The Family - the Basic Unit of Society

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the Feast of the Holy Family (Basic readings, not the options for Year B or C)

Merry Christmas! This is the proper greeting for today, since we are still within the Octave of Christmas, and today is the 6th day of that Octave! The Church gives us this Feast of the Holy Family on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas to further focus our attention on the mystery of the Incarnation: Jesus not only took on flesh and dwelt among us as one like us in all things but sin, He didn’t just enter into the individual human condition, but He also entered fully into human society.

The basic unit of society is NOT the individual… no individual is self-sufficient… our DNA and bodies come from our parents, and we have to be fed and tended with great care for many years before we come anywhere near taking care of ourselves! At the end of our lives we once again depend heavily on others for basic bodily care, and at every moment of our lives in between we are by nature, by God’s design, members of a family, and members of the human family. In a world so focused on “ME,” it is only by an intentional choice that we will live in touch with the fundamental reality that we are not self-sufficient, and that our lives do not in fact make much sense except in relationship with God and others. Jesus Himself entered into this fundamentally communal reality at His conception, He became a member of a family, and a town, and a nation.

The family is a complicated reality to approach from the standpoint of faith, because in every time and place there have been families. What structures family is marriage – the particular relationship between a man and a woman who are potentially a mother and a father. There are certainly instances where the conception of a new life is not physically possible, but the basic reality of family is structured by marriage and oriented toward the possibility of children. This reality is evident in every society in every time and place. There are variations, and various degrees to which particular cultures respected the equal dignity of men, women, and children, but nonetheless marriage is not the particular expression of one culture or religion, but a basic human reality found wherever there are humans.

It is this basic human reality, woven into our very being, that God elevated, blessed, and purified through His self-revelation. First amongst the Jewish people, and then in a fuller and fuller way in the Christian community, marriage took on a clearer and clearer form – a covenant between a man and a woman who freely and knowingly commit themselves to be totally faithful to each other until death and open to the possibility of life. Even in our first reading from the Book of Sirach we don’t find the full expression of Christian marriage, but notice how each member of the family, father, mother, and each child, are called to honor and respect and serve each other in kindness and love. Place this against the backdrop of the pagan world where wives and children were often treated as mere possessions to be bought and sold!  A helpful way to summarize this fullness of God’s teaching on marriage is to use four adjectives: free, total, fruitful, and faithful. We could unpack each one of those adjectives at great length, and maybe we will at another time!

I think anyone who opens their eyes and looks around in our society can easily recognize that marriage and family are under great pressure and even attack, and that, on average, our family structures are slowly falling apart around us. Everyone suffers from this: kids without parents, parents trying to do their best without spouses, and everyone else who’s caught in the middle. Marriage as the Church understands it, marriage as a sacrament, a covenant, that fundamentally structures family life is difficult… without God’s it’s not at all plausible or realistic. With God all things are possible, but as every married couple here present can attest to, that doesn’t make it easy.

Listen to Paul’s advice to the Colossians, and imagine how you might apply it in your family relationships:

Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.

This advice applies to each one of us in all situations, but especially in family life.

The incident recorded in our Gospel today alerts us to the full reality of Jesus family life: Mary, Joseph, and Jesus have a miscommunication and misunderstanding that leads Mary and Joseph into no little difficulty and fear. They can’t find the child entrust to them by God! If such difficulty can be present in a family where two of the three people involved are without sin, how much more so in our own families!

With Christmas we have entered into the 2nd phase of our Year of Faith. After focusing on the Sacrament of Penance, in step with the Penitential Act at the beginning of Mass, now we are moving into the Liturgy of the Word, with a focus on Sacred Scripture. In the midst of all the difficulties that each family faces, one very powerful way that we can center our family life on God is to place the Word of God in place of honor in our homes, and in our time. If a family begins to allow itself to be shaped by God’s word, each member individually and the family as a whole, then God’s grace will be more and more at work in them and through them. As the family goes, so goes society... it is ONLY by seeking conversion in our individual lives and in the lives of our families that we can hope to change the world!

Listen now to Bishop Sample’s invitation to each of us during this second moment of the Year of Faith:

BISHOP SAMPLE’S SCRIPT: SECOND MOMENT OF THE YEAR OF FAITH CD

“This is Bishop Alexander Sample. It gives me great joy to welcome all of you to this second moment in our celebration of the Year of Faith. This period will run from Christmas until Holy Week. And this part of the Year of Faith will focus on the part of the Holy Mass that we call the Liturgy of the Word. And we will focus during this time on the Sacred Scriptures, on the Bible. As we celebrate at Christmas time the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us, we will celebrate God’s Word in a very special way. We will take a closer look at what God has revealed to us in His Holy Word, in the Sacred Scriptures.

I ask you during this period of the Year of Faith to open your hearts and your minds to God as he speaks to us in the Sacred Scripture, in his Holy Word. During this time, we will try to teach all of you to take a more focused look at the Holy Bible. We hope to teach you how to study the Bible, how to pray with the Word of God, to meditate upon the words of Scripture and to apply the words of the Bible to your own lives. God’s Word is a living Word, and it speaks to each one of us today.

As a way of introducing all of us to this moment of our Year of Faith, we are going to ask that each one of us enthrone the Holy Bible in our homes. We will provide a ritual to use for you and your family to create that special place of honor in your home for the Word of God. We will also provide a reading plan for you, asking that you, individually and as a family, take time each week to read the Holy Scriptures. We will focus on the Gospel of St. Luke, which is the Gospel that the Church gives us during this year.

I ask that each one of you draw closer to God through his Holy Word during this time. God will speak to you and will draw you closer into communion with himself and in his mercy and love. God bless each and every one of you.”

+ A. M. D. G. +

Gaudete! Rejoice... and keep getting ready!

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, Year C

The theme of this Gaudete Sunday is joy. Gaudete is command in Latin… “Rejoice.” It comes from our entrance antiphon today, the verse assigned by the Church to set the tone as we begin our Mass. I read it before the Sign of the Cross, and this year the same text is found in our 2nd reading:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!

We have been waiting for two weeks, and we have nearly two more to go, and the Church wants us to be encouraged in our waiting and anticipation, and even filled with joy. The result of spiritual preparation is a deep, lasting, and abiding joy.

One of the most vivid experiences of joy that I have myself experienced came two summers ago when I had the beautiful opportunity to accompany our diocesan pilgrimage group to World Youth Day in Madrid. We were led by Bishop Sample, and I was directly responsible for a group of our campus ministry students. With them I tramped all over Madrid, moving through enormous crowds of young Catholics from all over the world. I had expected that this profound immersion in the universal Church and the encounter with Pope Benedict would integrate head knowledge of the Church into their hearts, and our prayerful discussion each night demonstrated that this was in fact happening, both for each of them and for me. However, when I interviewed each of them weeks after we had returned home, what struck me was how so many of the young people made reference to the deep and lasting joy that was still present and tangible in their hearts. Having prayed, worshiped, sang, laughed and danced with millions of young Catholics from every nation under the sun and with the Holy Father, these college students were able to speak of the joy that was still informing their daily lives weeks later. I was humbled and impressed by their insight and the authenticity of their experience of God at work in His Church.

These same young people had often been exhausted, footsore, thirsty, and bewildered during those same days in Madrid. We had waited in lines for hours at a time, pressed into enormous crowds in the Spanish heat. It was clear that like us, many people were not recently bathed!  We slept each night packed together in rows in a stuffy school building which we shared with hundreds of other pilgrims, including a large group of Italians that didn’t even get home until midnight, forget about sleeping!

This is the mysterious of authentic Christian joy… it can coexist with and endure great hardship. It is not superficial happiness or a veneer of fake cheerfulness. The prophet Zephaniah exhorts Israel to “shout for joy” and to “be glad and exult with all your heart’ even as they are surrounded by enemies and the likelihood, humanly speaking, of failure. This weekend we all have heavy hearts in light of the terrible shooting in Connecticut, and we cannot help but grieve with the families of all those who died. Yet even into the midst of such circumstances, Paul’s message to the Philippians, and to us, still rings out:

I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Paul spoke to communities surrounded by persecution and misunderstanding… he’s not reminding them that the Lord is near for nothing. They have every worldly reason to be anxious, afraid, and discouraged. When we look around this mortal and broken world, even during this Advent season, we can find plenty of reasons to be discouraged. When we look even within our own families and recognized the brokenness and struggle that takes place between those who should love each other well, we can certainly find cause for anxiety. And, yet, there is more to the story. Our hope and our courage is not in this world alone. We are not called to be optimists who rely on positive predictable outcomes on our own schedule… rather we are called to hope in the Lord, and even to rejoice in the midst of sickness, sorrow, and struggle.

Hearing John the Baptist's call to repent and to begin anew, the people asked him, “What should we do?” In light of our coming commemoration of Christ coming in time, and our preparations to meet Him at the end of time, we too can rightly ask, “what should we do?” John the Baptist's reply is simple, but hard to live out: we should share what we have with those in need, we should treat others with fairness and justice, we should turn away from all sin. This is how we prepare to receive our Lord and King… and this preparation equips us to weather the storms of this life so that we might keep our eyes fixed on the calm joy of eternal life.

We have 10 more days to get ready… and we need them, as the struggles and tragedies of this world make all too clear. Please don’t jump the gun and skip the preparation. Prepare in prayer, in penance, in reflection now, so that your hearts might be truly open to the full joy of our coming feast!

+ A. M. D. G. +

Up Jerusalem, Stand upon the heights... (Or... Will we have to go door to door?)

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 2nd Sunday of Advent, Year C

John the Baptist brings a basic, visceral, forceful message: “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Recognizing that we are sinners, that our lives and deeds are not wholly pleasing to God or according to His law, we repent, we turn back, we change direction. To dramatize this invitation, John invited people to a baptism of repentance, an exterior washing that spoke of an interior desire. This is not yet the full Christian baptism, but it serves to prepare the soil of their souls for the further message Jesus Himself would bring.

As Luke records John the Baptist’s ministry, he recognizes the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy:

A voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

All creation expresses the call to every human heart: circuitous motives and desires to be straightened out and brought into the light, obstacles overcome and surmounted, weakness supplied with God’s strength, clouded flesh and bleary eyes beginning to see clearly the beautiful salvation of God.

This restoration and healing, this homecoming echoes through our first reading as well, from the prophet Baruch:

Up, Jerusalem! Stand upon the heights; look to the east and see your children gathered from the east and the west at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that they are remembered by God.

Exiles who have been wandering lonely and poor in a strange land are restored to communion with God and with God’s people. They see from the heights of God’s truth out over the beautiful work that God is doing in their midst.

I am struck by how the profound call of the Year of Faith coincides with the message of our Scriptures today. Pope Benedict and Bishop Sample are calling us to leave our lonely wandering in the poor strange land of our modern time, a wandering characterized by so many Catholics who have slipped farther and farther away from God and the life of the Church… I refer to those of us here at Mass! Certainly there are many more who have fallen away more completely, but those of us here, those of us who still worship, at least occasionally, those of us who still pray, at least occasionally… God is speaking FIRST to us through His Church. We are the ones who still perhaps possess some flickering weak light of grace in our hearts that can be blown upon by the wind of the Holy Spirit and fanned into a beautiful flame of love. If we will re-appropriate, re-visit, re-learn the faith given to us at Baptism, then we may well stand upon the heights, then we may well stand upon the solid rock of the Church’s teaching and life and sacraments, rather than constantly getting bogged down in the shifting quicksand of popular opinion.

It has been a profound joy for me to accompany our Catholicism Project groups as we do exactly this, sinking our teeth into the solid food of the Church’s doctrine. Many perceptive questions have been asked that have led us into the heart of the fire of God’s love for us. This past week, one person sat with an uneasy face, and asked about going door to door. “Father, if we learn what our faith teaches, then we’re going to have to go out and knock on doors, right, and tell people about it.” You could see this person almost turning green at the gills at the thought! Isn’t this the gist of the New Evangelization, that we need to become more and more like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who with great and persistent courage go from door to door?

Well, perhaps, but this is not exactly what Pope Benedict has in mind! The moment will come when some among us may well be called to do more inviting, even of strangers. But this movement must well up in the context our own personal and ongoing conversion to Christ. We cannot give what we do not have… as long as our own faith is lukewarm and wavering, we do not have much to offer! If we pick and choose the parts we like from amongst our broad and challenging tradition, we don’t have much to offer. If we think to ourselves, “Well, heh, I’m a pretty good person, I do some good things, isn’t that enough…” Well, I hate to say it… we don’t have much to offer. John the Baptist calls us to repentance, Jesus Christ calls us to repentance, Pope Benedict calls us to dig deep, repenting, and seeking once again the fullness of our faith, in all its challenging beauty. As we draw nearer and nearer the fire of God’s love, as the obstacles that separate us from God are overthrown, who knows what God might do in us? If we stand upon the bracing heights of Christ’s saving truth, who knows what path we might see leading deeper into God’s light? Who knows who we may see there, waiting for us to live the truth and speak the truth to them? God might well call us to all these things, but as long as we muddle along half-committed, half-converted, we’re not likely to hear any call clearly. If anyone ends up going door to door, it must be because of a burning love in their hearts that will not leave them in peace unless they share it with their neighbors!

This, then, is the project before us, the project of Advent, the project of the Year of Faith which we have begun by focusing on penance and repentance: to prepare the way for the Lord into our hearts and lives. The simple practices outlined last week will provide us with the concrete steps: Sunday Eucharist, regular confession, daily prayer. As we come into contact with God’s grace and truth, who knows what might be unlocked in our hearts and lives?! Let me close with St. Paul’s beautiful prayer on behalf of his beloved Philippians, a prayer our Mother the Church prays for us:

that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

+ A. M. D. G. +

Would we RUN forth to meet Christ?

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 1st Sunday of Advent, Year C

Advent has arrived! With it a new liturgical year, a new cycle of readings (Year C), and some visible changes in our sanctuary and worship. The Church always seeks to engage the whole person, the whole human being, body, mind, and soul. We have begun this period of joyful waiting, “of devout expectant delight”. As the priest vests in purple, which has a penitential tone, we ask ourselves, “Are we ready to receive our Lord and King?” We forgo the Gloria during these 4 Sundays of Advent so that it might ring out with yet greater joy on Christmas Eve. Our music is simpler, less elaborate. We light the candles of the Advent Wreath to highlight this waiting, and our progress towards our King. In the weeks ahead we slowly begin to decorate the Church, step by step preparing for our feast.

What are we waiting for? For what do we prepare so elaborately and with so much care? I suspect many of you are saying in your mind, Christmas! And that is the second thing we prepare for during Advent… but the first is actually Jesus’ Second Coming in Glory at the End of Time! Prior to Dec. 17th, the Church directs our attention to the coming of Christ that lies ahead of us. Note our Gospel today:

And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory….Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.

There is a nice logical flow here: in November we meditate upon death and the end this mortal world, and then as Advent begins, we focus on that end as a beginning: With Jesus’ 2nd coming, God will bring to final completion and fulfillment all His promises to us.

Those promises are very evident in our first reading from Jeremiah:

The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah….In those days Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem shall dwell secure….

Jesus’ coming in time as a tiny baby child was the beginning of the fulfillment of this promise. That fulfillment reached a climax on the Cross and in the tomb and on the third day when He rose, but we live now in the tension between the victory already won for us on the Cross, and our own appropriation, reception, and acceptance of that perfect gift. When Jesus comes again in glory, His arrival will be unmistakable—every heart will know that God has come.

We see, then, how this message and teaching to us echoes through these readings proclaimed here, and in EVERY Catholic Church in the world on this first Sunday of Advent. The Church chooses them with great love and care to teach us.

There is another text, though, that I often fear we easily miss. Mass begins with the Sign of the Cross, a greeting, the penitential rite… outside of Advent and Lent we continue then with the Gloria. Having begun in God’s name, having asked His forgiveness, the priest then prays the opening prayer, more properly called the collect. That name suggests what this prayer is meant to do: it gathers up, collects, the message and import of the whole liturgy that lies ahead into one succinct prayer. But, unless you have a missal in front of you, it goes by so quickly! I remember beginning to practice celebrating Mass as a seminarian, and being amazed both by the beauty of these prayers, and by how I was for the most part totally unaware of them!  Here it is again:

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, with resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at his right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom.

This is a very fine summary of what we are about during Advent, especially these opening weeks: preparing to meet Christ at His coming. If we imagine Jesus’ coming to judge the living and the dead, do we shrink back? The Church desires us to be so converted to Christ that we might be filled with zeal and joy at the thought of His Second Coming, so much joy that we run to meet Him, with righteous deeds… acting on our joy and His grace by pouring out acts of virtue, love, and mercy.

This is very different from the commercial hype that began celebrating Christmas, forget about Advent, 3 weeks ago! Please don’t allow the mercantile madness to sweep over you… seek Christ, not piles of gifts! Seek prayer, not seasonal anxiety. Seek deeds of charity rather than keeping up with the Joneses!

What does this look like concretely? Well… I’ve given some very simple suggestions in my bulletin column:

          · Make a good confession this Advent;

          · Come to Mass every Sunday until Christmas;

          · Come to a daily Mass, an extra helping of grace.

          · Read the Gospel every day, they’re listed in the bulletin, or even both the daily Mass readings.

          · Finally… take one of our Advent Companions that are at all the entrances, and pray with the
            simply daily devotion that’s given there.

          · Use these prayers with your Advent wreath at your evening meal each Sunday, or even each night.

These are simple, concrete ways to prepare to greet the Lord in this life and in the next.

Paul gives the Thessalonians a beautiful blessing:

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.

And all God’s people say, “Amen.”

 + A. M. D. G. +

IS Jesus your King?

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, Year B

The liturgical year draws to a close as the days shorten and winter settles in. Next week we will begin a period of intense expectation and preparation: Advent. At this moment of transition, the Church reminds us with solemn joy that Our Lord Jesus Christ is King of Heaven and Earth, King of the Universe, King of all that is! “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.” My brothers and sisters in Christ… this is thoroughly good news!

Perhaps the idea of a king is something old-fashioned for us—we don’t have many kings anymore. We attempt to govern ourselves by a messy democratic process that has brought our nation unprecedented wealth and stability, along with growing isolation, the rapid breakdown of the family, and increasingly high rates of suicide and addiction. We are in the midst of an astounding and difficult to comprehend holocaust of the unborn: in the last 40 years alone, in the United States, we have killed at least 10 unborn infants for every Jewish person killed during the Holocaust. These tragedies are just as much a part of our American experiment as voting and the Civil Rights movement.

Our feast, then, is meant to address our modern discontent. Jesus Christ was proclaimed Messiah even during His life, the anointed one, the Son of David the King. The title is ancient, but this liturgical feast only goes back to 1925 when the tide of secularism and the rejection of God was rising in Europe and among the elite. Just two years later, in 1927, Blessed Miguel Pro, a Jesuit priest, was executed by the Mexican government for his faith. Like thousands killed during that terrible persecution just 90 years ago, he died with the words “Viva Cristo Rey” on his lips, "Long Live Christ the King." His feastday was on Friday.

Now that tide of aggressive secularism has washed all before it and has inundated our businesses, schools, homes, and youth. Individualism has tempted us, rather successfully, to declare ourselves King: king of our lives, our pleasures, our decisions, our sins. More and more of us fall down in worship before strange and yet all-too-familiar gods: comfort, pleasure, power, wealth, distraction. Our allegiance is frequently to our own convenience. The famous Sinatra song, “I did it my way,” is certainly the anthem of Hell. Worshipping our whims and bowing down before our passing fancies leads us onto the broad road away from God and into bitter emptiness.

So how do we respond to these attractive temptations and traps? What does the Church want from us, or for us, on this Solemnity of Christ the King? I believe we are being invited to renew our allegiance to Jesus Christ, or perhaps even offer that allegiance for the first time. This is not primarily an emotional experience, although we may indeed feel some strong emotion. Rather, it is an act of the will, a decision: whom do we follow? Whom do we serve? Whom do we seek?

This year, today’s feast falls in the midst of the feasts of three different martyrs. I already mentioned Bl. Miguel Pro, Friday’s memorial, and Saturday it was St. Andrew Dung-Lac and companions, some 117 Vietnamese Catholics killed between 1820 and 1862. If the 25th were not a Sunday, it would be the memorial of St. Catherine of Alexandria, a respected philosopher who lived in what is now Egypt, and having become Christian, gave her life as a martyr in the 4th century… in every time and place, there have been men, women, and children whose allegiance to Christ the King stood firm even in the face of torture and death. Perhaps we don’t make our choice in such dramatic circumstances, but it boils down to the same basic question: Whom do we follow? Whom do we serve? Whom do we seek?

As Jesus tells Pilate, His kingdom is not of this world. He is not capricious, rapacious, lustful, or bloodthirsty. But, He is King… He is powerful, with the perfect gentle sweet power of Love. He does defend us, and He does teach us. He testifies to the truth by His life, and by His words. He is the Alpha, the Omega, the one who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.

On this feast I think the Church wants us to seriously ask ourselves the question: Is Jesus the Lord of my Life? It’s not a question we answer just once… but we do need to give an answer. To give full allegiance to Christ and His Church is a lifelong journey, a process that never ends until the moment of our death… but it is a process and journey that must begin somewhere, in fact, right where you’re sitting, here and now… once again, or perhaps for the first time, to choose Christ, to respond to His choice of you.

If I am king of my own life, or if I bow down before comfort or pleasure or power or wealth or fame… well, then Jesus is not Lord of my Life. If I like Jesus, but I ignore His Law, His commandments, His teaching… then Jesus is not Lord of my life. If I like Jesus, but I ignore His Living Body the Church, if I feel comfortable picking and choosing the parts I like and the parts I tacitly ignore… well, Jesus didn’t set up shop with a bunch of disconnected individuals, He founded a Church, a cohesive living community that has survived down to this present day, into which we entered by our baptism. By the power and protection of the Holy Spirit, the Church has worked through broken men and women like you and me to bring us the Bible, the inspired Word of God -- no Church, no Bible -- to bring us clear and sound teaching in the midst of the storms of every age, and to bring us the abundant grace of the sacraments. Jesus is the Head, the Church is His Body, and we members of that Body by our baptism. But if we chart our own course and reject the Church, well, then, we have rejected Jesus, King and Head, as well.

Let us close by listening once again to Jesus’ loving words to Pontius Pilate, that strangely modern and skeptical man seeking to get ahead in the world, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” May we belong to the truth, in our thoughts, words, and deeds. By God’s grace may we serve Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, and thus live in His Kingdom.

+ A. M. D. G. +

Be Alert, Be Hopeful or "Don't be like Ol' 7-Cap"

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Today we celebrate the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time… the second-to-last Sunday before we begin Advent. Next Sunday is the high and solemn feast of Christ the King. As the liturgical year ends, our Mother the Church wants to use this moment to remind us that our lives and this world will come to an end. Jesus tells us graphically and powerfully in our Gospel that this world will indeed come to an end, and we will each one of us stand before the awesome judgment seat of God. Our decisions in this life have eternal consequences for ourselves and for all those around us. It is SO easy to lose track of this, and many voices encourage us in that confusion. Praying with these readings in my deer blind, this has brought to my mind a deer hunting story that involves my dad!

Our camp is on a migration route, so the hunting during the muzzleloader season is often very good. My dad was in his blind several winters ago on a very cold snowy December day. A fat doe walked in, giving every appearance of being a wary and careful animal, looking around, sniffing. As she began to eat some of the bait, my dad decided it was time to fill his tag. He stealthily raised up his smokepole, but when he pulled the trigger, the cap snapped, but the gun didn’t go off! A misfire, and at the worst possible moment. To my dad’s astonishment, though, the deer, after looking up startled, continued eating. With great care, he silently and slowly placed a fresh cap on the nozzle, and then took aim. Snap… a second misfire! Well, to make a long story short, after 7 misfires, on the 8th cap the gun went off, and my dad bagged the deer! We’ve ever since referred to her as ol’ 7-Cap! She gave every pretense of being wary and alert, but despite a bunch of noise and commotion, she kept eating the bait, and ended up in our freezer!

Do you see the connection? Jesus wants us to be alert and awake in a world where there are many distractions and much confusion, a lot of bait, so to speak. The tradition has tended to summarize these attacks as the World, the Flesh, and the Devil… the allure of power and wealth, our personal weaknesses and temptations, and our Enemy who seeks to lure us to our destruction. The modern world seems to want to forget that we have an enemy, and that there are any consequences to sin and lies. But there are eternal consequences to our daily decisions.

The solution is certainly not to see a demon behind every bush, and it has nothing to do with the occult or with zombies or horror movies. However, we do need to develop a spiritual alertness that leads us to recognize temptations, distractions, and lies both around us and in our own hearts. If we merely give a pretense of alertness, an occasional prayer, a superficial examination of our conscience from time to time, we’re just like a deer that hasn’t noticed that it’s deer season… we’re an easy target.

In offering His life once for all on the Cross, Jesus made sacrifice for ALL our sins. Our journey in this life, then, is the process of accepting and integrating that sacrifice and grace into our lives, a decision we make many times, and even many times each day. Jesus even invites us to participate in His High-Priestly sacrifice, out of our baptismal priesthood, our participation at the Eucharist, and in the other sacraments. One of the most powerful tools in the battle of this life is frequent confession. The most recent edition of the UP Catholic has some beautiful reflections on the sacrament of penance by our bishop, and the testimony of several people who’ve come back, or come back more frequently to the sacrament. The sacrament works on three levels:

1) it is the ONLY ordinary means to be forgiven of mortal sin, a sin that is serious that we have committed with full knowledge and consent. This is why the Church speaks of the “Easter Duty,” the precept of the Church by which every Catholic conscious of mortal sin MUST go to confession at least once a year during the Easter Season.

2) Second of all, perhaps by God’s grace many of us avoid mortal sins even for weeks and months at a time. A prayerful and devout communion at Mass does heal us from our daily brushes with venial sin. However, it is highly recommended and very helpful to make a devotional confession, that is, one where one does not have mortal sin to confess. This is the context in which most people would make of the sacrament monthly more or less. I try to go every couple weeks or so myself. At each confession not only are sins wiped away, but we are given power and strength to go forward, and we become more alert to the battles of this life, to temptations, and also to the Lord’s gentle promptings.

3) Finally, the third level on which confession works is that it is the primary place most Catholics have to access some basic spiritual direction or counsel. This is not the primary purpose for the sacrament, and very often the best thing would be to schedule an appointment with a priest, but oftentimes that conversation can at least begin in confession, where the priest can encourage you on the path to deeper prayer, or give you some concrete advice on how to fight a particular temptation. This is why the Church invites us to more frequent confessions, because it is one of the best possible ways to be more equipped for the battle of this life.

In confession, in the Eucharist, and in our prayer we have infinite grace offered to us moment by moment! We are in the midst of spiritual warfare, and the forces of evil are real and powerful. However, the primary reality of this world is not the scarcity of good things, but the great and overwhelming abundance of God’s grace. The prophet Daniel sees St. Michael the Archangel, one of the many angelic warriors who fight on our behalf. Our own stained glass depicts the guardian angel each of us is given by God. The saints give us good example and intercede for us, and we are strengthened by the friendship and help of our brothers and sisters in Christ. There are so many ways to be strengthened and to grow, there is no need to stand dumbly at the bait pile of sin and falsehood, waiting to be nailed!

So, we ask the Lord today to prepare our hearts by His grace for eternal life. We ask Him to lead us back to confession, or into a more profound reception of the sacrament. We ask Him to fill our hearts and lives now with the infinite gift of His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, offered to us once again at this altar.

+ A. M. D. G. +

Generosity, Penance, Sacrifice or, "What you can learn from a candle!"

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year B

If there was ever a day in the lectionary for preaching on tithing, it’s today! But I bring you glad tidings—these passages certainly point towards money, but I want to walk a slightly different path with you! While it is true that as Catholics we give far less percentage-wise than most other Christians, on average, I feel like there is a more basic message here, something that comes several steps before we examine how much money any one of us should give away.

Notice the connection between the first reading and the Gospel: the widow of Zarephath (most likely a pagan), responds with simple kindness to Elijah in the midst of a terrible drought, brings him water, and then shares with him the very last bit of bread she has for her son and herself. Her open heart is then filled by abundance as God provides the three of them with food for a whole year. God’s generosity here is even more apparent than hers! Then, in the Gospel, we hear of the widow’s mite. That’s the traditional title for this passage, based on the King James Version’s translation of the name for this very small coin. Jesus praises this widow for having given from her necessity, perhaps even all she had that day. The wealthy people gave greater sums, but only from their surplus.

Put together, these two passages highlight the blessings that accompany generosity towards God and our neighbors—the way an open and generous heart is a prerequisite, a precondition, for receiving God’s grace and abundant blessings. If our hearts are closed up, we have walled the Lord out of our lives, however much His perfect love is at our side.

Make no mistake—this is not the prosperity Gospel as trumpeted by the likes of Joel Osteen, offering faith that will result in immediate and visible worldly success. Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me,” and “If they persecute me, they will also persecute you.” Following the Lord faithfully and generously, giving of what we have been given…this will involve real sacrifices, real suffering, real difficulty. However, it also opens the door to the Lord’s manifold blessings, many of them hidden and quiet, crowned by the only perfect and lasting blessing, eternal life. Generosity does not guarantee worldly success, but a lack of generosity certainly closes the door in God’s face.

Jesus is the perfect embodiment and exemplar of such generosity. As our second reading alludes to, Jesus made the perfect and complete and total gift of self on the Cross for us, a gift we are called to enter into and participate in:

"But now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages to take away sin by his sacrifice. Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment, so also Christ, offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him."

In Jesus Christ we encounter the necessary connection between generosity and sacrifice. Authentic generosity must involve a willingness to make real sacrifices: to give and thus lose things or time or effort. Many of us are parents—the love you give your children may or may not be returned. To love them well, you have to be ready for the possibility that at any given moment, your love for them may not be reciprocated; and so also in marriage and in authentic friendship.

In our celebration of the Mass, two very simple images of generosity and sacrifice are often present. First, always, our candles… the wax or oil is burned, destroyed, lost, and yet it becomes light and warmth, and with beeswax candles, even a fragrant aroma. Candles speak of the light of Christ shining in the darkness, but also of His sacrifice. Second, incense—each resinous grain of incense loses itself as it is placed on the charcoal and is transformed into a cloud of aromatic smoke. This smoke rises up as an image of prayer, the smoke symbolically envelops and purifies us, but it is also a reminder of sacrifice. The incense is destroyed, but in the process it uplifts and fills our church with fragrance.

This Sunday we celebrate Veterans’ Day, and we remember the sacrifice made by the men and women of our armed services. This kind of self-sacrifice, though, should not be thought of as the particular domain of soldiers in far-away wars, rather, it is the path of EVERY Christian.

During this Year of Faith, Bishop Sample has solemnly invited us to two very simple practices: to abstain from meat each Friday, and to pray one rosary each week for the New Evangelization. These are practical goals: for families, for children, for adults. They do indeed involve some inconvenience, some time, some effort and intention—in a word, sacrifice. This offering, this penance, though, opens the door of our hearts, if offered with love and right intention, it opens us to abundance and blessing that far surpasses our own resources. Every gift we have received has been given to us by God to be given away, not least our lives and time and possessions. As we contemplate a world so far from God, and as we recognize that God has called us to bring His truth into this world, let us begin with sacrifice, penance, generosity—opening the door to His superabundant power. Now we prepare to receive Christ’s perfect sacrifice from this altar, and we ask the Lord that we may become and imitate He whom we receive.

(The Bishop's Pastoral Letter on the New Evangelization and the Year of Faith, "We Wish to See Jesus.")

+ A. M. D. G. +

Our Youth Group Pie Bake!

We made 75 delicious blueberry, apple, and apple-craisin pies this Saturday morning, and they almost all sold after the very first Saturday Mass... almost none for Sunday!  Lot's of great pictures of the kids making pies:  Pie Pictures on Facebook (you don't need an account)

Here's one to wet your whistle!

Our team hard at work... mostly!

What God has joined...

 

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Today we hear about God’s plan for our happiness and eternal salvation. We learn about the most basic unit of society, the family. Families are facing unprecedented challenges, and even attacks. Each of us came from a family, an imperfect family made up of people like us, people who struggle against sin. Each of us came from a family which gave us the most basic gift, life, and helped make us who we are. That’s true biologically, emotionally, and spiritually. As we call our families to mind, there are reasons for joy and thanksgiving, and also reasons for sorrow and regret.

God desires our perfection and joy. In our 2nd reading, Jesus’ mission is described as “bringing many children to glory.” From the beginning, God’s plan for our glory is to be found in our creation as men and women. We are not autonomous individuals, as the modern world has often proposed. Rather, we are intrinsically and necessarily communal, not built for ourselves, but for each other, and for God. Adam was not self-sufficient; he was incomplete. So, God made Eve, and Adam recognized her as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and yet he exclaims at her uniqueness and beauty. Adam and Even became one flesh. They were joined together in their common humanity and their unique complementarity. Compared to the rest of creation, man and woman are so much alike, but compared to each other they are so beautifully different!

We know what came after: Adam and Eve rejected obedience and chose their own sad path of sin. We too are marked by the ravages of original sin: the weakness of our will, the darkness of our intellect, and the brokenness that so often finds its way into our relationships. When Jesus is questioned about divorce, a practice common among the Jewish people, He rejects it out of hand. “What God has joined, man must not divide.” These words ring out at every Catholic wedding.  Marriage vows are for life, and once validly made, they are ended only by death. Marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life, and open to life. It is exclusive and faithful, entered into freely, and it is meant for the union and joy of husband and wife, and the procreation of children. Only in marriage do men and women rightly enter into a one-flesh union.

God’s truth and God’s plan for us must be proclaimed by the Church in season and out of season. It must be proclaimed boldly and gently, courageously and lovingly. No one can speak of God’s plan honestly without being personally aware of having fallen short, and that is certainly true for me as your pastor. Each day I come face to face with my own faults and failings, my own limits and inadequacy in the face of your needs and God’s beautiful will for us all. I do not speak of this truth, a truth hard for many of us to hear, except that I am completely convinced to the very core of my being that only in conforming our lives, our marriages, and our families to God’s plan for us do we find true and lasting peace and joy. All other paths, however easy or necessary or socially acceptable they may seem, lead away from God and away from lasting joy.

So much needs to be said and done to bring the beauty of Christian marriage into full light, but let me limit myself to a few salient points. First, to present this beautiful truth is not meant to be a judgment on those among us who may have a rather complicated path in our past. Wherever we are, we can only walk closer to the Lord and His will if we clearly identify what He has revealed to us, so that we can seek it. Secondly, there are certainly situations where a husband and wife have to separate for their own safety and the safety of their children. Third, there is no Catholic divorce. Marriage is not a sacrament that can be undone; the Church simply does not have that power. An annulment is the recognition that no marriage existed in the first place because some necessary ingredient was missing, it is not the dissolution of a civil contract by a civil authority. Fourth, if you are living with someone with whom you are not validly married, the Lord calls you to rectify that before you can receive the sacraments. I will do everything in my power to assist you in that process, which is not always straightforward or easy. If you are in that situation, you ARE NOT excommunicated, you are NOT unwelcome here, you SHOULD absolutely come to Mass every Sunday. Living with someone with whom you are not validly married is indeed an obstacle to the reception of the sacraments, but it does not mean that you are not an important member of our community. Please, don’t pretend everything’s all right if it isn’t. Please, don’t walk away from God’s invitation. Please, do come and talk to me so we can see what is needed to begin a journey back to the fullness of the Lord’s grace. I am already working with half a dozen couples who are seeking the fullness of God’s blessing upon their marriages and families. It would be my privilege and joy to work with you.

+ A. M. D. G. +

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. +