The Sacrifice God Desires

Third Sunday of Lent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  So much of our communication connects to the culture in which we live.  For example, when I say the phrase “March Madness,” almost everyone knows that I am talking about the college basketball tournament.  But imagine, for a second, that you came from a place that had no knowledge of basketball, or even a diminished understanding of the cultural impact of college basketball.  The phrase “March Madness” would probably lead one to believe that there was a mental illness that could afflict people one month out of the year (and some may argue that the amount of attention some people pay to college basketball approaches a mental illness).   
    In the biblical word, sacrifice, as a word and an idea, was likely as ubiquitous as March Madness is in the US today.  Sacrifice was a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly part of life.  Sacrifice usually entailed the destruction of something for the benefit of the gods, so very early on other animals or plants, or sometimes even humans, were used so that one did not have to kill off one’s own race and religion to appease the gods.  When we look at Judaism, animals, plants, and liquids (but not humans) are destroyed in order to thank the one, true God for the gift of life, to ask for forgiveness, and to ask God for some future good.  Sacrifices entail entering into a relationship with God, and agreeing to do or not do certain things in the future.  The English word sacrifice comes from the Latin words sacrum, a sacred thing, and facere, to make.  To sacrifice something was to make it holy, to set it apart for God.  
    St. Paul would have had all of this in mind when he wrote about Christ offering Himself as a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness.  Of course, Christ already belonged to God, but He offered His human nature to the Father through the sacrifice on the cross, an offering which had a sweet odor, as in precious incense, which represents prayers rising to God.  Christ did not need to become holy, set apart for God, but He offered our human nature so that all those who joined themselves to Christ through holy Baptism, could also be set apart for God.

    In times past, sacrifice often included animals.  Noah, after just rescuing animals from the great flood, immediately kills some of them once the flood recedes to thank God for saving him and his family.  Abraham sacrifices a ram, in place of his son Isaac, after the angel stays Abraham’s hand.  And the unblemished lamb is slaughtered and its blood is spread over the lintels of the door to prevent the angel of death from killing the first born of Israel.  Blood signified life, and so the pouring out of blood meant the offering of life of the animal.
    But God, though the prophets, instructs the people that the sacrifice He really wants is a life given, no longer through the shedding of blood, but through right living, following His ways, and loving others as God loves us.  In Psalm 39, the psalmist prays, “Sacrifice and offering you do not want; you opened my ears.  Holocaust and sin-offering you do not request; so I said, ‘See, I come…to do your will, my God.’”  The Prophet Isaiah speaks for God and says that God does not care so much for the sacrifices of the Temple, as for living according to the way of the Lord.  Isaiah says: “cease doing evil; learn to do good.  Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.”  Through the Prophet Hosea God says, “it is mercy I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings,” a phrase that our Lord uses after He calls St. Matthew and goes to dine at his house.
    Through salvation history, God has led His people to think of sacrifice as something we do to an animal or grain or wine, to something we give of ourselves, which is the deeper meaning.  But we don’t have to destroy our physical life.  Rather, God wants to destroy in us by His grace all of the spiritual shortcomings that we have so that we can make more room in our souls for His grace.  God wants us to offer ourselves, not through the shedding of blood, or the burning of grains or incense, but by the shedding of all that is fallen in us, and the sending on high all the good that we desire to do.  God has received the blood that brings us into relationship with Him, the Precious Blood of our Lord, the true Passover Lamb.  He wants our joys and sorrows, our work and our leisure, our going and coming.  
    And God even wants our sins, the things that separate us from Him.  In the Sacrament of Penance, we sacrifice to God the ways that we have said no to God in contrition and with firm amendment to sin no more, and God grants us forgiveness and strengthens our soul to fight temptation in the future.  There is nothing that we have that God does not want to take from us, bless, and then return to us as an opportunity of grace.  May this Lenten season help us to offer the acceptable sacrifice of hearts humble and contrite to God the Father, through Christ the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

On Pilgrimage

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord/Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  On this past Christmas Eve, Pope Francis opened the 2025 Jubilee Year, choosing as its theme “Pilgrims of Hope.”  There are numerous opportunities to gain plenary indulgences during this Jubilee, including pilgrimages to our Cathedral in Lansing, to two of the three churches on the pilgrimage to Kentucky that we hope to do in June, or to certain churches in Rome and Jerusalem.
    We hear in our Gospel of the first pilgrimage of our Lord to Jerusalem for the two-fold purpose of celebrating the purification rites for a woman who had given birth, in accord with Leviticus, chapter 12, and the redemption of the first born son, from Exodus, chapter 13.  Our Blessed Mother offers the sacrifice for her purification, and our Lord is given back to God as the firstborn son, remembering how the angel of death passed over the Israelites who marked their lintels with the blood of the lamb.
    This idea of pilgrimage to the Temple, for various reasons, finds its root in the Old Testament, which our Lord fulfilled.  Generally, a good Jew would travel to the Temple each year at least for the Feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Booths.  The temple signified the dwelling place of God, and so all the people would travel to God’s home to be near Him and to thank Him for freedom from slavery and the life of the firstborn (Passover), for the blessing of produce and giving of the law (Pentecost), and the blessing of the harvest and exodus from Egypt (Booths).  But in each case, one traveled to be near God.

Simeon and the Christ Child

    In Christ’s first pilgrimage, the Holy Family did not, technically speaking, need to go to the Temple to find themselves close to God.  They had God with them at all times!  And yet, they still humbled themselves to obey the Law.  Yet, in that Law, God came into His temple in a new way, unlike even when He dwelt in the Temple of Solomon in His presence with the Ark of the Covenant.  By their humility, the Holy Family participated in the fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi that we heard in the first reading/epistle: “there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek.”  And in the fulfillment of this prophecy, another promise is fulfilled, that to Simeon, whom God promised would not taste death until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah, His Anointed One.  And from that fulfilled promise, Simeon also prophesies that Christ will be the rise and fall of many in Israel, and that a sword of sorrow would pierce Mary’s Immaculate Heart.  
    So how are we on pilgrimage to God?  Our life is meant to be a pilgrimage, not to Lansing, or Kentucky, or Rome, or Jerusalem, but to the heavenly Jerusalem, the Temple not made with hands.  Bethlehem to Jerusalem is a 5.5 mile walk.  You could easily get there and back in a day.  But Jerusalem was built on a hill, and so there were ups and downs.  This time of year in Jerusalem it is around 60 degrees, but there is also rain at this time of year.  So the Holy Family maybe dealt with sun or rain.  Likewise, in our life, which passes before God like a day, there will be ups and downs.  Some days trying to live as a disciple and love God and neighbor as He commanded will be easy; other days it will be difficult.  There will be sunny days where we are full of smiles while following the Lord and there will also be rain when we feel like God has absented Himself from our life, or like the cross He has allowed us to carry seems too heavy.  But you can’t get to the destination of a pilgrimage by stopping.  Sometimes little breaks may be necessary for rest, but the point of the pilgrimage is to keep moving.  
    And as we go towards the heavenly Jerusalem, we, too, should seek the purification of God.  Sin darkens our soul.  It makes us unworthy of temple worship, unworthy of being in God’s house because our actions have communicated that we don’t want to be with Him, and prefer our own ways to His.  It clouds our intellect so that we cannot understand what God wants us to do and how He wants us to love Him and others.  But God offers us purification through the Sacrament of Penance.  He washes us clean by His Precious Blood so that we can enter the Temple and bask in the warmth of His presence.  
    Pilgrimages are also based on hope.  We hope that we will arrive.  Nowadays, as we travel by car or bus or plane, or sometimes all three, our travel is less unsure.  But pilgrimages were historically a matter of walking, and you didn’t know where you might stop, or how safe the way was, or even if you would arrive.  So on our pilgrimage to heaven, we have to have hope.  We hope that God will protect us from anything that seeks to do us harm.  We hope that God will help us arrive at our final destination.  We go from what is seen, our starting point, to what is unseen, our destination.  In the end, until Christ returns in glory, only God knows who arrives safely, unless God grants the Church a knowledge that some have already arrived (our canonized saints).  But we hope that our loved ones are there, cheering us on, encouraging us not to give up, not to turn aside to other false gods or paths that lead away from God, and to persevere through the hills and valleys, the sun and the rain.  
    May this Jubilee Year inspire in us the hope that we will arrive in heaven someday, where Christ will welcome us all as parts of the Mystical Body of the Son redeemed in the Temple forty days after His Birth, the Light of Salvation for all peoples, Jesus Christ[, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen].

Rejoicing and Patience

Third Sunday of Advent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Patience is not a virtue at which I generally excel.  While we had posted the Office Manager job, I wanted good candidates to immediately apply for the position.  My best friend is sometimes bad at responding to texts, and I struggle when he doesn’t respond to me quickly enough (at least quickly enough in my mind).  And, generally, I respond pretty quickly, whether to an RSVP, a request for information, or to a text or a phone call.  In fact, I’m becoming a bit of a cause celeb among the Diocese of Lansing priests because I usually pick up my cell phone on the first ring, which somehow means it hasn’t even rung once for the person calling (I don’t know how that happens).

    So, as we hear the word “rejoice” today in the introit and in the epistle, which both come from Philippians chapter four, verse four, I’m all for it!  We rejoice because soon we don’t have to be patient anymore!  The celebration of our Lord’s Nativity, the day when our salvation became known in the flesh, is closer than the beginning of our time of waiting in Advent.  Our waiting is closer to finishing than when we first began waiting.
    But, we rejoice, not because we don’t have to exhibit the virtue of patience.  We rejoice because we can celebrate soon.  And that goes for our celebration of the Nativity (which will become an even greater focus in the readings in the coming days), but also for the return of Christ in glory.  The second coming is closer today than yesterday.  And that second coming is when all will be made right, the righteous will be welcomed into heaven to enjoy eternal bliss.
    But, we can even rejoice today because we know that Christ has come to save us, and that the salvation He offers us we can receive at any time.  Christmas is near.  The return of Christ is near.  But Christ offers us the gift of salvation now.  All we have to do is take hold of it and make it a part of our lives.  
    We see this most especially in two important Advent sacraments: Penance (confession) and the Eucharist.  Through the Sacrament of Penance, God reconciles us to Himself.  Twice in two verses in his second epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul talks about how God reconciled the world to Himself in Christ.  That was the good news of Christmas and the Incarnation.  But that good news still applies today.  God is still reconciling the world to Himself through Christ.  And in the Sacrament of Penance, we participate in that reconciliation.  God takes our sins, like my impatience, and He removes it from us, and gives us in its place His grace, which is really His life.  He breaks down all the barriers between us and Him that sin creates, “so that we might become the righteousness of God in him,” to use the words of St. Paul from that same second epistle to the Corinthians.  In the Sacrament of Penance, the Holy Spirit accomplishes in us what Christ accomplished when He died on the cross.  And that is certainly a reason to rejoice.
    Likewise, in the Eucharist, we receive our salvation.  Christ gives Himself to us under the sacramental signs of bread and wine which truly become the Body and the Blood of Christ, so that we can have, in the most special way on earth, Christ living within us.  The same Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, took flesh and humbled Himself to be born with our human nature, again humbles Himself by allowing bread and wine to become Him, and allowing us to see His Sacred Flesh and Precious Blood with our eyes of faith.  The same Incarnate Lord whom St. Joseph, his foster father, held in his arms, I get to hold in my hands and give to you.  The same Suffering Servant who offered His life for the salvation of the world by dying on the Cross, joins us to that same sacrifice on Calvary through the Mass.  As I invite you to “Behold the Lamb of God,” (“Ecce Agnus Dei”), I remind you how near the Lord is to you and encourage you to rejoice as you behold your salvation.  And this is certainly a reason to rejoice.
    Patience is not my greatest virtue.  I continue to work at growing in that virtue which is described by St. Thomas Aquinas quoting Tully, “the voluntary and prolonged endurance of arduous and difficult things for the sake of virtue.”  And this virtue will help us to wait these next ten days until we celebrate Christmas, and these next days, however many, until Christ returns in glory.  But, what we will celebrate at Christmas, and what we await at the end of time, we also have now: Christ our God, reconciling us to the Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Same Words, Different Results

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

St. Thomas Aquinas

   In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When I served at St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing as a parochial vicar, I spent a fair amount of time in our parish school.  One day I was asked by a teacher to come over at the end of the school day to talk to a few students who had been picking on another kid, such that the other kid had locked himself in a bathroom stall and brought to tears.  I pulled the two students aside into a classroom and asked them what had happened.  They explained that they had continuously stolen and hidden the other student’s folder, seeing how upset it made him.  I asked them why they would do such a thing.  The responded that they didn’t think it would affect him so much.  I said, “That’s right; you didn’t think.”  After that point, things become a bit hazy in my memory, but I remember thinking to myself after those words came out of my mouth, ‘I have become my father,’ because my dad would say the same thing to me if I had done something wrong and had responded that I didn’t think such and such would happen.
    I was struck in today’s Gospel by the words that the servant uses to the master when his freedom is threatened: “‘“Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.”’”  Later that same day he hears those same words from another servant who owed the first servant much smaller amounts than the first servant owed the master: “‘“Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.”’”  But apparently the light didn’t come on in the first servant’s head, and rather than recognizing that he was now in the position of the master to be generous and patient, the first servant took immediate and decisive action to put the other servant in debtor’s jail until he could pay back what he owed.  Where the master was patient and lenient, the servant was intolerant and rigorous.  

    One of the great blessings God has given us is the Sacrament of Penance, what we often call confession.  And I try to offer generous times for the celebration of God’s mercy in this sacrament.  I am also pleased that so many people, from both our parish and from other parishes, take advantage of these opportunities.  I myself try to go to confession every two or three weeks.  Besides the primary effect of forgiveness of sins (especially if we are in a state of mortal sin), as well as giving us grace to avoid temptation in the future, one of the graces that God desires to give us is to make us more like Him, our Master, in His Mercy.  
    People can often confuse mercy with license.  Especially in today’s culture, where no one takes responsibility for anything, mercy tends to mean letting me get away with something I have done.  But a priest I recently heard at convocation said that, in order to receive mercy, we have to acknowledge what is just.  And this priest used the example of the prodigal son to back up his point.  We are very quick to jump to the part of the parable where the father runs out to meet his son and puts a ring on his finger, a robe around him, and sandals on his feet, and throws a big party.  But right before that, the son acknowledges that he has sinned against heaven and against his father, and he no longer deserves to be called a son.  This priest made the point that it was because the prodigal son made that admission in justice that the father granted mercy and restored him to his previous place in family life.  Imagine if the son would have come back and simply said, “Could I have a job?”  
    Now, these two points may seem contradictory.  The parable from today’s Gospel highlights mercy, while the parable of the Prodigal Son seems to highlight justice.  But both are truly operative, and both guide how we show mercy.  In the Gospel parable the servant says that he will pay the master back.  He admits the justice.  And that admission of justice opens up mercy, a mercy which does not have a timeline.  It restores the relationship immediately, and even cancels.  And we are invited to have that same level of mercy.  When someone admits that they have wronged us, we should be ready to grant them mercy, just as God grants us mercy as soon as we confess our faults in the Sacrament of Penance.  As long as we will try not to commit that sin again, even if we think it would take a miracle to avoid those temptations, then God will forgive us.  If someone admits to us that he or she is wrong, then Christ calls us to be like the merciful Father and immediately grant mercy.
    To drive home this point even more, the Lord says elsewhere that the measure we measure out to others will in turn be measured out to us.  If we come before God, admitting our faults, and expect God to forgive us, then we should also forgive those who come to us and admit their faults.  If we do not, then how can God grant mercy to a heart that is hardened?  If we have no mercy for others in our life, then we have no room for the mercy of God, either.  If we are not willing to receive another’s act of contrition, then how could God receive ours?
    Probably many of us of a certain age have had those moments where we think: ‘I have become my parents.’  And maybe sometimes that idea scares us.  But it should be the goal of each one of us to become like our heavenly Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.

As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us

 Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When we think about participating in the divine, what occasions first come to mind?  I know for me, the sacraments are the most obvious answer.  The mysteries of our Lord’s life, Pope St. Leo the Great says, have passed into the sacraments.  Specifically, I think about the Mass, the joining of heaven and earth that takes place here in our church.  Not only do we hear God’s Divine Word, proclaimed for us in the Scriptures, we also receive God into us through the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, which is the very Flesh and Blood of Christ.  The Eucharist best exemplifies the way in which we can become like God, as St. Augustine reminds us that the intent of the Eucharist is to make us more like the one whom we receive.
    But another way to participate in the divine is through the act of forgiveness.  We heard this very familiar story about the paralytic being brought to our Lord.  He forgives the man’s sins, at which the Pharisees become indignant because only God can forgive sins.  But, to demonstrate His authority to forgive sins, Christ then heals the paralytic as well.
    The Pharisees were not mistaken in their estimation that only God can forgive sins.  In fact, our Lord demonstrated His divinity to them by this miracle.  So any time you hear someone say that Jesus never asserted He was God, point them to Matthew, chapter 9.  There are other times that our Lord reveals His divinity also, but this is certainly one of those times.
    So, if only God can forgive sins, then how can we say, “sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris”; “as we forgive those who trespass against us”?  How can we forgive if forgiveness belongs to God?
    As a good Thomist, we can consider forgiveness in two ways.  The first way, which is reserved to God alone, is the remission of sins.  When God deals with sin, He eliminates it, wipes it away, and makes it so it ceases to exist.  Only the consequences of that sin remain (and even those can be dealt with through pious acts).  When we examine who forgives our sins in the Sacrament of Penance, it is God.  Yes, God uses the ministry of the priest to convey that forgiveness, but it is God who forgives, which is why the priest is bound to secrecy (we call it the seal of confession).  Those sins have been absolved by Christ through the ministry of the priest, but their use belongs only to Christ, not even to the minister, who then does not divulge or act on those sins in the future.  It is the sacrifice of Christ which washed away the sins of the world, the sacrifice of the unblemished Lamb of God.  We cannot add to that, but we can participate in it.
    But, as with so many aspects of life, God allows us to participate in His work.  We see this in the garden of Eden, as God calls Adam and Eve, not only to continue to care for the garden of Eden, but to create with Him and order with Him, and even to create new life (procreation).  God, further, calls humans to speak for Him when He calls prophets to proclaim His Word, both of comfort and of conversion.  We see that especially with Moses, Samuel, and the prophets that follow them.  God also allows men to exercise governance over His people, as seen through Kings David and Solomon, and the kings of their line.  God shepherds His people through kings who cooperate with His will.  
    But God also allows us to participate in His forgiveness.  He gives us the gift of saying “I forgive you” to a person, and not having it be empty words, detached from reality.  When we forgive someone, something in that person changes, and something in us changes.  We participate in the mercy of God.  It may not eliminate that sin (because a person has offended not only us, but also God), but it does eliminate the attachment of that sin that exists between the two  or more people.  God’s mercy flows through us, and the burden of sin can be lifted from hearts.
    To be Catholic is to be a person of forgiveness, because Christ tells us that the measure we measure out to others, will in turn be measured out to us.  He calls those who show mercy blessed because they will be shown mercy.  And He condemns the servant who was forgiven a great debt, but who could not forgive others their smaller debts.  We are merciful because God was first merciful with us, just as we love God because He first loved us.

    And He showed that love for us by sending His Son to die on the cross so that we could be forgiven.  God’s forgiveness wasn’t an ethereal reality.  God demonstrated His forgiveness by the spit that was hurled upon the face of Christ; by the skin viciously torn out from his back and side at the scourging; by the bruises and scrapes and split skin that came from falling under the weight of the cross as He carried it to Golgotha; by the holes in His hands and feet from the nails that pierced them; by the gall put to His lips; by the thorns pressed into His Sacred Head; by the gash in His side to prove He was dead, whence came Blood and Water that are the streams of Divine Mercy.  God forgave through the crucifixion.  Though He doesn’t ask us to be nailed to the cross in the same way, He does ask us to forgive in the same way.
    And the easiest way to forgive others is to first recognize that we need to be forgiven, not only directly by God, but also by our neighbor.  I wish that I could tell you that I’m a perfect priest, that I always make good decisions, that all my words are the words that our Blessed Savior would speak.  But that would be a lie.  I myself am beset by weakness, and sometimes I act out of my pride; or choose a hurtful word when a loving one works much better; or I choose the easier path instead of the virtuous one; and so many other ways that I fall short of the image of the Good Shepherd, to whom I am configured by sacred orders.  I am a sinner; sometimes it is hard to admit that I am wrong and have followed the wrong path.  And so I ask your forgiveness, as your brother and your father.  For any ways I have hurt you, or not demonstrated the love of Christ the Good Shepherd, I seek your mercy.  And perhaps, to those in your life who have hurt you, you can also show mercy.  
    One of my favorite quotes from saints is from St. Maximus of Turin, who preached, “Sinner he may indeed be, but he must not despair of pardon on this day which is so highly privileged; for if a thief could receive the grace of paradise, how could a Christian be refused forgiveness?”  If our Lord could shower His mercy on St. Dismas, the good thief, in the moments before He died, how could he not have mercy on us whenever we come to Him as He reigns in glory?  And, having received that mercy, our Lord also instructs us: “Go, and do likewise” to the praise and glory of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

How God Offers Mercy

 Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    There is a kind of parable told about a man whose house was in the path of a flood.  The waters were starting to cover the roads, and a patrol car came by to take him to safety.  “No thanks,” he said, “God will save me!”  The water kept rising, until it was up to his porch.  A rescue boat came by to take him to safety.  “No thanks,” he said, “God will save me!”  The waters kept rising, until it was up to his roof.  A helicopter hovered over his house and offered to take him to safety.  “No thanks,” he said, “God will save me!”  The waters kept rising, and the man drowned.  Standing before the judgment seat of God, the man asked the Almighty why He didn’t do anything to save him.  God said, “I sent you the patrol car, the rescue boat, and the helicopter to save you.  You didn’t want my help.”  
    God is merciful.  We hear it again and again in our readings.  Our first reading mentions the mercy of God after Moses pleads for the people.  The verses of our responsorial psalm is the prayer King David wrote after he realized he had sinned greatly by committing adultery with Bathsheba and then having her husband, Uriah, killed in battle.  St. Paul recounts in our second reading how God treated him mercifully, even though he was a blasphemer and arrogant.  And in our Gospel, Jesus speaks about how the mercy of God goes out, seeking the lost to return him to wholeness, in three parables of His own.
    God is merciful.  But do we accept how He sends His mercy?  God’s mercy was shown in a most perfect way in the Incarnation.  Jesus revealed the mercy of God.  And yet, we rejected Him.  The very people God had chosen to be His own; the people who had the prophets, telling the people about the savior God would send them; the people who knew God’s revelation from Genesis to Malachi; many could not accept God’s merciful presence in the Incarnation because it was not the way they wanted to receive God’s mercy.  And so Mercy Incarnate took upon Himself the justice that should have been meted out to us because of our sins.  As Isaiah prophesied about Jesus: “He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, Like one from whom you turn your face, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.  […] We thought of him as stricken, struck down by God and afflicted.”

    How does God offer us His mercy?  He offers it through the Sacrament of Penance.  This is the ordinary way that God forgives sins.  Can He forgive in other ways?  Certainly; He is God.  But God told His apostles that they would have the power to loose and bind, the power to release people from their sins.  Why would God give a power if He didn’t intend that power to be exercised?  
    The Church has discerned two ways in which a person may be sorry: perfect and imperfect contrition.  Perfect contrition is when sorrow for sin “arises from a love by which God is loved above all else.”  That is, we recognize how our sins have offended our God and our relationship with Him, not because of any effects it may have on us, but simply because it is contrary to who God is, and “breaks the heart” of the Beloved.  Imperfect contrition is when sorrow for sin is “born of the consideration of sin’s ugliness or the fear of eternal damnation and the other penalties threatening the sinner.”  In other words, imperfect contrition is more so the sorrow that comes from knowing that we will, eventually, get caught, and have to pay the price for our sins.  As I reflect on my life I would like to hope that I am moving towards perfect contrition when I sin, but I am often at least partially sorry simply because I don’t want to suffer the consequences of my sins.
    In the Sacrament of Penance, God transforms our imperfect contrition into perfect contrition so that we might be forgiven.  But through the Sacrament of Penance, God also reconciles us with the Church and with each other, which is why confession to a priest is necessary.  Standing alone in our home or in the woods, we can certainly ask God for forgiveness.  But each sin, no matter how private or personal, also affects the other members of the Body of Christ, to whom we are connected by Baptism.  So we also need to ask forgiveness from them, and the priest is authorized by God to act in the name of the entire Body, including the head (Jesus Christ, who, as God, is the only one who can forgive sins) and the other members.  
    This way of receiving God’s mercy is not as popular now as it has been.  But do we seek this ordinary way of being forgiven by God?  Or do we reject it like some of the Chosen People rejected the Incarnation?  God is seeking us out through the Sacrament of Penance.  He is looking for us while we are still a long way out, so that He can run to us and restore us to our status and sons and daughters in the Son of God.  But are we like the man in the parable at the beginning of the homily today: convinced God will save us, but not open to the way that He wants to do so?  If it’s been a while since you’ve been to confession: do not be afraid.  The confession of your sins is merely the means by which God conveys His mercy.  Let God save you in the way He has chosen.

Giving God Your Nothing Left

 Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
    People think priests have a hard life.  And, in some ways, we do.  We’re on call 24/6 (I do get one day off per week), it’s not uncommon to have evening meetings after a full day of work, because that’s when people are most often free to meet.  Because people have their own ideas (sometimes based in theology, sometimes not) about how long homilies should be, how warm (or cold) the church should be, what songs should be sung, etc., the priest often gets peppered with complaints from all sides.  So yeah, it is tough at times, but we are also taken care of and loved pretty well.
    I think parents have a hard life.  If it put myself in their shoes, I wouldn’t want to be working all day, probably putting up with many similar things as priests in terms of working conditions, complaints, expectations, etc., and then come home, only to have to prepare some dinner, often from scratch, clean-up after dinner, help the kids with homework, and then, hopefully, have some time to catch up with a few things around the house, maybe have a little alone time with the spouse, before going to bed to start all over on the next day.  That sounds like a tough vocation!!
    I know I have been, and I’m sure parents have been, at the point where I feel like I’ve got nothing left.  Maybe it’s been a long day, or there’s a long day coming on the following day, or an earlier start, and I’m exhausted, and then there’s a call to go to the hospital, or, because I work with MSP, to go out to a homicide or meet with a Trooper who can use some comforting words.  And I know parents are in a similar boat so frequently.  So you give, even though you think you’ve got nothing left to give, and somehow, it works out to be enough.
    The same was true for the widows we heard about in the first reading and the Gospel.  Can you imagine being in a famine, and all you have left is a handful of flour, just enough to make a couple of cakes for you and your son, and then this man of God comes and asks you to make some for him?  I think if I did that, I’d be run out of the house, maybe even the parish and county!  But the woman gives, and Elijah makes sure that the woman doesn’t run out during the famine.  She gave beyond what she thought she could, and God rewarded that generosity.

Examples of the widow's coins

    Or in the Gospel, the widow is giving two coins that she needs probably to feed herself to the temple, to offer to God something.  The value wasn’t large, but the sacrifice was her everything.  She gave, even after she had nothing left.  And yet, the Lord commends her gift, more than those who were putting in large amounts of money, because she was giving when she had nothing left, while the others were giving while making sure they had something left over.  
    God invites us to trust in Him as we give to Him.  And I’m not talking only about money (though, we’re always happy to receive that from you).  I’m talking about giving to God time and energy and whatever is going on in your life, even if you don’t think you’re giving God much, even if you feel like what you have to give to God isn’t worth giving.
    Maybe life is crushing you right now, and it takes all you can muster to come to Mass.  It would be so much easier to stay home and rest.  And yet, you came to give God that little bit.  And God will reward that.  Or maybe you’re just trying to make sure your kid doesn’t run away during Mass, or trying to make sure that he or she is not a major distraction (though, truth be told, I am rarely distracted by kids and love having them around at Mass).  You don’t think you’re getting much out of Mass, but you’re giving to God what little attention you can call up while you supervise your child at Mass.  And God accepts that and makes it a loving sacrifice, received with gratitude because it’s your gift.
    Parents often get gifts from their children that are made at school that are not that expensive, and maybe are not Michelangelo sculptures or Rembrandt paintings.  But those are still treasured gifts (how many moms have kept those little gifts throughout the years!?) because the child is giving what he or she can.  The same is true for God: when we give God what we can, He treasures it as the perfect gift.
    God even receives the fallen parts of us, our sins.  Through the Sacrament of Penance (aka confession or reconciliation), God deigns to take our brokenness and failings from us, so that we can be made whole.  I know that sometimes it seems like the sins may be small, or maybe the sins are awkward to acknowledge, or maybe it’s just that we confess the same sins over and over again.  In any case, God wants to receive that as our small gift, the last little bit we have left, so that it doesn’t stand in the way of our relationship with Him.  Obviously our sins are not good; they’re not our finest moments as human beings.  But God takes it upon Himself so that we might have life in place of death, grace in place of sin, light in place of darkness.
    I don’t know about you, but I feel like more and more people are at their wit’s end these days.  I meet people who feel like they have nothing left to give.  At that moment, offer to God that nothing, that fatigue, that exhaustion.  It may not seem like much, but neither did the two coins offered by the widow in the Gospel, or the handful of flour offered by the widow in the first reading.  But if it’s what you have, God will accept and bless it, and will make it enough.

A Second Look at God's Mercy

 Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the great things about Sacred Scripture is that it is a treasure that can never be fully mined, a spring that never runs out.  I was reminded about that as I was reading over this very familiar parable about the unforgiving servant.  It’s funny how you sort of skim over the parts that you think you know: a servant has a huge debt, he can’t pay it back, so the master decides to sell him and his family to pay the debt.  But the man pleads, and the master gives him more time to pay it back.  But when faced with the same situation where the servant is like the master, and someone else owes him a little bit of money, the servant is not as merciful.  That’s what I thought I had heard all these years.

    But then I looked closer at the Gospel, and noticed that the master didn’t give him more time to pay back the debt.  The servant offered to pay it back, if he could have more time, but the master forgave the entire debt.  That changes the tone of the parable a bit.  I don’t know why I never noticed it (I’m sure a psychologist could have a field day with that), but I always presumed that the servant was expected to pay the money back.  
    It doesn’t take a great Scripture scholar and knowledge of Greek to know that the master represents our heavenly Father in the parable.  Our Lord reveals someone of who the Father is as He shows that, faced with the pleading of His children, He does not give more time; He eliminates the debt.  And isn’t that what we see with salvation?  
    We can sometimes have this idea that if humanity in general, or we in particular, just had more time, we could pay back the debt of sin.  But that’s wrong.  We, whether in general or in particular, could never pay back the debt that was incurred because of sin.  By true justice we should have been handed over to the jailers (Hell) to pay the price of our sins.  But as we pleaded for the mercy of God, God did not give us more time, but forgave us our sins as Jesus paid the price for it on the cross.
    What generosity!!  How prodigal (wasteful) God is with His mercy!  Just thinking about that should make us fall to our knees, not in pleading, but in gratitude for what God has done for us!  No matter what our sins, when we plead with our heavenly Father in the Sacrament of Penance, He forgives us, wipes away our debt, so that nothing stands against us.  As the hymn states, “What wondrous love is this!”  
    But then, the Lord says and the parable clearly teaches, we are to imitate the Father in His mercy.  Just as we receive mercy, so should we give it.  When others offend us, they offend merely another human.  When we sin, we offend God and our fellow man, so the debt is much greater than being offended by another person.  And yet, how often are we quick to plead for God’s mercy, but not show it ourselves?  Oh the irony that sometimes the angriest drivers are the ones who are leaving the church parking lot on a Sunday!
    We are invited to emulate the mercy of God the Father, and, in doing so, fight the fallen powers of the devil.  To do that, we have to wear the armor of God: the breastplate of justice, the shoes of peace, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.  St. Paul also mentions girding our loins with truth, so I guess we could also add the compression shorts of truth to that list.  In any case, we should be surrounding ourselves with prayer and the mercy of God as we go to interact with people.  Yes, people may sometimes be nasty, but the devil can use other’s nastiness to tempt us to fall into sin by being nasty right back.  Earlier in the month on 2 October we celebrated our Holy Guardian Angels.  We can ask for their assistance in helping protect ourselves from the attacks of the enemy.  We can ask them to clear away any temptations to sin, especially if we have to prepare for a difficult conversation.  
    And as we do so, we should keep a clear head that the measure with which we forge, is the measure that we will be forgiven.  Again, a sobering reality.  As we go to confession, it should not only forgive us our sins (which it does), but also allow us to demonstrate the mercy of the Father more readily.  If that’s not happening; if we are not (however slowly) finding it easier to forgive others and be patient with them, then we’re not allowing the sacrament to be as fruitful as God wants it to be.  God intends His mercy to change us, to convert us, to change our hearts.  May we leave the confessional each time feeling well-armored from the darts of the enemy, and ready to enter the battlefield of the world and extend the mercy of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Foreshadowing

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  If today’s Gospel were a work of secular literature, we would talk about this passage as a great example of foreshadowing.  Think about it: a son had died, the only child of his mother, who was a widow.  If that doesn’t describe Jesus and Mary at the crucifixion, then you haven’t payed enough attention to the passion narratives.  I can’t help but think that our Lord’s own Passion was on His mind as He came upon this scene, and how it tugged at His Sacred Heart.  The resurrection of this boy is a great act of mercy for a woman who would be in a similar position as the Blessed Mother some time later. 
    But our Lord has the same desire for us, even if we are not a widow or if we have not lost a child.  The Lord desires to raise us up with Him, to raise us to new life, not just a second chance at life on this earth, but a chance at life in a world that will never end, where there is no sorrow, no weeping nor pain, but the fulness of life as we contemplate God for all eternity and worship Him in heaven.  And all of the rituals and practices that the Church has, some, like the Sacraments, given to us directly by our Lord, and others, like sacramentals and devotions, given to us through the Church, are ways that the Lord raises us to new life.

    Think about Baptism, the first Sacrament which opens to the door to the rest of the sacramental life of the Church.  As the water is poured over our heads, we die with Christ, so that we can be raised up with Him.  The old man (to use a Pauline term), Adam, is put to death so that the new man, Jesus, can live in us.  And as Christ lives in us, it is meant to configure us more and more each day to be more like Him, each in our own vocations and avocations.  In fact, this is the way that we rise to new life with Christ: we make His life our own more and more, doing the things that our Lord would do as we go through our day, and putting behind us things that our Lord wouldn’t do. 
    When we don’t quite live that our perfectly, Christ gave us the Sacrament of Penance to raise us from the squalor that we have let infect our souls through sin.  St. Paul reminds us that the wages of sin is death, and so, as we take upon ourselves death through our sinful actions which we freely choose, we need to be raised to new life, which is done through confessing our sins, being truly sorry for them, having a firm purpose of amendment to not sin again, and receiving absolution from a priest.  In that moment, we are raised from the dead.
    Likewise, the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Sacraments, allows our Lord to enter into us.  We are, quite literally, consuming life Himself, which helps us to live that life of Christ each day.  That is why saints, like St. Pius X, recommended frequent reception of Holy Communion (assuming that we are in a state of grace): so that we can more and more receive life, which casts out death.  Without the Eucharist, it is impossible to live the life that Christ desires for us as Catholics, which is why it is so painful when Catholics fall away from the faith, even if they attend other ecclesial communities.  They are depriving themselves of opportunities to receive within themselves, in the closest and best way possible on this side of eternity, eternal life which is given to us through Christ’s Body and Blood.
    But we, too, are called to participate in Christ’s action of raising others from the dead.  We can do this, as St. Paul mentioned in the epistle today, through helping others to know and choose the good, doing so gently, and bearing one another’s burdens.  Fraternal correction and encouraging others to live as our Lord desires is often difficult, because we can seem to be boasting or taking a position of superiority to others (even if we don’t intend that, it can often be perceived that way).  One of the best ways to avoid this is to help others know that we are not perfect ourselves, and that we will help them.  Our Lord condemned the Pharisees for imposing burdens on others, but not lifting a finger to help them.  Let that never be said of us as we seek to help others live a Catholic life!
    But raising others to new life also extends to those who are not Catholic, who are not part of the “family of faith.”  Raising up Catholic children is one wonderful way of spreading the faith, but here in our beloved City of Flint and in Genesee County, there are literally thousands of people who do not know Christ, and who are caught up in works of death.  Homicides are up 50% in the City of Flint from last year to this year.  And one of the many ways to curb that horrible statistic is to spread the Good News about Christ, to be evangelists.  Because people who love Jesus don’t kill other people, don’t take the law into their own hands in violent acts of revenge, don’t sell illegal drugs.  If we truly wish to see change in our city and county, then we have to share with others the life that we have received. 
    Again, it is important not to be sanctimonious in our approach, or even to be perceived this way.  Yes, we have “the way, the truth, and the life,” in our Lord.  But we are working with and walking with others on the path to daily increase in holiness, rather than standing above others.  But the key is that we are, in fact, inviting others to the new life that Christ desires for all mankind.  It can be done through a kind word, through a warm smile, through a cup of water given to a person in need, all the while sharing not just the word, the smile, or the water, but also the reason why we are doing it: to share the new life of our Lord and help raise people from death. 
    We may not seem to be doing much.  Our efforts may not seem to be effective or making any real difference.  But, I would suggest we look at St. Dominic as our model.  While the Order of Preachers was still very young and very small, only with a few friars, and the nuns praying for their success, St. Dominic sent the few out friars to the major universities of Europe to share the Gospel.  What started off small, and often times was not received well (even by local bishops!), soon became a large community that continues to spread the Gospel to this day.  The Lord is inviting us to sustain our own new life in Him, but also to spread that new life to others.  Can we look upon our brothers and sisters who are dying and dead, and not feel pity for them as did our Lord with the son of the widow of Nain?  Will we walk past as the spiritual funerals of so many pass us by?  May we instead share the new life that we have received of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Job and Detroit Lions Fans

 Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    I am convinced that at some point in the future, the Lions will make it to the Super Bowl.  It will be the fourth quarter, and the Lions will be losing by 1 point.  They’ll be on the opponent’s 20 yard line, ready to kick the game-winning field goal, with 1 second left on the clock.  The kicker will kick the ball, and it will go straight, ready to pass through the uprights, and just as it’s about to pass through, and the refs are about to raise their hands, Jesus Christ will return in glory, and the Lions will forever be the team that never won a Super Bowl.
    As Lions fans we are used to disappointment.  There are other bad teams, but only the Lions seem to find new and exciting ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  So perhaps we can sympathize with Job from our first reading and say “I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me.”  In case you’re unfamiliar with Job, it’s a beautiful book of the Bible.  It may be more of a parable than a literal story, but it tells the story of a man who is faithful to God, but then undergoes great trials.  His first trial is that his oxen and donkeys were grazing, and were stolen by Sabeans, who killed all the herdsmen, save one.  Lightening struck all his sheep and shepherds and killed all but one shepherd.  Chaldeans came and stole all of Job’s camels, and killed all their caretakers, save one.  His seven sons and three daughters were all killed when their house collapsed during a party, and only one servant survived.  To this Job says: “‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’”  Quite the ordeal!
 

   But then, Job is struck by severe boils “from the soles of his feet to the crown of the head.”  Life is so bad that his wife, obviously a loving and caring woman, tells Job, “‘Curse God and die.’”  The Book of Job makes clear that Job has done nothing wrong, and yet he suffers greatly.  This story of Job is an attempt to understand why bad things happen to good people.  I encourage you to read the rest of the book (we only hear a part of chapter 7 today) to see how it ends.
    Suffering is a part of life, not just for Lions’ fans.  There are moral evils that we have to suffer with (crimes, betrayals, loneliness from others’ rejection of us); there are also natural evils that make us suffer (natural disasters, illnesses, pandemics).  People of all faiths and none struggle with this question, sometimes called Theodicy, of why bad things happen to good people, and why there is evil in the world.  In case you’re wondering, there is no easy answer.
    Jesus, as He so often does, turns the question on its head.  What does He do?  He heals; He grants wholeness; He saves.  Our Gospel today relates healings that Jesus did, exorcisms, and preaching.  Jesus shows us that He enters into our evils, some of our own making, some that we have no control over, and He brings healing.  The very word for savior in Latin, Salvator, is connected to another word, salus, meaning health.  The Salvator is the one who brings salus.  
    But Jesus, our Savior, doesn’t do so extrinsically, outside of all our sufferings.  He doesn’t watch from afar and offer us health while social distancing.  He enters into our pain, our suffering, our illness, and brings us delight, wholeness, and health.  And that’s part of the beautiful message of the Gospel: Jesus defeats sin and death through His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension; but we still see it happening, until Jesus returns and ushers in the fullness of His Kingdom.  Until then, Jesus suffers with and in us; He does not abandon us.  And while suffering is not good, it always helps to know that we are not alone, that our suffering has not separated us from the One who loves us above all, as suffering often does make us feel segregated.
    I think this is so clear from our pandemic.  I’m not here to argue against science and taking necessary precautions to protect one’s health.  But one of the greatest evils in this pandemic, whether physically necessary or not, is that we are being disconnected from each other.  Whether we have symptoms, are asymptomatic, or are virus-free, COVID has sought to divide us from each other.  The age-old wounds of sin and division, that were always just below the surface, have come to the top and are festering.  And because we lack a physical unity with each other, that spiritual and emotional unity has also been stretched, or even torn.  
    In the midst of that division, Jesus continues to heal and make whole.  There are stories of heroic Catholics–priests, deacons, and lay faithful–who have refused to let people die alone, even if they had COVID.  The Church has continued to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, educate adults and children, because that is Jesus’ work, and that work does not stop just because there’s a pandemic.  My mind is drawn, by way of an earlier example, to St. Damian of Molokai, whose Belgian blood I share, who gave up his own life to bring Jesus and His healing, especially spiritual healing, to the leper colony in the Hawaiian islands.  
    But even today, through the Sacrament of Penance (confession) and the Eucharist, Jesus continues to heal, and continues to walk with us through our suffering.  He has defeated it, and suffering will end when Christ is all in all.  But until then, Jesus does not leave us orphans; He does not leave us to suffer alone, but suffers with and in us, so that we can bear our burden with Him.
    In the times when you feel most alone, most abandoned, most bereft of human interaction, turn to Jesus in prayer.  Come to the church and spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  Look to the crucifix, and lay all your trials on that cross.  If you do, life, victory, and wholeness will be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Kenny Chesney the Theologian

 Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Since I’ve been a priest for ten years, people ask me if I just recycle my old homilies.  Generally, the answer is no, as each time I preach I am in a different place, and so is the parish to which I’m preaching.  And yet, as I heard this Gospel passage, and saw the theme developing, especially from the first reading and Gospel, my mind kept going back to a Kenny Chesney song that I knew I had used before in a Sunday homily.
    So I went to my blog where I keep all my homilies to see how I had used it, and if I had used it here at St. Pius X.  And lo and behold, I have used the song…twice…once in 2012 when I was at St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing, and once in 2014 when I was administrator of St. Joseph parish in Adrian.  So, now I guess it’s your turn to hear the words of this Kenney Chesney song that my previous two parishes had heard.
    The song is from the album “Lucky Old Sun,” and was written by Jim Collins and Marty Dodson.  It became Kenny’s fifteenth number one hit.  The song is entitled, “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven.”  Country music has long been known for its lyrics, and was described by Harlan Howard as “three chords and the truth.”  The lyrics I’ll highlight today are from the refrain and a little from a verse.  Kenny sings:

Everybody wants to go to heaven,
Have a mansion high above the clouds.
Everybody want to go to heaven,
But nobody want to go now.
[…]
Said preacher maybe you didn’t see me
Throw an extra twenty in the plate.
There’s one for everything I did last night
And one to get me through today.
Here’s a ten to help you remember
Next time you got the good Lord’s ear,
Say I’m coming but there ain’t no hurry
I’m having fun down here.

The lyrics are even better with the melody.
    There is truth in those lyrics, as in there are people who would say those words echo their sentiments.  There’s this general desire of people to go heaven, that mountain of the Lord about which the Prophet Isaiah spoke in our first reading.  But, if pressed, there are things that they would prefer to do while on earth, items to check off their bucket list, however saintly or devilish, that they want to do first.  Everyone wants to say with Psalm 23, “and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord / for years to come,” even if they don’t always want to follow the lead of the Good Shepherd and go to the pastures He points out.
    So there’s this cognitive disconnect.  When we hear the parable that Jesus tells, the one we hear today about the wedding feast to which the king invited guests, we think they’re crazy to say “thank, but not thanks,” especially for something as simple as farming or doing business.  But, if pressed, we often RSVP in the negative, but for worse or flimsier reasons than for farming or business.  
    The excuses become even more mundane if we look at the Mass as the foretaste of heaven.  Each week I say: “Behold the Lamb of God.  Behold him who takes away the sins of the world.  Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”  This is as close to heaven on earth as we can come.  And yet, even without COVID, we have all sorts of excuses why we can’t make it.  
    But truly, each day we are RSVPing to the King’s invitation for the wedding feast for His Son, Jesus.  Each day we make choices that say, “Yes, I’m coming,” or “Nobody want to go now.”  And what the Gospel reminds us is that a simple desire to go may not be enough.  Jesus, in the parable, tells of a guest who came, but one was not in a wedding garment (and in the parable it’s a man, which isn’t surprising, since men often wouldn’t know how to dress for a particular occasion).  The king says to him, “‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’”  The man has no answer.  So he is bound and cast outside into the darkness.  
    When we were baptized, we were given a wedding garment, a white cloth which represented the cleanness of our soul.  The priest said, “you have become a new creation and have clothed yourself in Christ.  May this white garment be a sign to you of your Christian dignity.  With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring it unstained into eternal life.”  When we make a choice against God, when we deem something other than God a higher and more important good, we stain that garment.  God, in His mercy, can cleanse it for us in the Sacrament of Penance, but we still have to hold on to it (symbolically speaking) and not throw it away by our choices.  
    It is so easy to fix our hearts and minds and attention on what is earthly, on the physical things that scream for our attention.  It is so easy to go day-to-day with an earthly mentality, that we don’t want to go to heaven, yet.  But that is why St. Paul reminds us to set our minds on what is above.  That is why, as we will hear in a few minutes, we are invited to lift up our hearts, so that we are, once more, reminded that getting to heaven is our top concern so that, at our time, we are ready for the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Admitting We're Wrong; Receiving God's Mercy

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Sacrament of Penance, aka Confession, is one of my favorite sacraments to celebrate, both as a priest and as a penitent.  Not because I like hearing all the juicy details of your life.  Lord knows other priests have heard mine.  I love giving and receiving the mercy of God.  As a priest, a person’s confession is never about what they have done.  Yes, they have to be sorry; and sometimes I try to get them to truly make the changes that will help them not commit those sins in the future.  But the sacrament is about God’s mercy, and restoring that person to sanctifying grace, that is, the grace that makes us the saints that God called us to be in baptism.  When a person comes into the confessional, he or she may be in serious danger of going to hell because of mortal sin.  When that same person leaves, he or she is once more on the track to being a saint.

I think one of the difficulties in confessing our sins is that it can be embarrassing.  Some sins are embarrassing to confess, or even just to say.  Sometimes it’s the embarrassment of knowing that we did something we knew was wrong.  But when we confess our sins, when we admit that we have done wrong, we are not alone.  David, the best king Israel ever had, the image of what the Messiah would be like, was an adulterer and a murderer.  He got Bathsheba pregnant when she was married to Uriah, tried to have Uriah have relations with his wife so that he would think it was his, and then had Uriah killed when his planned deception did not work.  In today’s first reading, we get part of that story, where God chastises David for doing what was wrong.  But notice that, as soon as David said, “‘I have sinned against the Lord’”, God responds immediately through his prophet Nathan, “‘The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die.’”  As soon as we admit that we are in need of God’s mercy, which is itself made possible by God’s grace, God rushes in to forgive us, and to keep us from death and hell.  

The woman in today’s Gospel passage doesn’t even say she is sorry with her words.  She provides a service of love to Jesus to express how sorry she is.  She can’t even speak her sorrow, but cries because of how much she knows she has strayed from God.  And in her act of love, Jesus says, “‘Your sins are forgiven.’”  She knows the value of God’s love, and wants to be restored to it.  She knows that what she did was wrong, and she seeks God’s mercy.  And God, in Jesus, gives her the mercy for which she was looking.

It’s hard admitting that we’re wrong.  We love to justify ourselves as much as possible, and rationalize what we do when we sin.  Or, in some cases, we do not refer to sins as sinful; we ignore how they are contrary to God’s plan for our happiness.  We know by faith, that our chances of getting into heaven if we die in the state of mortal sin are not good.  God never forces His love upon us, and we can freely choose to reject Him in our actions.  Yet we also know of God’s mercy, that is waiting to be showered upon us.  Pope Francis has especially encouraged us to seek God’s mercy in this Jubilee Year of Mercy.  He invites us to experience personally what Psalm 32 said today: “I acknowledged my sin to you,/ my guilt I covered not./  I said, ‘I confess my faults to the Lord,’/ and you took away the guilt of my sin.//”

In his Papal Bull starting the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis wrote, “Let us place the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the centre [sic] once more in such a way that it will enable people to touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with their own hands.  For every penitent, it will be a source of true interior peace.”  The Lord wants to shower his mercy upon us, but we must first admit that we are the ones who need mercy.  In the Sacrament of Penance, we admit that we are a sinner, and the Lord looks upon us with love and forgiveness.  Or, we recognize, as Pope Francis said in an interview, that, “‘I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.”

So we should not fear the Sacrament of Penance.  Even if it’s been 5 or 10 or 20 or 40 years since your last confession, I invite you to experience the ordinary way that God gives His mercy to us.  Don’t worry if you don’t remember your act of contrition; I’ll help you through it.  Or, if you don’t want to go to me, Fr. Shaun is always available, or you can go to one of the surrounding parishes in Lenawee County.  But don’t miss out on the chance to receive God’s mercy!

New Life

Fifth Sunday of Lent–Year C and Scrutinies

Most of the times when we have the yearly readings and the scrutiny readings (which 2 out of three years means they are different), I prepare two different homilies.  Usually each set of readings has its own focus and takes me down two different roads as I think about what the Lord wants me to say.  But this week the two Gospel passages–the woman caught in adultery and the raising of Lazarus from the dead–tied in together and seem to both emphasize the same point.

If I think about the raising of Lazarus (you can go home and read John 11 if you want a refresher), it is an amazing passage in itself.  Probably all of us have experienced the death of a loved one, and if it was a close family member or friend, we know the pain and sorrow that Martha and Mary were feeling.  We understand and maybe even have said with Martha, “‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’”  We can then also imagine how moving it would have been to actually have seen Lazarus risen from the dead.  Imagine your loved one, who had been dead for four days, being returned to life.  Maybe it would be a little creepy, but the joy would have been inexpressible.  

And then I think about the woman caught in adultery from John 8.  That woman was raised from the dead by Jesus, but in a pre-emptive way.  His challenge to the scribes and Pharisees keeps them and the mob that had formed from stoning her to death.  Jesus’ words have been repeated (whether appropriately applied or not) throughout the ages: “‘Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’”  Jesus saves her life, and encourages her to go and sin no more.

But both Lazarus and the woman caught in adultery would later die.  Lazarus’ earthly life came to an end…again, at some point.  By pious legend Lazarus either became the first bishop of a city in Cyprus, or Provence in France.  We have no idea what happened to the woman caught in adultery.  But they both died.  We usually think of the raising of Lazarus as Jesus’ biggest miracle.  And certainly it was a biggie, and proved His divinity.  Jesus showed that He, as God, had power over life and death.  But we might say that, in one sense, his miracle with the woman caught in adultery was bigger.  When Jesus raised Lazarus, Jesus gave Him back earthly life.  When Jesus forgave the sins of the woman, He offered her eternal life.

Forgiving sins raises people from death.  In my ministry as a confessor, I have been privileged, though I am a sinner and in need of God’s mercy, to be the instrument of God’s mercy to people, some of whom have been away from God’s grace for longer than I’ve been alive.  To hear the confession of people who have been alienated from God by their choices, and to reconcile them to God and bring them back into His family, is a humbling and truly awesome gift, one of the greatest that a priest receives.  To act in Jesus’ Name, with His power, when someone tells me, often with tears in their eyes, that they have been away from the Church for 10, 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years; that they have killed the infant in their womb; that they have committed adultery, allows me to see the great power of Christ which raises their dead soul to life, and recreates them.  

I can often see the guilt and hurt, or hear it in their words.  These are people who are as good as dead, and yet are looking for new life.  The world has not shown them kindness.  They have been drug out into the streets, ready to be killed by the stones of judgment of others.  Sometimes they even expect judgment or condemnation in the Sacrament of Penance.  But what they hear are the words of Jesus: “‘Has no one condemned you?  […]Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin any more.’”  Once inside that confessional, the only one who could truly condemn that person because He truly knows what the person has done and why and to what extent he or she is truly culpable, does not condemn, but forgives.

Forgiveness is a way that Jesus gives new life.  Not just an extension of earthly life.  But a new life that can last forever in heaven.  It is given in Christ’s Name with His authority in the Sacrament of Penance.  But each one of us has the power to raise someone from death by forgiving them.  If we truly forgive someone who has wronged us, especially if they have wronged us in a powerful way, we give that person new life, and raise their souls from death.  It is not easy.  It doesn’t mean we forget the pain and hurt that person caused us.  But it means we no longer hold it against him or her, and grant them the opportunity of a new life without the chains of sin dragging that person down to death.  Today, and every day, you have the opportunity to raise someone from the death of sin to the new life of forgiveness.  Can you say with Jesus, “‘Has no one condemned you?  […] Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin any more.’”

You Can't Cheat God

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sometimes it is made very clear to me what I should preach.  This past Monday, when I looked over the readings, I was immediately drawn to the Gospel where Jesus talks about how the practice of washing hands is not about what happens outside the person, but what happens inside the person.  It struck me that the Pharisees went through the ritual motions of religious life, without letting those actions take root in their soul.  As Jesus says, it is not what is outside the makes one unclean (that is, unfit for worship in the Temple) but what comes from the heart: all our passions that we give in to.

But, as I sat down to write my homily out on Thursday, I found myself drawn to a similar topic, but going in a different direction (how symbols are supposed to be sensible things that communicate an invisible reality).  I had my hook.  I was going to talk about how we misunderstand words, like when English speakers make the mistake of thinking that the word for embarrassed in Spanish, embarazado is a cognate–a similar sounding word–when it really means pregnant, leading to numerous embarrassing moments when a man says, Yo soy embarazado.  I had my main point, how symbols are meant to communicate the invisible through what we can receive through our senses, and how what we do in religious symbols should reflect what is truly going on inside our hearts and souls.  And I managed to talk about all of this and expand on the main topic in the usual Fr. Anthony homily duration (I’ve been told I preach a bit longer than our deacons).

But then Friday I stopped by the Adrian Police Department.  Some of you know that I have been doing ride-alongs with the Police and I have offered to provide any help to the officers that I can.  I went to talk to Clay, who often works the front desk.  I stopped by at about 4:10, and he wasn’t there, but when I asked I was told he was just getting ready to leave.  I waited a little, and then Clay came out and we had a nice little talk.  In the midst of that talk, he said that he didn’t understand two things about Catholics (he’s not Catholic, but is Christian).  The first difficulty we spoke about were the saints and praying to them.  That might be a homily for a different day.

The second thing we talked about took me back to what I first thought I was going to preach on, and caused me to totally rewrite my homily on Saturday morning, between altar server training and confessions.  He asked me about the experience he’s had of Catholics who say they can do whatever sinful thing they want Monday through Friday, then they go to confession on Saturday and Mass on Sunday with a clean slate, and then get back to serious sinning on the weekdays; rinse and repeat.  Clay said that it makes no sense.

Clay is right.  And I explained to him that we can’t cheat God.  Yes, we have the Sacrament of Penance to cleanse us of sin, the Sacrament established by Jesus in Matthew 16 and John 20 when He gave the Apostles the authority to forgive sins.  But I also told Clay that the Church teaches that, for the Sacrament of Penance to be valid, the penitent (the confessee, as it were), has to be truly sorry for his sins and has to make a firm amendment to not commit those sins in the future.  Certainly we sometimes fall into the same sins week after week that we don’t want to.  But if we’re not truly sorry for what we did Monday through Friday, and we fully plan on doing the same thing again the next Monday through Friday, then our sins are not forgiven.  We can’t cheat God. 

And that’s precisely what our Gospel is about.  Jesus did not condemn ritual purification and ritual actions.  But He taught us that the ritual is meant to have an effect in our lives, not to be a meaningless gesture.  Washing hands without washing souls means little in our relationship with God.  And sometimes doing the rituals without the meaning behind it becomes a scandal, an obstacle to other people believing in the Catholic faith.  I’m sure Clay is not the only Christian who thinks that the way some Catholics treat the Sacrament of Penance betrays the fact that these Catholics think that the Sacraments are magic.  They’re not magic.  They are meant to convert us, to change us, to become more like God.  If we’re not open to having God change us, God will not force His grace–His life, His love, His peace–on us.  We can go through the motions, but we won’t receive the effects that those actions are meant to have in our souls. 

Jesus gave us the Good News to help us draw closer to God.  The Good News He teaches us today is that while we can struggle with the same sins each week and be truly sorry, if we are trying to treat the religious rituals like a get out of Hell free card, we’re in for a not-so-pleasant surprise.  This is Good News because it gives us a chance to truly have a change of heart, a metanoia, a conversion, and ask God to purify us from the things that really make us unfit for the Temple.  God wants to truly cleanse us of those things and wash, not our hands, but our hearts.  Will we allow God to wash our souls with His cleansing grace?