Repeating

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    I used to have SiriusXM Radio in my car, but I got tired of having to verbally fight with them to get the lowest rates, so I decided to try streaming music instead.  And because I’m frugal (others would use the word cheap), I wanted a free source.  I tried Pandora at first, but then everyone I know encouraged me to get Spotify.  I like the idea of being able to like certain songs, and have what I’m sure is an algorithm suggest other songs like it to which I can listen.  
    But what I have noticed is that, with occasional exceptions, it tends to play the same songs over and over again in any playlist I have.  Even when I get a rare new song and like the song, it still tends to take me back into a rotation of about 30 songs, so I feel like I’m hearing the same songs over and over again.

    You may have the same feeling with today’s Gospel reading, though maybe not as strongly.  This Gospel passage, from the first chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, was the Gospel for the day on 18 December; it’s the Gospel today; and it will be the Gospel for the 4:30 p.m. Christmas Eve Mass.  I can imagine what your mind goes to when you hear the words, “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.”  It’s probably something like, “Didn’t I just hear this?”  
    Beyond the Gospel, Catholicism is built on ritual.  The Mass is, substantially, the same every week.  The readings change, the preface sometimes change, and I generally alternate between different versions of the Eucharistic Prayer week by week, but not that much changes.  I will admit that I even sometimes check my blog with all my homilies to make sure that I’m not preaching the same thing year after year, especially with these seasons and days that have similar themes.  
    And some will criticize the ritual nature of Catholicism.  Our evangelical brothers and sisters might have a different service every month, even if there is a similar format.  There’s much more sense of inventing something new and exciting every year, probably because it appeals to our desire to be entertained.  And entertainment is, generally speaking, putting out new things that delight the fact that we’ve never seen it before.  While Hollywood has leaned on remakes of past releases, generally they are always making new movies.  Singers tend to include some old favorites at concerts, but more so tend to focus on the latest album they released.  
    But, as much as we find ourselves drawn to what is new and exciting (or, to use a newer word, bussin’), the human person has a need for routine and things that do not change.  Routine creates a certain calm or stability that we need.  Even in the hectic mornings when you’re getting yourself and/or your kids ready, your routine, even if interrupted, of putting on deoderant, brushing your teeth, combing your hair, shaving, putting on make-up, using cologne or perfume, probably gives you some sense of stability, even if the rest of the day is anything but stable.  And it opens up success for the future that chaos tends not to support.  Imagine that, to keep things new and fresh, you decided not to wear deodorant or brush your teeth.  It probably wouldn’t help you out in your day, and would create more stress.
    Ritual in the Catholic Church creates calm because our encounter with God is not meant to be a flurry of emotions, though we sometimes do get an emotive response.  Our worship of God should create a peace and quiet in us that allows to hear God, who often works in the stillness and silence.  An emotive high is like a drug: it’s exciting (for you younger folk, it slaps) when you experience something new.  But then, as you get used to new and ever-changing, the level of new and changing has to increase because your tolerance for new has increased, and the old new and exciting doesn’t give you the same high.  That’s why Catholic Masses are not and should not be like rock concerts.  There’s a place for that kind of music, in our devotional life, but in the Mass, we need to create a quiet space to encounter God, who didn’t come to Elijah in an earthquake, fire, or storm, but in the stillness.
    Routine and ritual also allow us to do what novelty never allows: go deeper.  When I’m just concerned about getting something new each time, I remain that the surface level, because I’m adjusting to stimuli I haven’t experienced before.  When I hear the same prayer or the same Gospel passage again and again, God desires that I do go deeper than just the surface.  It was only after a while of praying the fourth Eucharistic Prayer (which I use during Ordinary Time), that I recognized the words, “Look, O Lord, upon the Sacrifice which you yourself have provided for your Church…” could refer back to Genesis, when Abraham was on his way to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved Son, and Isaac asks where the sheep for sacrifice is, that Abraham says that God Himself will provide the sheep for the sacrifice.  As I grow in my understanding of the Scriptures, I see how they intertwine with the Mass, something we can miss if we only stay at the surface level.
    So, yes, we will hear again (if you go to the Vigil Mass of Christmas on Wednesday afternoon), “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about,” a passage that we have likely heard countless times.  But, as with this Gospel, so with the Mass: don’t stay at the surface.  Allow the calm of the ritual to push you into deeper meanings and connections throughout the rest of the Mass, the Scriptures, and the Church’s other teachings.  Don’t miss the depth God wants to reveal because you want something new and exciting each time.  Remain with God, the source of beauty, ever ancient, ever new. 

The Old Rejoicing in the New

Passion Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When it comes to the Bible, I think sometimes we have this sense that the New Testament is all we need to read.  And certainly, it is often a bit easier.  The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are pretty straight forward.  The writings of St. Paul, while including some long sentences with very complex structure, are instructive, as are the other epistles from St. Peter, St. Jude, and St. John.  Yeah, Revelation or the Apocalypse of St. John can be a bit confusing and/or scary, and easily misunderstood and misinterpreted, but generally, the New Testament seems like the place to focus.  To use an analogy, the New Testament seems like nice, sunny pastures with rolling hills, while the Old Testament, even with some of the familiar stories that we enjoy, seems much more like a forest with thick growth, and a narrow trail through it.
    But we cannot truly understand Christ without understanding what He Himself revealed before the Incarnation.  We cannot be like the gnostic heretics who claimed that the God of the Old Testament was a different God than Jesus Christ.  When read properly, the Old Testament points to and is fulfilled in Christ.  That is one of the points of the Gospel today.  Our Lord says, “‘Abraham rejoiced to see my day.’”  Abraham rejoiced because in Christ, God’s covenant would be opened up to all nations, a covenant made with a true son of Abraham through Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
    The evangelists and apostles were great at seeing how Christ was revealed throughout the Old Testament.  The Letter to the Hebrews, our epistle today, in another place talks about Melchizedek as a type of Christ, since he was king of Jerusalem and a priest of God Most High, and because he had no lineage given (unlike almost everyone else in Genesis), and because He blessed Abram, noting that only a greater blesses a lesser.  The author of the Letter to the Hebrews also quotes Psalm 2 when he asks, “to which of the angels did God ever say: ‘You are my son; this day I have begotten you’?”  And he also quotes other verses to shows Christ’s superiority to the angels.  St. John the Apostle and Evangelist loves to quote earlier Scriptures as he saw them fulfilled by the Savior.  When the soldiers cast lots for the robe at the crucifixion, he quotes Psalm 21:18; when the soldier pierces the dead body of Christ with a lance rather than breaking the legs, he quotes Psalm 33:21 and Zechariah 12:10. 
    The Church Fathers also saw Christ prefigured in Old Testament figures who had their proper importance in their own right.  Christ is the New Adam, the new head of humanity, who, rather than disobeying God and dooming all of humanity, is obedient to God, even to the point of death, and so graces all humanity and opens for all the children of Adam and Eve the possibility of eternal life in heaven. 
    Christ is prefigured in Abraham.  Abraham left his home at the direction of God, and was promised descendants numerous as the stars in the heaven.  Christ “journeys” to earth to fulfill the will of the Father, and joins both Jew and Gentile to God, so that the number of the elect comes from every corner of the earth.

    Isaac, too, represents Christ.  Isaac is the beloved son of Abraham and Sarah.  Abraham, his father, asks Isaac to carry wood for the sacrifice up Mount Moriah, the mountain, according to tradition, on which the City of Zion and Temple were later built.  Isaac is a young man, and yet allows Abraham to bind him to the wood for the sacrifice of his own free will.  So Christ carries the wood of the cross up Calvary, and willingly lays down His life, trusting in His eternal Father.  Abraham’s hand was stayed by the angel, stopping the sacrifice, but no angel stopped the sacrifice of Christ.
    Christ is prefigured in Jeremiah the Prophet.  Jeremiah preached tough messages to the people of Judah.  He condemned trusting in a building, even the Temple of the Lord, and called the people to be faithful to God.  For preaching God’s message, Jeremiah was opposed and oppressed by the king and leaders of Judah, even though his words came true.  Christ preached the Word of God, and foretold the destruction of the new temple built by Herod, built after the temple that Jeremiah saw had been destroyed by the Babylonians.  He was opposed and oppressed by the leaders and many of the chief priests, Pharisees, and scribes of His own day.  Christ called all to fidelity to God and a return to Him.
    This could go on and on (maybe you feel like it has already!).  But the point is that the entire Old Testament points to Christ and is fulfilled in Him.  Beyond the people, all the sacrifices of the Old Testament are fulfilled and perfected in the one, perfect sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, which we will celebrate in a particular way on Good Friday.  So if we wish to truly appreciate who Christ is and what He did for us, we need to be well-versed in the what came before Him.  Yes, it can sometimes seem strange, and needs to be unpacked, and should be done with the assistance of the Magisterium, the official teaching office of the Church.  But rather than avoiding it because it can be confusing, let’s take the safe path of how the Church has read the Old Testament, so that we can arrive at the one fountain of life that forms the hinge between the Old and the New Testaments, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Cut It Out

 VIII Day of the Octave of Christmas & Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  God, in calling Abram out of Ur in modern-day Iraq, said many amazing things to him.  We hear at the beginning of Genesis, chapter 12, that God tells Abram, “Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”  That, in itself, took a giant leap of faith.  Abram was being asked to leave the fertile crescent, the birth-place of civilization, as scholars call it, for an unknown land inhabited by unknown, and possibly hostile, people.  It’s hard enough for us to pack up our entire life and move to a different place.  Imagine doing it without having a home to which you were going, not knowing exactly where God was going to settle you (and whom you might have to dislodge to stay there), and doing it at the age of 75 years old.

    God also promised Abram, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”  Abram and Sarai (later Abraham and Sarah) were well past the childbearing years.  They had no children.  And yet God promised that he would make of them a great nation.  This must have seemed odd to them.  And yet Abram trusted in God to do the impossible.  This makes Abraham’s almost sacrifice of Isaac much later even more incredible.  God had finally given Abraham and Sarah a son, Isaac, and so perhaps they thought that becoming a great nation could actually happen.  But then God asks Abraham to sacrifice that son, that fulfillment of the promise, that promise of hope for the elderly couple.  And yet, Abraham is willing to do it (though God stays his hand at the last minute).
    Before that, in chapter 17, God appears to ninety-nine year-old Abram (who had conceived Ishmael with his slave, Hagar, but was still childless with Sarai), and says:
 

I am God the Almighty.  Walk in my presence and be blameless.  Between you and me I will establish a covenant, and I will multiple you exceedingly.  […] You are to become the father of a multitude of nations.  […] I will make you exceedingly fertile; I will make nations of you; kings will stem from you.  […] I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land in which you are now residing as aliens, the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession; and I will be their God.  […] This is the covenant between me and you and your descendants after you that you must keep: every male among you shall be circumcised.  Circumcise the flesh of your foreskin.  That will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

Luckily, Abraham was open to God’s will.  Because, put in his place, I think most men would have said, “You want me to do what?  To my what?”  
    And yet this was the sign of those who believed in and followed God.  And this sign of the covenant endured even to the time of our Lord, who, though He was the Lord of the covenant, was still joined to Israel by His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and His foster-father, St. Joseph, in a powerful way that united Christ to Israel as the People who belonged to God, the sons and daughters of Abraham.  Even for those who needed to be joined to Israel, this was a difficult sign.  Indeed, when the Bible talks about God-fearers, it speaks about those who wanted to become Jewish, but who had some issue preventing them from joining.  One can imagine that the thought of circumcision kept any number of adult men converts from becoming fully Jewish and part of the covenant.  God our Savior, who had no need to become part of the covenant, still underwent this sign.
    But the sign had a spiritual meaning in addition to the physical act.  The prophet Jeremiah prophesies: “Be circumcised for the Lord, remove the foreskins of your hearts, people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Or else my anger will break out like fire, and burn so that no one can quench it, because of your evil deeds.”  Circumcision was a physical cutting away.  But God also intended it to be a spiritual cutting away of all that was fallen and of disobedience to God.  The covenant was not only to be part of one’s flesh, but also part of one’s heart, spirit, and soul.  
    Christ Himself, while He was subjected to the covenant as an infant, Himself established a new covenant in His Precious Blood, and a new sign of the covenant was given that had both a physical and a spiritual aspect.  That new sign was baptism.  The water washed one clean of original sin, but it also meant a washing away of all that is fallen from that point on.  It made men and women part of the new Israel, the Church, gathered from all the nations, as a people who belong to the Lord.  
    But think of the humility that Christ underwent in being circumcised!  He who is Lord of the Sabbath is certainly also Lord of the Covenant, and so is not bound to it.  But He allows the cutting of His flesh in anticipation of giving His flesh for the life of the world in His Passion.  He subjects Himself to the Law, though He is the Lawgiver.  And He does the same in His baptism in the Jordan, as John baptizes Christ, though John asks to be baptized by Christ.  
    This is a great model for us when it comes to humility.  How often do we bristle when we have to do something that we don’t think we should have to do?  How quick do we make known our importance, and how we think things should go?  But this is not the example of our Savior.  Like Abraham, Christ, the Son of Abraham, trusted in His heavenly Father, and went where the Father told Him to go, did what the Father told Him to do, and said what the Father told Him to say.  “Like a lamb,” Isaiah prophesied, “he was led to the slaughter, and he opened not his mouth.”  Yet, if we bear one unrighteous punishment, how quickly do we open our mouths to protest our own innocence?
    God does not call us to be doormats, but on the other hand, sometimes He allows the just to suffer unjustly for their own sanctity, their own growth in holiness.  The day after Christmas we celebrated St. Stephen, who was martyred though his only crime was to witness to the fact that Christ was the long-awaited Messiah.  The day after that we celebrated St. John, who, while not a martyr, was exiled to Patmos as a Roman punishment for following Christ; the day after that we celebrated the Holy Innocents, who could not even confess Christ with their lips, though they took His place with their deaths; the day after that we commemorated St. Thomas Beckett, who died at the hands of King Henry II for standing up for the rights of the Church.  These past days of the Octave haven been filled with witnesses who suffered unjustly.  Their witness should spur us on when we have to undergo sufferings much lighter than theirs.  

    I would also add Pope Benedict XVI to those who suffered unjustly, but utilized it for his own holiness.  He was often attacked in the media, was called “God’s Rottweiler,” despite his gentle and humble disposition, and suffered other attacks, simply for holding true to the unchanging teachings of the Church.  Yet I never remember him complaining once about those slings and arrows.
    God promised Abraham that he would become the father of kings and many nations.  Abraham remained faithful to God, even in hard times, even when the sign of that covenant meant the stripping away of flesh.  Christ subjected Himself to the Law, and paid the penalty for our sins, though He Himself was the Lawgiver and free from all sin.  What witness will we give through the new circumcision of the heart, holy baptism, by which we become united to God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Transformation through Trial

 Second Sunday of Lent
    In many a great story of literature, we find a hero who has to undergo a great trial, or many great trials.  After going through the trial(s), the hero is changed, for the better; transformed, we might even say.  This is true of ancient literature, like “The Odyssey,” where Odysseus, on his way home from war, has to conquer many trials on various islands as his ship is tossed about the seas.  This is true of classical literature like “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, where Ebenezer Scrooge has to grapple with his past, his present, and even a possible future in order to be changed from a miser to philanthropist.  This is true in the great Catholic trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings” by J. R. R. Tolkien where Frodo is put through many trials trying to destroy the Ring of Power in the fires of Mount Doom.  This is even true in J. K. Rowling’s novels about Harry Potter, who discovers who he is and how to stop the evil wizard Voldemort through many tribulations.  
  

 That is true also for Abraham in today’s first reading.  After being promised a son to inherit everything; after his wife, Sarah, getting impatient with God’s plan and telling Abraham to conceive a child with her slave, Hagar; after finally having that son through Sarah, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son (at least of the promise), the son whom he loves.  Abraham’s willingness to abandon himself to God’s plan, however mysterious, is his great trial, for which God greatly rewards Abraham.
    As for the greatest story ever told, the story of Jesus, He doesn’t have to do anything to be great; He is great because He is God.  And yet, Jesus, too, in humility, undergoes a great trial in His Passion and Death, in order to be transformed, to be raised from the dead and receive a glorified body.  And in today’s Gospel, we hear about a foretaste of that glorified body as Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James, and John.  It is a rest before the great struggle begins, and the apostles will need that reminder as they go through an unexpected journey of their own with their Master.
    What about our story?  I dare say that everyone over the past year has had trials.  And many people had trials before COVID.  And we will all have trials after we’ve gotten a handle on this pandemic.  How do we view those struggles in the light of faith?  Do we view those struggles in the light of faith, or are we fatalists, just letting life happen to us?  
    God does not call us to be fatalists, as if suffering is beyond the control of God and so we have no one to turn to during our tribulations.  God calls us to be sons and daughters in His Son, who gives us everything that we need, including allowing us to undergo trials to help us to grow.  
    There is, I would also dare say, a part of us that cringes from the trials and tests.  We would rather have the Resurrection without the crucifixion.  We would rather have abs of steel without going to the gym and eating well.  We would rather have infused knowledge than going to school for so many years.  But that’s not the way the world works.  In God’s mysterious plan, somehow the struggle is good for us, and builds us in ways that cheap grace never could.  There is no such thing as cheap grace; it is never earned (because grace is a gift), but it’s also not encountered passively; it always requires some death to self, which is a struggle.  
    And the attitude to have through it all is the attitude of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jesus: God will provide.  We can imagine how much the thought of sacrificing his son tore up Abraham.  We can imagine how confused and perhaps even scared Isaac was.  And in a few weeks we’ll hear the reaction of Jesus to His known, impending suffering and Death as He asks His loving Father for another way, if it is possible.  But, and these words are key, Jesus says, “Not my will, but yours be done.”  
    The trials and tribulations of life, the sufferings we encounter, especially if they are not of our own making, are the ways that we pass through death to life.  Lent is a long time of truly entering in, as we are called to do year round, to the Paschal Mystery–to the Passion and Death of Jesus–so that we are share in the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus.  And if we go through whatever struggles we have with God, they do strengthen us, they transform us, they even transfigure us to be more like Jesus in glory.  
    We have a choice: do we want to get to that glory that Jesus showed His apostles on Mt. Tabor?  If so, there’s only one way to get there: through the cross; through suffering and death to our own wills and to our own sinfulness.  St. Rose of Lima put it this way: “Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.”  The ladder may be difficult to climb, but the reward at the top is joy beyond imagining!  In the story of your life, follow the path of so many literary heroes: go through trials so that you can be transformed!

Transfiguring Society

Second Sunday of Lent

In the afternoon of Ash Wednesday the nation was alerted to what became the most-deadly school shooting in US history in Parkland, Florida.  There were so many tragic pictures and videos, many of them the result of almost everyone these days having a phone or tablet that can take pictures.  Last weekend we prayed for both the survivors and those who were murdered at our weekend Masses, and we certainly need to keep that entire community in our thoughts and prayers.

In the hours and the days after the shooting, there were many suggestions on how to stop such a tragedy from happening in the future.  Different suggestions included more gun control legislation and more help for the mentally ill, among others.  I’m not here to endorse or reject any suggestion that was offered on news sites and television programs.  But as we celebrate today the second Sunday of Lent, we are given a few reminders from God that are very poignant given what has happened in our country in the past couple of weeks.

In our first reading, we heard from Genesis about the well-known almost-sacrifice of Isaac.  While child sacrifice sounds so foreign to us, it was not so foreign to Abraham, as it was practiced in many of the local, near-Eastern religions that surrounded Abraham in the land of Canaan.  Abraham’s faith is tested by God, to see if Abraham is willing to give his most precious treasure up for God.  But before the sacrifice, God stays Abraham’s hand, and provides a sacrifice in Isaac’s place.  In God’s stopping Abraham, we see that God never wants any of His children to sacrifice their own children.  Child sacrifice is condemned (as God will condemn it again and again when the Israelites re-settle in the land of Canaan, the Promised Land), but it also looks forward to when God will allow what He would not require of Abraham, the death of His Son, His “only one,” whom God loved above all.  St. Paul reminds us in the second reading that God did not spare His own Son so that we could be raised from the dead and have our sins forgiven.

From the Church of the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor

In our Gospel, though, Jesus is not dying, but being transfigured, being transformed so that His body takes on the quality of a resurrected, not a crucified, body.  “His clothes became dazzling white,” and the prophets Elijah and Moses stood next to Jesus.  And the voice of the Father instructed Peter, James, and John, “‘This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him.’”  And in the transfiguration, we find the key to putting an end to the horrible destruction of life that so plagues our society.

So many of the suggestions to put an end to school shootings, no matter how good they are, treat only the symptoms, and not the disease that has infected the body of society.  The key to ending such horrors is to be transfigured by Christ.  We, individually, and, as more and more individuals are, collectively, have to be transformed by Christ.  Without this transformation, we will sadly see our past national carnage repeated again and again.

How can we be transfigured?  By being open to the work of the Holy Spirit to become more like Jesus.  That’s what the Sacraments are meant to do.  That’s what going to Mass is meant to do.  God wants to change us to be more like Jesus, and we need to be changed by God in order to find happiness and peace and wholeness, and therefore holiness.  Being transfigured by God is the medicine that wipes out the virus, rather than simply treating the symptoms.  

But to be transfigured a certain openness is required on our part.  God will not transform us without our permission.  St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the saints on our icons, said exactly that in Sermon 169: “God who created you without you, will not save you without you.”  If we come to Mass simply to put a butt in a pew, without any desire to hear God’s Word, to be formed and change our lives, no matter how long it may take us, then we will not be transfigured.  If we receive the Eucharist simply as something we were told to do since second grade, without first discerning if we should receive the Eucharist, then, as St. Paul says, we may be eating and drinking condemnation, not transformation, upon ourselves.  We should want to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ each Mass, because that very food transforms us, as St. Augustine also says in Sermon 227, “If we receive the Eucharist worthily, we become what we receive.”   But if we have committed a grave sin and have not gone to confession; if our marriage is not faithful to the teachings of Christ; if we’re chewing gum, reading the bulletin, checking email, or playing games during Mass, then we will not be transformed.  

And if we do not take the graces that we receive in the sacraments, especially baptism, penance, the Eucharist, and holy matrimony, and live them in our day-to-day lives, in the choices we make in our family life, in our jobs, in our driving, in as many aspects of life that we can think of, then we will continue to see horrendous images continue to plague us.  

How do we stop Parkland from happening again?  Formed by God, filled with His grace through the Sacraments, love your spouse more than yourself; love your children enough to be their parent, not their friend, and say no to them and love them even more when they want something destructive; reach out to the people who have just lost a loved one and remind them how much you and God care for them; live and model a life that is based on the Word of God, not the changing ideas and trends of a culture that is based solely on pleasure and opinion.  In short: be transfigured.

Entrusting our Family to God

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Last week my sister and brother-in-law celebrated their 9th wedding anniversary.  I remember the day of their wedding pretty clearly: I wasn’t a priest or even a deacon yet, so I was in charge of cantoring the Mass; there was lots of snow on the ground, but it was about 50 degrees, so it was very foggy; there were 5 priests concelebrating the wedding (including now-Bishop Raica, now-Msgr. Vincke, two priests from the Diocese of Lansing and one from the Archdiocese of Detroit; perks, I guess of having a seminarian for a brother, and a dad who works for a parish in DeWitt).

I also remember, a little more than 5 years ago, when they told us that they were pregnant with their first daughter, Evelyn.  I remember wondering how my mom would take being a grandmother, because, generally, grandma is a word that is associated with those who are a bit more mature (a kind way of saying older), and I wasn’t sure my mom was ready for the very real and public acknowledgment that she was, in fact, more mature.  But, I couldn’t have been more wrong!  My mom was very excited to be a grandmother, and she has loved spending her time with her two granddaughters, my niece Evelyn and my niece and goddaughter Adelaide.

We heard in our first reading and our second reading about Abraham becoming a father with his wife, Sarah, for the first time, at an age which would be described as really mature (that is, really old).  And God fulfills His promise to Abraham through Isaac, who is the beginning of the descendants of Abraham more numerous than the stars in the sky.  Abraham must have wondered if God was going to fulfill His promise, but Abraham trusted in God to be true to His word, and it happened.  And that trust was put to the test when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  Of course, God stayed Abraham’s hand before he could complete the sacrifice, but even then, Abraham trusted that God could raise from the dead an heir as we hear in the Letter to the Hebrews.  Of course, the author to the Letter to the Hebrews, traditionally St. Paul, sees in Isaac and Abraham a foreshadowing of Jesus, whose Father, God, did not stay the executioner’s hand, but let His Son be sacrificed so that we could go to heaven.

And that’s where our Gospel comes in.  Even as an infant, being offered to the Lord as the firstborn by the sacrifice of two doves, Jesus’ destiny is set.  Simeon, the just man, awaiting the Messiah, sees Jesus and knows that God has, again, been faithful, in not letting Simeon see death until he saw the Messiah.  But he also prophesies that Mary, Jesus’ mother, will have her heart pierced by sorrow, which is certainly the case when Mary had to watch her own Son die, naked on the cross.  

Children are, more often than not, the fruit of family life.  In fact, in order to be married, you have to be open to children (unless you’re past childbearing age).  It’s one of the goods of marriage, and even for those who are of childbearing age who cannot conceive, adoption is a great way of having children.  In either case, having or adopting a child should be the response to God’s will for a husband and wife.  Look what happened to Abraham when he tried to take God’s promise into his own hand: he and his slave, Hagar, conceived Ishmael (Sarah at first said it was ok, but then mysteriously changed her mind after Abraham started spending a lot of time with Ishmael).  When we try to replace God’s plan with our own plan, it tends to mess things up.  And we know, by what Jesus has said through His Church, that natural conception or adoption are the only good ways to bring a child into the world.  Sometimes, yes, that conception has to be helped by hormone treatments or vitamin supplements.  But when processes like in vitro fertilization are used, or when people decide they have a right to have a child on their terms, and not as part of God’s plan, our relationship with God is damaged by the sinful means or by selfish desires.  Children, no matter how they are conceived, are always blessings.  But we always want to be sure that the way we welcome a new life into a family is according to God’s plan, and not only according to our plan.

Instead, the Lord invites us to entrust our families to Him.  And that goes not only for how to welcome a new child in the family, but even before that.  The Church requires that Catholics get married in a Catholic Church, or get a dispensation from the local bishop from that requirement, because as a new family is formed, the Church wants to make sure that God is a part of that decision and is involved in the life of the new family.  And when that family, by natural conception or adoption, brings a new child into the picture, then the family is also invited to help that child with the life of faith by having the child baptized and living out that faith daily with the child.  This means going to Mass each Sunday (don’t worry if the baby or little child acts up or is noisy; it’s what kids do); praying at home before meals and sometime during the day or night (for me it was usually right before bed); showing unconditional love and forgiveness to the best of our ability; treating others as we want to be treated and as we would treat Jesus.  All of those things go into making a family holy, like the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  And that all starts by trusting God, by having faith in God and His plan, just like Abraham did.  We sin, and we mess up, when we take matters into our own hands, as Abraham himself did a few times.  But God invites us to trust in Him always, and so find salvation for ourselves and our families.

Where's the Animal?

Second Sunday of Lent

What is our reaction to the first reading today?  What thoughts cross our mind when we hear about God asking Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah?  Perhaps we weren’t really thinking about it too much because we’ve heard the story before.  We know that the angel will stay Abraham’s hand and the ram will take Isaac’s place.  But when we do that, we lose the force of this passage.  What if God asked you to sacrifice your child or one of your children?  What would your reaction be?  Would you start marching up the mountain?

This story should make us shudder.  Part of the story wasn’t so strange for the Jews and pagans hearing it, because the sacrifice of the son was part of a few pagan worship practices.  In fact, the Israelite and Judean kings will be blamed by God later for taking upon themselves the worship of Moloch; and the way Moloch was worshipped was by immolating, killing, the first son by throwing him into the fire.  But even while Abraham was probably not surprised that a god might ask for the sacrifice of the son, that didn’t make it any easier for Abraham.  He had sent away Ishamel, his son by the slave woman, Hagar.  He and Sarah were even more past the age for bearing children than when Isaac had been conceived probably around twelve years earlier.  And yet, God had promised that Abraham’s descendants would be more numerous than the stars in the sky or the grains of sand by the sea.  You can imagine the question Abraham has going through his mind: ‘How could this be?  How will I have all these descendants if God is asking me to kill my son?’  

Maybe some of the children could relate to Isaac, too.  Hopefully not because they think their parents would kill them!  But imagine what must have been going through Isaac’s head: ‘Dad says we’re going to offer sacrifice to God today.  And here I am carrying the wood, and the knife, and everything to make the sacrifice, but where’s the animal that we’re going to sacrifice?  It’s just me and dad walking up the mountain!!’  With each step, maybe Isaac got a little more nervous about what was going on.  And Isaac is even forced to set up the wood for the sacrificial fire.  And Isaac even lays down, no doubt asked by his father to do so, as Abraham was an old man, and there was no way he could have caught up to Isaac if he decided to run away, or fight off Isaac if he decided to resist being sacrificed.  Hopefully we’re starting to feel the tension, like in a movie where the hero is about to die, but you’re not quite sure the hero is going to be able to escape and wondering how the plot can continue without the hero.

Even though this account that we hear today is a true account, it also foreshadows a future event to which St. Paul refers: the crucifixion of Jesus.  Isaac becomes a prefigurement of Jesus: he carries the wood for his own sacrifice; he willingly lays down upon the wood to be sacrificed.  But, instead of an angel appearing at the last minute to stop Abraham from killing his own son, God the Father allows Jesus to die.  The scourges fall on Jesus’ back; the nails pierce through Jesus’ hands and feet; the spear punctures Jesus’ side.  There is no ram to take Jesus’ place.  Jesus Himself, the only Son of God, the Beloved, dies, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.  The hero of the disciples dies, as an unexpected twist in the plot of their lives and in salvation history (at least from our point of view).  

With such drastic suffering that the disciples were going to experience in watching their master be arrested, scourged, and put to death by evil men, God did not want the disciples to be without hope.  And that’s where the Gospel comes in today.  God gives the disciples a preview of the end of the movie: the Resurrection and Ascension as Jesus is transfigured before their eyes.  Peter, James, and John get a preview of the heavenly life and what a glorified body will look like to help carry them through the dark days of the Passion of our Lord.  Of course, they don’t understand that it’s meant to carry them through.  Especially in the Gospel of Mark (by tradition Mark’s source for Jesus’ life was St. Peter) the disciples never seem to understand what’s going on, with a few brief exceptions.  But afterwards, they see how God was preparing them for suffering by seeing a taste of glory.

That preparation is important for us, too.  For many of us, there is suffering in our lives: unemployment; loved ones with diseases; dysfunctional families; a lack of friends.  God doesn’t say to us: deal with it!  He does, sometimes just in fleeting moments, give us a foretaste of the joy that awaits us in heaven.  Mass is supposed to be something of that, as we come together to worship God with precious metals and vestments that remind us of heaven, where we will see God face to face and be embraced by His love and by all those who have been faithful in following Christ.  God gives us the Eucharist to give us strength to make it through suffering, as food for our pilgrimage.  And He shares glory with us in so many other small ways, that we often don’t recognize them until later.  

The same could be said for Lent.  During Lent we focus on suffering: on Jesus’ suffering; on uniting our own suffering and penances to Jesus on the cross.  But it’s not meant to be all suffering.  Even this early, in the second week of Lent, God gives us a foretaste of the glory that comes after suffering through Him, with Him, and in Him.  Lent is not the end of the story.  Jesus’ death is not the end of the story.  God has prepared glory for us, just as He prepared glory for Jesus and raised Him from the dead.  May we recognize the foretastes of glory that God gives to us, so that the joy of Easter carries us through the Good Fridays of our lives.