celebrates the fact that in Christ, human nature has been given an even better place than the Garden of Eden; we have been given heaven.  That’s a big deal.

Heaven is our inheritance because it’s the inheritance of Jesus, the Son of God, for his obedience to God.  Christ, as St. Paul says, was obedient, even to the point of death, death on a cross, and His obedience was what allowed Him to pass from death to life, and open that new life for us.  Heaven is the one million dollar inheritance that our rich ancestor leaves us.

But, we have to receive that gift.  Jesus does not force that inheritance upon us.  He reigns as King at the right hand of the Father, but does not force us to be a part of His kingdom.  We have to be open to that gift, and the way that we show that we are open to the gift is by the way we live our life.  Our obedience to Christ on earth does not earn us heaven.  We cannot earn it, any more than any other human could have earned it.  Only Christ could gain heaven for us.  And yet, we show that we want to receive our inheritance by the way we show that we’re disciples of Jesus in our words and deeds.

And this is where the stolen parts come in.  There is an ancient document from some time after Christ called the Letter to Diognetus.  Diognetus is one of those names that has fallen on hard times.  I don’t think you’ll find it in the top 500 of baby names.  But, the author of this letter beautifully writes:

[Christians] live in their own countries as though they were only passing through.  They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens.  Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign county.  […] They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh.  They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven.

The author of this letter reminds us that our homeland is not here.  We are only passing through this world.  It can be so tempting to live as if this is all there is.  We try to make our decisions to have as good as a life as we can on earth.  But do we pay attention to having a good life after we die?  Do we live so as to receive our inheritance?

And we should live this way because we try to live as if we’re in heaven.  It’s not easy, but if we want to live in heaven for ever, it helps to practice for it.  It’s like sports: to be ready for the game, we have to practice.  The more we live on earth like we’re in heaven, the more familiar heaven will hopefully be for us.  And the more familiar heaven is for us, the more that we show that heaven is what we want.

That’s why our way of life is (or should be) different as Catholics.  We may drink, but we don’t get drunk; we date and marry and have kids (well you do; I don’t), but our understanding of dating and marriage and children is not the world’s understanding; we work hard to make a living, but we don’t work as if making money is all there is to life.  We live differently because heaven is different.

And coming to Mass on Sundays is part of our practice.  Mass is a foretaste of heaven.  The Book of Revelation says that there is a fair amount of singing praise to the Lamb in heaven.  In heaven we spend our time worshipping God and being surrounded by His love.  We get a foretaste of that worship in the Mass, and we receive Love Himself in the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Mass helps to prepare us for heaven.  The less we come, the less we are prepared.  The less we are prepared, the less likely we are to actually be ready to go there.  

In Christ, our human nature is already in heaven.  That’s the joy of today’s celebration.  Our response is to try to be as ready as we can to be there with Jesus, not only in potential, but in actuality.  Prepare yourself for heaven.  Prepare yourself for the home Jesus has prepared for you.

Chocolate, Puppies, and Belinda Carlisle

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

What is heaven like?  People have many different ideas.  Some people believe heaven is an unending chocolate fountain of goodness, but the chocolate has no calories.  Some people think heaven is a world full of puppies, except you never have to clean up after them and they obey your every command.  Some people consider heaven to be a tropical island with bottomless piña coladas and cuba libres.  In 1987, Belinda Carlisle told us heaven is a place on earth.

In all of these situations, heaven is simply a better version of earth.  The Sadducees in our Gospel today also took that approach.  They felt that heaven was merely a continuation of earth.  So, they plan to trick Jesus, by showing how problematic even believing in heaven truly is.  They set a trap where a woman in heaven would have seven different husbands, and try to see how Jesus would squirm out of this problem.  But rather than granting their premise that heaven is merely a continuation of earth, maybe with a little less pain, Jesus tells them that they have missed the point entirely.  Heaven is not a better continuation of earth, but is radically different.  In heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage, because marriage is for earth.  Marriage, at least between two baptized Christians, is a visible symbol of the invisible reality of Christ for His Church, which not only reminds us of Jesus, but communicates His grace.  In heaven, we don’t need physical realities that communicate God’s grace to us, because we have the direct vision of God.  

Heaven is the place where God’s reign comes in its fulness, as compared to what we have today.  We hear about that in our first reading.  This passage tells us of when Jewish brothers and their mother were remaining faithful to God’s law, even though the government, run by pagan Greeks, tried to get them to abandon God’s law.  The brothers knew that God would accept their sacrifice, and would right the wrongs that had been inflicted upon them by giving them new life.  

Heaven is not just earth 2.0.  Heaven is not just earth without any more elections, without any more war, without suffering and pain.  Heaven is as different from our current way of life as our life is different from an ant’s.  The Book of Revelation reminds us that heaven is the place where there are no more wrongs to be righted, and where we see God face to face.  Heaven is the place where there are no more tears or suffering or sorrow, for the old order has passed away.  Heaven is perfect happiness, not to our fallen human nature, but to our human nature perfected by Christ.  And to get there, we have to cooperate with God’s perfection of our nature in this life.  If we work against God’s will by our actions in this life, then we won’t be going to heaven in the life to come.  

The Book of Revelation also describes heaven as an eternal liturgy, an eternal Mass.  Now, before you think to yourself: ‘Heaven is like a never-ending Mass?  I don’t wanna go there!’, there won’t be boring homilies in heaven.  We won’t have to wait for bread and wine to be transubstantiated into the Eucharist in heaven, because we won’t need a sacrament of Jesus’ Body and Blood; Jesus’ Body and Blood will be present for us immediately. 

But if you have ever read the Book of Revelation, and not just the snippets about weird animals and the number 666, then you will recognize that it describes what goes on as worship of God, which is what we do at Mass.  The elders (in Greek, 𝛑𝛒𝛆𝛔𝛃𝛖𝛕𝛆𝛒𝛐𝛓, from which we get the word presbyter or priest) are around the throne of the Lamb, Jesus, throwing down their crowns (I don’t get any crowns) as they worship God.  They are also surrounded by the four living creatures, the Ox, Man, Lion, and Eagle, representing the four evangelists or Gospels, with the Cherubim singing “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God.’”  The scroll with the Word of God is digested (like we’re supposed to do in the homily), and the elders and the angels and all those who are in heaven sing hymns to the Lord, praising God for what He has done.  And all of this is done over the place where the martyrs are, which is why, since the earliest days of Christianity, altars have been built over the site of martyrdom, or relics have been placed in altars.  If you want to read a good book on this, Scott Hahn’s book “The Lamb’s Supper,” is a great read.  

The Mass is supposed to give us a foretaste of what heaven is like.  It’s not meant to be the same as every day life.  It’s not supposed to be earthly.  It is patterned upon the worship of God in Scripture, and as the Church has developed the Mass throughout the centuries to emphasize what we believe.  While using earthly things, everything about our Mass is supposed to transport our senses, minds, and hearts to the heavenly Jerusalem through the symbols that make that reality present, and the signs that remind us of that reality.  

Heaven is not a mere continuation of our earthly existence.  It’s not earth without mosquitos.  Heaven is not a place on earth, with all due respect to Belinda Carlisle.  Heaven is the place of perfect fulfillment, where we will be who God created us to be.  May we all receive the many graces God gives us, especially through the Mass and confession, so that we will be found worthy of dwelling with God in that place of perfect light, happiness, and peace.