Last Week on Mass at St. Pius X...

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the great things about being the only priest in a parish is that you always know what was preached the week before.  When I was in East Lansing, I was one of three priests, and we had 8 Masses each weekend at two sites during the school year (7 during the summer months).  So one week I might have the Saturday evening Mass at St. Thomas and the 8 & 10 a.m. Masses at St. John Student Center, and then the following week I might have the 9 & 11 a.m. Masses at St. Thomas, and the following week I might have the 12, 5, & 7 p.m. Masses at St. John.  It was hard to be consistent in preaching, as each priest would often pick up on a different aspect of the readings.

But you’re stuck with only me, and I know that, if you came to Mass here last week, you heard about obedience and how we need to be obedient to God in all things.  But that obedience applies to us in a special way about what we heard in the second reading and the Gospel (we’ll not dwell on the Debbie Downer first reading from Job this week).  And that obedience comes to each of us to preach the Gospel.

In the Gospel, Jesus takes a little time off to pray, to recharge His batteries, to have time with His Father so that His ministry might be fruitful.  But not long after, the disciples find Jesus and tell Him that everyone is looking for Him.  Jesus then says, “‘Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also.  For this purpose have I come.’”  Jesus’ mission is to preach the good news, the Gospel.  In obedience to the Father, He goes beyond His home village to preach that God is fulfilling His promise, and God is freeing the people from their oppressors, not so much the Romans, but the oppression of Satan and sin.

God also gives St. Paul the mission to preach, and St. Paul takes it very seriously.  He calls it an obligation imposed on him by God, “and woe…if I do not preach it!”  St. Paul does everything he can to spread the message.  To the weak he becomes weak to win them over.  He becomes all things to all so that at least some of them may be saved.  And his only recompense is having a share in the Gospel.  

We have also received this mandate to preach the Gospel.  You might not remember it, but it happened at your baptism.  And will happen tonight/happened last night at Jack’s baptism.  After the triple pouring of water, I anoint the child with Sacred Chrism, perfumed oil that has been consecrated by Bishop Boyea.  The second half of the prayer says: “As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.”  Being anointed as a Prophet means that we are specially chosen to proclaim God’s Word, just like the prophets in the Old Testament and St. John the Baptist (but you don’t have to wear camel hair and eat locusts and honey).  And at the end of the rite I touch the ears and the mouth of the newly baptized child and say, “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak.  May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”  In these two ways the Church clearly shows how we are mandated, like St. Paul, to preach the Gospel.

But what is the core of the Gospel?  Do we know what the good news is?  I can give you the basics right now in three points, and certainly there is more that can be fleshed out, but here it is: 1) We are sinners and were separated from God by sin; 2) Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, and came to pay the penalty for sin for us by dying on the cross; 3) Jesus rose from the dead, destroying death and offering new life to those who believe in and follow Him.  Again, there is more to the Gospel than just those three points, but those three points are the heart of the Gospel.

So do we take our mandate seriously?  Are we obedient to God as being evangelizers, those who spread the good news?  Do we recognize, as St. Paul did, that an obligation to spread the Gospel has been imposed on us, and woe to us if we do not preach it?  And we can’t say that it all happens by our actions.  It was popular to quote St. Francis of Assisi with the saying, “Preach the Gospel always; use words if necessary.”  The problem is that he never said that.  And certainly St. Francis did not live that way, as he was constantly talking about Jesus, even to the Sultan in Egypt.  

Does this mean that we have to leave our jobs and do nothing but talk about Jesus?  No.  In fact, Vatican II reminded us that the laity, you, are called to sanctify, to make holy, the temporal order.  You’re supposed to talk about Jesus and live as a disciple of Jesus in your job.  You don’t have to be pushy (in fact, that tends to turn people off to the Gospel), but can still help others see by your life and your words what a difference being Catholic makes in your life.  Sometimes you’ll get asked questions you to which you have no answer.  That’s ok; it’s better to be honest and not have an answer than try to make one up and be fake.  The key is that we’re trying.

I certainly try to take my obligation to preach the Gospel seriously.  My eternal judgment will be partially based on how well I preached the Gospel, and if I watered it down to avoid conflict and thus betrayed the truth.  But we all were mandated in baptism to preach the Gospel in our daily lives.  Woe to all of us if we do not preach it!

Do You Smell Good?

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            A couple of weeks ago I went out to lunch with a guy named Joe.  Joe graduated from Lansing Catholic this past May, and was getting ready to move down to Ave Maria College in Florida, where he will play football, and he wanted to catch-up a little before he left.  While Joe and I were eating lunch, the waitress, a 45-50 year old women came over and said, “I just have to say, one of you smells really good.”  There we were, left with the option of a woman liking the smell of either a young priest (dressed in clerics, mind you), or an 18-year-old. 

            A few days later, playing volleyball with some friends on a Thursday evening, my teammate tells me as he’s about to serve, “Father, you smell really good!  What type of cologne do you wear?” 

            We each have our own smells.  Some are highlighted (or hidden) by deodorants and/or cologne or perfume.  But our “scent,” if you will, helps to communicate who we are.  St. Paul, in our second reading, tells us to “be imitators of God…as Christ loved us and handed himself over…as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.”  So if we are to be like Jesus, we must smell like Jesus, not in the sense of our musk, but in the way we live.

            When a person is baptized and later confirmed, Sacred Chrism is put on his or her head.  The Chrism is a mixture of olive oil and a special perfume.  Parents of baptized babies notice the smell of the Chrism.  Those who are confirmed certainly notice the smell, especially since most of those who are confirmed around here are in adolescence and are very concerned with how they smell.  But Sacred Chrism smells for a reason.  It reminds us that we are to have a special smell, the aroma of Christ, the odor of holiness.

            How do we smell differently?  How do we have the odor of holiness?  There are a lot of ways, but based upon our first reading and our Gospel, I want to suggest one very practical way: the way we treat Sundays.

Sunday is a Christian’s day, because it is the day that Jesus rose from the dead.  That’s why we set it aside every week for worship.  It is the new Sabbath, fulfilling the rest that God commanded we take in the Ten Commandments.  It is a day to be given over to the worship of God, charitable works, family and friends, and relaxation.  And it used to set us Catholics apart, just as Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, set Jews apart.  But we have fallen away from the sacredness of the Lord’s Day.

Why do we need the Lord’s Day?  Frankly, we need the rest.  I’m sure I could ask any one of you how the past week went, and you would have myriad events that took place that, whether simply required or even recreational, drained your batteries.  We need rest, just like Elijah, working for God, needed rest.  In fact, he was running away from King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, who were going to kill him, because he had demonstrated the power of the true God, and put to death the false-prophets of Baal.  But, Sunday is not just about sleeping all day.  Even Elijah is told to take bread, because He will need it for the journey to the mountain of God.

Sunday is also about worship, and for us as Catholics, that worship means the Mass.  We are not fulfilling the Sabbath Commandment if we just sleep all day and vaguely think about God.  We need to come to Mass because it is only in the Mass that the Bread of Angels, the Eucharist, is given to us.  We come to Mass because it is there, in a special way, that we are taught by God through His Word, read to us to strengthen us to live out our baptismal call to holiness.  Jesus promises us that, if we are not conscious of grave sin, which makes us unworthy to receive His Body and Blood, than we will live forever, because the bread that He gives is his “flesh for the life of the world.”  The Eucharist is precisely what we need to have strength to do those million things that naturally arise in life between Monday and Saturday, from work, from family, from sports, etc. 

Now, there are lots of people, even Catholics, who do not go to Mass on Sunday, who do not receive the Eucharist, and we may think that they’re doing just fine.  But “just fine” is only a shadow of the “great” that God wants for them, if they would only come to Mass to worship and receive, in a state of grace, the Eucharist.  Without the Body and Blood of Christ that we receive at Mass, we are only a shadow of who we can truly be in Christ.

For the rest of the day, as a way of having the aroma of Christ, let’s say no to almost everything else.  That will be hard, without a doubt.  And some of us have to work, especially in emergency response jobs or the service industry like in restaurants or gas stations.  But, many of us can say no to anything which is not truly relaxing and God-focused.  Many of us can say no to sports practices and menial work which can be done on other days.  If we pledge to each other that we will say no to lesser things, which allows us to say yes to God, family & friends, assisting the poor, and relaxation for one day per week, then our families will be able to worship God and find strength in the Eucharist, and will be able to enjoy each other’s company and strengthen their familial bonds, and we’ll have the strength and energy we need to do the work that lies ahead of us from Monday through Saturday: at work, at school, on the field, in the gym, and around the house.  And in this one way, we will have the aroma of Christ, the odor of holiness, so that we will smell good, not for a waitress or a friend, but for God.