Bars Low and High

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time–Rite of Sending
    Do the red and say the black.  When it comes to the sacraments, that’s what the Church asks priests and deacons to do.  The red refers to the rubrics, the words literally written in red type-face, that say what to do.  The black refers to the words that the minister should say.  When the priest or the deacon does the red and says the black, we know that God makes the sacrament take place.  So, for example, if the priest, while pouring water over the head, says the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the person truly has received baptism.  If the priest changes the words, or uses a different liquid other than water, the sacrament didn’t take place.
    But that’s a pretty low bar.  Sometimes a priest will say, “As long as I do the red and say the black, I know I’m good.”  But there’s so much more to exercising ministry well than just doing the minimum.  A priest who deeply loves Jesus and wants to communicate that saving, sacramental grace will do more than just the least required.  I could say in a monotonous and quick-paced voice, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” and people’s faith that this person has just become a child of God and a member of the Church and had original sin washed away would not increase.  Do we really want our celebrations of the sacraments, especially by those ordained to act with the power of Christ, just to be the minimum?

    You may wonder right now what that has to do with you?  I’m not, after all, preaching to a seminary crowd, even if we have future priests in the pews.  But in our Gospel, Jesus, the new Moses, gives a new law that goes beyond the bare minimum and actually helps support the conversion to which God calls all His children.  The Ten Commandments are good and help us to lead a good life.  But they’re more of the minimum, not the fullness of living as a child of God.
    Not many, if any, of us have murdered someone, which the fifth commandment prohibits.  I can honestly say, as I’m sure many of you can, that I have not even planned on how to murder someone because I wanted them dead.  I have not even planned on getting a room with a woman of ill-repute to commit adultery.  I have never considered putting my hand on a Bible to make God as my witness and then lying.  So I, and probably many of you, have managed to reach the low bar of not breaking those three commandments.
    But how many times have we harbored serious anger in our hearts?  How many times have we wished ill on another person because of some wrong they have done to us?  Or in what ways have we used another person, even if only in our minds, to give us some sexual gratification?  How many times have we wished that we could get away with adultery without suffering any consequences?  How many times have we lingered on a image, be it in person or online, of a scantily clad member of the opposite sex?  Or when are the occasions where we “bend” the truth, or convince ourselves that it’s only a white lie and it won’t hurt that many people?  Or when do we make the mental calculation that a small lie will not hurt someone else’s feelings?
    What Christ reveals to us today is that He calls us not only to do the right things, but to go deeper and make sure our hearts really belong to Him.  If we truly wish to follow Him, we have to allow His grace to transform every part of our lives: not just our external actions, but even the desires of our hearts.  Some transformation of the world would certainly happen if no one murdered another, or committed adultery with another, or swore to God and lied.  But imagine how much better life would be if we didn’t give room for rage and vengeance, and didn’t use others at all as objects of our lust, or we knew that a person’s word meant clearly what was said.  As Louis Armstrong sang, “What a wonderful world”!
    My dear catechumens: today you will be sent, in a manner of speaking, to the Rite of Election.  Your formation up to now has included how Catholics are to live, what they are to do and what they are not to do.  But you hopefully have been growing more and more in love with God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  And during these next weeks, especially during the Scrutinies during Lent, we will ask God to draw you even closer to Him, and transform your hearts.  While a major change will occur at your baptism, where God will wash away all your sins, you, like all of us, will need to continue to work on allowing God’s grace to transform our hearts and desires throughout the rest of your life.  
    But God promises, both to you and to all of us, to give us what we need to meet, not just the low bar, but even the higher bar of Christian perfection.  God promises, especially through our worthy reception of Holy Communion, to make us disciples not only on the outside, but on the inside, where our actions begin.  Especially through our upcoming Lenten observances, may God help us to live as a people transformed from death to life, from darkness to light, from sin to holiness, so that we can be effective witnesses of the power of the Gospel and transform this world, by the power of God’s grace, to be the place He originally created it to be. 

American Pie, the Letter, and the Spirit

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Don McLean produced a hit 8 minutes and 42 seconds long called “American Pie.”  And while most red-blooded Americans know the song, and maybe have even sung it at a karaoke bar, I imagine that as generations get further and further from its release in 1971, fewer and fewer people know that the song, which is mostly upbeat, speaks about the loss of innocence in America, beginning with the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper in 1959.  
    As we heard the Gospel today, we heard about the Pharisee who stood as far removed from the Law of Moses as many young people do today from “American Pie.”  The Pharisee knew the words.  He knew the right answer that the two greatest laws to uphold included the love of God with all of one’s self and the love of neighbor as oneself.  But he didn’t know the deeper meaning.  

    And so Christ has to give him a parable to talk about love of neighbor and how love of neighbor is demonstrated.  The Samaritan, the one outside the law, actually demonstrated love of neighbor, rather that the priest or the Levite.  Those who should have known the law the best, and certainly its deeper meaning, practiced the law the least, and become the bad guys in the parable.  The one who had no direct access to the law, because his people had abandoned the law when they intermarried with the local pagans, lived the law of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, even sacrificing his own money to care for the robbery and assault and battery victim, though the neighbor in this case was a stranger.
    There can be a challenge for us as Catholics, and Catholics probably better educated that in any century before.  If you want to know what the Church teaches on any issue, simply Google it.  I understand there’s even a Catholic AI that can help synthesize the Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church, and Magisterial documents to answer questions.  But are we like the Pharisee, who knows the right answer, but lack the gift of understanding to know how to put that knowledge into practice?  
    Many will refer to the practice and the deeper reality of what God has revealed as the spirit.  We hear that dichotomy today from the epistle between the spirit and the letter.  The spirit gives life, while the letter kills.  Sometimes this dichotomy is used to advance things which are patently contrary to the letter by placing it under the spirit of the law.  Some will say, for example, that while St. Paul clearly teaches that those who obstinately practice homosexual actions cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven (and notice that the actions separate us from God, not necessarily the disordered affection), that because our Lord taught us to love people, we cannot say that homosexual activity is wrong, because St. Paul was referring to the letter of the law, while the desire to let people love whomever they want to love (to use their phrase, not our understanding of true love) is part of the spirit of the law.
    But, that’s like saying that we can’t say adultery is wrong simply because Christ loves the person who commits that sin against the sixth commandment, and would never want to condemn that person.  Christ doesn’t want to condemn that person, but that person does have to choose the good that God has revealed, which is part and parcel of how God made us.  
    The spirit of the law does not mean anything goes.  But it does mean we have to look more deeply than the surface.  There’s a difference between looking beyond and looking more deeply.  To look beyond means that we ignore what we have received.  To look more deeply means to investigate how what we have received can be more fully understood.  It is the difference between changing a teaching (looking beyond) and legitimate development of doctrine (looking more deeply).  
    I think one good example of this is the more nuanced teaching of the Church on suicide.  The Church has taught, and in some cases will always teach, that taking one’s own life means committing a grave sin.  God clearly states in the Scriptures that He is the author of life, and the only one who can legitimately end an innocent life (though sometimes people have to end lives in the interest of defense of self, family, friends, or country without sin).  However, we have come to understand the complexity of a human mind that thinks that the best way to ease the psychological pain that he or she undergoes is to take his or her own life.  In some cases, and really the full knowledge of what is going on only God knows, a person is not free to make a choice because of chemical imbalances in the brain.  And, as we know, if a person cannot freely choose an action, no matter how grave it is, it cannot be a mortal sin.  So when a person commits suicide, unless we know it was made with a clear mind, we have some doubt as to how culpable that person was for an objectively evil action.  
    This is also what makes assisted suicide, also known as euthanasia, so horrible.  If people of any age feel that their lives have no value (and often times society tells them they have no purpose if they can’t be fully active or somehow benefit society), they are vulnerable to depression and rejection, and a doctor or nurse who comes to them to help them kill themselves takes advantage of that depression in an action which does not admit, generally, of repentance because of its finality; once completed you don’t get a do-over.  On the one hand, the Church reminds us that if we undergo euthanasia or assisted suicide and we know what we’re doing, we don’t know how that person could go to heaven, and that person would be denied anointing of the sick beforehand, and a Catholic funeral afterwards.  However, only God knows fully the mind, and so we also need to not presume omniscience and have some understanding for a person who may have dealt with mental illness in some form while trying to make the decision, especially if it was more encouraged by those who swore an oath to do no harm.
    The face value of the law and the commandments is not always the final word.  We don’t go beyond what God has revealed for our moral life, as if there are no moral absolutes or as if God’s teaching always changes with cultural adaptations.  However, we do need to go deeper to better understand the full implications of what God has revealed of how we are to love our neighbor and how we are to love God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Sweat the Small Stuff

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

   “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”  We’ve probably heard that phrase a time or two.  And in some cases it can be quite good advice.  One can get so focused on little things that you miss the bigger things of life.  Or, to use another cliché, “you can’t see the forest from the trees.”  
    But when it comes to our life in Christ, when it comes to following Jesus, that’s not the message we hear today.  We are still advised to take care of the big issues, e.g. murder, adultery, divorce, and false oaths, but Jesus encourages us to go deeper, to look to the smaller roots that lead to those bigger problems.
    Because those big ones can be easy (at least to some or most) to keep.  Most people are not going to murder another person.  Most married couples do not cheat on their spouse.  Most people do not “swear to God” and then do not follow through.  And if that’s all we think that following Jesus is about, then we probably think we’re pretty good.  Indeed, many have come to think that as long as they’re not a horrible sinner, then they’re probably going straight to heaven after death.  It’s a nice wish, but not one that is in line with the Gospel.
    Jesus reminds us that the small stuff is precisely where the big stuff begins.  If you have enough trees to do get a forest.  In following Jesus, it does not suffice not to be an egregious sinner.  Jesus desires us to have a change of heart.  In Church language we use the Greek word metanoia.  In fact, what we translate as repent, often comes from that Greek word “metanoia,” which could also be translated, “change your hearts.”  
    And a heart that is changed to be more like Jesus is a heart that recognizes how those smaller desires in our hearts lead to action.  Every action comes from a desire, really, but those big sins we see in seminal form by smaller sins and desires that stem from the heart.
    Very few, if any, wake up one day and say, “You know what?  I haven’t murdered anyone lately.  I think I’ll give that a try!”  No, it starts with that person that we find annoying, and an anger with that person in our heart.  It continues with us calling others names, insulting them, giving them the middle finger.  It builds to desiring evil for another person whom we do not like, hoping that some bad happens to them so that they’re taught a lesson.  Those may not always lead to murder, to killing an innocent human being, but every homicide started many steps back with anger in the heart.
    Very few, if any, wake up one day and say, “I haven’t cheated on my spouse” or “I haven’t messed around with my girlfriend” (ladies, you can replace this and later examples with the male counterpart) and then proceed to be unfaithful and unchaste.  It starts with the song we hear on Spotify, or the Netflix drama we watch.  It continues with that longer look we take of the attractive woman at work or in class, or the racy adds we linger on that pop-up on the Internet.  It builds through watching pornography, or being alone in a room with a girlfriend when no one else is home, never intending to cross that line, but hoping to get as close to that line as possible.  
    When our desires and our hearts are rightly ordered, then the big stuff never enters our mind.  When our desires and our hearts run wild, and follow any desire they have for small things, it is much easier to give into bigger evils.  Again, smaller evils don’t necessarily lead to bigger evils, but even those small evils show that God is not number one, which means that we’re not ready for heaven, where God is all in all.  
    Jesus says later in the Gospel according to St. Matthew that, “‘the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.’”  Following Jesus is not for sissies or wimps or whatever other word you want to use.  Following Jesus means fighting battles day in and day out.  It is not for the faint of heart.  Following Jesus means we fight those small disordered desires in our hearts because even in themselves acting on those small disordered desires means that we’re pulling away from God.  If someone were trying to take our life, we would fight with all we had, using any means necessary to preserve it.  God wants us to use the same, all-out mentality when it comes to our eternal salvation, to eternal life.  Fight with everything we have to deny ourselves those little sins that we often overlook.
    The good news is that, just as we should sweat the small stuff, doing small things for Christ also can help us beyond what we imagine.  Just as small disordered desires lead us away from God, and can lead to much greater sins, so small acts of fidelity to God can build up to greater witness that God is number one in our life.  That excuse for the person who cut us off on the road, thinking that the person may be going to a dying family member rather than cursing them out; that change of the channel when something lewd comes on TV, or going to a different page when the Internet brings us a scantily clad member of the opposite sex; that act of kindness towards a person for whom we do not particularly care; the putting of a filter on the phone or the choosing of an accountability partner who helps us avoid pornographic sites; all those things help change our heart for the better, and make us better disciples of Christ.
    The good news is also that we don’t have to fight alone.  No good, whether small or great, is possible without the grace of Christ leading us there, accompanying us through it, and completing it.  And God showers down his grace like rain at all moments of our life so that we can say no to evil and yes to good.  Pay attention to the small desires of the heart.  Keep what is good, reject what is evil, so that, by God’s grace, we will be as prepared as we can be for our judgment, and hopefully be welcomed into eternal life in heaven.  

The Spirit of the Law

Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Some, or maybe many of you, have heard that I have applied to become the chaplain of the Flint Post of the Michigan State Police.  I’m almost done with the process and will know by the middle of March whether I have been approved or not.  In the mean time, hoping that I am approved, and trying to get to know the troopers, I have been doing ride-alongs with them.  Many people who have experiences with law enforcement have negative experiences with them, because they have been caught doing something wrong.  But in my ride-alongs, I have been extremely impressed with the mercy of the troopers, and how often people get only a warning.  In fact, on one ride-along, a trooper asked me (and he said, “Be honest,”), “Do you think I should be doing anything differently?”  I told him that, if I were in his shoes, I probably would have given out more tickets and given fewer warnings.  He chuckled.

Besides what I see as a generally antagonistic culture when it comes to law enforcement (i.e., the cops are always wrong, they use way too much force all the time, they’re all racist, they’re horrible human beings, etc.), we are also in a culture that does not value the law.  Many people, if not we ourselves, feel like the rules were made to be broken, and that rules get in the way, rather than help us.  

So Jesus’ words today might be hard to swallow.  After all, Jesus, so we hear, wasn’t about laws and rules!  That’s why he was so tough on the Pharisees and the scribes!  But what did Jesus say today?  “‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.  I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law.’”  It would be hard to argue the whole “spirit of the law” theory while quoting these words.

But Jesus was a spirit of the law guy.  Now, the spirit of the law does not mean undoing the law.  So often that’s what we want it to mean: the spirit of the law means we don’t have to follow the real law.  But as Jesus goes beyond the letter of the law (Thou shalt not kill…, thou shalt not commit adultery…, whoever divorces his wife…, do not take a false oath…), He seems to make things stricter, not looser.  

As a confessor, I’m not sure I have ever had someone say, “Yeah, I killed somebody.”  But I do often hear anger and hatred and vengeance of the heart.  But Jesus goes beyond simply doing bodily harm.  He goes to the heart of the issue, which is, pardon the earlier pun, the heart.  

The letter of the law says that I cannot take an innocent life.  If we consider how many people are on earth, and how many of them ever actually murder someone (murder being the word we use for the taking of an innocent life), that percentage is probably pretty low.  But how many of us have wanted to do someone serious harm because they wronged us?  How many of us have held something against another person in hatred and vengeance?  That’s probably a much larger percentage.  But Jesus, the new Moses, the new Lawgiver, tells us that our offering here at Mass is only acceptable if we have been reconciled with those with whom we have issues.  If there is a large separation between us and another person, or us and God, we should go to confession, receive forgiveness of sins, and only then present ourselves for Holy Communion.

The letter of the law says that we can’t have marital relations with a person who is not our spouse or who is married to another.  Jesus reminds us that the infidelity or unchastity does not begin with the exterior parts of our body, but begins in our hearts and in our minds.

The teaching on divorce might seem very difficult.  After all, Jesus makes it very clear that we cannot divorce and remarry without committing adultery, unless the marriage is unlawful.  This is the passage that the Church points to in what is commonly referred to as the annulment process.  The Church examines the validity, or lawfulness, of the marriage.  But until the Church declares that bond unlawful, each spouse is bound to live a life free of sexual relations with someone other than their spouse.  

Whenever Jesus gives us a law, it is meant to guide us to lead happy lives.  And in my ride-alongs with the Michigan State Police, I can tell you that, outside traffic stops, the difficult situations into which the troopers are called began earlier than when 911 was called: with anger or lust in the heart; with distrust; or with any other issue.  The calls we responded to were simply the outer manifestations of interior problems that had been festering for some time.  

Today we are invited to listen to the words of Jesus.  To paraphrase our first reading from Sirach, if we follow the words of Jesus, we will be happy and be in a right relationship with God.  Before us are the choices between good and evil, life and death.  Choose the life-giving words of Jesus.  

Don't Look Back!

Fifth Sunday of Lent

            One of the hardest things to do when you’re running a sprint in track is not to look back to see who is coming up behind you.  No matter whether you’re first and you want to see if anyone is gaining on you, or you just don’t want to be last, as you’re running those last meters, you want to know if you’re going to win, or if you need to push it harder.  Ironically, for most people who look back, they seal their fate and the other person often passes them, because looking back slows us down.

            Isaiah talks about it in our first reading.  He says for the Lord, “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!”  God tells the Israelites not to dwell on what led them into exile (their idolatry, their trust in foreign nations), but to look ahead and see the good that God wants them to accomplish.

St. Paul talks about that in our second reading today: “forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”  St. Paul certainly had stuff that he could have dwelt on in his past.  He was a zealous Pharisee; he arrested men, women, and children for following Jesus; he condoned the stoning of Stephen.  But, while he did not forget his past, he didn’t keep looking back to it to weigh him down.  He recognized he was the least of the apostles because he had persecuted the Church of God, but he used that to propel his missionary activity, and is still the greatest missionary the world has ever known.

            We see it in our Gospel passage today.  Jesus doesn’t ignore the woman’s past.  He doesn’t condone the fact that she was caught in adultery.  But He forgives her, and tells her to move on, to “‘Go, and…do not sin any more.’”  He does not want her past to determine her future, unlike the scribes and Pharisees, who want to end her future because of her past. 

            When we focus too much on our past, we lose our future, just like the sprinter who can lose the race because he looks behind him.  We all have a past, we all have things that we wish we would not have done: not just mistakes or accidents, but choices that we have made that we should not have.  It’s called being human.  Look at St. Peter: he denied that he even knew Jesus.  But he didn’t stay there.  He repented, he wept for his sins, and he reaffirmed his love for Jesus.  Look at St. Mary Magdalene: she had seven demons that Jesus had to cast out of her.  We don’t know exactly how they got there, but it wasn’t a pleasant past.  But she didn’t stay stuck on the fact that she had seven demons, she followed Jesus, even to the cross when all but one of the other apostles abandoned Jesus, and was able to be the first to see the risen Christ.  And that’s just the beginning!  Through the millennia, there have been saints who had serious sins in their past.  But they, like St. Paul, forgot what was behind them, and continued their pursuit towards the goal of union with God forever in heaven.

            “But Fr. Anthony, you don’t know what I’ve done!”  Or, “Maybe I haven’t done any one thing that was really bad, but I’ve got a whole lifetime of little bad things that sure add up!”  Please!  Don’t give your sins that power.  None of them are so heinous as to be unforgiveable.  Bring them to the Lord and let Him nail those sins to the wood of the cross so that new life can come from our death to sin and life in Christ.  What happens when we do give our sins that power, when we remain stuck in the past, is what happened to Judas: despair and death.  Judas could not turn away from his past and turn towards the Lord, and so could not receive the forgiveness that he wanted and needed.

            Now, in not looking back, it certainly does not mean that we do not learn from our past sins.  God wanted Israel to look ahead to the future, to see the blessings of fidelity to God, but He certainly didn’t want them to slip back into their old sins.  St. Paul continued to run the race and look ahead to the prize of salvation, but he didn’t think that he could just go back to being a Pharisee and persecutor of the Church because he had been forgiven.  And Jesus exhorted the woman not to be adulterous in the future.  Not looking back doesn’t mean that we forgo true conversion and treat our sins as if they do not offend God.  They do offend God, and harm whom we are called to be.  But they are not more powerful than God, and God can write straight even with crooked lines. 

            The same happens in reconciliation.  We don’t pretend we haven’t done anything wrong.  Rather, we confess our sins, acknowledging how we have turned away from the Lord, and then He forgives us and urges us to press on towards Him and the road to salvation, that straight and narrow road that Jesus spoke of in the Gospel.  But just as we don’t pretend we haven’t sinned, we also don’t let our sins bog us down afterwards, because God has forgiven them.

            Don’t be the sprinter who loses the race because you looked back and were overtaken by the past.  Win the race by learning from past sins and pressing onwards toward God, keeping Him always before your eyes.

My Favorite Sacrament

Fourth Sunday of Lent

            When people ask me what my favorite sacrament is, I don’t think they’re generally surprised to hear me say the Eucharist.  Vatican II teaches us that the Eucharist is meant to be the source and summit of Christian life, the beginning of our life in Christ, whence we get the strength to live as disciples, and the goal of the Christian life, that we have intimate communion with God.  For priests even more so, the Eucharist is the key to the priesthood, as the priest acts in the person of Christ the Head, offering himself to the Father represented by the bread and the wine which become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

            I think they are more surprised when I say that there is another sacrament that is tied for first with the Eucharist, and that sacrament is Reconciliation.  But it’s true.  While I was, in some ways, prepared for the joy of celebrating the Mass and bringing about, in an unbloody manner, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross through the Eucharist, I have to say I was not prepared for what a gift celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation would be.

            At this point I have to make a disclaimer: I don’t love to celebrate Reconciliation as a confessor because I get to hear all your dirty little secrets of the things you’ve done wrong.  What I love is the fact that I get to take part in an intimate moment between the penitent and God and get to grant that penitent the forgiveness of their sins in the name of Christ, and bring them back to the road to heaven.  It is an experience of humility (because it takes true humility to tell God, not that we have made a mistake, but that we freely chose to go against His will) and an experience of love.  I treasure the “ministry of reconciliation” as St. Paul says in our second reading, that God has entrusted to me.  I am in awe of the fact that, though I continue to need to confess my sins (being a priest doesn’t mean that I suddenly stop sinning), God has chosen me to grant that forgiveness to His beloved sons and daughters so that they can, once more, be prepared for heaven.

            Our Gospel passage is all too familiar to us today.  We likely hear it every year, at least once.  But it is so powerful, if we let it speak to us!  We can put ourselves in the place of the prodigal son, the son who wastes his inheritance on dissipate living, and then who goes broke, and has to work as a swineherd (one of the worst jobs that a Jew could have), and would love just to eat the pigs’ food.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son who recognizes that he needs to return to the Father, if for no other reason than just to work as a slave so that he can eat.  And we can put ourselves in the place of the son who is embraced by the Father who has run out to meet him.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son, because that is what happens in reconciliation.

            “All men have sinned,” says St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, “and are deprived of the glory of God.”  We all tell God that we know better, that we’d rather control our own lives and do our own thing.  It’s the ancient sin of pride, which leads to so many other sins.  We squander the inheritance of grace that we received in baptism, when we were made sons and daughters in the Son of God.  And when we do that, we squander it quickly, and we find that we are living a trashy life, amidst slops that are meant for the pigs.  But God does not abandon us.  He gives us grace, we use the term prevenient grace, to lead us back to Him, to consider that the “threshold of the house of God” is better than the “tents of the wicked,” as Psalm 84 says.  Even just being close to union is God is better than living with evil.  And so we start on our way back.  But before we can even get out the words of our apology, to try to argue our case for being a slave rather than the heir that we were, the Father embraces us and says to us

“Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.  Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.”

God doesn’t rub in our face the wrong we have done, but celebrates that we have returned to our Father’s house, and that we are back to life in grace.

            There is nothing quite like the experience of welcoming someone back to the love of God in reconciliation.  Often, those who have been away from the Church for some time or those who feel the heavy weight of sin are brought to tears.  I am not ashamed to say that from time to time I am brought to tears as the love of God flows through me and I rejoice in the fact that the penitent was lost and now is found, was dead and is now alive by the grace of God.

            I want to invite each of you today, whether it’s been a week or a lifetime, to come experience this great sacrament of God’s mercy, and to start a habit of making regular confessions.  There’s no sin that can permanently keep you from the love of God, unless you give that sin that power.  God will forgive all sins, if we come to Him in sorrow, sincerely at least wanting to stop.  Whether it’s lying; impatience; stealing; adultery; viewing pornography and the sin that often accompanies it; sex outside of marriage; contracepting; murder; abortion; missing Mass; pride; or whatever other sins we may struggle with, God wants to put a robe of love around you and put the ring that signifies your place in God’s household on your finger.  Maybe it’s only been a few days since you last went to confession.  Maybe it’s been forty years since you last went to confession.  In either case, we priests are glad to give you the assurance of God’s mercy.  We have a great confession schedule between St. Thomas and St. John, and we even have a communal penance service with individual confession & absolution next Sunday, 17 March at 2 p.m. at St. Thomas in case you want to go to a priest from out of town (though recall that we can’t tell anyone else your sins, nor can we treat you any differently based upon your confession).  Don’t stay stuck in the pigs’ slop.  Come back to the Father’s house.  Let God love you and forgive you.  “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”

From the Heart

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            In case there are any guys out there who are not otherwise prepared and have not gotten flowers or made reservations for dinner, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.  It’s a day that we focus, in one sense on love, but in another sense, on the heart.  From the very earliest days that we celebrate this holiday in school, hearts are important to this day.  We make hearts out of red paper and doilies.  We might give those little card-stock Valentine’s Day cards that say, “You’re My Valentine” with little hearts on it.  We might even give out Sweethearts candy with cute sayings like, “Be mine” or “True Love.” 

            The heart is also important in our Gospel today.  This passage is part of the Sermon on the Mount, the same place where Jesus gave us the Beatitudes, like “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  At this point, Jesus gives us a law, not new, but the fulfillment of the Law that God gave to the Israelites on Mount Sinai.  This fulfillment of the law does not abolish the old, but as Jesus says, fulfills it.

            And this law has a lot to do with the heart.  Whereas in the Law given on Mount Sinai, certain acts were condemned, like murder and adultery, Jesus tells us that those acts stem from something much deeper.  They stem from the heart.

            Because long before the act of murder takes place, there is a hatred that stems from the heart.  And so, in the Kingdom of God, where all people live as God desires, not only murder must not happen, but even unrighteous anger, so that one person no longer says to another, “raqa,” which means in Aramaic, “empty-headed”; we might translate it colloquially as, “moron.”  If we are harboring a grudge against another who has wronged us, or even if someone has done nothing to us but we still harbor hatred towards them, then we are not living according to the Kingdom, and we might even be endangering our place in that kingdom. 

            The same goes for adultery.  Long before a person has sex with a person who is married to another, the desire to do so is in the heart.  So, Jesus tells us, using a man as an example (ladies, don’t feel that you’re off the hook when it comes to looking at men), when a man looks at a woman with lust, he “‘has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’”  The objectifying of another person as an object of sexual pleasure starts the person down a path which could lead to the sin of adultery, and begins not when the couple “hooks up,” but when the desires are unchecked in the heart.  Again, this is not what God intended for the human heart, and already shows a departure from the way that life is supposed to be in the Kingdom.  The human person is never an object to fulfill a need, but is a subject with inestimable dignity because he or she was created in the image and likeness of God.  This is why, as shocking as the teaching is, soon-to-be-Blessed Pope John Paul II could say that the sin of lust could occur even with a married couple, if one or both of the spouses was simply looking at or using the other spouse as an object of pleasure.

            This can seem really hard.  The bar is certainly set very high for us.  But, by the grace of God, this is possible.  And the payoff is literally “out of this world!”  As our first reading tells us, “If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; [God] has set before you fire and water…life and death, good and evil, whichever [a person] chooses shall be given him.” 

            By ourselves we cannot keep the fulfillment of the Law that Jesus gives us.  There are too many times when we are drawn to anger: when someone cuts us off while driving; when a co-worker gossips about us; when a professor gives us a lower grade than we believe we deserve on an exam, paper, or project.  It is in these moments, and all those when we feel the onset of deep anger and hatred that we need to turn to the Lawgiver Himself, Jesus, and ask for his grace that we might be able to have His peace and cast out that hatred from our hearts so that it does not poison us and lead to other hateful acts.

            There are too many times in our very sensual culture when we are exposed to images of a human person with barely a fig-leaf on; when a salacious add pops up on the computer; when internet pornography is just a click away; when a movie adds a steamy sex scene.  It is in these moments that we need to turn to Jesus to ask Him for His grace to keep our hearts and minds pure so that we do not dwell on those thoughts and passions, and then have those passions develop into actions with others or by oneself. 

            The great news, too, is that if we should fall in a major way with anger or with lust, we have a loving God who will welcome us back if we are truly sorry and will forgive our sins through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  That even if we break the fulfillment of the Law that Jesus gives us, because of His death and resurrection, we can come back into a good relationship with the Lawgiver, against whom we have sinned. 

Part of the way we express our hearts at the Mass is by how we greet each other.  In November, the greeting dialogues will change a little, but will remain, as they are now, a way of expressing the peace that we need to have before offering our gift at the altar of God.  As the priest, the person who acts in persona Christi capitis, in the person of Christ the Head, I offer you in the name of Christ, God, in whose name Jesus came, as I will say, “The Lord be with you.”  No change there.  Or, from time to time, expanding on what I am giving you as I greet you in the name of Christ, I might say, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all,” expressing the gift of the Trinity, based upon 2 Corinthians 13:13.  Not much different.  But, your response will change slightly, reflecting the words of 2 Timothy 4:22, and will be, “And with your spirit.”  All of this is simply to prepare our hearts to receive the Word of God and the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

Christ has set the bar very high.  He has commanded us examine our hearts to see where our love truly is.  But if our hearts are configured to Jesus’ heart, then we know that we have eternal life waiting for us.  Let us lift up our hearts to the Lord, that our hearts will lead us to act justly and lovingly towards others, and so fulfill the Law that Christ has given us.