Trusting God with our Future

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

These readings for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time providentially connect well with my final Sunday as pastor of St. Joseph.  This is one of the amazing things about the Word of God.  It always has something to say to us to strengthen us, to comfort us, and to provide us with the way forward in our lives, no matter what is happening.

I do have to say, though, it is a bit funny that the first reading is about Elijah calling Elisha away from his home, and the Gospel includes a passage where Jesus affirms that He has no permanent home in His ministry, unlike the foxes and birds who have their dens and nests.  

When I was ordained a priest, six years ago, I put my hands in Bishop Boyea’s hands, and Bishop Boyea asked me, “Do you promise respect and obedience to me and my successors?”  I answered, “I do.”  Bishop Boyea then continued, “May God who has begun the good work in you bring it to fulfillment.”  Bishop Boyea didn’t tell me that moving to Flint was part of my promise of obedience to him.  But as he asked me to leave my home, Adrian, behind, I knew that God was asking me to let go of that which I treasured, and entrust myself to Him, just as Elisha had to entrust himself to God as he followed Elijah.

One of the things that may seem crazy is the life of a priest.  The decision to give up money, the ability to make the major decisions in our life, to be obedient to another, as well as to give up sex and a biological family, seems, in the view of our society to be crazy.  It might even sound boring or too much to give up.  But, even with the very real sacrifices that I do make, I am grateful to God that He called me to be a priest, and I would make the same decision again if I had to.  I also can think of at least 8 young men who are in the parish (in addition to Jake, the seminarian who is living with me) or are from the parish who would make a good priest (I won’t embarrass them by naming them).  If you are a young man, even if you think you know exactly what you want to do with your life, do not be afraid to be open to the will of God.  If you have heard that little voice in your heart suggesting a priestly vocation, at least look into it.  Keep praying about it.  And do not be afraid to see if that is where the Lord is calling you.

But that attitude of abandonment to God’s will is not just for priests.  As Christians, we are all called to a radical trust in God in every circumstance.  And sometimes God calls us to walk away from what we think is best in order that we can continue to grow in faith in Him.  Sometimes that means moving, like in my case.  Sometimes that means letting go of a favorite hobby, food, or especially a sin without which we are sure we cannot live.  Maybe it means being open to another child when we think we’ve had enough.  Of course, when it comes to a new life entering our lives, we want to pray about it, and use the gift of reason that God has given us as we discern God’s will.  But just because our will says one thing, does not mean that it is necessarily God’s will.

We are called to live by the Spirit, as St. Paul reminds us in the second reading.  And not just any spirit, but the Spirit of God.  Our fallen human nature sometimes says one thing while the Spirit of God says another.  We are always tempted to take our lives into our own hands and make all the decisions ourselves.  We still struggle with the same temptation that afflicted Adam and Eve: to put ourselves in the place of God and decide our future without any relation to God.  But by our baptism, we can know God’s will, and we can choose to make what may seem like an insane decision according to the wisdom of the world, but which is the best decision according to the wisdom of God.

The Lord calls us throughout our lives to put our trust in Him and to follow Him, even to places we didn’t expect to go.  Will we have the courage to be like Elisha and leave what we know behind in order to serve God where He leads us?

Admitting We're Wrong; Receiving God's Mercy

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Sacrament of Penance, aka Confession, is one of my favorite sacraments to celebrate, both as a priest and as a penitent.  Not because I like hearing all the juicy details of your life.  Lord knows other priests have heard mine.  I love giving and receiving the mercy of God.  As a priest, a person’s confession is never about what they have done.  Yes, they have to be sorry; and sometimes I try to get them to truly make the changes that will help them not commit those sins in the future.  But the sacrament is about God’s mercy, and restoring that person to sanctifying grace, that is, the grace that makes us the saints that God called us to be in baptism.  When a person comes into the confessional, he or she may be in serious danger of going to hell because of mortal sin.  When that same person leaves, he or she is once more on the track to being a saint.

I think one of the difficulties in confessing our sins is that it can be embarrassing.  Some sins are embarrassing to confess, or even just to say.  Sometimes it’s the embarrassment of knowing that we did something we knew was wrong.  But when we confess our sins, when we admit that we have done wrong, we are not alone.  David, the best king Israel ever had, the image of what the Messiah would be like, was an adulterer and a murderer.  He got Bathsheba pregnant when she was married to Uriah, tried to have Uriah have relations with his wife so that he would think it was his, and then had Uriah killed when his planned deception did not work.  In today’s first reading, we get part of that story, where God chastises David for doing what was wrong.  But notice that, as soon as David said, “‘I have sinned against the Lord’”, God responds immediately through his prophet Nathan, “‘The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die.’”  As soon as we admit that we are in need of God’s mercy, which is itself made possible by God’s grace, God rushes in to forgive us, and to keep us from death and hell.  

The woman in today’s Gospel passage doesn’t even say she is sorry with her words.  She provides a service of love to Jesus to express how sorry she is.  She can’t even speak her sorrow, but cries because of how much she knows she has strayed from God.  And in her act of love, Jesus says, “‘Your sins are forgiven.’”  She knows the value of God’s love, and wants to be restored to it.  She knows that what she did was wrong, and she seeks God’s mercy.  And God, in Jesus, gives her the mercy for which she was looking.

It’s hard admitting that we’re wrong.  We love to justify ourselves as much as possible, and rationalize what we do when we sin.  Or, in some cases, we do not refer to sins as sinful; we ignore how they are contrary to God’s plan for our happiness.  We know by faith, that our chances of getting into heaven if we die in the state of mortal sin are not good.  God never forces His love upon us, and we can freely choose to reject Him in our actions.  Yet we also know of God’s mercy, that is waiting to be showered upon us.  Pope Francis has especially encouraged us to seek God’s mercy in this Jubilee Year of Mercy.  He invites us to experience personally what Psalm 32 said today: “I acknowledged my sin to you,/ my guilt I covered not./  I said, ‘I confess my faults to the Lord,’/ and you took away the guilt of my sin.//”

In his Papal Bull starting the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis wrote, “Let us place the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the centre [sic] once more in such a way that it will enable people to touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with their own hands.  For every penitent, it will be a source of true interior peace.”  The Lord wants to shower his mercy upon us, but we must first admit that we are the ones who need mercy.  In the Sacrament of Penance, we admit that we are a sinner, and the Lord looks upon us with love and forgiveness.  Or, we recognize, as Pope Francis said in an interview, that, “‘I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.”

So we should not fear the Sacrament of Penance.  Even if it’s been 5 or 10 or 20 or 40 years since your last confession, I invite you to experience the ordinary way that God gives His mercy to us.  Don’t worry if you don’t remember your act of contrition; I’ll help you through it.  Or, if you don’t want to go to me, Fr. Shaun is always available, or you can go to one of the surrounding parishes in Lenawee County.  But don’t miss out on the chance to receive God’s mercy!

Frequent Dying and Rising

Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

For as stupendous as raising someone from the dead is, it happens somewhat frequently in the Bible.  We heard about God raising the widow of Zarephath’s child through Elijah in our first reading, and Jesus raising the son of the widow from Nain in today’s Gospel.  Jesus also raises the daughter of Jairus, a synagogue official, and Lazarus.  After Jesus ascended into heaven, Peter raises a young girl named Dorkas (what an unfortunate name!), and Paul raises to life a person who falls out of a window after that person had fallen asleep because of how long Paul was preaching (there are dangers with preaching too long!).  I don’t know why, but I feel like that’s a lot of times.  About a month ago, I was given credit for raising someone from the dead by some of our firefighters, after I was riding with the firefighters and we responded to a call of someone having a heart attack, who seemed to miraculously wake up when we arrived (in reality, that person was an example of why you should never mix alcohol and a prescription narcotic).

But God truly does raise people from death on a regular basis, if we take time to think about it.  God raises from death those who are baptized.  In baptism, children, men and women are taken from being at enmity with God to being His children.  By baptism, people are buried with Christ–they die–so that they can rise with Him to new life.  By baptism, the old self has to die, like the grain of wheat, so that the new self, the person alive in Christ, can live.  

But that process of dying and rising does not stop on the day that we are baptized.  Each day we have the opportunity to die and rise.  It starts for some of us at the moment our eyes open.  At that moment we have the opportunity to die to our laziness and the comfort of our bed and rise to the new day that is before us.  There’s nothing wrong with hitting the snooze button if we have time, but at some point for many of us, we need to get up and get prepared for the day.  That’s why, at the beginning of my day, before my feet hit the floor of my bedroom, I say a short prayer: Mater mea, fiducia mea!–My Mother, my confidence!, and I entrust my entire day to Jesus through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  You could say any prayer that you like, but prayer is a great way to rise to new life.

Throughout our day there will be people trying to kill us.  Sometimes we are the people trying to kill others.  Hopefully not literally, but certainly figuratively.  What I mean by that is that we are all sinful, and we all give in to temptations, to not be disciples of Jesus.  Whether it’s others or ourselves, there’s gossip, slander, sharing secrets we have no business sharing, treating others as objects or as means to advancement, and the list could go on and on.  If we are the culprit, then we need to die to all of those sins.  We need them to be put to death, and Jesus does that by His suffering on the cross.  When we bite our lip, or treat someone kindly, we are dying to our fallen nature and its sinful tendencies.  If we are on the receiving end, then we die when we patiently suffer through them (correcting when necessary and prudent) instead of giving back what we received.  And whether we are putting to death our own tendencies, or suffering with Jesus because of others’ tendencies, new life, resurrection, is available for us, not only after our earthly life ends, but even on this side of eternity.

Because those who can accept suffering and unite it with Jesus do live happier lives.  They may still have the same sorrows, but they do not let the sorrows control their lives.  They cling to their new life in Christ, given to them in baptism, and live in the joy of the Resurrection, even in this vale of tears.  Which is the happier life: the one tossed about by uncontrollable forces, or the one who entrusts his or her life to God and stays on a steady course toward Him?

Everything in our nature rebels against death.  We were not made to die, but experience death because of sin.  We see that rejection of death and its power in our first reading and Gospel today.  But there is another kind of death, a healing death, a death to our sinful selves, a death in Christ, which is not contrary to who we are, but helps us to be the fullest person we were created to be.  May we allow our sinful natures to die with Christ on the cross, so that we can also rise with Him to new life, both in our daily lives, and especially in the life to come.

Bread: Not As Ordinary as You Might Think

Solemnity of Corpus Christi

One of my favorite foods from my pilgrimages to the Holy Land is the bread.  The way it is made, we would likely call it pita bread, but it’s an unleavened bread that has a pocket in it, though it’s totally enclosed until you rip into it.  It puts Wonderbread to shame in my opinion.  Of course, it’s not made just for sandwiches.  It’s also for dipping into hummus, sopping up some of the sauce or gravy with the food, and other ways of eating.  It’s the same type of bread that you can get at Middle Eastern restaurants like the Beirut in Toledo.  And while Adrian has more restaurants than you can shake a stick at, there’s no place that really sells good, Middle Eastern bread that I have found.

It may seem odd to focus so much on bread.  Bread is so ordinary.  No matter what kind it is, most people expect it with their meal, even if sometimes as a roll.  As much as I go on about bread, there is nothing too special about it.  And yet, Jesus used bread as one of the elements, or what theologians call the matter, of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.

Our readings today on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ all revolve around bread (and also wine).  In our first reading, Melchizedek, a prefigurement of Jesus, offers bread and wine, and then blesses Abram.  A good chunk of the Letter to the Hebrews focuses on this small passage we heard from Genesis, and what it prefigured.  And we, as Catholics, should have our sacramental sense tingle every time we hear bread and wine in the Old Testament.

St. Paul in our second reading recalls Jesus instituting the Eucharist, that Jesus offered bread and wine, but no longer referred to it as bread and wine, but as His Body and Blood.  And the Gospel we heard is the multiplication of the loaves and fish.  Now, to be clear, Jesus did not use fish as a part of the Eucharist, though maybe it does explain why Catholics love having fish fries.  But Jesus multiplies the bread, bread which satisfied everyone who was there, around five thousand men, not counting the women and children.  

Why bread?  Why did Jesus choose bread as part of the matter of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood?  We can only speculate, but many have thought over the years that it has to do with the different aspects of bread.  In the first place, bread is ordinary.  It was a staple of the Middle Eastern diet.  God takes the ordinary, and makes it extraordinary.  He does that with bread, but He also does that with us.  God takes our bread, our ordinary lives, whatever they entail, and He accepts them from me, your priest, and then returns it to you, no longer bread, but the Body of Christ; no longer your common life, but transformed.  Bread is a metaphor for us: nothing special, but common.

In the second place, we can look at how bread is made.  In a document of disputed origins called The Didache, some parts probably dating from the 5th century, others dating from the 12th or 13th century, there is a prayer that purports to be said at the Eucharist.  Part of the prayer reads, “As this broken bread was scattered over the hills and then, when gathered, became one mass, so may Thy Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom.”  This prayer examines how bread is made.  First, the grain is scattered across the field.  Then it is gathered together.  After it is gathered, it has to be crushed to make flour.  Then flour is added to water, is baked, and then you get bread.  Humanity, too, is scattered across the field of the world.  But Jesus unites what was scattered; He gathers all of humanity in Himself, and gives them the opportunity to be one with Him through faith.  Humanity, too, is broken, often crushed.  We each have our own crosses in life, the ways in which we suffer.  When we unite our suffering with the waters of Baptism, our participation in the suffering and death of Christ, and are warmed by the love of Jesus, we become one loaf of bread, bound together in the Kingdom of God.

Wine, too, has a rich symbolism, as it is taken from grapes on the vine (we recall Jesus saying that He is the Vine, we are the branches), crushed and pressed into wine which, as the psalms say, gives joy to the heart.  But maybe I can talk about wine in a different homily.

So maybe bread isn’t so common.  It certainly has a vast symbolism which is perhaps why God chose to use it so often in the Old and New Testaments.  Whenever we hear bread, hopefully our minds will immediately think about the Eucharist and about Jesus’ abiding presence with us.  As we walk through the streets of Adrian today in our Walk with Jesus, we will follow what looks like a small piece of unleavened bread.  But we know by faith, that it is no longer bread, but is truly Jesus’ Body.  May our joy for what Jesus did with bread, changing it into His Body, be manifest when we come to Mass, when we walk with Jesus today, and even in our daily lives, that we might truly be a Eucharistic people, a people who are always grateful and on the lookout for the presence of the Lord.

Not Only the Externals

Solemnity of Pentecost–During the Day

If there’s one thing Jesus got after the Pharisees about time and time again in the Gospel, it was doing only the external things, without having the internal change of heart and life.  I know that it is very easy for me to think, “How could you simply do the religious deeds on the outside, without letting it change you on the inside?”.  And yet, how many times does the same thing happen to us at Pentecost?  Many people wear red for Pentecost, to match the vestments of the priest, and to remind themselves of the Holy Spirit, who is always celebrated with the color red.  But how many of us go beyond the externals of wearing red, and actually try to have the Holy Spirit be a more active part of their lives?  There’s nothing wrong with wearing red on Pentecost, but if it’s all we do, then we’re in the same boat as the Pharisees.

In our faith life, we can be like a story from the Acts of the Apostles.  St. Paul was preaching in Ephesus, and finds some disciples.  He asks them, “‘Did you receive the holy Spirit when you became believers?’  They answered him, ‘We have never even heard that there is a holy Spirit.’”  We’ve probably heard of the Holy Spirit, but how many of us live like we don’t even know He exists.  As I asked a few weeks ago, how many of us pray to the Holy Spirit?  

Catholics can sometimes be afraid, I think, of the Holy Spirit.  We see Pentecostals doing what we consider to be weird sorts of stuff when they claim to have the Holy Spirit.  Catholics who belong the Charismatic Renewal will sometimes talk in tongues, or will heal people, or speak about a “word from God” or a prophecy.  Because many Catholics don’t have those gifts or talk in that way, it can seem quite strange to us.  But unless we believe that the Holy Spirit decided to call it quits after the age of the Apostles, then there’s no reason why those gifts cannot be active in the Church today.  Maybe none of us have any of those gifts; maybe some of us do.  But those special charisms, those special gifts which are meant to be used for the building up of the Church, are still active, as are many other gifts in the Church, all given to us by the Holy Spirit.

In one sense, we should all be Charismatic Catholics.  Not necessarily in the sense that we need to attend Christ the King parish in Ann Arbor, but in the sense that we should live a Spirit-filled life.  It is the Spirit who helps us to pray as we ought, the Spirit who gives us strength to resist temptation and sin, the Spirit who gives us the courage to proclaim Christ by what we say and by what we do.  If we do not have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, then all those things which God calls us to do by baptism and confirmation, will be impossible.  

We might be scared; we might think we don’t have what it takes.  So did the Apostles.  Why do you think they were hiding in the upper room?  Jesus told them to return to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit, but they didn’t necessarily have to all stay in the same place.  Still, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they were so overcome with joy that people thought they were drunk.  They heard them proclaiming Jesus in many different languages, the languages of the pilgrims who had come from Jerusalem from all over the world.  

God wants us to live a Spirit-filled life.  The Spirit gives us the grace we need to be saints.  He brings the peace of Christ.  He forgives sins.  We need the Holy Spirit.  Adrian needs more people on fire with the Holy Spirit in order to be transformed.  Without the Holy Spirit, we cannot be the people God wants us to be.  Without the Holy Spirit, we will remain timid and stay in the upper room, instead of going to those we know to introduce them to Christ or to strengthen their relationship with him.  We need to be reminded of what Jesus told us, and be taught by Jesus, rather than by our fallen world.  

Pray for the seven-fold gift of the Holy Spirit.  Pray that God pours His Holy Spirit upon all the residents of Adrian, that they will be alive with His love and power to transform this city into the city God wants it to be.  Pray to the Holy Spirit and grow in relationship with Him so that we will not be like the Pharisees who have the externals down but are dead inside.  Pray to the Holy Spirit to give you new life!

A Tour of Salvation History with the Holy Spirit

Solemnity of Pentecost–At the Vigil

Why?  That is the question in some of your minds right now.  Why so many readings?  This may remind some of you of the Easter Vigil.  But this is the Pentecost Vigil, and it is one of two Masses in the year that the Church gives us the option of an extended Liturgy of the Word, to hear the Word of God and meditate on it to a greater extent than usual.  Just as we prepared for and began our celebration of one of the great mysteries of our faith, the Resurrection of Jesus, with an extended time of prayer, so as we prepare for and begin our celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, we have an extended time of prayer.

The introduction that I said at the beginning of Mass, also reminds us that tonight, as we gather, we are following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Apostles and disciples, who were waiting for Jesus’ promised gift of the Spirit, who would be their Advocate, and help them to proclaim Jesus to the world.  We are invited to relive all of salvation history in a quick glance, and see how God’s promise of the Holy Spirit was from the beginning and continued through the Old Testament, as was the Resurrection of Jesus.

The readings that we heard tonight tell us something about how the Holy Spirit acts in us, as He acted in the Apostles.  The Holy Spirit unifies what sin divided.  In Genesis, sinful humanity tried to get to God on their own terms by building a tower to the heavens.  But it didn’t work.  We cannot get to God on our own terms.  And where our sinful pride led to the multiplication of languages, the Holy Spirit, given at Pentecost, allowed the Gospel, the new of way life and the way to eternal life with the Father, to be proclaimed so that all could understand.  

The Holy Spirit is the source of power, and consecrates the People of God.  In Exodus, we are told of how God’s people are called to be a “‘kingdom of priests, a holy nation.’”  And Mount Sinai gets wrapped in smoke and thunder and fire, with trumpet blasts, so much that the people are afraid to approach God.  Through Baptism, we are made priests, so that we can offer our spiritual sacrifices in union with the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and we are given power from on high.

The Holy Spirit is the giver of life.  If we are just flesh and bone, then we do not have life.  But if the Spirit of God fills us, then we are no longer zombies, no longer the walking dead, but are filled with life.  When God first made us, He breathed His life into us.  We lost that divine life when Adam and Eve disobeyed God.  But through the Holy Spirit, new life is given to us.  Finnian will receive that new life today as he is baptized, so that he is not dead in his sin, but alive in Christ.

The Holy Spirit helps us to understand the things of God.  In the Old Testament, only certain people were able to speak for God, and they were called the prophets.  God would speak to individuals like Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joel, and they would pass on what God had said.  But in this new age after the Resurrection, all of God’s people have access to His voice, and have the possibility of seeing with the eyes of God.  All flesh has the possibility to receive the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is a well-spring of life.  We cannot live without water.  But Jesus promises the Holy Spirit will be a river of living water flowing from within us.  It will give us new life so that we can truly live, not for ourselves, but for God.  The Holy Spirit helps us to believe in God the Father and His Son, Jesus, and to quench our thirst for the infinite and the eternal, that can only be satisfied in God.

All of what I mentioned happens today as Finnian is baptized.  Finnian is united to God, receives power and consecration to be a member of God’s priestly people, receives new life, is able to understand the things of God, and is given the ability to live for God.  All of that happened to us when we were baptized.  And it was given to us in a new way in the Sacrament of Confirmation.  Union with God, power and consecration, new life, seeing things through God’s eyes, and living for God are all possible because of the great gift of the Holy Spirit, who continues the work of Jesus.  That work is continued in us.  Will you cooperate with the Holy Spirit in proclaiming the Gospel and living as a disciples of Jesus, as the disciples did after they received the Holy Spirit?  Will you put into action in your life what was foreshadowed in the Old Testament?  Will you receive the Holy Spirit?

Mom and Jesus Lead us Home

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

One of the great things about mothers is that they generally know how to make a house into a home.  Whether as a family you have as much money as Warren Buffett, or you’re struggling to make ends meet, a mother has a way of making a place feel comfortable, and making it a place where you want to return.  Home is the place you know you can go back, even if things aren’t going so well.  It’s the place where there is love and acceptance of the person, even if not everything the person does is accepted.  Home, as the saying goes, is where the heart is, and where mom is, there is always a lot of heart.

Today, in the convergence of the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord and Mother’s Day, we celebrate in the fact that Jesus has prepared a home for us, and is waiting for us to go there.  We have not been there, but the disciples saw Him go there.  Jesus ascended into heaven, our true home, and wants us to go there.  Heaven is the place of ultimate love, as those who live there forever are embraced by God, who is Love Itself.  Jesus is not our mother, but He wanted to show us the way home.  He has taken our Blessed Mother there, body and soul through the assumption, just as He is present there through the Ascension.  There are members of our Catholic family there already, the saints, both those who are canonized and those who are known only to God, hopefully including our mothers who have gone before us.  

But Jesus hasn’t shown us the way so much in a physical manner.  He did ascend, body and soul, into heaven, but it’s not as if we shoot up in a space shuttle that we can get to Him.  He has shown us the way in the manner He lived His life.  We are meant to imitate Jesus’ life, and in that way, we follow the way that Jesus has shown us to our home.  If we follow Jesus’ teachings in Scripture, some of which can be pretty hard, then we’re on our way, because, as Jesus Himself said, He is the way.  If we love others and God loves us; if we do not hate each other; if we are humble, poor in spirit, clean of heart; if we live marriage as God created it from the beginning; if we pray for those who persecute us; if we are willing to suffer for the ones we love, even to the point of death; then we are no longer living our life; we are living the life of Jesus, and, as St. Paul says, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  And if Christ lives in us, then we will know the way home to Him in heaven.

In the meantime, our Mother, the Church, helps us to allow Christ to live in us.  It cannot be forced.  No one can force us to live life in imitation of Jesus.  Holy Mother Church helps us through her laws, her rules, but also through her liturgy.  The Letter to the Hebrews talks about how Jesus entered into the true sanctuary in heaven.  And in the Solemnity of the Ascension, we celebrate that Christ is seated forever at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us.  Because He is there, in the heavenly sanctuary, our true home, we can enter through His way, to participate in His worship as High Priest of the New Covenant in His Blood.

In the liturgy, we are given a taste of heaven.  Of course, this isn’t heaven; this is Adrian (to paraphrase the movie “Field of Dreams”).  And because we live in a fallen world, even our liturgy is a shadow of the eternal liturgy in our heavenly home, which will be perfect.  But we get a taste of heaven in the Mass, where God is made known to us, just as He gives Himself to us in His Word and the Body and Blood of Jesus.  We get a taste of heaven in the Mass as we gather in a community, part of the communion of saints.  Of course, in heaven the only ones there will be perfected, and none of us is there yet.  But still, we get a taste of being in the communion of the saints of heaven as we gather here on earth.  We get a taste of heaven through the light, shining through our stained-glass windows, giving us a glimpse of what a glorified body might look light through the images of the saints that we have in our stained-glass windows.  We get a taste of heaven as we have union with (communion) God.  In all these ways, Holy Mother Church prepares us for the home that her Groom, Jesus, has prepared for us.

Sadly, and some of you know this all too well, sometimes children don’t go home.  Sometimes they choose to stay away from home for a variety of reasons.  And God will not force us to go home to heaven.  If we choose to live our own life, a life in contradiction to what Jesus teaches us, then we will not go home, will not go to the place of love and joy and peace.  But I pray that, by the power of the Holy Sprit, we will use the grace God gives us to live the life of Christ, to let Christ live in us, so that we can go to the place God has prepared for us, the love and joy and peace of heaven, our true home.

Don't Forget the Holy Spirit!

Sixth Sunday of Easter

No one likes to be ignored.  But if there’s one Person of the Blessed Trinity that we often ignore, it’s the Holy Spirit.  We tend to always remember the Father in our prayers, especially the Our Father, or sometimes we’ll just refer to Him as God.  Jesus, as the one who took flesh and was our means of being reconnected to the Father is usually at the front of our minds as well.  But the Holy Spirit tends to get left out.  How many prayers do we being with some form of: Dear Holy Spirit…?  Probably not many, if any, while we are very comfortable with beginning prayers with: Dear God… or Heavenly Father… or Lord Jesus.  

It’s important, then, that in these last few Sundays of our Easter Season, the Church really focuses in on the Holy Spirit.  Of course, every Mass we begin with the Holy Spirit, and He’s mentioned in the Gloria, and our opening prayers always say “in the unity of the Holy Spirit.”  But the readings in these weeks also remind us that the Holy Spirit is God and guides the Church in a special way since the Ascension of Jesus.

Our first reading reminds us of the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding what we are to believe as Catholics and how we are to live as Catholics.  Having discussed whether or not the Gentiles (the non-Jews) had to be circumcised and follow Judaic laws, and with the testimony of St. Peter, St. James sends a message to the Jews who had become Christians about what is required for Gentiles to become Christians.  And he writes specifically, that it was “‘“the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities, namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals, and from unlawful marriage.”’”  It was not simply a group of old men getting together and thinking of the most pragmatic thing to do.  It was the Holy Spirit, the love shared between the Father and the Son, who guided the apostles to decide that Gentiles did not have to become Jewish and follow those laws to become Christians.  In other words, every time you eat a cheese burger or bacon (which Jews cannot do because it’s contrary to kosher laws), you should thank the Holy Spirit.

But the Holy Spirit did not stop guiding the Church with this decision.  Throughout the 2,000 year history of the Church, the Holy Spirit has continued to guide the successor of St. Peter, the Pope, and the successors of the apostles, the bishops, in making decisions about what we are to believe and how we are to live.  Some of those teachings are crystallized in the Creed.  But also in all the 21 Ecumenical Councils, from Nicaea I in AD 325 to Vatican II in the 1960s, and even in Papal pronouncements in between, the Holy Spirit has continued to teach the Church everything and remind the Church of what Jesus told us.  He has guided us on how many books to have in the Bible; who Jesus is; how many Sacraments were instituted by Jesus; Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Assumption; that only men can be ordained priests; that marriage is between one man and one woman for life; all these are part of Jesus’ words, which the Holy Spirit has helped us to understand and which the Holy Spirit has guided the Pope and the bishops to proclaim as being what is necessary to be believed if we wish to truly call ourselves Catholic.  The Holy Spirit and the successors of the apostles, the foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem, work together to continue Jesus’ teachings into new times and new cultures.

But the work of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the Pope and bishops.  The Holy Spirit wants to give us life.  He helps us to understand what is right and wrong in our conscience.  We receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, and a new gift in the Sacrament of Confirmation, to help us as individuals know what is God’s will in our daily actions and in the major decisions of life: what vocation we should choose, how to use our gifts and talents in a job, how to educate and raise our family.  Of course, the Holy Spirit would never contradict Himself, and we as individuals do not have the gift of infallibility, as the bishops in union with the Pope, and even the Pope by himself on matters of faith and morals has.  So if our conscience is ever telling us to do something that is contrary to what the Church officially teaches as to what we need to believe or how we need to live, we should do some major research on what the Church teaches and why, because it is more likely to be right than what we think our conscience is saying.  But the Holy Spirit is in us, too, and wants to make our living of the Gospel a joy-filled experience.  The Holy Spirit wants to give us the power to say yes to God and no to our fallen nature and to evil.  And by virtue of our Baptism, all we need to do is ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen us.  

It may not come as naturally, but may we also pray to the Holy Spirit, especially when we are making choices.  We can pray in our own words, in conversation with the Holy Spirit, or we can also use that wonderful prayer to the Holy Spirit that we said as a Diocese a few years ago, and which I will lead today.  Please join in if you remember: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faith, and enkindle in them the fire of your love.  Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.  O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that, by the same Holy Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations.  Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Cure for a Cult-Personality Parish

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Today the Church celebrates the Fourth Sunday of Easter, which has also been called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” because the Gospels for each year come from John 10, where Jesus refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd.   The Church uses a three-year Sunday cycle of readings (we refer to them as Year A, B, and C), and it is very rare that the Gospels for Years A, B, and C would all have the same theme.  But, for this Sunday of Easter, we do.

Of course, this year the readings take on a new meaning for me as I prepare to leave this flock and shepherd (pastor) another flock.  So many of you have been very kind in your outpouring of love and support for me during this time of transition.  Many of you have asked the question, “Do you really have to leave?”  Some have even threatened to write letters to the bishop (and some have followed through).  One of the Adrian firefighters must have figured that he didn’t want to mess with middle management; he was sending his letter straight to Pope Francis.  In any case, it has been touching to me to have this demonstration of your love for me as your pastor.

At the same time, though, as we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday, I am not the Good Shepherd.  That’s Jesus.  I hope I have been a good shepherd, but I am not the Good Shepherd.  Families are often the ones who are most cognizant of each other’s faults, and I am sure that you are very cognizant of mine, along with my idiosyncrasies.  But this parish is not about me.  If I have given that impression, then I owe you a huge apology.  This parish is about Jesus, and how the people of this parish can follow Him more closely.  It should be Jesus’ voice that you hear and recognize and follow; not mine.  

Of course, each priest is called to be as close of an icon of the Good Shepherd as he can be.  But each priest has his own gifts and talents and his own failings.  Fr. Dave, who is still so loved here, and rightly so, brought with him as pastor his gifts and his failings.  I brought with me my gifts and failings.  And Fr. Kurian will bring with him his own gifts and failings.  Some of our gifts and some of our failings are probably the same.  Some of them are certainly different.  But we all, Fr. Dave, myself, and Fr. Kurian, all try to lead you to the Good Shepherd.

The temptation in our day is the cult-personality parish.  Because of our increased mobility, it is easy to travel 20 or 30 minutes without thinking about it because we like this priest or don’t like that one.  Maybe we like this way this one celebrates the Mass better than that one.  Maybe we like that one’s homilies better than this one’s.  But the Church is not meant to be built around any one person; she is meant to be built around Three Divine Persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  If our faith and our religious practice is built around anyone else, it is built on sand, and is always in danger of collapsing.  

St. Paul, whose preaching to the Gentiles we heard about today, was no stranger to this.  In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul bemoans the fact that there is a cult-personality parish being built in Corinth.  He writes: 

Whenever someone says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?  What is Apollos, after all, and what is Paul?  Ministers through whom you became believers, just as the Lord assigned each one.  I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.  Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes growth.

He then writes a little further, “So let no one boast about human beings, for everything belongs to you, Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the future: all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.”  It isn’t about Fr. Dave, or Fr. Anthony, or Fr. Kurian, or any other priest.  Only Jesus, the Good Shepherd, saves.  Inasmuch as certain priests lead us to God, let us give thanks to God for them.  Inasmuch as we struggle to find God in them, let us pray to God for them.  But may our faith be centered in Jesus, and may we follow His voice, so that we can have eternal life and never perish.  

Having said all that, I treasure my time that I have spent with you, and the next two and a half months that I will spend with you.  Pray for me, that I may be a good shepherd after the heart of the Good Shepherd.  Pray that I can continue to build you up as disciples of Jesus in Adrian, those who recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd, who follow Him, and who are led to the verdant pastures in which He wants to give us repose.

"Peace" not "Really?"

Second Sunday of Easter (or Sunday of Divine Mercy)

I have a niece, and another niece or nephew due to be born in mid-April.  And one of the big things for families that I have come to experience in my own family are the big firsts: the first tooth; the first crawl; the first solid food; and the first word.  There are probably countless comedic scenes about moms and dads trying to get the little child to say mama or dada first, as a sign of which parent is the best.  

So it is interesting that Jesus’ first word to His apostles after He rises from the dead, in both the Gospel according to Luke and the Gospel according to John (which we heard today) is: peace be with you, or shlama amkhon in the Aramaic Jesus would have used (a phrase which is still used in some Eastern Catholic liturgies).  After all that Jesus had gone through, and all the most of the apostles had not been through with Him, Jesus chooses to say: peace.  What a merciful response!  Even if we weren’t mad, how many of us would’ve said something like: “where were you?”; “why did you abandon me?”; or maybe just “really?”

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, we rejoice in God’s mercy, which flows from the piercèd side of Jesus.  We rejoice that Jesus, whom we have crucified with our sins, does not say, “Where were you?” or “Why did you abandon me?” or even “Really?”  Jesus gives us His peace.  

And if we rewind 6 chapters to John 14, when Jesus was speaking to the apostles, again in the upper room, on the night of His Last Supper, we hear more about that peace.  Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”  Jesus’ peace, the peace of heart, peace of mind, is the peace that comes from God’s mercy being showered upon us.  It is not simply the worldly notion of peace: the cessation of violence.  It is a wholeness and integrity of God with us, and we with God.  It is a right ordering of our souls and minds and body, as well as with our neighbors.  

But that mercy is not something that we put in a bottle on a shelf.  It is something that is meant to be shared.  Immediately after giving the apostles His peace, Jesus also says, “‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’”  Jesus’ mercy, God’s mercy, Divine Mercy, is meant to be shared with others, just as the Father shared Jesus with us.  In fact, in encountering us, others should encounter Jesus, and His mercy, just as St. Thomas did a week after the Resurrection.

What is mercy?  Mercy is God’s love.  In Hebrew, they word chesed can be translated as mercy and as love.  The Psalm we heard today is one example of this: chi leolam chesedo: for his mercy endures forever.  It is the way God shows His love for us.  Otherwise, it would have be judgment, not mercy.  Instead, the justice of God for sin fell upon Jesus, so that we could receive the mercy of God, which is offered to us as long as we are alive.  Our sins, as St. Faustina reminded us, as a drop in the ocean of God’s mercy.

But mercy does not call wrong right, or ignore it.  Neither ignorance nor rationalization is mercy.  Instead, mercy recognizes that there is a debt to be paid, but does not demand its payment.  Mercy acknowledges that good has been rejected, but returns an embrace when a punishment could have been dealt.  

We see mercy in one of Jesus’ last acts before He died.  St. Dismas, the Good Thief, admits his sin before Jesus as they both hang on the cross.  But then asks the unthinkable: for mercy.  And Jesus responds, “‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”  One of my favorite readings from the saints is from a sermon by St. Maximus of Turin, a bishop, which reads, “And so, my brothers, each of us ought surely to rejoice on this holy day.  […] Sinner he may indeed be, but he must not despair of pardon on this day which is so highly privileged; for if a thief could receive the grace of paradise, how could a Christian be refused forgiveness?”  May we never despair of God’s pardon, God’s mercy, God’s peace, but acknowledge our sins, confess them in the Sacrament of Penance, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate these sacred mysteries, in anticipation of the wedding feast of the Lamb in heaven.