Food for the Journey

 Holy Thursday–Mass of the Lord’s Supper

    When many Catholics today talk about Last Rites, they think of the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.  But when the Church talks Last Rites, she talks about the Sacrament of Penance, the Apostolic Pardon, the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, and Viaticum, or Holy Communion for a person on the way to death (Viaticum is a smash-up of the words meaning “on the way with you).  We were taught in seminary that when a person is seriously ill, they are to be anointed.  When a person is certainly (barring a miracle) not getting better, the priest may anoint again, but certainly offers Viaticum (and Viaticum can also be offered by a deacon).  In the Church’s mind, the last sacrament a person should receive on earth is the Body of the Lord, Holy Communion with the Lord, because that is what we pray the person will experience after death, communion with the Lord in heaven.  
    We probably don’t often think about it this way, but the Eucharist is meant to be spiritual food for a people ready to move on somewhere.  We see that even in the prefigurement of the Eucharist in the Passover sacrifice.  The Jews were to sacrifice an unblemished lamb, spread its blood over the doorposts and lintel, and eat it.  They were to eat it “‘with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and your staff in hand, you shall eat like those who are in flight.’”  The eating of the Passover lamb was to prepare the Chosen People for their pilgrimage from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.  
    So for us, the Church, the Eucharist is our food for the journey, not only the journey from this life to the next, but even our daily journey from the safety of the church into the war zone of the world, where we fight against spiritual powers inside of us and outside of us.  It is meant to strengthen us for our witness to the Gospel in our daily life.  And yet, how often do we see it as boring, as just another obligation.  Dorothy Day, the great, saintly woman of the Catholic Worker movement, related a scenario when she encountered one such person:
I was saddened last week when a former nun told me she was tired of going to Mass daily.  She had been doing that for fourteen years, and no longer felt it necessary.  So much routine.  One could only point out that breathing was routine, and eating was routine…We go to eat of this fruit of the tree of life because Jesus told us to….He took upon himself our humanity that we might share in his divinity.  We are nourished by his flesh that we may grow to be other Christs.

Indeed, as Jesus prepare to celebrate the Last Supper, the first thing He does is serve.  He washes the feet of His apostles.  So for us, after we receive the Eucharist, we are called to serve.  Jesus says, “‘I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.’”
    This is not to say that the Eucharist is merely a means to an end, the means by which we move on to the really important stuff, the activity of daily life.  In fact, it’s the other way around.  The Eucharist is the really important “stuff,” and the activity of daily life is the overflowing of the cup that is filled only with the Body and Blood of our Lord.  
    Jesus gave us the Eucharist because He knew we needed to be fed by God as part of our worship.  He knew that so few would be with Him on Golgotha, as He did what the Last Supper pointed to: give up His Body and Blood for the salvation of the world.  And from that most important act of the crucifixion, the transformation of the world became possible.  So it is only after we are worthily nourished by Eucharist that we are able to be the disciples that we are called to be, relating to others by word and deed how our connection to Jesus changes us.
    And then, there is a double movement that, after our daily activity of living as disciples, brings us back here, back to the Mass.  Having utilized the spiritual energy which we received the last time we went to Mass, we are drawn back for more, because we hunger more for God.  And yet, we also are drawn back to thank God for the power that we have seen exercised through us as we shared the fruits of the Eucharist we received in talking about Jesus, in loving like Jesus, in serving like Jesus.  “How shall I make a return to the Lord / for all the good he has done for me? / The cup of salvation I will take up, / and I will call upon the name of the Lord.”  We return because we hunger more; we return because we thank God for what the Eucharist made possible in our lives.
    As we begin these three holiest of days–Holy Thursday tonight, Good Friday tomorrow, Holy Saturday culminating in the Easter Vigil–there’s a lot going on.  If we are truly, fully entering into it, we’ll be physically, emotionally, and spiritually tired.  We will need sustenance.  Even though we won’t celebrate Mass again until Holy Saturday night, the Church will feed us with the Eucharist tomorrow from what was consecrated tonight.  And then we’ll have the chance to be fed once more on Holy Saturday evening as we will rejoice in the news the surpasses every joy.  Only those who are in need of Viaticum can receive the Eucharist at another time on Holy Saturday, because the Church knows they need Holy Communion to prepare them for the ultimate communion with God.  
    Tonight we are fed by the Lord, Who knows that we need Him to be His disciples.  May we never find the reception of Holy Communion routine, but find in it our strength to be the saints God has called us to be.

Take a Retreat

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

    Every year, priests are asked to take a spiritual retreat.  On a merely physical level, it’s an opportunity to “recharge the batteries,” that can be drained by spending himself for his people.  On a spiritual level, it’s an opportunity to deepen his relationship with the Lord, to grow in the Theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.  Jesus Himself invited the Twelve to take a brief retreat in Mark 6:31, when Jesus said, “‘Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.’”  Mark notes that there were large numbers of people who had been coming to see Jesus, and the apostles and Jesus were often missing meal time, so they went off in a boat “to a deserted place.” 
    But retreats aren’t only for priests.  The lay faithful, too, are encouraged, to the extent possible, to take a yearly retreat.  Before COVID, our great retreat center in DeWitt offered different tailored retreats to men, women, married couples, and other groups.  As we get through this pandemic you can make sure and check their webpage for upcoming retreat opportunities. 
    But I get that retreats are especially hard for those who are still working and/or who are caring for dependents.  For many Catholics, a retreat is something that they hear about that other people do, but nothing they take advantage of for themselves. 
    So this year, for our upcoming Sacred Triduum–Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday–I want to encourage you to think about the opportunities for prayer as a chance to retreat, to take some extra time with the Lord.  We’ve added times for prayer, but there’s also the times when the Church is simply open and quiet, when you can come and spend time with Jesus.
    Jesus Himself, as we heard in our Passion Narrative today, took time to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane as He was preparing for His Passion and Death.  He asked St. Peter, “‘Could you not keep watch for one hour?’”  Come to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 7 p.m. on Holy Thursday, and pray with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane after the Mass.  Pray for the openness to what the Lord wants to share with you during these holy days of the Lord’s Passion.  Sign-up for 30 minutes or and hour to spend with Jesus in our Community Room Gethsemane, which will start after Mass and go until 10 p.m.  Most of that time is simply silent, with the Blessed Sacrament.  But it’s a powerful time to pray and spend with Jesus.
    For Good Friday, we’ll have four opportunities for you to come and spend time with Jesus.  The church will be stripped, and we’ll start with Daytime Prayer, part of the Liturgy of the Hours, the official prayer of the Church, at noon.  Then at 12:30 we’ll continue with Stations of the Cross, the great devotion of walking with Jesus as He walked to Calvary to die for love of us.  It’s then that we can ponder our own crosses, our own falls on the path the God has allowed us to walk.  At 3 p.m., the hour that Jesus died, we’ll recall His Death on the Cross, and venerate the cross that saved us from sin and death.  And then at 8 p.m. Good Friday night, we’ll hear the powerful and sorrowful psalms and readings that point to the price that was paid for our salvation.  And, if any of those exact times don’t work, feel free to come to the church any time between 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. to spend time with Jesus.
    Holy Saturday is our day of watching and waiting.  We know the rest of the story, but we put ourselves into the place of the Apostles and faithful disciples who didn’t know what to do after Jesus had died.  We wait in the great silence of the day that Jesus’ Body remained in the Tomb, while His Soul descended to hell, the place of the dead, to rescue to the souls of the just and escort them into heaven.  We’ll have a powerful set of readings at 8:30 a.m., and then bless any Easter food you bring at 12:30 p.m.  On that day of silence, the expectation of what we know will happen that night pushes us to be patient with God’s will as it becomes known to us in our daily lives, especially in the sufferings that we endure, often not seeing the future risings that will come from them.  And then, at 8:30 p.m., we’ll begin our solemn Easter Vigil, the Night of Nights, when sorrow turned to joy, darkness turned to light, and death was conquered by Life Himself. 
    It’s only a three-day retreat, and it’s not the full three days, but you’ll have a great opportunity to take time away with the Lord, to give Him all that is on your heart right now, to rest with Him.  This is a beautiful way that we accompany Jesus during His Passion, doing for Jesus what He does for us in all our sufferings: stay with us, encourage us, pray with us.  Don’t miss out on this opportunity of our Triduum retreat.  Recharge your spiritual batteries; come to be with Jesus; rest with Him.

Actions & Consequences and A Freely-Given Gift

 Fourth Sunday of Lent

    When I was growing up, if we were flirting with trouble (mostly my sisters, because I was a perfect angel, of course!), my parents would say things like: if I have to pull this car over…; don’t you even think about it…; or other such tried and true methods.  They were not cruel, it was just a very direct form of discipline.  As all of us kids turned our pretty well, I’d say it worked.  But my sister Amanda, the only one with kids right now, often uses the phrase, “Make good choices.”  I’d call that the softer approach, but my nieces are also pretty well-behaved (at least, as far as I know), so that approach apparently can work, too!
    One major aspect of raising children is to help them to understand the consequences of their actions.  If you draw on the wall with crayons, you get time-out.  If you touch the hot stove, you get burned.  If you don’t do your homework, you don’t get to play outside (nowadays it’s more likely play video games or play on your phone).  If you break curfew, you’re grounded.  These small lessons about actions and consequences are meant to help young people understand that if we make good choices, there are, generally, good consequences.  If we make bad choices, there are, generally, bad consequences.
    We see that in the first reading today, and even, to an extent, in our Gospel.  The Books of Chronicles of the Old Testament are the abridged versions of the Books of Kings, explaining the actions of the kings of Judah and Israel.  The lesson at the end of the Second Book of Kings, our first reading today, is that the people made bad choices.  They worshipped foreign gods, they mistreated the poor, they trusted earthly riches and powers more than God, they did not live as God’s Chosen People.  God sent them messengers to tell them to make better choices, but they never listened.  And what was the consequence?  The Temple, the great house of God, was destroyed, and the people were exiled into Babylon.  To echo Bishop Barron, there’s a sort of spiritual mathematics going on.  If you add sin upon sin, you get death, like 2 + 2 = 4.  Notice, that death doesn’t only come because of sin (we see that in other books of the Old Testament), just like 4 can be added to with a few different combinations.  But certain actions have certain consequences, or, to put it in St. Paul’s words, “The wages of sin is death.”  
    Jesus, too, and John the Evangelist, give us this same idea in the Gospel.  “Whoever believes in [Jesus] will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned.”  Again, the spiritual mathematics of the importance of believing in Jesus.  Or, later on, John continues that evil means darkness, whereas God means light.  If we do evil things, we envelope ourselves in darkness.  If we do good things, we are surrounded by light.  This is part of the push to the New Evangelization.  We who have received the light (which will be powerfully demonstrated at the Easter Vigil, as we enter into a dark church, at first only illumined by the Paschal Candle which represents Christ), have a responsibility to share it with others.  And we should not prefer darkness to light, because otherwise we’ll find condemnation.
    But this can tend us to the idea that, if we just check off the right boxes, then we’ll be good.  It makes us the author of our salvation, rather than God.  It pretends that we have what it takes to save ourselves.  If that were so, certainly Abraham, or Moses, or Isaiah would have been in heaven as soon as they died.  But they couldn’t be in heaven without Jesus' saving Death and Resurrection.  Even those just men and women of the Old Testament couldn’t get to heaven on their own.  They, and we, are saved by grace, by the gift of God; it is not earned.
    But Fr. Anthony, you may be saying, you just got done saying that good choices lead to good consequences.  Yes, I did.  But all the good choices in the world couldn’t open up heaven.  It was the consequence of the death of Jesus on the cross that allowed us to enter heaven.  His good choice led to our good consequences.  “God, who is rich in mercy,…” says St. Paul, “brought us to life with Christ….For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God.”  Try getting to heaven without Jesus; it’s impossible.  You might be able to get halfway there every day, but you’ll never get all the way there.  Jesus is the only one who makes salvation possible.  And He’s the only one who gives us what we need to accept that gift of salvation.  If those in other religions are saved, the Church says, it’s still only because of Jesus.  Moses does not save people (nor did he claim to).  Mohammed does not save people.  Buddha does not save people.  Only Jesus does.  And anyone who is saved, is saved only through the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus.  
    God invites us to salvation.  He invites us to open the gift that He has prepared for us.  But, as with any gift, we can choose whether or not to accept it.  In that way, we’re back to actions and consequences.  If we accept God’s free gift of salvation, heaven is for us.  How do we know that we have accepted that gift?  By the way we live our life; by the good choices we make in response to that gift, because of our love for God.  We can’t earn it, but neither can we receive it without responding to it.  God did not come to condemn us; He sent Jesus to save us.  But the way that we can grab ahold of that salvation is to respond to the gift, to live as Jesus invites us; to make good choices when presented with the free gift of salvation.

Interiorlizing the Rules

 Third Sunday of Lent
    There are many good jokes about those who study the liturgy, who are often called liturgists (of which I am one).  For example: what’s the difference between a vampire and a liturgist?  One is a blood-sucking, dark creature of the night, and the other turns into a bat.  Or what’s the difference between a terrorist and a liturgist?  You can negotiate with a terrorist.
    

What is it about those who love the liturgy that makes these jokes have just the right amount of a ring of truth?  Maybe at times you have felt that I have been immovable or inflexible when you thought I should be.  I think part of the reality is that those who have studied the liturgy understand the rules of the Mass, just like athletes and coaches understand the rules of the game.  If you find a really good athlete (one example that comes to my mind is Peyton Manning), you can see the art in how he or she competes in the sport.  When Peyton Manning was quarterback, it was poetry in motion watching him read the field, pass the ball, and avoid getting sacked.  Over his years of play, and with a good dose of God-given talent, Peyton went from simply thinking about the rules, to implementing the rules in a way that created beauty.  But imagine if Peyton didn’t understand rules on a false start, or an ineligible receiver.  Those games would have been ugly for the teams for which Peyton played.  The game would have been slow and clunky, and Peyton would not have won many, if any, games, and certainly not two Super bowls.  
    So for those who study the Mass and the Sacraments, they have made the rules a part of how they operate at Mass, such that it no longer looks like they are think about the rules, but are more naturally flowing, as is it’s a part of who they are while they’re at Mass.  For those who don’t understand or who have never been trained, it’s just a lot of dos and don’ts.  
    When we hear about Jesus cleansing the temple today (which in John’s Gospel happens towards the beginning, while the other Gospel accounts put it closer to Jesus’ Passion), we might wonder what Jesus’ problem was.  After all, people needed oxen, sheep, and doves for the temple.  They needed to exchange their foreign currency, often with the image of an emperor or king who considered himself a god, with money that did not have graven images and could be used in the temple.  In fact, the word profane comes the Latin words pro and fanum, meaning outside the temple.  To be profane was to be something that could only be used outside the temple, because it was not worthy of God.  
    But Jesus, who, as God, inspired David and Solomon to build the temple, and inspired the plans for the temple which was meant to represent heaven, knew the rules.  He knew how the temple was supposed to go, and what were “penalties.”  And so Jesus cleansed the temple to restore it to what it was meant for: the worship of God according to the pattern of heaven, rather than a marketplace.  
    So, too, for us, we are invited to give our best to God each time we come to Mass.  That can mean dressing a little better for Mass than we do for our weekdays.  It can mean trying to focus more than we usually do when someone is reading to us or speaking to us.  In whatever way we can, we want to give God our best, and enter into His plan and His rules for the Mass because it allows the beauty of the heavenly realm to begin to break-in to our earthly world.
    But it also applies to life in general, the extension of the Mass that we live out day-to-day.    When we hear the Ten Commandments, as we heard them this morning, we may just think of them as a long list of “Thou shalt not.”  But, in fact, while we are told not to do things, the rejection of sin and evil allows us to thrive and to live the life that truly makes us happy.  That may, at times, seem counterintuitive.  After all, it might seem nice to yell out a swear word or take God’s Name in vain when we hit our thumb with a hammer or stub our toe.  Or it might seem better not to have to worry about coming to Mass on Sunday, and just sleep in and do whatever tasks we left after watching sports on Saturday.  Or maybe we don’t want to be tied down to just one spouse; or we think it would make us happier just to take whatever we want, whenever we want, from whomever we want.  And certainly if my spouse asks me if this dish that’s called dinner tastes good, lying would be so much easier!
    But, in fact, that’s like saying that it would be easier to play football if your offensive line could line up however they wanted, and move whenever they wanted.  Or if Peyton could throw to whomever he wanted, rather than having only certain people who can be eligible receivers.  And those are just man-made rules for a man-made game.  The Ten Commandments are God’s rules for the world, which God created, and so He knows exactly how things are to be done to be beautiful and bring happiness.  
    Even the most simple, made-up game by children has rules that allow them to have fun, to find joy, and to allow the game to proceed as it’s intended by its creator.  So, too, with life: there are rules to allow us to participate well, and to win the imperishable crown that awaits those who win at life.  God gives us those rules because He loves us, and He knows how we will truly be happy.  Today let’s recommit ourselves to entering into the rules of life, not simply to do this or not do that, but to allow God’s grace, which truly makes us alive, to operate in us as easily as Peyton Manning plays football.

Transformation through Trial

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

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

Prepping for Lent

 Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Many of you probably remember my attempt a few years back to practice with the Powers Catholic boys soccer team, and how I broke my thumb in a drill.  Certainly it was a humbling experience in my life.  But it happened because I wasn’t ready.  34-year-old me thought (quite incorrectly) that I was still 20-year-old me, and could simply run around without having really exercised in quite some time and still have the same ability and stamina.  Was I ever wrong!!
    So as we sit today only a few short days away from Lent, we may think that we can just pick-up this Lent where we left off last year, without any real preparation.  Or maybe we’re just procrastinators who live by the motto: don’t do today what you can put off till tomorrow.  But if either of those are our approaches, I’m going to suggest that Lent might not be that fruitful for you.
    And Lent is supposed to be fruitful.  We often think of it as a time of negation and less, but in terms of our spiritual life, it’s a privileged time of growth.  Lent is meant to help us more and more to do what St. Paul said in our second reading: to imitate Christ and the saints.  And we do this in three primary ways during Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
    Prayer is key to our life as followers of Jesus and in imitation of Him.  The lepers today in the Gospel spoke to Jesus, and asked Him for the favor of healing.  That’s what prayer is for us, whatever our physical or spiritual needs.  We talk to God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–and present what’s going on in our life to Him.  Sometimes it’s asking for ourselves, sometimes it’s thanking, sometimes it’s praising, sometimes it’s interceding for another.  In the comedic Will Ferrell movie, “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” the coach says, “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”  For prayer, I adapt that to say if you can talk to a friend, you can talk to God.  
    But prayer is also listening.  How much time do you spend listening to God?  How much time do you make for God in silence?  We offer beautiful times for silence before the Blessed Sacrament, almost every Friday from 7-7:45 a.m. and every third Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.  But besides that, our church is open usually until 3 p.m. or so each day.  Even if you don’t want to come to church when there are crowds, pick out a time during the day, and for the most part, the church is empty or almost empty.  You can visit the Lord, speaking, listening, and being close to him while social distancing from everyone else.
    Fasting is something we’ve gotten away from in the Church, and I would say to our detriment.  We all have a sickness, not leprosy, but concupiscence, which draws us to avoid good things that should do, and draws us to do bad things that we shouldn’t do.  Our body sometimes draws us in ways that are not in accord with God’s will.  Just like in sports, we have to train our body and soul to perform at its best levels.  Fasting is a great way of training our bodies and souls to reject the bad, but denying ourselves even good things that we don’t necessarily need.  
    When we talk about fasting specifically, we’re talking about not eating certain amounts of food, like we do on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the two days that the Church requires us to fast.  We eat one main meal, and two smaller meals that, combined, equal or are less than the one main meal, and at the same time don’t snack.  But fasting in a broader sense can include what we call abstinence, which, in the case of our penitential practices, means abstaining from beef, pork, and chicken on Fridays, but especially Fridays of Lent.  Many of you are old enough to remember not eating meat on any Friday, and that’s a practice I have taken up, and I do find that it has helped me draw closer to God, choose good things more and bad things less.  Fasting can also mean giving up a particular type of food or drink, either for a time or permanently, in order to help our spiritual life.
    Fasting also is meant to give us solidarity with the poor.  There are so many people in our world, and even in our very rich nation, that don’t eat because they don’t have money to buy food.  Or they rely on the generosity of neighbors and food banks to give them their daily bread.  Fasting reminds us that we are no better than them, and that we are all children of our heavenly Father.  My plan is to give up alcohol this Lent as a sign of solidarity with all those who struggle with alcoholism.
    Almsgiving means giving money or goods.  Almsgiving is, in its original sense, money or goods given to the poor.  It is an imitation of our loving Father who gives blessings to many people, no matter who they are or what they do.  Almsgiving is also stretched to mean giving money to the church or to another charitable organization.  As I mentioned in our annual stewardship report a couple of weeks ago, I am very appreciative of your generosity to the parish, to help us continue to serve you.  This current fiscal year, our Sunday and Holyday collections have accounted for 77% of our income.  Because of your generosity, I don’t talk about money that much, but, as expenses continue to grow each year, we need to keep our weekly income at least at the $7,700 per week level.  Your almsgiving to the church will decide what our staff levels and office hours are for next year.  We can only give what we can, but it’s a way of sustaining not just ourselves, but our entire faith community.
    I would encourage you not to “stumble” into Lent this year.  Take these next few days to really consider how the Lord is asking you to pray, to fast, and to give alms.  Don’t make Lent a quick diet, but by your planning and prayerful consideration of what God is calling you to do, make it a great time of spiritual growth and development!

Job and Detroit Lions Fans

 Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    I am convinced that at some point in the future, the Lions will make it to the Super Bowl.  It will be the fourth quarter, and the Lions will be losing by 1 point.  They’ll be on the opponent’s 20 yard line, ready to kick the game-winning field goal, with 1 second left on the clock.  The kicker will kick the ball, and it will go straight, ready to pass through the uprights, and just as it’s about to pass through, and the refs are about to raise their hands, Jesus Christ will return in glory, and the Lions will forever be the team that never won a Super Bowl.
    As Lions fans we are used to disappointment.  There are other bad teams, but only the Lions seem to find new and exciting ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  So perhaps we can sympathize with Job from our first reading and say “I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me.”  In case you’re unfamiliar with Job, it’s a beautiful book of the Bible.  It may be more of a parable than a literal story, but it tells the story of a man who is faithful to God, but then undergoes great trials.  His first trial is that his oxen and donkeys were grazing, and were stolen by Sabeans, who killed all the herdsmen, save one.  Lightening struck all his sheep and shepherds and killed all but one shepherd.  Chaldeans came and stole all of Job’s camels, and killed all their caretakers, save one.  His seven sons and three daughters were all killed when their house collapsed during a party, and only one servant survived.  To this Job says: “‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’”  Quite the ordeal!
 

   But then, Job is struck by severe boils “from the soles of his feet to the crown of the head.”  Life is so bad that his wife, obviously a loving and caring woman, tells Job, “‘Curse God and die.’”  The Book of Job makes clear that Job has done nothing wrong, and yet he suffers greatly.  This story of Job is an attempt to understand why bad things happen to good people.  I encourage you to read the rest of the book (we only hear a part of chapter 7 today) to see how it ends.
    Suffering is a part of life, not just for Lions’ fans.  There are moral evils that we have to suffer with (crimes, betrayals, loneliness from others’ rejection of us); there are also natural evils that make us suffer (natural disasters, illnesses, pandemics).  People of all faiths and none struggle with this question, sometimes called Theodicy, of why bad things happen to good people, and why there is evil in the world.  In case you’re wondering, there is no easy answer.
    Jesus, as He so often does, turns the question on its head.  What does He do?  He heals; He grants wholeness; He saves.  Our Gospel today relates healings that Jesus did, exorcisms, and preaching.  Jesus shows us that He enters into our evils, some of our own making, some that we have no control over, and He brings healing.  The very word for savior in Latin, Salvator, is connected to another word, salus, meaning health.  The Salvator is the one who brings salus.  
    But Jesus, our Savior, doesn’t do so extrinsically, outside of all our sufferings.  He doesn’t watch from afar and offer us health while social distancing.  He enters into our pain, our suffering, our illness, and brings us delight, wholeness, and health.  And that’s part of the beautiful message of the Gospel: Jesus defeats sin and death through His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension; but we still see it happening, until Jesus returns and ushers in the fullness of His Kingdom.  Until then, Jesus suffers with and in us; He does not abandon us.  And while suffering is not good, it always helps to know that we are not alone, that our suffering has not separated us from the One who loves us above all, as suffering often does make us feel segregated.
    I think this is so clear from our pandemic.  I’m not here to argue against science and taking necessary precautions to protect one’s health.  But one of the greatest evils in this pandemic, whether physically necessary or not, is that we are being disconnected from each other.  Whether we have symptoms, are asymptomatic, or are virus-free, COVID has sought to divide us from each other.  The age-old wounds of sin and division, that were always just below the surface, have come to the top and are festering.  And because we lack a physical unity with each other, that spiritual and emotional unity has also been stretched, or even torn.  
    In the midst of that division, Jesus continues to heal and make whole.  There are stories of heroic Catholics–priests, deacons, and lay faithful–who have refused to let people die alone, even if they had COVID.  The Church has continued to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, educate adults and children, because that is Jesus’ work, and that work does not stop just because there’s a pandemic.  My mind is drawn, by way of an earlier example, to St. Damian of Molokai, whose Belgian blood I share, who gave up his own life to bring Jesus and His healing, especially spiritual healing, to the leper colony in the Hawaiian islands.  
    But even today, through the Sacrament of Penance (confession) and the Eucharist, Jesus continues to heal, and continues to walk with us through our suffering.  He has defeated it, and suffering will end when Christ is all in all.  But until then, Jesus does not leave us orphans; He does not leave us to suffer alone, but suffers with and in us, so that we can bear our burden with Him.
    In the times when you feel most alone, most abandoned, most bereft of human interaction, turn to Jesus in prayer.  Come to the church and spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  Look to the crucifix, and lay all your trials on that cross.  If you do, life, victory, and wholeness will be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Listening

 Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fr. Jim Rolph

    Last Sunday I went to a family’s house for dinner, a family that I have visited before.  When I visit, the adult children in the family like to tease me and say how much more they like Fr. Jim Rolph, the chaplain at Powers Catholic.  So during dinner conversation last Sunday I was talking to someone else at the table, but one of the kids interjected and said something, but all I heard was “in Flint.”  At first I just let it pass and figured it wasn’t anything important, but then young man started laughing, and realizing it was connected to what I had missed, I said, “Wait; what did you say?”  He started laughing and said, “I wondered why you didn’t react.  I said, ‘After all, Fr. Jim is the best priest in the Flint area!’”  
    Sometimes our attention is divided, and we don’t hear what’s going on.  And because we don’t hear, we miss something that we would want to know.  It’s not such a big deal when a young man is poking fun and saying that a brother priest is better than you (for the record, Fr. Jim and I are good friends, and I respect him greatly!).  But if it’s not teasing, but the voice of God, it’s much more important to pay attention and listen.
    In our first reading, Moses prophesies that God will send another prophet, like Moses, to whom the people need to listen.  This prophet will have very important messages to communicate.  Of course, we know that Jesus was the fulfillment of all the prophets, and was a prophet Himself, since He spoke for God.  But He didn’t even speak like the other prophets, but spoke with authority, authority that came from Himself, since He is God.  The people listening to Jesus recognize this, and they recognize “a new teaching with authority.”  
    Part of this authority is that Jesus, unlike the other rabbis of His time, would not appeal to an earlier rabbi.  That was the way the interpretation of laws and teachings worked for the Jewish people.  If you were a rabbi, people wouldn’t necessarily believe what you were teaching or interpreting.  But if you could appeal to an earlier rabbi who was well-respected, then your teaching took on more authority.  And the closer you could get to Moses, the more authority you would have.  
    But Jesus did not appeal to any other rabbi.  He simply spoke as if it were true.  Think back to Matthew chapter 5.  Jesus keeps saying, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…”. He teaches as one who is authentically interpreting God’s will, authentically speaking for God, like Moses, but even more authoritative than even Moses.  And even unclean spirits respond to the words that Jesus speaks.  It’s not even a contest about who has authority; Jesus speaks and they have to obey, because He is the Creator, and they are mere creatures.
    It is with this same authority that the Church, when teaching on faith or morals, speaks.  Because the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and because Jesus has given His authority to the pope and bishops who lead His Church (remember that Jesus said to the apostles that whoever listens to them listens to Him), the Church can say that, to be in union with Jesus, you have to believe this, or you can’t believe that.  The Church can also say with the authority of Jesus that, in order to be living as a disciple, you should do this or you shouldn’t do that.  It’s not simply the opinion of some old men who wear pointy hats; it is Jesus Himself teaching.
    Our psalm today encourages us: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”  How often do our hearts harden when someone tells us something that we have to do, especially in the area of faith (what to believe) or morals (how to live).  It’s almost like an instantaneous reaction that someone tells us what to do and we automatically want to do the opposite.  That’s our fallen human intellect and will.  When the Church says we cannot support abortion, or we need to assist the poor, we have a responsibility as followers of Jesus to obey.  When the Church says that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Jesus, or that marriage is only between one man and one woman, to be loyal to Jesus we conform our lives to that teaching.  Sometimes it’s hard.  Sometimes it’s very hard, and may even seem counterintuitive, but God asks us to listen to His Son, who will never lead us astray if we follow Him.
    But besides the struggles to listen to Jesus as He speaks through His Church, it can also simply be hard to listen to Jesus.  Our age is filled with cacophony, which comes from the Greek meaning “bad sounds.”  We often surround ourselves with noise, and in doing so, drown out the God who likes to speak to us like He spoke to the Prophet Elijah: in the whisper in the silence.  Hardening our hearts can include not making time for God in daily prayer.  Maybe the only time you have is five minutes; maybe it’s turning off the radio in your car; maybe it’s coming to a daily Mass, or spending time in adoration.  But in order to hear God, we have to carve out time for Him, especially in silence, not only speaking to God, but listening to how God responds.  Sometimes silence can be scary, but God will, in His way, in His time, speak to us.  All we have to do is pay attention and listen.
    Don’t miss the conversation God wants to have with you.  Don’t miss out on how God teaches us to follow Him and to find true happiness.  Listen to the Church when it comes to faith and morals.  Make time for silence with God each week.  You will find the happiness for which you long.

Banjos and Baptism

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

    As a fan of country music, I love the sound of the banjo.  The banjo got a bad name from the movie “Deliverance,” but it’s a beautiful instrument with a great sound, almost part and parcel of country music.  When I served as a priest in East Lansing, I decided one year to get a banjo.  I’ve played piano, saxophone, and the bassoon before, so I felt I could handle a new instrument.  I took lessons for a few months, bought a book with an accompanying DVD to help me learn, and went to it.  I didn’t pick up the instrument as quickly as I liked, and then Bishop Boyea named me pastor of St. Joseph in Adrian, so it fell by the wayside.  After years of not using it, I gave it to Jake, the seminarian who was living with me for the summer when I became pastor here.  Hopefully he has found more use for and success with it than I did!
    Sometimes we Catholics treat baptism and our faith life like a banjo.  We’re excited about it when there’s a new child, we might use it a lot at the beginning, but then things get hard, and we set it off to the side, never to use it again.  I think some of this comes from a misunderstanding of what baptism is and means.
    For years after the Second Vatican Council, there was an emphasis on how similar our sacraments were to human milestones.  The intent was good.  If all people are created in the image and likeness of God, and if all humans truly desire God, as St. Augustine noted, then it makes sense that other cultures and even other religions would have times and ceremonies that mimic what Christ Himself instituted in the sacraments.  For example, baptism is connected to birth, confirmation to adolescence, matrimony and holy orders to marriage and family, anointing of the sick to dying and death.  Many cultures and religions do have rituals during those times of life, and I do think that it reflects the pieces of truth that connect other cultures and faiths to our true religion.
    But at the same time, baptism now is often viewed as a merely sociological experience that is over as quickly as it begins.  Parents come to church to have their children baptized, and then they’re not seen again until first reconciliation and first Holy Communion, then leave again, then not seen again until confirmation, then leave again, then return again for marriage (often because it’s a requirement of the parents who are footing the bill), and then leave again, hopefully returning again at the baptism of their own children. 
    But millennials in particular, and the generations that are following them, are not into empty rituals that are done for the sake of being done.  Many young people who leave the church during college never return, unlike the generations before them.  And when they have kids, fewer and fewer are having their children baptized.  In some ways that’s troubling, because baptism is the ordinary way that eternal life is opened up for humans, but in other ways, it’s almost more honest, at least if the parents have no intent to live out their faith. 
    Baptism means seeking the Lord, like Isaiah said in the first reading, but it also means the scoundrel has to “forsake his way and the wicked mad his thoughts.”  It’s the beginning of the growth of new life and a relationship with God, the first watering of the field of the soul, not the harvest and the rest that comes after.  Jesus didn’t quit telling people about God the Father and drawing them into relationship with the Father once Jesus was baptized; He began His public ministry of calling all to repentance and the fulness of happiness.  As a pastor, it seems like many take baptism to mean that they never have to work at keeping the commandments, unlike what St. John said in the second reading.  Baptism is treated as a Get Out of Hell Free card. 
    But Baptism really means that the person will try his or her best to make the life of Jesus his or her own.  Baptism is the grace-assisted and grace-empowering beginning of a habit of: listening to the Holy Spirit; trusting in and following the will of God; dying to our own preferences and fallen desires and habits; putting behind us sinful life and living for God above all else.  Yes, it washes away original sin; yes it imparts a character with which we are sealed for all eternity as a child of God; yes it gives us sanctifying grace which pushes us toward heaven.  But it’s not magic.  It’s not a “do this and then you’ll never have to do anything else” ritual. 
    Baptism is the beginning of a grand adventure with God.  Baptism is the beginning of a saintly life.  It doesn’t mean that we always get the saint part right, but it means we’re trying to, and we put behind us things that don’t help us be saints.  It is a life-long commitment to strive to do the will of God in every circumstance.  It gives us the identity of a son or daughter in the Son of God, which isn’t so much a badge that we can scan to get to exclusive areas, but rather a mission to live like Jesus would in our own day, a life that truly begins happiness, and share that call to happiness with those we meet, both by word and by deed. 
    Don’t let your baptism be like my banjo.  Don’t just start and then not follow through.  Don’t just pick it up every now and then.  Allow your baptism to be the strength which allows you to live each day in the freedom of the children of God, a freedom God gave us not for license, for doing whatever we want, but for holiness, for doing what God wants.  Live your baptism every day, and at your judgement you will hear from the Father: “‘This is my beloved…with you I am well pleased.’”

Follow the Light

 Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord

    One of the great images of the Epiphany is the star.  And sometime in the fall of last year, we heard that the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, which some postulate was the “star” of Bethlehem and led the magi to the Holy Family, was going to be visible on 21 December.  This was a seeming bright spot in a very dark year, and many people were excited to be able to see this celestial phenomenon, which one could even do while being social-distanced.  But, just to make 2020 feel even more 2020ish here in Flint, it was, of course, cloudy.  Lucky for them, the magi weren’t trying to find the newborn king in Michigan, because our usual cloudiness during this time of year would’ve made that nearly impossible!
    Because we’ve heard the story so often, we probably gloss over what the magi, the wise men, went through to find the Christ Child.  They were likely from modern-day Iran, a foreign land, which was not a friend of Israel or the west.  It was the Babylonians (in modern-day Iraq) who had conquered and exiled the Jews from the Chosen Land.  After the Persians took over the Babylonian Empire, they were not always friendly to others around them.  Recall that King Leonidas of Sparta at the Battle of Thermopylae fought against the Persians, some 500 or so years before Jesus was born.  The Persians (now referred to as Parthians) had kicked Rome out of Judea in 40 BC, but the Romans had regained control in 37 BC, and held it until centuries later.  All of this is to say, they were foreigners, and probably not necessarily welcome visitors.  In fact, it was a Herod who had helped the Romans to kick the Parthians out of Judea.
    Depending on where the magi came from, they may have traveled upwards of 700 or more miles, perhaps from Babylon, a great center of learning that the Persians took over from the Babylonians.  That’s 700 miles, and assuming the camel was carrying them and the supplies at about 3 mph, and traveling for maybe half a day (taking time to rest and eat), it would have been more than 20 days of travel, if everything went well.  It’s clear from the fact that they go to see Herod first that they were not exactly sure where this newborn king was supposed to be.  But Herod, after asking the chief priests and scribes, informs the magi that it will be in Bethlehem, which is about 5 miles away from Jerusalem by foot.  All that way, to see a little child, in the home of a carpenter and his wife, probably not much to speak of.  But they were guided by the light of the star, and they adapted their lives around that light because of the importance it had for them.
    Isaiah prophesies in our first reading that Jerusalem’s light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon it.  While the world is in darkness and clouds, the Lord shines upon His people,  and even other nations shall be guided by that light from the Lord (a foreshadowing of the magi, those from other nations, coming to see the Lord Jesus).  The light of the Lord was to allow the Chosen People to see clearly, to not trip over obstacles, or lose their way.  
    That’s what the Lord wants to be for us, as well.  He wants to be the one who guides our way, who helps us to see clearly, who gives us the ability to avoid obstacles that will hurt us or wrong paths that will not take us to our destination.  Is He that light for us, or have we allowed clouds to cover up that light?
    The magi, for a king that they would see only for a short time, traveled some 700 miles.  They likely left behind family and friends to bring fine gifts to an unknown child.  They risked much for someone who wasn’t even part of their religion, but whom, they knew, they had to see.  How much effort do we put into seeing Jesus?  Which lights guide us, and where do they lead?
    God wants to be the light in our life.  Jesus will refer to Himself as the Light of the World.  Light allows us to see and interact with the world.  Are we guided by the light of Christ, or by other lights?  Jesus reveals to us how the world truly is, and where we want to go.  But how often do we find other paths, or prefer to stumble around in the dark?  
    I think that many people know what God wants them to do; they understand Jesus’ teaching; but their will is not in relationship with Jesus; they are not willing to follow that star.  Following the will of God is sometimes very difficult, because, like Herod, the world or even simply our fallen will would rather be in charge, and doesn’t want competition.  It seeks to snuff out the light, or to present us with other, dimmer lights that are pale reflections of the true light and do not lead us where we want to go.  We prefer our way to God’s way.  We bristle, especially now, at any institution which tells us how to live our life, as if guidance means that we lose control.  We prefer to stumble in darkness, and are then surprised when it hurts.  We follow lesser lights to places we are not meant to go, and then are shocked that we can’t find happiness.
    The life of a Catholic is meant to be a life that follows a star, the Morning Star, Jesus Christ, in everything.  God, through His Son Jesus, and the one Church that Jesus founded, the Catholic Church, reveals to us what we are to believe and how we are to live in order to be happy.  Sometimes that means that we have to give up things that we desire, or things that others, sometimes many others, say will make us happy.  Sometimes it means that, while the rest of the world goes one way, we go another.  It means when we come to significant or major decisions, we take them to prayer and evaluate them by Scripture and the teachings of the Church, not just think about them and decide what we want to do.  
    The magi followed a star to a foreign country to briefly see a king from a different religion.  For us who claim to follow Jesus, to belong to the religion He founded, are we willing to follow Him, our Star?  Are we willing to conform our life to Him in order to find the happiness we all desire?