Repeating

Fourth Sunday of Advent

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

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

It's Not Supposed to Be This Way

Mass of the Lord’s Supper

The Upper Room in Jerusalem (now a mosque)

    Many people presume that the Passover meal that Jesus celebrated was a Seder Meal.  I myself remember being in Catholic elementary school during Holy Week and having small Seder Meals in a classroom.  I wasn’t a fan of the egg, but I did enjoy the matzoh, parsley and the charoseth (which was a mixture of apples, walnuts, cinnamon, and honey).  Instead of real lamb, we had a paper lamb cut out for us (when I first tasted lamb many years later, I learned how truly disappointing it was to only have paper).  But scholars, even Jewish scholars, that I have read, state that the Seder Meal originated sometime after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem around the year of our Lord 70.  So Jesus, at the Last Supper, most likely was not celebrating a Seder Meal.  But, that’s not to say that the Passover didn’t have rituals.  Indeed, our first reading starts to outline some of the rituals of the Passover meal.
    Rituals are repeated actions, sometimes associated with religion.  The beauty of ritual is that, for the most part, it’s not supposed to change.  So the Apostles, gathered in the Upper Room with Jesus, had some idea of what was going to happen, even if it started out oddly, as it was a day earlier than the first Passover celebration was supposed to begin. 
    But those ideas were quickly shattered.  Before the celebration begins, Jesus takes off his outer garments and serves the Apostles in the task usually reserved for the lowest slave.  You can imagine the Apostles thinking, “It’s not supposed to be this way!”  Peter is the only one who has the courage to actually say what’s on his mind: “‘Master, are you going to wash my feet?’”  Jesus is the Master, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God who is supposed to lead Israel into a new kingdom of prosperity!  What is Jesus doing?  It’s not supposed to be this way!
    And then, as they celebrate the Passover (in whatever way that happened), Jesus changes things.  When it comes to the unleavened bread, Jesus changes the ritual and says, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body.”  And then when it comes to the wine, Jesus again changes the ritual, and says, “Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.  Do this is memory of me.”  As they ate the Body of the Lord, and drank His Blood in the celebration of the first Eucharist, I can imagine them thinking, ‘It’s not supposed to be this way!’
    After the first Eucharist, Jesus then has a beautiful prayer and conversation where He goes back and forth between a conversation with the Apostles and a conversation with His heavenly Father.  We call this the Last Supper Discourse, and if you’re looking for a beautiful read tonight and tomorrow and Saturday, you can read the Gospel of John chapters 14-17.  This was certainly not part of the Passover meal (you’ll get why if you read the chapters), and so probably the Apostles were thinking, ‘It’s not supposed to be this way!’
    As I celebrate Mass tonight, the same thought is on my mind: it’s not supposed to be this way.  The church is not supposed to be empty; there’s supposed to be the optional ritual of washing feet; there’s supposed to be a Eucharistic procession.  None of that will happen.  In fact, Cardinal Sarah, speaking for the Pope, had to give special permission for priests to celebrate this Mass with only one minister, as that has, from time immemorial, never been allowed.  Don’t get me wrong: Jesus is still here, the bread and wine will still become His Body and Blood, but I think that we realize that it’s not supposed to be this way.  The Mass of the Lord’s Supper is meant to be our special entering into the Lord’s Passion for all parishioners, not simply for the few who are necessary to pull off a beautiful, but minimal, celebration.
    But what followed from that first Eucharist, administered by the hands of Jesus Himself?  Salvation followed.  Dark days, yes, but light, too.  Suffering, intense suffering, but later, peace and joy.  Death, a death unlike any before or any after, but also resurrection.  All those came through a celebration that wasn’t supposed to be the way it happened.
    So, what will follow from this year’s, “it’s not supposed to be this way”?  Jesus is offering the same gifts, but our response will dictate whether or not we receive those gifts.  Will we treasure our reception of the Eucharist, rather than simply see it as the weekly routine we go through?  Will we prepare better for the celebration of the Eucharist, perhaps by confession, but always by quieting our hearts and minds to hear what the Lord wants to say to us?  We will allow the Eucharist to transform us and change the way that we interact with each other after we leave Mass? 
    There are many tragedies during this time of pandemic.  But the biggest tragedy of this time of fasting from public Mass in our churches will not be those who are infected or who have died, tragic as that truly is.  The biggest tragedy of this time of fasting from public Mass will not be the economic changes that churches have to make to adapt.  The biggest tragedy of this time when we cannot pray together in person in our parish church will be if, after all of this is over, we return to the same life we had before and not appreciate the sacrifice that Jesus allows us to share in every time we get to come to Mass by either not even coming when we don’t feel like it, or receiving the Eucharist in an unworthy state.  Tonight Jesus teaches us: it’s not supposed to be that way.

You Can't Cheat God

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sometimes it is made very clear to me what I should preach.  This past Monday, when I looked over the readings, I was immediately drawn to the Gospel where Jesus talks about how the practice of washing hands is not about what happens outside the person, but what happens inside the person.  It struck me that the Pharisees went through the ritual motions of religious life, without letting those actions take root in their soul.  As Jesus says, it is not what is outside the makes one unclean (that is, unfit for worship in the Temple) but what comes from the heart: all our passions that we give in to.

But, as I sat down to write my homily out on Thursday, I found myself drawn to a similar topic, but going in a different direction (how symbols are supposed to be sensible things that communicate an invisible reality).  I had my hook.  I was going to talk about how we misunderstand words, like when English speakers make the mistake of thinking that the word for embarrassed in Spanish, embarazado is a cognate–a similar sounding word–when it really means pregnant, leading to numerous embarrassing moments when a man says, Yo soy embarazado.  I had my main point, how symbols are meant to communicate the invisible through what we can receive through our senses, and how what we do in religious symbols should reflect what is truly going on inside our hearts and souls.  And I managed to talk about all of this and expand on the main topic in the usual Fr. Anthony homily duration (I’ve been told I preach a bit longer than our deacons).

But then Friday I stopped by the Adrian Police Department.  Some of you know that I have been doing ride-alongs with the Police and I have offered to provide any help to the officers that I can.  I went to talk to Clay, who often works the front desk.  I stopped by at about 4:10, and he wasn’t there, but when I asked I was told he was just getting ready to leave.  I waited a little, and then Clay came out and we had a nice little talk.  In the midst of that talk, he said that he didn’t understand two things about Catholics (he’s not Catholic, but is Christian).  The first difficulty we spoke about were the saints and praying to them.  That might be a homily for a different day.

The second thing we talked about took me back to what I first thought I was going to preach on, and caused me to totally rewrite my homily on Saturday morning, between altar server training and confessions.  He asked me about the experience he’s had of Catholics who say they can do whatever sinful thing they want Monday through Friday, then they go to confession on Saturday and Mass on Sunday with a clean slate, and then get back to serious sinning on the weekdays; rinse and repeat.  Clay said that it makes no sense.

Clay is right.  And I explained to him that we can’t cheat God.  Yes, we have the Sacrament of Penance to cleanse us of sin, the Sacrament established by Jesus in Matthew 16 and John 20 when He gave the Apostles the authority to forgive sins.  But I also told Clay that the Church teaches that, for the Sacrament of Penance to be valid, the penitent (the confessee, as it were), has to be truly sorry for his sins and has to make a firm amendment to not commit those sins in the future.  Certainly we sometimes fall into the same sins week after week that we don’t want to.  But if we’re not truly sorry for what we did Monday through Friday, and we fully plan on doing the same thing again the next Monday through Friday, then our sins are not forgiven.  We can’t cheat God. 

And that’s precisely what our Gospel is about.  Jesus did not condemn ritual purification and ritual actions.  But He taught us that the ritual is meant to have an effect in our lives, not to be a meaningless gesture.  Washing hands without washing souls means little in our relationship with God.  And sometimes doing the rituals without the meaning behind it becomes a scandal, an obstacle to other people believing in the Catholic faith.  I’m sure Clay is not the only Christian who thinks that the way some Catholics treat the Sacrament of Penance betrays the fact that these Catholics think that the Sacraments are magic.  They’re not magic.  They are meant to convert us, to change us, to become more like God.  If we’re not open to having God change us, God will not force His grace–His life, His love, His peace–on us.  We can go through the motions, but we won’t receive the effects that those actions are meant to have in our souls. 

Jesus gave us the Good News to help us draw closer to God.  The Good News He teaches us today is that while we can struggle with the same sins each week and be truly sorry, if we are trying to treat the religious rituals like a get out of Hell free card, we’re in for a not-so-pleasant surprise.  This is Good News because it gives us a chance to truly have a change of heart, a metanoia, a conversion, and ask God to purify us from the things that really make us unfit for the Temple.  God wants to truly cleanse us of those things and wash, not our hands, but our hearts.  Will we allow God to wash our souls with His cleansing grace?