TV link from the Vatican... this should show the beatification LIVE!

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If you want to post this on your website go to:  http://www.h2onews.org/form-web-tv-en.html



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Run to Him, Serve Him, He is Risen, Alleluia!

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Homily Outline for Easter Sunday, Year A

Jesus Christ is risen, Alleluia Alleuia! Truly, He is Risen! Alleluia Alleluia!

Alleluia is Hebrew for “Praise God,” it is the Easter word par excellence, for on this day of all the days of the year we truly have reason to praise our God and Savior… Jesus has risen from the grave trampling death and sin! The stone which the builders rejected has become the corner stone! Most amazing of all, we are invited into and offered the fruits of this victory… Jesus rose precisely for us! God created us in love, now He has redeemed us in love by the blood of His Only Son.

We heard in the Gospel that St. Peter was the first to enter Christ’s empty tomb… listen to his testimony, the testimony of an eye witness, the testimony of one who denied the Lord and yet repented: “He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed by God
as judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Last night, after we had entered the church with only the light of the Paschal Candle, newly blessed and lighted from the Easter Fire, I proclaimed the Exultet, a song of rejoicing. One line of that most beautiful song captures the mystery of Christ’s resurrection, “O happy fault, o necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!” The Church marvels, we marvel, that from Adam’s sin that sundered the tie between man and God, God has brought forth joy and beauty beyond measure. God Himself came and dwelt among us, Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man. He bore every price of our sin, was beaten and crucified, died and descended down into the land of the dead, and yet rose victorious! Alleluia, Praise God for His mercy, Praise God for His love, Praise God for the invitation made to each one of us, especially in our baptism, to respond to this love with love.

Paul tells us that our lives are hidden with Christ in God. When we were baptized, we descended into the depths of the water, dying with Christ, and we rose up out of the water reborn. “When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with Him in glory.” We are drawn into this praise, into this victory, OUR weakness and sin is overwhelmed in Christ’s victory… This is a mystery, truly our lives are hidden with Christ… so often we do not see all, we do not understand… but Christ has won the victory! May we praise Him this morning in His hiddenness, even as we do not fully understand.

It is often the case that on Easter, like Christmas, many people come to Church who are not here every week… I just want to address some words to you this morning: Welcome! We are glad you are here with us! Of all the days of the year to go to Church, today is the most important day… for your presence here we say Alleluia, Praise God! In our joy that you are here, we also extend the Lord’s invitation… do not come today in joy, and then stay away! We want you to be with us every Sunday, we need you to be with us every Sunday, indeed, you need to be with us every Sunday!

  For every one of us here, today, this morning, in this Easter Joy, there is an invitation… God has given us everything, even Himself… and He has won for us the victory… there is only one response that is fitting… to respond in joy, to give our lives to Him, to seek Him… not just today, on Easter, not just on Sunday, but every day of the week. We are to seek Him, to serve Him, to love Him at Church, at home, at work, at school, each day and in every moment. He offers us grace and strength and light. May we wait upon His love as Mary Magdalene did, may we run to Him as Peter and John, may we see the empty tomb and believe.

In just a few moments, we will renew our baptismal promises… this is our renewed response to the Lord. May our prayer be heartfelt, and may we in this way prepare our hearts to receive the Risen Lord Himself from this altar.

He died for our sins.... for love of us.

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Homily Outline for Good Friday, Year A    

In many powerful ways, this Good Friday service speaks for itself… it places before us the Passion of Christ, His suffering and death. We will respond shortly by praying for the whole world, we will venerate the Cross, sign of our salvation, and we will receive the fruits of the Lord’s Sacrifice, His Body Blood Soul and Divinity. We will depart in silence, into the waiting and fast, lasting all the way through tomorrow evening, if possible. Only on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, of all the days of the year, is the Mass not celebrated. We wait in silence while Christ lies in the tomb. Tomorrow evening, having passed through this silence, as darkness falls and Saturday ends, we will gather again for the Easter Vigil, the most joyous of all nights.

I simply want to draw your attention now to the reason for all of this, the reason for our somber and sober liturgy today, the reason for Christ’s suffering and death. There is an immediate reason, a painful one, and a deeper reason, a joyful one.

Listen again to the prophet Isaiah “he was spurned and avoided by people…. the guilt of us all.” Christ died because He bore our offenses, He was crushed for our sins. This is not hyperbole, this is not immoderate or inappropriate guilt, this is simply the truth. Christ died for our sins. Every time we’ve been unkind to someone, every time we’ve used pornography or indulged a lustful thought, every time we’ve refused forgiveness, whatever sins we have preferred or been unable to overcome,… the lash of our sin strikes painfully into the Lord’s wounded back. Physically, the Roman soldiers and the Temple Guard beat and killed him, Pontius Pilate in his cowardice condemned him, people in the crowd that day yelled “Crucify Him,” but only our sins brought Him to the Cross. If we ignore this fact, if we fail to be sorry for our sins… if no ray of sorrow pierces our hardened hearts at the thought of the Lord of Glory ground to a pulp, we have not understood this day or the Gospel.

If in honesty we can gaze upon our broken Lord, if we can gaze upon our broken promises, the baptismal purity that we have sullied by our sin, then and only then are we open to the deeper and far more joyful reason for today.

Listen again to Isaiah, who dimly and through shadows foresaw this mystery and joy. “If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him.” Christ gave His life for our sins… and he was motivated only by perfect love and obedience. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” God loves us perfectly, faithfully…. although our sins often render us unable or unwilling to receive that love, nothing we do diminishes His perfect and faithful love for us. That love took on flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus who is Himself God, who is Himself Love. “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” Jesus, in His infinite power as God, is only held to the pillar to be scourged, He is only bound to the cross, by love for us. This is the irony when they mock him, “come down from there.” He could have come down, but out of love, he took our sins all the way to death, so that we could be saved.

So, this afternoon, let our hearts be pierced with sorrow at the pain and sorrow we have caused the Lord. In this sorrow, let us be filled with thanksgiving… He bore the lash for us. By his stripes we are saved…. and in the midst of that healthy and truthful sorrow, let joy be found, and awe and wonder. Jesus loved us perfectly, and was obedient unto death, death on a cross. All has been bought and paid for at the greatest price. Through our tears, as it were, let us see the unimaginable love, the infinite love that has conquered our grief. Let us fast and wait for the joy of the coming dawn.  

           

Embrace healing or remain blind?

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Homily Outline for the 4th Sunday of Lent, Year A

“Rejoice, Jerusalem! Be glad for her, you who love her; rejoice with her, you who mourned for her, and you will find contentment at her consoling breasts.” (Is 66:10-11)

Today is Laetare Sunday, Rejoice Sunday, named after the “introit” or entrance antiphon proper to this Mass, which I just read. Rejoice Jerusalem, rejoice O Mother Church, rejoice members of Christ’s Body, the Church… on this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we have come through over half of our 40 days of fasting, only 18 days to go until the feasting of Easter! We have been in the desert, but we draw nearer each day to the wellspring of our salvation.

God’s ways are not our ways; God’s power goes far beyond our own power. In our first reading, God chooses David, the youngest brother, despite everyone's expectations.  God sees not just the exterior, but also the heart!  We see Jesus using His divine power as He heals the man born blind. Physically, this is impressive. Spiritually, it is beautiful… this man can now behold the beauty of the natural world, the faces of his parents, even the face of our Lord Jesus Himself. As Paul speaks of us as “children of light,” this description is very tangible for that formerly blind man who sees light for the first time, and at the same time comes to know the Lord.

 What might the Lord heal in your heart this Lent? Perhaps you harbor wounds or pain or grudges or fear that are not nearly so evident as that man’s blindness. Maybe they’ve been caused by your own sin, the sin of others, or by circumstances beyond anyone’s control. Jesus can heal your heart. It does not seem that the blind man expected to be healed that day, and so often God’s healing comes to us unawares, from unexpected quarters, in times and ways we cannot predict.

I suspect that many of you have already had this experience before today… perhaps it was kind words from someone you considered an enemy, maybe it was making a good confession after being away from the Lord. To receive God’s healing is beautiful, but do we embrace it? Does it continue to change our lives? As God pours out the healing water of His grace, are our hearts hard and frozen clay, or are they rich broken soil? To be contrite, to be sorry for our sins, this means to have a heart that is broken, but also a heart that is open to God’s healing. We can look at past healing in our lives, or healing in the lives of others with skepticism, with disbelief, with hostility as the Pharisees, or we can greet that healing with honesty as the blind man did. He doesn’t in any way fully understand what has happened. He doesn’t even recognize Jesus when he encounters Him again. But he is open, desiring the gift of faith that he cannot manufacture himself. Listen to that final dialogue: When Jesus heard…. and those who do see might become blind.”

If we can know and own our brokenness and sin, we are in a position then to receive healing and the gift of faith. This is precisely what Lent is about. We courageously enter into our hearts and lives and seek the sinful places, the painful places, the ugly places, not to wallow in guilt, but to know our need and then be ready to receive. Jesus is the Light, and in Him we can see the truth about our hearts. That may not always be pretty, but it can lead us to the true beauty of healing and reconciliation.

Karol Wotyla, the man who would become JP II

Today is the 6th anniversary of Pope John Paul II, soon to be beatified. I think we can see in his life and ministry this healing light of Christ in a particularly bold way. Karol Wotyla experienced every sort of pain and loss as a young man… he lost his mother, his brother, and his father by 22. He saw his country ravaged first by the Nazis and then by Communism. Many of his friends, both Catholic and Jewish, were killed. Out of this crucible of violence and hatred, by God’s grace he was not a man filled with hatred or anger, but a man filled with a visceral sense of God’s infinite capacity to heal and sustain us in the face of suffering. He was also deeply convicted of the need to speak the truth in the face of falsehood and deception. 

To me, and perhaps in a special way to my generation, John Paul II tore away the blindness and lies of  materialism, relativism, and individualism and spoke of love as the perfect gift of self for the good of the other. He rejected the culture of death, condemning attacks on human life and dignity from whatever direction. As the world slid into an abyss of sexual confusion and sin, he spoke clearly of the beauty and sanctity of the human body, of Christian marriage between a man and a woman, and of the gift of our sexuality. He said no to abortion, contraception, sterilization, capital punishment, and war. He said yes to truth, love, generosity, solidarity with those most in need, and reconciliation. He experienced God’s healing grace, and responded with unusual openness and generosity. The man born blind, once healed, encountered Christ, and believing in Him, worshipped. Six years after the death of John Paul II, I still marvel at the way he too followed this example.

We stand in the line and heritage of redeemed and healed sinners from every age. May we use well these 3 Lenten weeks that remain to go deep within and welcome Christ’s healing light.

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