Sin-Conversion-Forgiveness

 Fourth Sunday of Lent

    Right now we’re in the midst of the NCAA basketball tournament, often called March Madness.  The hard work of 68 teams throughout the regular season is put to the test, as they compete against the best teams in the nation, not just in their conferences.  In the end, one team will hold up the trophy, the physical sign that they are the best in the country.  It would certainly be easier if a team didn’t have to win the six games of the tournament to be crowned champion, but that trophy would mean a lot less, because it would not have come through hard work, good execution, and sometimes a little bit of luck.
    Just as there is a progression through March Madness, so there is a progression that we hear in the Gospel today about forgiveness as we heard the all-too-familiar parable of the Prodigal Son.  The main point of the parable is the mercy of the father, which Jesus uses to teach us about the mercy of our Heavenly Father.  But we also see how this whole process of sin, conversion, and forgiveness takes place, until the celebration in the father’s house at the son’s return.  
    Of course, the first part of this story is sin.  The son demands what is “his,” which isn’t really his yet.  He doesn’t want to depend on the father for what he needs.  When we sin, we don’t rely on our heavenly Father.  We take what we feel is ours, and we spend it on “dissipation.”  We think that we can make it on our own without God’s help.  In fact, when we separate ourselves from God, we notice how little we have, and how much like a famine it is.  If we don’t recognize how bad things are, we go from bad to worse, until we are surrounded by the mud of sin upon sin, and even hungry for the scraps that the pigs are eating, which is bad enough from our point of view, but even worse from the point of view of a Jew, to whom pigs are ritually unclean animals.
    The next part of the process in conversion is sometimes the hardest part: we recognize how bad things are.  Alcoholics Anonymous will talk about the necessity of hitting bottom before one can truly find sobriety.  The same is true with sin.  We can only truly seek conversion if we realize that we need help, and that we cannot take care of ourselves.  In the parable, Jesus refers to it as the son “coming to his senses.”  With so many sins, we tell ourselves it’s not so bad, it’s not really doing a lot of harm, and so we continue on.  Of course, when we do that, we keep ourselves away from the Father’s house.  We don’t find the way home, and we don’t really move much to get there.
    But if we do recognize the evil of our sins and the horrible effects they have on us, then we start back towards the Father.  Both the recognition of sin, and then the movement back to the Father are only possible because of God’s grace, to which we start to open ourselves.  Nothing that we can do that is good happens without God first making it possible.  As we open ourselves to being sorry for our sins, and leaving them behind, we start back to the Father’s house.  
    Part of this is being open and honest about our sins: that we chose them.  As a society, we are good at making excuses.  We’re never guilty for anything; it was always someone’s else’s fault.  Maybe it was our upbringing, or some external factor, or really anything, as long as we don’t have to take responsibility.  We don’t even know how to take responsibility in our apologies: “If I hurt you, then I’m sorry.”  A true contrition acknowledges that we have sinned, that we have done wrong, and that we have disobeyed and offended our heavenly Father.  In order to truly have the conversion that will heal us, we need to acknowledge our own role in sinning.  
    But, having come to our senses, recognized how bad things are, and started back to the Father to apologize for our sins, our loving Father runs out to meet us.  God doesn’t dangle forgiveness at the end of a line for us to try and catch, like the tricks we play with dogs and their toys as we hide it behind our backs, or keep swinging it back and forth, just out of the grasp of their mouths.  God runs to us to embrace us in love.  In the days of Jesus, no man would have run, not only because it showed a lack of dignity, but also because it was physically hard to do in sandals and a tunic.  And yet, that is what God does for us.  He cannot contain Himself and His love for us.  He cannot wait even the few extra minutes it will take for us to get to Him.  He runs to us.  

    And as He embraces us, He makes us His sons and daughters, though we are not deserving of that title.  We wasted our filial dignity, and spent it away.  But God gives it back to us, and then celebrates for and with us.  And he spares no expense.  He puts a robe around us, which is his love and our protection from the outside elements; a ring on our finger, which symbolizes our authority in the house of our Father again; and sandals on our feet to keep the dirt of sin from attaching itself to us.  
    The celebration is worth it.  But there are no shortcuts to forgiveness.  We cannot find the celebration at coming back to the Father’s house if we stay in the mire and the mud of our sins.  We cannot receive the robe, ring, sandals, and fattened calf if we do not acknowledge that we had earlier squandered our inheritance of eternal life and offended our Father, whose only desire for us is that we stay in His house and enjoy what He has set before us.  If we do wander away, though, the good news is that the love of the Father will welcome us back when we have repented and started back to Him.  If we don’t have the good sense of staying in the Father’s house, let’s at least have the good sense to come back after we’ve been away.

Which Kingdom?

 Third Sunday in Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  At the end of the day, there are only two kingdoms: the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of the devil.  The Kingdom of God has and will win.  The kingdom of the devil has and will lose.  The question for us is: to which kingdom do we wish to belong?
    The easy answer is, of course, the kingdom of God.  We’re here, after all, so we must put some faith in God and want to be with him.  But we often find ourselves as divided, as some of us wants God, and some of us wants the devil.  We would likely never say it that way with our lips, but our actions tell a different story.  Every time we sin, especially, but not limited to, mortal sin, we choose the kingdom of the devil.  Every time we respond to God’s grace, we choose the kingdom of God.  
    Our Lenten pilgrimage is meant to help purify us to choose God more frequently than we choose the devil.  By denying ourselves certain things, or maybe doing extra things, we are trying to train ourselves to choose God.  As our Lord says elsewhere, we cannot serve two masters.  We will either love one and hate the other, or hate one and love the other.  
    St. Paul outlines ways that the people of the Church in Ephesus chose the devil: by saying obscene or silly or suggestive things, or participating in immorality, impurity, and greed, which the Apostle calls idolatry.  And certainly, when we do those things, we give our attention to something other than God.  Instead, we are told to be thankful.  Thanksgiving might seem to fit as an antidote to greed, but what does it have to do with immorality and impurity?  I suggest that we give thanks to God for the gift of our sexuality, but also for knowing how to use it properly.
    Our sexual passions often become false gods.  They so often want to demand total obedience.  But they are a hunger which is never satisfied.  They keep wanting more.  They’re like the old commercials for Lays Potato chips: bet you can’t have just one.  It’s not enough to see one impure image; once one is seen the desire for another, or something more enticing, grows.  The passions that arise from physical expressions of affection, too, seem to want to keep ramping up and escalating.  But God has revealed ways that humans can express physical affection, but without becoming slaves of them.  He tells us that certain expressions of love are only fit within the confines of marriage, where man and woman can give themselves fully to the other, open to life, as an expression of love between a husband and wife.  If those three requirements are not met, then a couple would be falling into the immorality which St. Paul says can exclude us from the kingdom of God.  Even and husband and a wife could need to abstain from physical intimacy if those three requirements for holy sexual activity are not present, so that they do not use each other simply for pleasure.
    In my work as a chaplain for the Michigan State Police, I too often see where people have let their passions, both sexual and other passions, run free, and how much it ruins their lives.  God does not desire ruin for us.  He desires the fulfillment of our human nature, which God reveals to us.  Yes, it sometimes means saying no to our desires, but that no is a sign that we are free.  If we only can say yes to something, then we are a slave.  If we have the ability to say no, then we are governing ourselves.  The devil, on the other hand, desires our ruin.  He never paints it that way, but he encourages us to give in to our desires every time they pop up.  But in doing so we enslave ourselves to the prince of lies.

St. Irenaeus

    Christ, by His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, has tied up the strong man.  As St. Irenaeus says:
 

For when Satan is bound, man is set free;…the Word bound [Satan] securely….And justly indeed is [Satan] led captive, who had led men unjustly into bondage; while man, who had been led captive in times past, was rescued from the grasp of his possessor, according to the tender mercy of God the Father, who had compassion on His own handiwork, and gave to it salvation, restoring it by means of the Word–that is, by Christ.

This time of Lent is the perfect time to re-welcome the kingdom of God in our lives, and ask Christ to bind up the enemy, so that we might no longer be in slavery to him.  
    So the question for us is: to which kingdom do we want to belong?  To the kingdom of the devil, which often brings immediate pleasure but later suffering and death?  Or to the kingdom of God, which does have us deny ourselves at times in the present, but which leads to the eternal joy of heaven, where we see God face-to-face: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Being Transfigured

  [The parts in Italics were used only at the Extraordinary Form Mass]

Second Sunday of/in Lent
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]. When I talk about going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I talk about how visiting the Holy Land makes it so that you never read the Gospel the same way, because you see in your mind the places where these things happened.  This is certainly true for the Transfiguration.  I remember the first time I went to the Holy Land, as a seminarian.  We stayed with the Franciscan friars at the top of Mt. Tabor.  To get up there, there are shuttles you have to take for large groups; the big travel busses can’t handle the snake-back roads.  While waiting for the shuttle, I decided I was going to climb up the mountain, and hopefully save some time.  So, with my Birkenstock sandals on, on a warm, May day, I started walking up the side of Mt. Tabor.  It was not as easy as I thought, with all the thorns and bushes.  Sometimes the stones were a little loose, and I lost my footing.  But I made it to the top, quite sweaty and hot, probably a little dehydrated, but proud at my accomplishment.

    I had another experience at Mt. Tabor, as I went inside the church.  There is a beautiful mosaic of the transfiguration in the apse of the church, and as I was praying, the sun shone just perfectly so that it hit the image of Jesus, and illumined Him.  I remember thinking that this must have been something like the apostles saw when our Lord was transfigured.  Combining those two days, it’s even more amazing when Christ was transfigured, as He and the apostles would also have likely been hot and sweaty, and yet Christ’s clothes became as white as light.
    That’s all well and good to understand some very realistic background, but what, we may ask, does the Transfiguration have to do with us?  How does the Transfiguration change my life?  Well, as with so many aspects of our Lord’s life, what He showed us is what He desires to happen to us.  We are supposed to be transfigured as well.  We are supposed to go from earthly dirty, sweaty, and tired, to clean, bright, and glorified.
    That process started for us in baptism.  At our baptism, the voice of the Father may not have been heard, but He said that we are His beloved.  We became configured to Christ for the first time (but hopefully, not the last!).  And from that moment on, we were destined for glory, the glory that Christ shone forth as a foretaste at the Transfiguration.  We call this divinization, or deification.
    God wants us to be like Him.  We cannot be the same nature of God (as we are limited and He is infinite), but He wants us to be transformed so that we are images of Him.  This is the whole idea of the Christian life.  From baptism until death, we are called to become more and more like Christ, the new Adam, and less and less like the first Adam.  St. Paul will talk about this using the terms “old man” and “new man.”  
    How does this happen?  Some of it happens through the sacraments.  I already mentioned baptism, but the Sacrament of Penance helps us be more like God through having our fallen actions (sins) washed away by the Blood of Christ.  Confirmation empowers us to act like Christ in public.  The Eucharist is meant to transform us from the inside out, so that as we receive Christ in the Eucharist, we become more like Him in what we do because we have Him inside us.    Marriage helps us to live for the other, as Christ did for His Bride, the Church.  Holy Orders allows one to act in the name and person of Christ the Head.  Anointing of the Sick strengthens us in illness to trust in God, even in difficult circumstances.  So when we receive the sacraments, it’s not meant to be coming up to receive some thing, like a prize for the just, but is meant to be a way of receiving God so that we can become more like God.  Which is why those in mortal sin have to go to confession first, because, among other reasons, you cannot become like God if you have separated yourself from Him.  Each time we receive sacramental grace, God wants us to utilize that grace to act more like Him in daily life.  
    Also, askesis, asceticism, is meant to help us be more like God.  We say no to things that we don’t need to rely more on the One whom we really need: God.  Especially in Lent, it can be easy to see penitential practices we do as something that we’re required to do, but only extrinsic practices.  Instead, in the Catholic spiritual tradition, our penitential practices are the practical ways that we say no to our fallen nature, and yes to Christ’s divine nature.  Do we see our Lenten penances that way?  Did we choose penances that will help us transform into the people God wants us to be, people more like Himself?  Or is it just “I gave up chocolate or beer for Lent because I would like to lose weight, but I’m going to go right back to it, and maybe even more, once Easter comes.”  It is so easy to pick a penance, and not get to the deeper reality of that penance, or what the penance is supposed to do.  
    Daily prayer is also a great means of divinization or deification.  Our Lord was always in contact with His heavenly Father, and would take specific time away from His preaching and miracles to be alone in prayer.  Is prayer just something that we check off to get it done for the day?  Or do we see it as our privileged time of speaking to and listening to the Father, so that He can change us to be more like Christ?      [Lastly, St. Paul in today’s epistle talks about how even the gift of our sexuality is meant to be transfigured by Christ.  Specifically, he talks about how to find a spouse in a Christian manner, not a pagan manner.  The Christian seeks someone whom they can help go to heaven, not just someone who looks good and satisfies bodily desires and lust.  In Christian marriage, personal happiness is not the goal; the holiness and happiness of the other is the goal.  Again, this is different from a pagan or secular point of view, which views the other as a means to the end of personal pleasure.  The way that we utilize our God-given gift of sexuality changes because of our relationship with Christ, whether we are single, married, in consecrated life, or ordained.  God wants to divinize all of us, not just parts of us.]
    Life is tiring, sweaty, and sometimes a hot mess.  We may always feel like we’re climbing, but never reaching the top of the mountain.  But if we allow God’s grace to be active in us; if we are open to the sacramental graces that we receive on such a regular basis; if we do penances that help us die to our old, fallen self; if we take time to really speak our heart to God and listen for what His heart says to us, then we will arrive at the top of the mountain, and find that God has transfigured us as well, to be a reflection of the glory of His Son, [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is Lord, for ever and ever.  Amen.] 

Fighting Temptations and Healing Wounds

 First Sunday of/in Lent
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]. Last week I did my taxes, and because I started to work partially in the City of Flint last calendar year (when I became pastor at St. Matthew), I have file taxes for Flint.  But, because I only worked part of the day in Flint last year, I had to see how many days I worked, and then how many of those days I worked in the City of Flint, to see how much of my wages Flint could tax.  As I looked through the year, week-by-week, I saw some of the highlights of the year, and also some of the lowlights.  My calendar connected me to memories, some of which were delightful, some of which were not so delightful.
    Many of those painful memories from last year were due to my own sinfulness and wounds that I have developed throughout my life, and the reactions that can sometimes happen when those wounds become irritated by the everyday happenings of life.  Some of my own wounds are the fear of abandonment, the desire to be wanted, and the desire to be successful.  You may have the same, or maybe very different, wounds and sins.  But we all have them.

Mount of Temptations in Israel

    As our Lord entered into His time of temptation in the desert, He took upon Himself, not His wounds or sins, because He didn’t have any, but He did take our wounds, sins, and temptations.   The three that He underwent might be categorized as temptations related to physical appetites, amazing feats, and power.  But Christ enters the desert to do battle with the devil, but also show us how to battle the devil with using the same tactics our Lord used.  
    Just as Jesus was in the desert for 40 days, so our 40 day Lenten pilgrimage allows us to grow closer to God and work on our sins and wounds.  As St. Paul says, now is the acceptable time for entering into this battle with our fallen self and with the devil, because now is the time of salvation.  Each day that we put off dealing with our wounds and sins is another day that the infection grows deeper, and becomes more painful when we want to debride the wound.
    So what does Christ show us?  First, He shows us that fighting wounds, temptations, and sins should be rooted in who we are.  Satan begins his temptations with: “If you are the Son of God.”  The enemy seeks to call into question who we are.  In order to fight our wounds, we need to recognize that we are the beloved children of God in the one Son of God, Jesus Christ.  When we operate out of that identity, we are less likely to seek our identity in lesser goods.  How easy it is for us to root our identity in who seems to want us, or what we have accomplished.  But those things are fleeting.  Friends can fall away; our achievements, especially if they are not rooted in God, can come crumbling down.  But God is the sure foundation upon Whom we can build our house and base our worth.  
    Secondly, Christ shows us that we should go to Scripture to fight against attacks of the devil.  Yes, Satan does quote Scripture in the passage we heard today, but Christ uses Scripture to show how Satan’s quotations of the Word of God is off.  Sometimes we are afraid of the Scriptures, and sometimes they are not readily clear or intelligible, or their meaning needs some unpacking by the Church’s magisterium, or teaching office.  But the Word of God is always a good place to go to fight off temptations, and you can reference the passages in the Catechism if you have questions about the deeper meaning.  Our psalm/gradual and tract from today, talks about how God will protect His servants.  That is what God does for us.  Our guardian angels want to fight off the temptations with us, and attack any of the fallen spirits that seek to do us harm.  Not even a lion or a dragon could stand a chance if we stay close to the Lord and trust in His power to keep us safe.  
    To resist sin and temptation, and to have our wounds healed, we need only ask God, and He will come to our aid.  God wants us to be holy and whole.  He knows how easy it is for us to operate out of false identities, not rooted in Christ, which then lead us to give in to temptation and fall into sin.  He knows beforehand what we often only find out after the fact: that giving in to temptation, sinning, and letting our wounds rule us is self-destructive and does not bring us happiness, even if it sometimes brings us passing pleasure.  
    Take advantage of this season of Lent.  Make this the acceptable time to be healed of sin and wounds through the Sacrament of Penance.  Ask God to help you to see where and why you hurt, and where and why you so easily fall into particular sins.  Those sins and wounds do not define you.  You are the beloved child of the Father, who with the Son and Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen. 

What Do You Want Me to Do For You?

 Quinquagesima Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “What do you want me to do for you?”  What a question!  Besides asking the blind man in the Gospel, our Lord asks us the same question today: what do you want me to do for you?  
    It would be easy to treat this offer like Aladdin, rubbing the lamp and having the genie come out, offering us three wishes.  It’s interesting that, when it comes to genies, most stories involve some level of greed.  What is desired is personal gain, whether it be money, power, notoriety, or some other fleeting good.  Of course, then there’s the other reality with a genie, that you have to be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it and get it literally, or in a way you never intended.  

    But our Lord doesn’t operate that way.  He promises neither to give us fleeting goods which are really the idols of the world (power, pleasure, money), nor to trick us with what we ask.  He sincerely asks us what we want to receive from Him.  And notice that the blind man does not ignore his physical reality.  He doesn’t deny the trouble that being blind gives him, or pretend that all he wants is eternal life.  He asks for his eyes to be healed.  We don’t know how old this man was.  Maybe he was young; maybe he was old.  But his eyes would eventually fail him again as he continued to age.  Still, God gave him that gift.  
    So what do you want from God?  What do you want God to do for you?  When you’re thinking about it, make sure that it’s something that is actually good.  I used to, when I had some extra cash, buy

MegaMillions or PowerBall tickets.  I would tell God that if I one, I would give 10% to the church, so it would really be a good thing if I won.  I haven’t won, for the record, and I am convinced that God hasn’t wanted me to.  I hear so many stories about people who came into quick and easy money, and how horrible their lives became.  So maybe God was saving me from that pain (some of you may be thinking, ‘I’ll take my chances, God; let me understand what it is to have that kind of problem!’).  But what do you want God to do for you?  Solomon didn’t ask for riches or victory over his enemies, but wisdom.  That would be a great gift to get from God.  Or maybe you want God to increase your faith or your hope.  Those are also good.  Or maybe you desire healing from God, like the blind man.  God also grants those prayers if it’s for that person’s good.  What do you want from God?
    Have confidence that God can do it for you.  In another story of healing, a man asks our Lord to heal his son who is possessed.  The man says, “If you can,” and Christ replies that all things are possible for the one who has faith.  Do we have confidence that God can do great things?  Does He do every great thing that we desire?  No.  Does that mean that He can’t.  No.  It means it wasn’t His will.  But if you look at almost every healing in the Gospels, they come as a result of faith.  When we have faith in what God can do, it opens up for possibilities that we never imagined were possible.  As the Lord asks us, “What do you want me to do for you?”, do we really think He can do something for us?
    That question, “What do you want me to do for you?”, takes on a special meaning for us as we approach Lent.  Perhaps the Lord is asking you and I today: “What do you want me to do for you this Lent?”  What do we expect to get out of this upcoming Lenten season?  Are our sacrifices something that we do because we’ve always given up this, or done this extra thing?  Or will they truly help us to grow in holiness?  Will our Lenten practices help us to be ready for Easter, to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead?  
    If we ask the Lord for something this Lent, He will give it to us if it is for our good.  Do we have a particular sin that we want to fight more and eliminate from our life?  Do we have a family member or friend with whom we need to reconcile?  Do we have an enemy that we need to forgive?  Lent is the perfect time to open ourselves up even more to God’s grace to allow us to live the divine life.  Lent is the time of metanoia, a change of heart and mind, a time to put on the mind of Christ, as the Apostle says.  Do we want that from God?  Do we want to change, or are we happy in our set ways of operating or the spiritual plateau on which we may find ourselves?  
    Do we need to grow in love?  Not the romantic love that we so often associate with the word love, but the agape love that St. Paul describes in our epistle.  Do we need to become more patient and more kind?  Do we struggle with envying what others have, or do we seek to elevate ourselves above others?  Does our love for others depend on our emotions or how the day is going?  If we wish to grow more like Christ, it necessary entails growing in love, both for the God we cannot see and the brother and sister that we can see.
    God is not a genie.  We are not limited to three wishes.  God truly desires our good, and wants to know what we feel we need.  He is our loving Father, and wants to give us every good gift.  As we go through this week, and as we prepare for Lent, may we hear the Lord asking us, “What do you want me to do for you?”, and prayerfully consider what it is that we desire from the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Death and Him that Conquered It

 Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    As we enter into Lent this Wednesday, we enter into a time of penance.  We begin our observance of Lent with the words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  And throughout Lent we give things up in order to die to our will.  We fast, we abstain, and we enter into a time of making do with less.  Why?  Why all this negation?
    Our little sacrifices are meant to remind us of the one big sacrifice that Christ underwent for our salvation.  But do we really understand salvation?  Do we know from what we were saved?  Do we want to be saved daily?
    St. Paul talks about that which is corruptible and that which is mortal, and talks about death and sin.  This is something that we don’t talk about a lot in modern Catholicism, but it’s important.  Because if we don’t understand the sorry state we were and can be in, then we don’t appreciate the gift of incorruptibility, immortality, and victory that our Lord Jesus Christ won for us.
    We have certainly grown up in a society that says that everyone is basically good, and everything is basically alright.  That’s one view of the world, but it’s not the Catholic, Christian, or Jewish worldview.  Yes, God created all things good, as we heard in Genesis, but through Adam and Eve’s sin, everything in creation was corrupted.  Death entered the world, and not simply the death that signals the end of life, but eternal death, eternal separation from God.  
    And that was not simply for Adam and Eve, it was for everyone who came forth from them, that is, everyone.  We don’t enter into this world on the path to heaven; we enter this world on a path to hell, because we are separated from God.  We belong to sin, and sin means death, which is the opposite of God, who is Life.  All we can produce is bad fruit.  Even the best of us–Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah–were all still bound in sin and could not enter into eternal life, no matter how good a life they lived.
    This is the victory that St. Paul was talking about for death.  Death claimed every person of the human race before the Incarnation.  It was as if everyone was in a prison, by humanity’s own making, and the warden was the devil.  So many came so close to getting out, only to be dragged back in.  

    But, the victory of Christ was the opening of the prison gates by one who died, but who was not under its penalty.  Christ knew no sin, and yet suffered the penalty of sin so that we would not have to.  He was able to transform the bad fruit into good fruit.  He freed us from sin and death.  And He did this by His Death and Resurrection.  And He imparts that Death and Resurrection to us through Baptism, and through all the Sacraments, especially the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.  
    So without Baptism, without the Death and Resurrection of Christ applied for us and accepted by us, we are still in that prison; we are still subject to eternal death.  Without Christ, nothing we do is meritorious and helping us get to heaven.  With Christ, even the smallest sacrifices that we make help us to accept eternal salvation that Christ won for us.
    But while Baptism frees us from the prison, we can, by our decisions, freely walk back in.  We would consider it crazy for a prisoner who was just released from prison to walk right back and close the cell door on him or herself.  But that is what we do when we sin.  
    And so, as we get ready for Lent, we do those small sacrifices that show Christ that we are grateful, but we are also training ourselves not to turn back to sin.  The things that we give up, the extra penances and charitable works that we do are meant to help us be closer to Christ and keep us free with Him.  We give up stuff that reminds us of how bad prison is, so that when we go throughout our day we reject the path back into prison and accept the freedom that Christ wants for us.  
    So, as we prepare for the beginning of Lent on Wednesday, we are not preparing for a Catholic diet.  We are not preparing for a random, 40-day period where we give up stuff just because it’s what we’ve always done.  We are not preparing simply for a season.  We are preparing ourselves to continue in the freedom that we received in Baptism and that we receive in the Eucharist and through the other sacraments we have received.  We are preparing ourselves to recognize and resist the ways in which Satan seduces us to come back to his prison and be his slaves.  We are preparing ourselves to stay close to Christ and the victory He won, so that, in Christ, we can say, “Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”  And “thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,” whom we will have the opportunity to worthily receive as we continue towards the climax of the Mass, the consecration and reception of the Eucharist. 

Weaknesses

 Sexagesima Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Especially for guys, weakness is not a trait that is desired.  No one is impressed by the 98-pound-weakling.  We are impressed by muscle mass, by big biceps, and the ability to do great feats of strength.  And yet, St. Paul today relates to us a weakness of his.  He tells us about a thorn in his flesh that he asked the Lord three times to remove.  But God told him that His power was made manifest in weakness.

St. Paul

    Isn’t this the whole history of salvation?  When God chose a people, the Jews, He did not choose the strongest nation on earth, or the wisest, as God tells Moses in Deuteronomy.  God chose the weakest.  But, because of that, no one could argue that the success of the Jews was because of their own strength or cunning.  No, it was because the true God was their God and supported them.
    So, too, through the times of the Judges.  When the Israelites relied on God and turned back to Him and away from their foreign gods, God would give them victory over their enemies, even though their enemies were stronger than they.  Think of the Book of Judith.  God chooses a woman, who would have been considered a weak sex from a weak nation, to conquer the great Holofernes.  Or consider King David: he was not the son of Jesse even Samuel thought would be king.  And yet, this small, shepherd boy dispatches the great giant Goliath.  And during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah, even though Sennacherib and the great Assyrian army was at his doorstep, after Sennacherib had destroyed the Kingdom of Israel, and mocked the soldiers in their own language, God grants the victory, as Isaiah the prophet had foretold, thanks to Hezekiah’s continuing trust in God.
    But, of course, the example of God choosing weakness par excellence is our Lord Himself, who came, not in the power that was and is His, but as a defenseless baby.  He conquered the dominion of the devil not by strength of arms and force, but by His weakness of taking upon Himself human flesh.  
    And the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, is no different.  The princes that Christ chooses to be the new leaders of His Church are generally uneducated men who do not have much to them.  If anyone could boast about being a theologian and a religious man it was Paul, who came to the Church after first persecuting it.  But none of the twelve was anyone to talk about when it came to being a natural leader or vision of spiritual strength.  Even Peter, the great rock chosen by Christ as our first pope, was, after being named pope, called Satan by our Lord and rebuked for his lack of trust in God’s plan of the crucifixion and death.  Weakness is how God works.
    And it is how God works in us.  The more that we trust in ourselves, the less God can work through us.  This is not to say that God lacks any power, but to say that God loves us, and so does not force Himself on us.  He could, but He doesn’t.  But, when we decrease, we allow the Lord to increase, as St. John the Baptist said.  
    So how do we decrease?  How to we remain weak so that the Lord may be strong in us?  One easy way is to consider how we make decisions, especially big ones, but even the daily decisions of life.  Do we trust in our own reasoning, our own intelligence, or do we take our decisions to God in prayer?  Asking God to guide our decisions means acknowledging that another is wiser than we, and may have a better plan.  When it comes to a job to take or leave, a path of business to pursue, the choice of a car, the decision of whether or not to try to have another child, how to educate our children, etc., we should place it first at the feet of our Lord, and ask for His guidance.  He may have some wisdom to impart to us, which may even seem counterintuitive sometimes.  St. Maximilian Kolbe is a beautiful example of relying on the Lord’s wisdom, rather than our own.  When founding a monastery in Japan, St. Maximilian decided to build his monastery on the opposite side of the mountain from that which seemed the best.  The name of the town outside which St. Maximilian built his monastery was Nagasaki, and because St. Maximilian had built it on the opposite side of the mountain, it was not destroyed by the atomic bomb that was dropped in 1945.  
    Sometimes, after placing the decision at God’s feet, God does allow us to use our reason to arrive at a prudent decision.  God sometimes gives us signs of how we are to proceed, but sometimes He trusts our judgements.  But He always loves being consulted so that we might know His will first.  We see this even in human relations, where we may think we know what is best, but we ask our spouse or our friend first to get their opinion.  Of course, God doesn’t deal in opinions, He deals in truth, but still it is good to have access to the source of truth when we make decisions that affect our present and future.  
    Paul was not afraid of his weakness, and neither should we be.  In fact, the Apostle recognized that, without God, he had nothing.  But with God, he had everything, even in the midst of his sufferings for spreading the Gospel.  So should we recognize that, without God, we are nothing; we have nothing.  And recognizing our poverty without God, we can cry out to God to give us what we need, and to supply for us in our weakness.  And we can have confidence that we will receive what we need from our Loving Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen. 

In It to Win It

 Septuagesima Sunday

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  There are no participation trophies when it comes to eternal salvation.  There are winners (those in heaven and those in purgatory), and there are losers (those in hell).  Luckily, it’s not winner take all.  There can be more than one winner, inasmuch as more than one person can go to heaven (thanks be to God, because Mary would be the only one there).  
    But we are still called to give it our all.  St. Paul reminds us that we should run so as to win, and train our bodies for victory, which means denying them things that keep us from winning.  And it means taking things that help us win.  

    Since June, at the advice and with the occasional help of a friend, I’ve been working out pretty much every day Monday through Friday (though, I will admit, I didn’t quite work out while on vacation).  I recently had a doctor’s appointment and he noted that, as far as the bloodwork I had done is concerned, I’m doing much better, especially considering that the blood was taken not that long after Christmas, with all of the goodies associated with it.  I may not be swoll (the Troopers at the State Police Post where I work out often say I’m doing my “holy gains”), I am getting a bit stronger.
    To do that I have to stick with it, day in and day out.  I also have to be more careful what I eat.  That includes not eating as much frozen pizza, but also adding good calories that helps my body grow stronger.  It isn’t always fun to go to the Post for “holy gains,” and the bulking powder I mix isn’t always a delicious, refreshing beverage.  But it helps me, little by little, to keep my body fit and lean.
    The same is true in the spiritual life: we cannot stop (not even for vacation) our desire to grow in holiness and the actions we take each day to develop our relationship with Christ.  The prayers that we say, the foods from which we fast or abstain, the little mortifications that we endure are all meant to help us train to be winners and to receive the crown of heaven from our Lord.  Some days we enjoy those things, or we notice the difference that those ascetic practices are making in our spiritual life.  Other times we seem to be the same, unfit person that we were when we started.  But the key is to persevere.
    Another key is not to make too many comparisons.  Certainly we can look to others as guides, especially the saints.  They help us to know how we can grow in our love of God and neighbor.  To continue the analogy I began earlier, the friend that I occasionally work out with is much stronger than I am, and you can see it clearly in his biceps.  Desiring to be stronger like him can sometimes push me to workout, even when I don’t want to.
    But, on the other hand, comparisons can also be less than helpful, because we’re not concentrating on our own pilgrimage, but get caught up in what others have and do.  That’s one of the messages of the Gospel today.  The landowner promised a certain pay to those who worked all day.  He even promises those who started a little later than the first laborers a just wage.  But when he distributes the pay, those who came last, who only worked a couple of hours, received full pay.  The first workers starting looking at others, and comparing their work to those who came at the end of the day, and assumed they would get more.  But they received what they were promised, no more, and no less.  Their comparison did not help them, but actually drew them away from the goal, which was to work well for the landowner.  
    So in our spiritual life, when we look at what others are doing, sometimes it does not lead us to imitate others’ greatness, but makes us jealous of what they have, and unsatisfied with what we have.  Maybe we feel like we’re doing a lot of work, praying a lot, fasting and abstaining a lot, doing those mortifications, big and small, that are supposed to make us holy.  And all it’s doing is making us look down our noses at those other people who don’t practice the same penances that we do.  Or maybe we see what others do, and we feel like it’s hopeless, like our spiritual muscles will never be as big as that other person’s.  
    God doesn’t want our negative comparisons.  He wants us to be who we are, not someone else, and cooperate with Him in growing in holiness, according to our own state in life, graces and temptations, and abilities.  He doesn’t want us to be Martha, comparing what we are doing to what Mary is doing.  He simply wants us to be Mary, attentive to Him and following His direction for our life.  

    It’s also important to note how merciful the justice of God is.  As I said earlier, the landowner promised to give what was just to those who worked in the morning.  But out of a desire for others to be a part of the great work, he pays the later workers the same as the earlier.  There’s no evidence in the parable that the later workers knew they would be paid the same as the earlier workers.  But they were.  God’s justice was colored with His mercy.  God was generous.  And so he is with us.  God is always looking to forgive us, to draw us closer to Him, even in the last moments.  Think of the good thief, St. Dismas, who at the last moments of his criminal life sought the mercy of God, and it was granted to him, like to the later workers.  So for us, even if our conversion has come late, or even if we’re still working on the conversion we know God wants for us, we should never despair of God’s mercy.  Neither should we presume on it, and wait until the last moments of breath to make a true conversion, but if we are doing what we can to grow in living a life like Christ’s, we know that God will reward that, not only justly, but abundant with mercy.  
    So, as we get closer to Lent, and are starting to think of the Lenten penances we can take on, let’s follow the advice of St. Paul and do the things that will help us truly convert our lives, not make Lent a Catholic 40-day diet.  Choose a penance that will help you be a winner!  But, also know and trust in the mercy of God, who desires heaven for all His children, so they can rest eternally with Him, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Our First and Most Important Friend

 Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Some of the greatest blessings in life are friends.  They are there for you to share in your joys and comfort you in sorrow.  The best friends help you to be the best version of yourself, which is sometimes easy, and sometimes a bit painful.  St. Augustine of Hippo had a beautiful reflection on friendship from his book The Confessions:
 

Friendship had other attractions which were very important to me – we could talk and laugh – help each other in small ways – we enjoyed doing lots of things together – reading some book – going somewhere – sometimes we would be very serious together – sometimes we were able to act the fool together.  Sometimes when we argued with each other it was not a bitter argument but like the kind of argument you might have with yourself.  In fact, sometimes the argument was the kind only friends can have when they have some disagreement – it sometimes made our usual harmony more meaningful.  Each of us had something to learn from each other and something to teach in return.  If someone was absent for some time they were missed and we welcomed them back warmly.

Maybe as I read St. Augustine’s description, your own memories with friends came to your mind, and the good and difficult times you made it through.
    But, as good as friendship is (and St. Thomas Aquinas calls friendship one of the highest goods on earth), we hear a very different message from the Prophet Jeremiah today as he proclaims, “Thus says the Lord: Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.”  Did St. Augustine and St. Thomas decide that Jeremiah got God’s message wrong?  Does God not want us to have friends?  
    Friendship is a gift from God, and in fact, Jesus calls tells the apostles, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  I no longer call you slaves…I have called you friends.”  So maybe Jeremiah did get it wrong!  God seems to encourage friendship, which necessarily entails trust in other humans.
    Of course, there’s a way to see this to brings together Jeremiah and Jesus, and Scripture and St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.  As with everything, it deals with the proper ordering of goods.  Ordering good things is one of the harder tasks in life, because we don’t have to reject what is evil, but decide which good is a higher good than another.
    As good as friendship with our fellow human beings is, our friendship with God is even more important.  And this is the message that Jeremiah is getting at in the first reading.  If all we do is trust in our fellow man, then we’re missing out, and in a great way!  There are things that only a human friend is going to accomplish (short of a miracle): helping you work on your house, throwing a birthday party, and the like.  And so it can be very natural in any need to turn to a friend to find comfort or to rejoice.  But our human friends are limited by time and space, whereas God is not.  So to neglect going to God first is to wrongly order our loves.  And, ironically, the Psalmist says, “Unless the Lord build the house, in vain do the builders labor.”  And St. Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord always.  So even with fixing up a house, or throwing a party, we should start by turning to the Lord.  We may still need friends to accomplish the manual labor, but unless that effort is done according to the will of God, it won’t be as successful as it could be, and may even be a disaster.  
    In my own life, the temptation to turn to friends first is most evident and most seductive when I’m feeling down.  Again, there’s nothing wrong with turning to a friend to find some comfort and consolation.  But my friend, as well as he knows me, does not know me as well as God does.  And my friend cannot see how certain things are meant to happen in the grand scheme of things.  So his advice is going to be limited by whatever finiteness he has, whereas God is infinite, and is limited by no external factors.  When I need a friend to lean on, God wants me to turn to Him first.  I might still turn to my human friends, but God gets first billing, or at least, that’s what he deserves and that’s what will help us the most.  
    Relying on God first is precisely the principle behind all of the Beatitudes that we heard today in the Gospel.  The poor, the hungry, those who weep, and those who are hated do not seem to be blessed.  But they have to rely on God first, and when you get that right, everything else can be put into its proper place.  Those who are blessed are those who know that they need God, first and foremost.  Those who are cursed are those who think they can get by on their own, and do not need God.  Why?  Because God has made the world contingent on Him and His will, and truly to succeed in life means acknowledging and living by that reality.  We may not always like it, but that’s the way the world works.  In the same way, we have this force called gravity.  We may not always like it, but if we try to live as if gravity didn’t exist, eventually we get to a place where gravity imposes itself on us, whether we like it or not, and reminds us that we have to live according to that force.  
    Friendship is a great gift.  “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas.  “Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.”  But, friendship with God, and relying on Him first is the key to any true friendship, and not only natural but supernatural friendship.  May we not only develop our friendships on earth, but also the friendship that will last into eternity: our friendship with God.

Christ Visiting Our Home

 Solemnity of the Anniversary of the Dedication of St. Matthew
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]. Bishop Boyea has a homily he wants read at every Mass this weekend about the upcoming Synod on Synodality.  But we have a special celebration as we celebrate the Anniversary of the Dedication of St. Matthew today.  So you get two homilies for the price of one today.  Still, I’ll try to keep mine brief.
    I want to focus in particular on the Gospel.  Zacchaeus might seem an odd choice for a Gospel on the Anniversary of the Dedication of a Church.  [In the Ordinary Form, there are other options like a pericope from the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, or I think the cleansing of the Temple].  But it really does make sense, if you think about it.  In this encounter with Zacchaeus, our Lord wants to visit his house.  Isn’t this precisely what our Lord does in a church building?  Doesn’t He ask to dwell with us, in the house of worship of our parish?  Of course, He doesn’t simply stay for dinner.  He remains here, which is why this space is dedicated, or set apart for sacred use.  

Zacchaeus' sycamore tree in Jericho

    We are, in this interpretation, Zacchaeus.  We are a tax collector, who is rich, that is to say, we probably have skimmed off the top.  That’s how tax collectors made reasonable money in the ancient days (hopefully not the present day): they would add money to the taxes owed, that they would then pocket.  But, whether we collect extra money literally or figuratively, we’re sinners.  Still, the Lord wants to dwell with us.  And once we encounter Him, it should lead us, like Zaccheus, to change our lives.  The whole point of Christ coming to dwell with us in this sacred temple is that we might be more configured to Christ, that Christ may more easily dwell within the temple of our hearts and souls.  If we are not drawn to change our lives, even if we feel like we’re making the same changes week by week, then we’re not truly encountering Christ.  This is not because He’s not here, but because we haven’t welcomed Him in.
    But Christ also wants to dwell in the hearts of other people.  And so this sacred space should also encourage us, through what we engage in here, to help others see the Lord.  We are the disciples who bring the Lord to other towns besides Jericho, so that Christ may dwell in the hearts of other sinners who need saving, just like we need saving.  In that way, Christ doesn’t just stop at the house of Zacchaeus; He goes to other houses, too.  
    So while we celebrate this beautiful church today, and the anniversary of when it was set aside for divine worship, we cannot rest on our laurels.  We are asked by Christ to take Him to others, so that He can draw them from their sin, and so feel comfortable living in them.  So, too, we work at continuing to make the temple of our hearts a place where Christ feels at home, so that our souls are the temples of the Holy Spirit, who with God the Father and God the Son, is one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.