Flirting with Death

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

A trail at Zion National Park

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In my visits to National Parks, which are a great treasure of our country, there have been some, like Zion National Park, where you can hike up high mountains and use trails that seemingly climb to the heavens.  Now, when I say trails, I don’t mean nice, paved, even trails.  These are usually parts of a mountain, sometimes with rudimentary railings, but often not, with sharp drop-offs if one were to lose his or her balance.  Some more adventurous folk like to get right to the edge.  As for me, I try to stay as far away from the edge as possible, because I definitely have a fear of losing my balance and falling to my death.
    While I, and many others who have a fear of heights, may not enjoy the idea of flirting with death by falling off a path, how many others enjoy flirting with the death that comes from sin.  St. Paul says it clearly enough: “The wages of sin is death.”  And even if the English grammar doesn’t hit our ears quite right (wages, though it sounds plural, is a singular idea, and so yields a verb in the singular), the message is clear enough: do you want to die?  Then sin!  Sin is like floating one foot over the edge of the gorge with nothing to hang on to in case you fall.  

    It can be hard to take sin so seriously, especially with such ready access to the Sacrament of Penance at this parish.  If I sin, then I go to confession.  And that is a good rule to follow.  We rightly focus on the mercy of God, because God, through Christ, has revealed the Father’s great love for us, a love which never wants us to be separated from Him, and a love which will be wasteful in mercy and look foolish just to reconcile us to Him.  
    But while not giving sin more power than God’s mercy and grace, we do also need to recognize the horror of sin.  And, our appreciation for the mercy of God increases with our appreciation of just what we deserve when we sin.  If I don’t think that sin makes all that big of a difference, then God’s mercy also doesn’t mean as much.  But if I know that the wages of sin is death, that I deserve death every time I sin, then when I do confess my sins and when God reconciles me to Himself through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, I recognize just what an amazing thing God has done.
    If we forget just how awfully sin takes a toll, then we need only look at a crucifix.  And, if we really want to understand crucifixion, then a Spanish crucifix is probably the best, as they are the most gruesome depictions of the death of Christ, rather than the very placid depictions we are used to seeing in bronze, silver, or gold.  Think of the excruciating (literally, from the Latin, from the cross) pain of having nails hammered into your hands and feet.  No matter where exactly the nails would have entered, they would have hurt.  Think of the struggle just to breathe, which is the way most died from crucifixion, as your lungs slowly filled with fluid and you struggled just to take a quick breath, all the while your body seeking any way to stay alive, but without any way to do so.  Add to that the shame of being totally naked before all, and we begin to get the idea of how terrible undergoing crucifixion was.  
    That, the crucifixion, was the wages the of sin.  No just sin up to the time of Christ.  Not just sin at the time of Christ.  But all sin, from all time, nailed to the cross and carried upon the shoulders of the spotless Lamb of God.  That was the price for our salvation.
    But the Apostle doesn’t end with “the wages of sin is death.”  He continues: “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Death does not get the last say, though we deserve it.  We don’t have to fear falling off the side of a steep cliff.  God remains vigilant, ready to grab us and pull us back to safety if we but call upon His Name.  Earlier in this epistle, St. Paul reminds us that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.  God’s mercy and grace are infinitely more powerful than our sins.  It’s as much a competition as my legos trying to fight me.  
    But it’s still good to keep in our mind that sin yields death.  Because the Church teaches us that if a person were to die in a state of mortal sin, we do not know how that person could go to heaven.  When we choose separation from God who is the source of life, we choose separation from eternal life.  It’s not that God sends us anywhere, as much as we choose by our actions if we want death or if we want life.  God will lovingly take us back if we desire, but if we don’t, God loves us enough to respect our misuse of free will, because true love never forces itself on another.  
    Yes, God is merciful.  If we ask for God’s mercy then He will grant it to us.  But if we choose sin, then we choose death.  And if we choose death, no matter how attractive it looks at the time, we will get death, eternal death.  Do not presume that just because we can say, “Lord, Lord,” we will go to heaven.  But do not despair of God’s mercy, as long as you seek to do the will of God the Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.   

Ordo Amoris

Quinquagesima
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I try to communicate accurately as much as I can, though I do sometimes err.  As a third order Dominican, the truth occupies a special place in my life and in my interactions with others.  When I make decisions, I try to have all relevant information that I can, to help me arrive at the right decision for a particular circumstance.  The more accurate information I have, the better decisions I can make, whether for the immediate present moment or even for the future.
    But truth, while greatly important, should not occupy the highest priority in our life.  St. Paul tells us that love, or charity (that type of love that reflects the love of God) is what is most important.  God could have given you special charisms, like speaking in tongues or prophecy.  You could know everything.  Your faith could be so strong that you, as our Lord said, move mountains or trees.  You could be the most generous person alive, giving away all that you have to the poor.  You could even offer up your body.  But if you do not love, all of that counts for nothing.
    What a good gut check!  How easy we can find it to do the right things.  We check off the lists of the precepts the Church asks us to follow: we go to Mass; we give money to support the parish; we pray daily; we abstain from meat on Fridays or do some other penance.  But even if we do all those things, if we do them without love, there is no merit for us.  All our daily deeds are like dehydrated food.  They have what they need to sustain us, but we need the water of love to rehydrate the food and make it edible once more.
    What many Catholics struggle with today is understanding what love is.  So many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, do not understand love.  They reduce love to an emotion or a desire.  They make non-sensical statements like “love is love.”  Or they react like children who want candy from the check-out line and say that if we really loved them, we would let them do whatever they wanted.  But that’s not how St. Paul describes love.  Love doesn’t seek after itself.  If I do not display patience with another, I’m not loving that person.  If I’m only looking out for myself, I’m not loving.  If my desires are perverse and contrary to nature, I do not desire love.

    Recently, our Vice President mentioned a teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas: the ordo amoris or order of love.  He referenced it in regards to the ongoing immigration debate.  I’m going to side-step the immigration debate, and simply focus on the ordo amoris, which will hopefully help you decide how best to implement what is most loving.  If you want the actual and full treatment from St. Thomas Aquinas, you can go to the Summa Theologiae, the Second Part of the Second Part, Question 26.
    The general order of love is: God, self, neighbor.  We then further delineate neighbor into family, city, country, and world.  We should love God above all else.  We owe everything to God as our Creator, and the first commandment our Lord gives us is to love God with all of who we are (and He cites the Book of Deuteronomy).  The second law is that we should love our neighbor as ourself.  But to love our neighbor as ourself, we have to love ourself first.  Love of self can be sacrificed for a higher good, the love of God, as we see in martyrs, or in parents for their children, but we need to have a proper love of self.  Lastly, we love others after God and self, based upon how close they are to us.  Generally speaking, the closest to us are family members, then members of our community, then other people.
    If we follow this to its natural conclusion, it makes perfect sense.  If I didn’t believe that there are priorities in love, then I might skip Mass on Sundays to spend time with a friend playing basketball or drinking bourbon.  Or if I don’t have a hierarchy of loves, then when I give money to charitable contributions, I should give the same amount of money I spend on groceries each week to each of the following: my parish; my Diocese; my local food pantry; the homeless shelter; each religious order that exists; each food pantry that exists in the US; each homeless shelter that exists in the US; every orphanage around the world; every charity around the world; etc.  Of course, that would lead to poverty, and the family would lack necessary goods, to which they have a right, while others, who are not even known to us, would receive the same financial support.  

    The Holy Father rightly brings up the parable of the Good Samaritan as our Lord reminds us to care for our neighbors who are not like us.  The Samaritan had no family or even national connection to the man left for dead.  But the man on the brink of death was close to him, and the Samaritan could do something at that moment to help the man, without neglecting any of his other legitimate responsibilities.  The man was in immediate need of assistance, and so, even in the ordo amoris, the Samaritan, like the priest and the levite before him who failed, had a duty to assist as a way of expressing love.
    The Scriptures also challenge us to remember that love of God cannot fully be divorced from love of neighbor.  St. John writes in his first epistle: “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  Love of God, strictly speaking, does outweigh love of neighbor.  I should be more concerned with what God thinks of me than what my friends or family think of me.  However, more often than not, we show God we love Him by loving the people He loves, that is, our neighbor.
    The argument of modern society is that we should love everyone equally.  To the extent that we generally will good for all people, that is true.  But we cannot, strictly speaking, actually love every single person on this planet equally, because we have closer ties with some than with others, and the resources by which we show our love are limited, even while love is not limited.  So we should order our loves, putting God above all else, then myself next, then my neighbor, and my neighbor starting with my family, then my friends, then my other communities both locally and internationally.  I also have to order my love so that I deal with what is in front of my face: the rich man had a duty to care for poor Lazarus because Lazarus was at his doorstep and needed the rich man’s help.  
    But we also have to understand what love is and what love is not.  Love is not just a feeling, or license to do whatever we or another want to do.  Love means willing the good, for ourselves and for others.  If we allow a person to do that which is harmful, or if we want to do something which is harmful, we are not loving.  
    We could do so many good things, or have so many spiritual gifts.  But love, willing the good of the other, has to undergird all of what we do.  Otherwise all of our good deeds and actions are worth nothing.  If we ever have a question about how love looks, then gaze at the crucifix.  Because that is the greatest example of love: to lay down one’s life for God and for neighbor.  If our actions connect us to the cross of Christ, then there is good chance that they are truly loving actions, and therefore join us to the God who is Love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

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.

What Makes Him Beautiful

Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

In 2012 one of the newer boy bands, One Direction, came out with the song, “What Makes You Beautiful.”  The song talks about how this girl, who is loved by the author, doesn’t realize how beautiful she is.  My guess is there are still girls who would love to be serenaded by One Direction with his song.

When it comes to beauty, we so often translate beauty into taste.  “Oh, that’s beautiful!” tends to mean, “I like that!”  “That’s ugly!” often means, “I don’t like that!”  “Beauty,” so we hear, “is in the eye of the beholder.”

But not for Catholics.  As Catholics, we believe that there is an objective standard for beauty, even though it is diverse in its expressions.  For us as Catholics, beauty is rooted in God who is, we can say, the truly Beautiful One.  And since God who is Beauty also identifies Himself as God who is Truth, we know that there is a relationship between beauty and truth.  In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas states that a beautiful thing is that which shows the truth of that thing.  Beauty, we can say, is the shining forth, the splendor, or refulgence, of the truth.  A beautiful duck is a duck that has two legs, two wings, and quacks.  The only ugly duckling is one that lacks in some way from what it means to be a duck. 

Today Isaiah prophesies about the Suffering Servant of the Lord.  And while that servant “shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted,” still that same servant shall be “marred…beyond human semblance.”  The Suffering Servant will startle many nations as one who has “no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him.”      He will bear our infirmities and endure our sufferings.  He will be pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, chastised, and beaten.  That doesn’t sound like someone who is beautiful.  It does not sound like one of the beautiful people.  If you have ever seen a Spanish crucifix, you see the great lengths the Spanish would go to in order to show how much Jesus suffered.  Their crucifixes are covered in the red of Jesus’ blood, with dark bruises over Jesus’ body.  The way Jesus was portrayed in “The Passion” by Mel Gibson gives in movie form what Spanish crucifixes tend to look like in statue form.

So, given all these injuries, all this blood, the bruising, the agony in visual form, do we say that Jesus, on the cross, was ugly?  Do we say that Jesus lacks some truth as He hangs on the cross?  Was the marring beyond human semblance such that it made Jesus an ugly Person?

Of course not.  In fact, Jesus, even in His human nature, remains the Beautiful One, united as He is in substance, with God the Father.  Even in the one pierced for our offenses, Jesus is truly beautiful.  In one of the many paradoxes of our faith, there is no greater example of beauty than the Jesus who became disfigured for our sake.  And we can say that, because in His crucifixion, into which we enter today in this liturgy, Jesus most perfectly demonstrated the truth about God, and the truth about man.

The truth is that God will go to the farthest lengths to save us, and we see that in Jesus.  God will sacrifice Himself if it means there is a chance that we will respond to His love.  Jesus, on the cross, most perfectly demonstrates that God is pure gift, and will pour Himself out for His creatures, even though He has no need of them.  Jesus, on the cross, shows us the great truth that God loves us, even when it means His own death.  The crucifixion of Jesus is the most beautiful example of love that ever has existed, exists now, or will ever exist in the future.  In terms of the truth about God, the crucifix is the highest form of beauty.

The truth is that man is most himself when obedient to the will of the Father.  The crucifixion is the utmost example of obedience to God.  Obedience to God is easy when it means doing something we enjoy, doing something where we see the fruits of our labors, doing something where we see the difference we make.  In the crucifixion, we see obedience in the face of pain, only trusting that it will make a difference without seeing any immediate results.  Jesus entrusts Himself to the Father, and so shows what a beautiful human looks like: one who does the will of God the Father for the good of others.  

What makes us beautiful is being like Jesus: sacrificing our good for the good of the other in obedience to the will of the Father.  The crucifix may not be to our taste, or something that we like, but it is the most beautiful thing we can look upon and think of in this world, because the crucifixion of Jesus shows forth most fully and dramatically the truth about God and the truth about us.

The King of Glory

Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

I think it would be safe to say that the secretary at my last parish was borderline obsessed with British royalty.  I did her wedding not long after I arrived at St. Joseph in Adrian, and one of her hymns was the same one that was used at the royal wedding.  She would often try to find less expensive versions of dresses that Katherine wears, and when the value of the British pound dropped after Brexit, she and her husband started to make plans to visit.

But America’s love of royalty is not limited to her.  For six years millions of Americans watched “Downton Abbey,” about a British noble family and their servants.  The final season finale drew 9.6 million viewers, so clearly there are a good number of people who like royalty and nobility.  And America even “created” it’s own royal family in John and Jackie Kennedy.  But what do we love about it?  Is it the fancy clothes?  Is the crowns and swords and ceremonial uniforms?  Is it the tradition?  Is it the power?

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.  Even just after our presidential election, we are celebrating a King.  We heard in our first reading a little about the best example of a Jewish king, King David.  King David was the model for all kings who followed, even though David himself wasn’t a perfect king (remember that story about Bathsheba, and how got her pregnant, even though she was someone else’s wife, and then eventually killed her husband to cover up the adultery?).  In fact, when the Archangel Gabriel appears to Mary to tell her that she will be the Mother of God, Gabriel says, “‘He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’”  

But in the rest of the Gospels, Jesus shies away from this heritage, of being a king in the line of David.  In John 6, the people want to make Jesus king after he feeds them miraculously.  But Jesus hides away, and does not let them.  The closest Jesus comes to accepting the fulfillment of the Davidic prophecy of a great king is on Palm Sunday, when Jesus receives the praise from the people that we heard in our Alleluia verse: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come!”

So why is Jesus so hesitant to be cast as a king in the line of David during His earthly ministry?  If He is a king, why not accept the recognition by the people that He is a king?

Jesus is a king unlike any other, and He does not accept earthly kingship from His own people because their idea of kingship was different than God’s.  Jesus was not concerned with the fancy clothes, the crowns and swords and ceremonial uniforms.  And He was certainly not concerned with power, though all power in heaven and earth belonged to Him.  Our Gospel today shows us what the kingship of Jesus is like: a suffering kingship, that does not seek power, but empties itself out for the good of His people.  Jesus on earth does not rule from a throne of gold, but from the throne of the cross.  In Orthodox churches, their large crucifixes do not have INRI above them like ours (INRI is an abbreviation for Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, which is Latin for Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews).  Instead, the inscription reads: The King of Glory, to remind them how Christ was glorified, and how we are to be glorified: through the cross.

Can we accept Jesus as our king on the cross?  Sometimes Protestants accuse us of wanting to crucify Jesus again and again because we give such a prominent place to Jesus on the cross, what we commonly call a crucifix, in our churches.  But that is our constant reminder of how Jesus reigns: on the cross.  As our preface before the Eucharistic prayer says, Jesus’ kingdom is “an eternal and universal kingdom, a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, and kingdom of justice, love and peace.”  

Jesus has all power, and yet He, the Lord of Lords, does not lord His power over us.  He invites us to accept His reign, but He does not force it upon us.  There will come a day, at the end of time, when His kingdom will be the only kingdom.  There will be no more lies and death, no more sin and sorrow, no more injustice, hatred, and war.  And at that time, we will be recognized as a part of that kingdom based on how we accepted that kingdom while here on earth.  Instead of being a part of a kingdom because of where we are born, we become a part of Christ’s kingdom by the rebirth of baptism, and we remain a part of that kingdom by being faithful in word and deed throughout the rest of our life.  May we be obsessed, in the best sense of the word, not with British royalty, but with being subjects of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

"What was Jesus' Problem?"

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“What was Jesus’ problem?”  That was the way one homily I heard in seminary on this Gospel passage begin.  Sitting in Sacred Heart Major Seminary, the Tudor Gothic building, at a 7 a.m. Mass, this first phase certainly got my attention.  “What was Jesus’ problem?” Fr. Muller asked.  The 9 other lepers did exactly as Jesus told them: they went to show the priest that they were no longer lepers, which was exactly what lepers were supposed to do according to the Book of Leviticus.  And yet, Jesus seems quite perturbed that only 1 leper had returned to say, “Thank you.”  In fact, the one leper who did return was being directly disobedient to Jesus; he didn’t go and show the priest.  

In fact, Jesus was praising the faith of the one who realized who the Person was who healed Him.  And what was remarkable was that it was a Samaritan, someone who was not part of the Chosen People.  In fact, the Samaritans were the people who had mixed Judaism with the surrounding pagan religions.  It was this pagan who had recognized that it was Jesus Himself who had healed him.  This was different from our first reading because Elisha never cured the man, but God cured the man.  Elisha was just the one who told the foreigner how God would cure him.

Saying thank you is a basic part of how we are raised, or at least it should be.  When a gift is received, or when someone holds the door for us, or when someone simply does anything kind for us, we are trained, and should be, to say, “Thank you.”  But sometimes we need a reminder.  Just the other day I was sitting at the corner of Utley and Corunna, and there was no traffic in either direction as I was trying to turn left onto Corunna.  It dawned on me that I should say thank you to God, and I did, because that is often a wicked intersection at which to turn left.  Now, we probably don’t often think about thanking God for those little things, but everything we receive from God is a gift, for which we owe God thanks.

But, if we really think about it, when we say that everything we receive from God, we also have to include the trials and tribulations that God allows us to undergo.  God doesn’t send us evil, but sometimes he allows us to go through evil for some greater good.  It’s easy to thank God that we have a choir singing at Mass again; it’s much harder to thank God for the month that felt like an eternity without the choir.  I thank God that I’m able to be involved almost daily with our wonderful Catholic schools: St. Pius X and Powers.  It’s a little harder to thank God for a broken thumb one received while spending time with said students.  But I know that God is teaching me patience as I go through the six more weeks of not having full use of my thumb.  

It may seem like it’s weird to thank God even for horrible stuff that happened.  And yet, that’s what we do every Sunday and Holyday, and each time we assemble for Mass.  Each time the Mass is celebrated we give thanks.  The word Eucharist comes from two Greek words, 𝛆𝛖-, which means well, and 𝛘𝛂𝛒𝛊𝛓, which means to give thanks.  Each time we are here for Mass, we give thanks to God.  For what do we give thanks?  The crucifixion of Jesus.  Each Mass Calvary is re-presented for us, and we are able to share in the fruits of our redemption.  While the Mass draws us in to the entire Paschal Mystery, the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus, the Eucharist connects us more specifically to the Death of Jesus on the cross, which is why the crucifix is so important for us as Catholics.  We give thanks for God’s death in a horribly brutal way.  

At the Easter Vigil, the Exultet, an old hymn about the very special night, says, “O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”  We even give thanks for the Fall of Adam and Eve, because that Fall made possible a life more glorious than the Garden of Eden when Jesus died on the cross.  

It’s easy to give thanks when something goes well, or when we get something we want.  Do we give thanks to God even for the things we don't want: an illness; a delay; a broken bone; a boring homily; a new priest who isn’t as good as the old one; a bad grade; a lost job.  Certainly those things are crosses in our life, and God never sends us evil.  But maybe there’s a reason God allowed the evil to enter our life, a way that we can become more of the saint He called us to be in baptism.

We’ve heard it a million times: say please and thank you.  But the Lord is inviting us to give Him everything we’ve experienced since the last time we received the Eucharist: the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Unite it with the bread and wine which will be offered to God.  In giving thanks to God for all of it, and uniting it with the perfect sacrifice of thanksgiving of Jesus on the cross, God promises to transform it, if we allow Him, and give it back to us transformed into something which draws us closer to Him.  As St. Paul says in his first letter to the Thessalonians: “In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”