The Domestic Church

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
    One of the great blessings in my life as a priest, when I have the opportunity, is to visit people’s homes for dinner and/or house blessings.  It’s good to see families in their home environment, even with all the messes and drama that can happen from time to time.  As the ritual for a house blessing states, the blessing is a sign that the family is welcoming Christ into their home.

Zacchaeus' sycamore tree in Jericho

    In some ways, this practice of inviting the priest into the home stems from the Gospel we heard today, when Jesus invited Himself to visit the home of Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus, for his part, was very happy to oblige, and “received [Jesus] with joy.”  We don’t know what was on the menu for the meal Zacchaeus prepared, but we do know that some became very upset, because Zacchaeus collected taxes for the Romans, and that job often included taking more than even what the Romans asked for, to line a tax collector’s pockets.  Still, Jesus says that He came to the house of Zacchaeus because He came to seek out and save those who were lost.
    How do we welcome Jesus into our homes?  Do we welcome Jesus into our homes?  A phrase that has been used, especially since the Second Vatican Council, but which dates to the early church, is the domestic Church.  No, this is not the calm, passive, housebroken Church (as in a domesticated animal).  The term domestic comes from the Latin domus, meaning house.  But the phrase domestic Church does not refer to having Sunday Masses in the home, either.  The domestic Church is the family, “as centers of living, radiant faith”, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says.  The Catechism continues:
 

It is here [in the family, the domestic Church] that the father of the family, the mother, children, and all members of the family exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way “by…prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, and self-denial and active charity.”  Thus the home is the first school of Christian life and a “school for human enrichment.”  Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous-even repeated-forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one’s life.

Families are not something added on to the faith; they are part and parcel of the faith, and the way that the faith is passed on and learned, in all its facets.
    This presumes that the exercise of the faith is not something that happens only on Sunday.  If the only time that we have contact with God is at Mass, even though the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life, then we are starving ourselves of the life-giving sustenance of our relationship with God.  Our faith is not meant to be observed only in these four walls on Sundays and holydays.  Our faith is meant to permeate our entire life, especially what happens in our homes with our families.
    Part of the symptom that people do not live their faith out at home is the desire to force all sorts of devotions into the Mass.  The Catholic Mass has a particular set of structures, music, gestures, which are noble, yet simple.  The more emotional, dramatic aspects of our faith are good, but are meant to be lived out more during the week outside of Mass, especially in the home.  Praying the Rosary, Praise and Worship music, clapping hands, spreading hands, lectures on this or that aspect of the faith can all be good things, but do not belong in the Mass.  People are hungry for the devotional life, because it is important to our life in Christ.  But the devotional life is not meant to be forced into the Mass. If people more fully lived out the faith at home, they wouldn’t feel the need for those devotional aspects during Sunday Mass.
    So what does living as a domestic Church look like?  What are things that every family should do?  The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lists a number of things that families could and should do to more fully exemplify their role as the domestic Church.  I’ll list a few.  
 

-Read Scripture daily as a family, pray together, not just before meals, but in the morning or evening, in a time that works best for your family.  Don’t only use formal prayers (which are good), but also heartfelt, unstructured prayers, too.
-Pray a family Rosary, or even simply a decade.
-Have a crucifix in a prominent place in the home, and in each room.
-Utilize an Advent wreath or a poor box for Lent.
-Visit different churches and shrines as a family.
-Show love for each other, and connect that love to the love that God has for us.
-Talk about how God is helping you in good times and bad.
-Make Mass a priority each Sunday and holyday, as well as going to confession regularly.
-Install a holy water stoop inside a door so that people can bless themselves on entering or exiting the home and as a reminder of baptism.
-Show the importance of donating time, talent, and treasure to the Church by what you say and do.

Those are just ten ways; there are many more that you could invent or find.  But the important thing is that, whether you are single person, a family of two, or a family of ten, that Jesus is welcome in your house, and that Jesus’ presence in your house is evident.

    Too often we constrict our relationship with Christ only to going to Mass on Sundays and holydays.  We enter God’s house, the church, but we fail to invite Him back to our house, the domestic church.  Be like Zacchaeus today and everyday: welcome Christ to your house with joy.

The Other Works of Mercy

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Hollywood has recently become very good at remaking movies.  Sometimes the movies are the same basic movies, but sometimes the remakes take a different spin.  Some of the remakes I’ve seen and are quite good, like “True Grit.”  Some are good, but have slightly different story lines, like “Ben Hur.”  Others I have seen and think the original was better, like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”  Sometimes I wonder if people today realize that “Planet of the Apes” originally included Charlton Heston rather than James Franco.

For the past few years we have been talking a lot about mercy, especially during the Jubilee Year for Mercy that Pope Francis proclaimed.  And during that year most people focused (and rightly so) on the Corporal Works of Mercy: feed the hungry; give drink to the thirsty; shelter the homeless; visit the sick; visit the prisoners; bury the dead; give alms to the poor.  These still remain important parts of our faith.  It’s not like we can stop doing these things because the Jubilee Year for Mercy is over.  

But there are also the spiritual works of mercy, and I wonder how many of us know what they are?  The Spiritual Works of Mercy are: counsel the doubtful; instruct the ignorant; comfort the sorrowful; forgive injuries; bear wrongs patiently; pray for the living and the dead; admonish the sinner.  This last Spiritual Work of Mercy, admonish the sinner, is especially apropos for today’s readings.  

In the first reading, God admonishes the Prophet Ezekiel that he is to warn the wicked of their behavior.  If he doesn’t, then not only shall the wicked die for his or her sin, but also Ezekiel, because he failed to warn that person.  This admonition is also given to priests every year in our spiritual reading.  Because we are shepherds, we have the responsibility to make sure people know how to make good choices (virtue and grace) and how to avoid bad choices (vice and sin).  If we fail to do that, then we will also bear the same punishment as those who make bad choices and sin.  This is why so many of the saints consider the priesthood not a reason to boast, but a reason to fear for the final judgment.  

But admonishing the sinner is not only for priests.  Jesus, in the Gospel, tells his disciples that when someone sins, especially when it’s against you, to tell the person his fault, and hopefully that person will listen.  But, Jesus gives more advice in case the person doesn’t listen.  He then encourages the wronged party to bring in other people who can attest to the sin, hopefully convincing the person of the wrong that has been done.  But if that doesn’t happen, then (and only then) involve the Church.  If they don’t listen to the Church, then it’s time to stop trying to convince them, and instead, simply pray and fast for that person.

Admonishing the sinner is not, of course, easy.  Especially with certain sins, people prefer sinning to following God’s plan.  And when confronted with God’s plan, people sometimes don’t take it too well.  Sometimes, though, the fault is also with the person admonishing.  Sometimes people want to get back at the person, or rub that person’s fault in his or her face, rather than acting out of love.  That is why what St. Paul says in the second reading is so important: “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; […] Love does no evil to the neighbor.”  Love doesn’t mean that sin is not sin; love doesn’t mean do whatever you feel like doing.  But it does mean that if we are correcting sinful behavior, we are doing it for the right reasons: out of love.  Parents do this all the time with bad behavior.  If a child uses violence against another, that child may have to have a time-out, or maybe even be spanked (not abused, though).  But if that is done out of love to help the child, then it can truly be a work of mercy, so that the child doesn’t continue to use violence, or escalate that violence as the child grows older.  

Still, you might wonder how to admonish well.  The USCCB website gives this advice: “In humility, we must strive to create a cutler that does not accept sin, while realize that we all fall at times; Don’t judge, but guide others towards the path of salvation; When you correct someone, don’t be arrogant.  We are all in need of God’s loving correction; We should journey together to a deeper understanding of our shared faith; ‘Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.’”  Those are all very good practical pieces of advice for how to admonish a sinner.

Today the Lord invites us to be our brother’s keeper, to help keep people from sin, or bring them back from sin if they have fallen.  May we do this Spiritual Work of Mercy with love, and be willing to accept this Spiritual Work of Mercy with love, knowing that we all have responsibility for and with each other to live according to God’s plan for happiness and holiness.

Leprosy?

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            Sometimes people will ask me when I start preparing my homily.  We were taught at Sacred Heart to always take a look at the readings for the following Sunday by the previous Monday, at the latest.  When looking over them I tend to look for trends or themes in the readings, and then to mull it over for a good couple of days, letting the readings bounce around in my head and seeing what the Lord wants me to say.  Sometimes I end up zeroing in the Gospel, other times it’s a combination of two of the readings, and on rare occasions, all three readings seem to have a similar theme.

            Looking over the readings this past week, the theme of the readings as I looked them over seemed to be leprosy.  It’s a major point in our first reading and Gospel passage today.  But I wondered, ‘What am going to do with that?’  This is a homily, not a medical school lecture (although it is important to note that the leprosy the Bible speaks of could be a number of skin ailments, and was most likely not limited to Hansen’s Disease).

            What struck me were the two different approaches God takes to leprosy.  In the first reading, God tells Moses and Aaron that “‘The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare, and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, “Unclean, unclean!”  […] He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.’”  In essence, God is telling Moses and Aaron, and all the priests and scribes that will follow and interpret this passage, to ostracize the leper.

            And yet, when it comes to the Gospel, Jesus not only welcomes the leper into His presence, but even touches the man.  This seems the exact opposite reaction to God’s warning in the Old Testament.  It’s not hard to see how, as a Jew at the time of Jesus, it was confusing for this apparent carpenter’s son from Nazareth to claim He was God, yet at the same time seem to go against what God had said in Sacred Scripture.  It’s also easy to see how one of the early heresies of the Church, Marcionism, asserted that the God of the Old Testament was a wrathful, angry God and was a lower deity than the God of the New Testament, proclaimed by Jesus to be loving, forgiving, and welcoming to the outcast. 

            But, Jesus is the same God, of the same substance (hence we use the term in our Creed consubstantial) as God the Father.  They are distinct Divine Persons, but the same deity.  And we cannot separate the two into different revelations, as if the Old Testament is opposed to the New Testament.  Rather, the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old Testament.  So what do we do with these two readings?

            In my meditation on these Scriptures, I found that leprosy could be interpreted allegorically to mean not so much a physical illness, but a spiritual illness.  And in general, we can refer to the illnesses of the soul as sin.  So what we’re really working with is the way God treats sin.

            God was slowly teaching His people, the Chosen People, about who He is, and how the world works.  As He taught them about leprosy, and how it distances people from the community, we can easily see how this is also true of sin.  One of the effects of sin is that it damages or ruptures our relationship with God and our relationship with each other, including even the rest of the created world.  Remember that all the world was in harmony in the Garden of Eden, but after Adam and Eve sinned, the whole created order was ruined, and even the plants stopped bearing fruit easily for our first parents, the animals, rather than being obedient and docile to them, started to either run away or to attack them, and even Adam and Eve started to desire each other not in accord with Divine Law, and so had to cover their nakedness.  Certainly, all was not totally ruined.  Adam and Eve were still carrying in them the image of God, but that image had been marred, and all creation felt the effects of the original sin.

            Jesus, as the full revelation of the Father, does not deny that sin damages or ruptures the relationship with God and with the community, but completes the message that God wanted to communicate, that He is also the one who can heal sin.  Yes, sin injures us and causes separation, but if we come to the Lord, then He heals us of our sins and restores us to a right relationship with God and with each other.  Sin does not get the last word, but grace does. 

            These two passages are not used to explain the Catholic teaching on the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but read allegorically, it can help us to understand that sacrament.  Because sin damages our relationship with God and with each other, we need someone who can represent both God and the community, and to heal what has been injured.  And so the priest, acting in the Person of Christ the Head, speaks for Jesus in the words of absolution.  And the priest, also because he is able to act in the Person of Christ the Head, who is Head of His Body, the Church, acts in the Person of the Church to welcome the sinner back to communion with each other. 

            The Good News is that God has shown us the effects of sin: damaging our relationship with God and with the community in the Book of Leviticus.  But He does not leave us to be forever separated.  In the Person of Jesus, God reveals that the separation does not have to be forever.  If we come to Jesus, through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we can be forgiven our sins and returned to a right relationship not only with God, but also with each other.  May we utilize this great sacrament of God’s love and forgiveness regularly, especially in the approaching season of Lent, and thank God that He has given us the divine remedy for the spiritual illnesses the plague us. 

In the bulletin this weekend is last week’s response from Bishop Boyea to the Health and Human Services mandate.  This past Friday, the Administration proposed a compromise that it felt would address the major issues with which not only Catholics, but also Evangelicals and members of the Jewish community and others have grave concerns.  To this proposed compromise the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops replied:

“[The compromise] continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions…The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for the HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.

We will therefore continue—with no less vigor, no less sense of urgency—our efforts to correct this problem through the other two branches of government…and we renew our call to the Catholic faithful, and to all our fellow Americans, to join together in this effort to protect religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all.”

Again, this is not a partisan issue: this is an issue of the Federal government, even in this new proposal, being allowed to force institutions and individual citizens to violate their consciences.  As Catholic Americans, regardless of which party we support, we should work hard to make sure that the government can never tell any institution or person: Catholic, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or any person of faith to do something which is contrary to that institution’s or person’s faith.