Three Pillars of the Christian Life

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

God called Moses, even against Moses’ own hesitation: he had a stutter, he was exiled from Egypt for killing a man, he was up against the Pharaoh, and yet God called him and led the people out of slavery through him. Now they are in the desert, and extends His power into the seventy elders. When two men who missed the meeting are also blessed in this way, some are jealous, but Moses says, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!”

In the fullness of time, this is precisely what the Lord did! In Jesus Christ, the Good News of salvation is offered to all nations. In baptism each one of us became, in Christ, priests, prophets and kings, called to sanctify, teach, and serve all people. You, out of your baptism, are priest, prophet and king—not some of us, not those among us who are most pious, not those among us who make fewer mistakes—every baptized person is called to this. As such, God calls us to raise our eyes above the temptations of this life, above possessions and lust and jealousy, above gossip and grudges, to raise our eyes up on high to our eternal goal, heaven. No sin is justified or worth more than the Kingdom of Heaven. Certainly Jesus uses hyperbole… I don’t want to see anyone coming in here next week missing any limbs! But, the point is clear. It is worth dying to every sin so that we can be open & available to God’s grace. Our daily decisions have eternal consequences for us and all those we meet, if we live and teach and speak truth, it leads to God. If we live, teach, and speak falsehood, it leads to eternity without God. This is the reality, the peril, the joyful possibility of this fleeting life God has given us!

How do we seek the Lord’s face, how do we avoid the millstone and the unquenchable fire? How do we make ourselves available to the Spirit moving in and through us? Let me propose to you three basics of the Christian life. Without these you cannot claim to be a practicing Catholic, with them all things are possible in Christ.

1) The Eucharist – Jesus said, “Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you have no life within you.” If we’re trying to serve God, but we’re only fed when it’s convenient, than we’re fighting on an empty stomach. It doesn’t work. This is why the Church has always taught that to freely and knowingly miss Mass is a mortal sin. If we tell God, “This week I’m going to handle my life myself,” we’ve rejected Him and His grace. This is deadly serious. I’m not talking about being sick, or caring for a sick family member, or the shifts you don’t have control over… I’m talking about choosing to miss Mass freely. Something like 70% of American Catholics haven’t been to Mass in any given week, which means that most of them should go to confession before going back to communion. God is serious about this… you should be too!

2) Regular Confession – God DOES NOT expect us to carry the burden of our sins by ourselves, but if you haven’t been to confession, that’s what you’re doing. Again, it’s saying to God, “God, stand back, I’ll handle this one on my own.” Or, perhaps, “Church, God entrusted to you the power to forgive my sins, Jesus gave the apostles the power to bind and loose, but I’d rather just chart my own path.” I experience myself the power of sacramental absolution when I go to confession at least once a month, and I see its effect in the people whose confessions I hear. Come back… God wants to pour out His grace upon you! Aim for a monthly confession.

3) Daily Prayer – This is just as essential, just as important as the other two. And, if you’re already coming to Mass and going to confession, this is probably the place where God is just waiting to unlock major growth and power in your life. Two times no adult Catholic should ever miss praying are upon waking and before going to bed. That’s not enough, but it’s a darn good start! Let me make this concrete… consider beginning the day with The Morning Offering, and ending the day with one decade of the rosary. That is completely within the power of any adult. It’s not enough, again, but it’s a really good start. God can do in and through you all things, far beyond what you can do yourself, and daily prayer is one of the principal places where that grace is unleashed.

Out of our baptism, we have been anointed priest, prophet, and king. May we respond to that gift in the Eucharist, in Confession, and in daily prayer.



(For you reading this on the blog, here's the Morning Offering Prayer I make reference to:

  Eternal Father, I offer You everything I do this day: my work, my prayers, my apostolic efforts; my time with family and friends; my hours of relaxation; my difficulties, problems, distress, which I shall try to bear with patience. Join these, my gifts, to the unique offering which Jesus Christ, Your Son, renews today in the Eucharist.
  Grant, I pray, that, vivified by the Holy Spirit and united to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, my life this day may be of service to you and your children and help consecrate the world to you. Amen



Much more on the spirituality of the Morning Offering here: Apostleship of Prayer



Also, a link to a nice simple guide to the rosary: How to pray the Rosary)

+ A. M. D. G. +

The Stuff We Find Tough

+ J. M. J. + 

Homily Outline for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

 

A theme from last Sunday continues today: Jesus prepared his disciples for His Passion & Death.  He spoke to them of the Kingdom, He performed works of power & wonder, & He also told them of His suffering & death.  This theme was present in the Old Testament, but not always embraced or understood.  Indeed, it is never easy to embrace or underst& this reality that our Savior & King saved us by His own suffering & death.  He rose glorious & victorious, but only after passing through apparent defeat & every sort of agony.

The world’s attitude toward this truth is vividly portrayed in our first reading from the Book of Wisdom:

Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings….let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him.

 

This attitude is common on the internet & in the news, & even among our own friends: “These Catholics, with their high teaching, look at THEIR faults & weakness, let’s see if they really live what they believe.”   Very often, due to our own weakness & sin, we come up short in the eyes of the world. The world often has plenty of excuses to ignore the truth we seek to proclaim by our lives.

By our baptisms each of us received the joy & sacred duty of preaching the Gospel by our lives in every place that we are: our homes, our offices, our hunting camps, our locker rooms, our restaurants, our schools, & even our volleyball courts & football fields.  When people observe us, our lives, our deeds, & words—what do they see?  Do they see what the Apostle James describes: “jealousy & selfish ambition… disorder & every foul practice.”  Or, do they see us striving for purity, gentleness, & mercy even in the midst of our own weakness & faults?  Do they see us striving for the fullness of the truth?  Or, do they see us picking & choosing the parts that are convenient & to our liking, & ignoring the rest?  If people do not see a resolve & a daily effort to live the fullness of the Gospel in us, well, they won’t see it anywhere.

In particular—do we pick & chose which parts of the Church’s teaching we follow?  This is widespread & disastrous here in the U.S.—the idea that the teachings I dislike or find inconvenient can be freely discarded. Some have called this “cafeteria Catholicism”: grab the chips & the hotdogs, but skip the spinach & the broccoli!  We shouldn’t do this at the supper table, & it’s just as harmful for us in our faith.  The Ten Comm&ments are NOT pick & choose, & neither is the Church’s teaching.  The teachings we find the most difficult are the very same places the Lord is calling us to conversion & growth.

Let me emphasize: this does not mean any of us is perfect, nor does it mean that our living of the Gospel is only effective if we’re perfect.  We ARE called to holiness, to perfection, but that is a lifelong & daily journey.  What people MUST see in us is not perfection, not a lack of struggle, but quite the opposite… they must see us fighting—literally fighting, struggling—every day to grow better, seeking every day to open our lives up wider & wider to God’s infinite grace. The saints are NOT those who had no faults or never sinned; saints are men, women, & children who never gave up, who kept seeking the Lord’s grace & mercy, who rejected the voice of discouragement & the status quo, who constantly turned back to the Lord.

This struggle to embrace the fullness of Christ’s teaching is evident in our Gospel. Having revealed His passion & death, a struggle that preceded His victory, the disciples do not underst&.  The extent of their incomprehension is dramatically revealed when Jesus discovers that they’ve been fighting among themselves about their own status.  What the Apostle James described later is already at work:

Where do the wars & where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? You covet but do not possess. You kill & envy but you cannot obtain; you fight & wage war. 

St. James is speaking to an early CHRISTIAN community, & we can see that this was already present among Jesus’ closest followers, & of course it is present in our hearts today & among us.  The disciples had not absorbed what Jesus had said, & so were occupied with their own prominence rather than with laying down their lives.  Jesus places a child in their midst as a model & a challenge:

If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be last of all & the servant of all…. Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; & whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.

We have a sacred & urgent mission, & the world needs the Gospel now more than ever.  Our enemy seeks to draw us into internal division & discouragement & attacks us daily with temptations & lies.  The path to eternal life & glory passes through the Cross.  May we ask the Lord for the courage to live undivided lives, the courage to embrace the fullness of His teaching, especially the parts that each of us find most difficult.

+ A. M. D. G. + 

 

For the 7th & 8th Grade St. Sebastian's CCD Class...

 + J. M. J. +

Here's that youtube video I was telling you guys about!  Obviously a little bit of fiction, but it does raise the question... could I be convicted of begin a Catholic Christian?  Does my life actually show evidence of faith, hope, and love?

Enjoy discussing!

Evidence

God Bless,
Fr. Ben

P.S. Here's another dandy! Palm Sunday

+ A. M. D. G. +  

Christ's Path Leads to the Cross... and Joy!

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Jesus places a significant question before us: “Who do people say that I am?” Notice the focus on Jesus’ identity: He doesn’t ask, “What do I do?” or “What do I teach?” but rather “Who am I?” The other questions are significant, but actions and words flow out of our existence and being. We are before we do or act or speak. Any number of theories are floating around about Jesus: Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one of the prophets. In our own time, this is also true: many theories float around about who Jesus is: a good teacher, a philosopher, a misguided peasant, a revolutionary, a peacenik, or one among a whole clan of religious figures like Mohammed or Buddha. Many people who pay lip service to Christ and think of Him fondly embrace one of these ideas: Jesus, one religious leader or founder among others, even if He is the leader I choose to follow.

This is not enough, and it wasn’t enough for Jesus, and He pressed His followers to go further: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter, impetuous faithful faltering Peter said “You are the Christ.” Christ is Greek for Messiah, which is Hebrew for the Anointed One: the one we have been waiting for, the new David, the new King, the Savior. All this is caught up in that little word, Christ.

Notice carefully what happens next: Jesus goes on to teach that the Son of Man will suffer, die, and rise again. Peter rebukes Him! Imagine this, the student rebuking the teacher! The Jews did not expect a suffering Messiah, nor is it what they wanted. They wanted victory, power, honor, wealth, comfort, all of this coming with the Romans kicked out and their kingdom not only reestablished, but preferably bigger than ever before!

Jesus uses the STRONGEST possible words in rejecting this, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” We readily choose to avoid pain and suffering and adversity, but God goes deeper, and He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, not to avoid suffering, but to walk right into the midst of it, thus conquering it from within and forever.

Jesus goes on to make it VERY clear that if we are to follow Him, this too will be our path, into the midst of suffering, taking up our cross, whatever it may be, giving up our lives into the Father’s hands, and in losing our lives with Christ, in dying with Him, rising to new life. Each of us faces suffering right now: physical sickness or pain, fear or anxiety, a crisis of faith, a broken relationship, trouble at work, or the sufferings of a spouse or a parent or a child. This is precisely what Jesus is talking about: will we take up these crosses in all their bitterness, and follow Him to Calvary? Quite against all our expectations and our longing for comfort and ease, this is the path that leads to joy and peace and eternal life. Our faith must express itself in concrete actions, in concrete everyday decisions, or it is merely lip service. To use James’ very pithy expression, “Faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

Today is Catechetical Sunday, and after communion we will bless our catechists, our parents who are the first and most important catechists, and godparents who promised at the baptism of their godchildren to be witnesses and teachers of the faith. Catechesis is a countercultural act, and a path likely to lead to disdain and rejection. To catechize is to teach and live the Gospel in all its truth. In our contemporary situation, to publicly claim that something is true is very likely to lead to accusations of hatred, bigotry, and intolerance. Even more, to claim that Jesus is Lord and Christ, the most basic expression of our faith, may very quickly lead us into difficulty, especially if we seek to firmly follow Jesus’ moral teachings. Isaiah describes the consequences of speaking the truth with our lives, “I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting.” We should not imagine that our own following of the Lord will necessarily lead to honor and respect and kindness from a world that is increasingly and aggressively hostile and intolerant towards people of faith , especially if they have the temerity to claim that what they believe is true!

Our catechists, parents, and godparents have a special joy, a special privilege, of handing on the truth of the Gospel, but also a special burden and challenge. I am filled with confidence that if we will follow the Lord with zeal and humility and faithfulness, this will lead us to eternal life and joy. I am similarly confident that it will involve us in every sort of difficulty and struggle! Jesus was frank and clear about this, we see that difficulty and struggle co-existing with peace and joy in His life and the lives of all the saints. Very likely we have observed it in the lives of family members and friends who have been witnesses of faith to us. Each day I encounter men, women, and children facing every sort of difficulty, and I am often humbled by their faith and perseverance in the midst of it.

I would like to conclude with a story of hope, a story of catechesis apparently failed and the Lord’s patient mercy. It is, briefly, the story of one of our current seminarians, Brandon Oman, a witness I have heard him share publicly a number of times.

Brandon readily relates that he had no love for CCD or confirmation classes, and went to great lengths to be disruptive. Once he was confirmed, he pretty much stopped going to church despite his parent’s entreaties. After high school he worked as a logger in the woods, and eventually was driving log trucks most of the time and making decent money. He was also playing in a band and living the party life. For several years, this was his life, but it left him emptier and emptier. One day, as he was driving a loaded log truck, he was feeling empty and hopeless. He knew he believed that God existed, and he believed that Hell existed, because he was in the midst of it. He remembered his confirmation teacher telling him, “If you ever call upon the name of Jesus, He will always come to your aid.” So, right there, as he was driving along, he called upon the Lord. In the months and years ahead, he started going back to church, to everyone’s surprise, and he began to pray the rosary. A few years later, Bishop Sample was ordained a bishop, and although Brandon had to work, he had his mom tape the live broadcast of the ordination Mass. As he watched it later that evening, he was struck to the heart by our bishop’s words. Bishop Sample, partway through his homily, went off his prepared text, moved by the Spirit, and looked out into the congregation. I was there myself and I remember it. He said, “If there are any young men listening to me today, and if the Lord has placed it on your heart to become a priest, take courage!” As Brandon heard those words hours later, he was pierced to the heart, and shortly after that began the journey to the priesthood. He is now in 2nd Theology and, God-willing, will be ordained a priest in about two and a half years!

I was relating this to a friend from the same area some years ago, and it turns out he was the confirmation teacher, and he shared with me his own joy at seeing the Lord at work in Brandon’s life, even though it had not seemed at all promising during those confirmation classes!

The Lord is at work in our midst, at every day, and at every moment, not least through our catechists and parents and godparents! As we come to this altar now to receive the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, our Lord and King, we ask the Lord to sustain us and empower us to live our faith each day, that our faith may pass beyond lip service and vague affiliation into concrete belief and action.

+ A. M. D. G. +

Be strong, fear not! Here is your God!

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you.

God comes Himself to save us! No one who heard Isaiah’s words could have imagined anything but a military victory: the Kingdom of Israel restored, prosperous, powerful, and honored. And, yet, we see hidden here in plain view the great mystery of the Incarnation, God coming to dwell among us in the Flesh, a man like us in all things but sin.

What would God do when He came?

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing.

He will bring sight, we will see beauty; He will bring sound, we will hear truth; He will bring strength and wholeness, we will leap and live; He will fill us with His grace and we will sing.

God kept this promise. Jesus went among the people and taught and healed and cast out demons. We hear today of His earthy healing of a deaf man with a speech impediment: a man who could neither hear the speech of others, nor speak well himself. His communication with others was blocked and Jesus said, “Be opened,” and he spoke plainly. Those who observed were exceedingly astonished, and they said, “He has done all things well.” God’s promise through Isaiah is fulfilled.

Great! Wonderful! Beautiful! But, what does this have to do with us today? That was 2000 years ago—now we have medicine, and doctors, and hospitals, now we have hearing aids and speech therapists and technology. Why would our hearts be frightened? Why do we need God to come with vindication and divine recompense? Brothers and sisters in Christ, we need the hope that God offers us more now than ever. Yesterday, as every day of the year, over three thousand children were surgically aborted in our country, leaving their mothers and fathers wounded and in need of healing. Roughly 100 people committed suicide, and that rate has been going up for over 10 years. The number of marriages has been steadily dropping, and marriage itself is now very much under attack. Our national birthrate is below replacement in our country, which means that without immigration, our population will shrink each year. Mass attendance in the US has been dropping in many places, and the average age of our congregations increases. Each one of us faces these and other struggles in our own lives, in our own homes, among our families and friends. In the media, we hear that the steady march of modern progress continues, and while it’s true that our cell phones are more powerful than ever before, nevertheless, I think if we look around us, and if we look within, we will quickly realize that we need hope, and Divine Help, very much indeed.

I was discussing some of these issues with a group of our Knights at Keenagers as we pulled off the old wallpaper. Somebody remarked on the grimness of these statistics, pointing out that the Lord seems to be hidden in the midst of all of this. It is true that the challenges we face are very great. It certainly appears that the tide has turned against life, against family, and against faith in our so-called modern world. Many would rather ignore or justify these grim statistics rather than seriously assessing the shadowlands we have walked into as a culture and society. But, there is little honesty or courage in looking away from these hard facts, and certainly no adequate response to be found by ignoring them. I don’t enjoy bringing them to your attention, but I could not be faithful to the Lord if I were silent. The Culture of Death does seem in many places to have the upper hand over the Culture of Life.

That would never have been more true than on Good Friday, such a paradoxical name for that dark day when Jesus Christ went to the Cross as most of His disciples turned their backs. We know, however, that there is more to the story. And that is just as true now as then—there is more to the story. God’s love for us is undiminished. Even as our ears have often been blocked, and our tongues tied, God has not stopped offering us healing and strength. Vocations to the priesthood and the consecrated life are on the rise in many quarters, and some families are choosing God and faith and life even though it’s an uphill battle. Even more importantly—YOU are here today, YOU are here seeking God, seeking His grace, seeking His will. The only adequate response to God is YES! If that “Yes” becomes full, it leads to sanctity, and saints change the world, on life at a time. Each of us received that call at our baptisms: will we answer it now, and then again tomorrow, and the next day? God will open our ears to His truth, and we will be empowered to speak the truth of His love with our lives. Our world is very broken, and we are broken, too, and in this brokenness the Lord says:

“Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you.”

He comes now to this altar to save us, and through us, the whole world.

+ A. M. D. G. +

Are you a Doer of the Word? Seek the Beauty of the Law!

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

La vita e bella! Life is beautiful! Perhaps you saw the magnificent 1997 film Life is Beautiful… if you haven’t seen it, run, don’t walk, and rent it or buy it. It’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen, and it tells a tale of great joy and gratitude in the midst of the very dark circumstances of World War II and the Nazi extermination of the Jews. Life is beautiful even in our broken and fallen world. From a young age I’ve often experienced an intense awareness of gratitude for God’s blessings in my life. James alludes to this in his letter, our second reading:

Dearest brothers and sisters: All good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change. He willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

God is perfect and perfectly faithful in His love for us, and all that is good comes to us from him. The greatest of his gifts is His Word of Truth. God created us by His Word: when God speaks, we are. Having loved us into existence, He didn’t abandon us when we turned away, but continued to love us and call us to Himself. One of God’s greatest and most perfect gifts to us is His Law.

Wait… what did I just say? One of God’s most beautiful gifts to us is His Law? Does that sound right to you? That’s what Moses told people in our first reading,

This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people. For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the LORD, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him? Or what great nation has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?

Although counter-intuitive, this is exactly right… God IS TRUTH, and He IS LOVE, and so His Word to us is perfectly true and perfectly loving at the same time, and thus His Law to us is an expression of the truth of things, of reality, and also an act of love. The One who made us knows what works for us and what does not. When we reject that law, when we live our lives against God’s plan for us as our Creator and Redeemer… well, we get the world we all live in today where sin and vice are glorified and rewarded and virtue is mocked.

In my own life Boy Scouting was a source of great grace to me, and one of the places, after my own home, where I learned about virtue and service and living well. I also began to notice that I was most full of joy and peace precisely when I was serving and helping others, whether that was running recycling drives, raking the lawns of the elderly, or helping the younger Scouts learn to start a fire or tie a square knot. Later in high school, one of the very first serious books about the faith I read was Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft. Peter Kreeft is a convert to the Catholic faith, and a brilliant speaker and writer… anything by him is worth reading, and very likely entertaining to boot! God was working through that little book, because for the first time I realized how thoroughly mixed up our world was, and how we’d lost track of God’s law, and how this path we’ve been on for some decades leads to self-destruction. I don’t know if I was 17 or 18, but I PRAISE GOD for giving me this clear glimpse of an authentically beautiful life of virtue, even as I struggled to live it.

God’s law is one of His greatest, most beautiful, and most difficult gifts to us. In our Gospel, Jesus challenges the Pharisees and scribes because they had embraced one of the two most common errors regarding God’s law: they had turned it into an empty and outward observance. They observed secondary consequences of the law, careful ceremonial washing of hands and dishes, but ignored the substance and heart of the law. Jesus quotes from Isaiah—this was not a new problem:

This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition.

So, the Pharisees went through the motions, and their hearts were often stone cold. This is still a very real possibility if we let Mass attendance, or regular confession, or “being good people” become an empty outward sign unconnected to the fire of love or conversion.

However, I think it is strikingly clear that in our own time, even among those of us who practice the faith, a far more common error is the outright abandonment of any standard of right and wrong, the great lie of relativism and individualism. One crude definition could be this: To live by the principle that nothing’s wrong if I want to do it. This is not only a big fat lie, but the surest path to sorrow and emptiness.

God loves us and gives us the beautiful gift of His Law, a Law perfected and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. St. James lays out the path for us clearly enough:

Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

May we reach out to those in need with generous hearts, may we reject the lies and sins that the world offers to us in such appealing disguises. May we receive the Lord today, and being filled with His grace, become doers of the Word, living beautiful lives.

+ A. M. D. G. +