A Friar's Life

Taking Liberties | America Magazine

2012-01-31T16:22:00.002-05:00

THE EDITORS | FEBRUARY 13, 2012

For a century and a half the Catholic Church in the United States has served the American people with health care, education and social services. Even a few months ago it would have seemed preposterous to suggest that the U.S. government would place the future of those good works at risk. That seems to be what has happened, however, with a decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to allow only a narrow conscientious exemption to the employer health care insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act, the administration’s signature health care reform law.

For U.S. Catholics as citizens, the administration’s failure to offer a broader exemption presents a grave test of the “free exercise” of religion protected by the Bill of Rights. For the narrow definition of religion in the new H.H.S. guideline is at odds with the millennia-old Catholic understanding of the church as a community of believers in service to the world. The H.H.S. definition would force the church to function as a sect, restricted to celebrating its own devotions on the margins of society. The ruling is a threat to our living as a church in the Catholic manner.

The controversial guidelines, announced on Jan. 20 by Kathleen Sibelius, secretary of H.H.S., restricts religious exemptions to those persons and institutions the administration defines as religious—namely, those that serve clear religious functions, employing primarily co-religionists and serving a largely denominational clientele. The administration rejected appeals from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Health Association for a broader conscience clause. Religiously sponsored institutions, like all other employers, will be explicitly required to provide coverage for contraception, sterilization and two potential abortifacients, services that are in violation of Catholic teaching. The administration has thus pushed the U.S. bishops into a destructive showdown over the future of Catholic health care, social services and higher educational institutions. It is a confrontation both sides should seek to avert.

The exemption devised by H.H.S. places Catholic institutional employers in an untenable position. The guidelines force them to cooperate, though indirectly, in grave wrongs by facilitating acts the church considers sinful. They also place dissenting institutions in the position of withdrawing health insurance benefits from their employees and from students at their colleges and universities. Employees of such institutions will have to seek out inferior and more expensive health plans on the open market, and their employers will face annual fines from the federal government for refusing to comply with the employers’ mandate.

A misunderstanding of the Catholic mission in the United States lies at the heart of this unexpected conflict. The Obama administration’s religious exemption covers only entities that serve patently religious functions, including parishes and parochial schools. But serving the broader community through hospitals, clinics, service agencies and institutions of higher learning is not an extraneous activity for the Catholic Church. It is a civic manifestation of the church’s deep beliefs in human dignity, solidarity with the suffering and forgotten, the importance of learning and commitment to the common good. Even as the church remains true to its moral teaching, it is called to remain open and engaged with the wider society. The administration must be led to understand that defining away the church’s service to the world infringes upon Catholics’ free exercise of religion.

Less, but equally real, is the threat to Catholic ecclesial identity created by exasperated responses from some church leaders, who unwittingly would acquiesce to the sectarian temptation presented by the state, jettisoning the church’s public institutions in the name of conscience, apparently without sober attention to the church’s historic teaching on remotematerial cooperation. By complying with similar state-level regulations, however, the practice of Catholic employers in a number of states without conscience exemptions (a full list is at americamagazine.org) suggests many have until now held a different reading of that tradition. In any case, the Catholic conscience needs to remain engaged in the public forum out of our faith in the church as a “sacrament” for the world.

Catholics have resisted authoritarian governments that attempted to confine religion to the altar and sacristy. What has distinguished Western democracies from authoritarian regimes has been not just the freedom of individual believers but especially the institutional freedom of the church. While Catholics should be prepared, if necessary, to resist such a policy in our own country, both sides should leave no stone unturned to find a workable solution without unnecessary confrontation. Practically, in an election year, a solution needs to be found as early as possible. Miscalculations from either side could prove devastating.

Behold, I make all things new!

2012-01-28T20:48:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME, January 29, 2012:
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A Faith Formation teacher had just finished her lesson about Confession and wanted to make sure she had made her point. She said her students, “Can anyone tell me what you must do before you can obtain God’s forgiveness?” There was a short pause and then, from the back of the room, a small boy spoke up and said, "Sin."

Let me ask you a question this morning. Who is going to win the Superbowl next week? My hopes and prayers are on our beloved Patriots, but a week early, we don’t know. How about the World Series? Again, I know who I want to win, but Spring training hasn’t even started yet. So, of course, I don’t know. You see, not knowing is a part of our human condition. It is our lot to live, sometimes uneasily, with uncertainty. There are many occasions in life where it would be great to have a chance to “ask the audience” or “phone a friend,” but instead we’re stuck with the lot of not knowing; of living in the moment and experiencing it as it unfolds.

But, what comes across in our Scriptures today is not the uncertainty and unknowing that we’re used to living with. Instead, what comes across today is authority. The authority that Moses speaks of in the first reading would fit Jesus well, “A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen.” And Jesus does command that type of authority in our Gospel reading today. As we heard, “The people were astonished at [Jesus] teaching, for He taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.”

Jesus was an invited speaker at the Jewish synagogue in Capernaum and there they were, very pious and attentive, wondering what He was going to say, and how He was going to say it. As it turned out, His manner of speaking was very different from either a rabbi, or a scribe or a prophet.

It was the practice of Jewish rabbis to build on the teachings of their predecessors. In discussing issues of law put to them, they would often refer to explanations given by rabbis of the past. Over time, those rabbis who gained renown for their wisdom and teaching would have their explanations added to the body of basic teachings from which the rabbis of the future would draw their authority. But, the people in our Gospel passage today are astounded at Jesus words because He does not speak on the authority of great rabbis of the past, no instead, Jesus speaks with His own authority, an authority which comes from Him alone as the Son of God, and His Word, His authority is effective. Notice its power: when Jesus tells the unclean spirit to come out, it comes out of the man, just like that.

This reminds us of the action of God that we hear of in the Book of Genesis. When God said, “Let there be light,” there was light. When He said, “Let there be dry land,” there was dry land, and so on. God’s word is active and creative and does not rely on any other power or authority. It is a power – it is the power – all its own.

Jesus, the very same Word of God in human form, shares in this same power and authority. He speaks differently than everyone else. If He were simply a rabbi or a scribe, He’d have explained the Law of Moses to them. No more, no less. If He were only another prophet, He would simply have handed on the Word of God to them. He would have said, “Thus says the Lord…” But, Jesus speaks for Himself. He made no distinction between His Word and God’s Word because they are one in the same. He was God’s mouth, God’s voice, God’s authority. Small wonder that Christ’s teaching impressed them. After all it was weighted with eternity. Worded like no other teaching before.

Have you ever stopped to think about the power of the Word of Jesus? His words are not just nice words like yours or mine. His words created the universe. His words forgive sins. His words change bread into Body. His words change our lives.

And, what’s even more incredible, is that Jesus continues to speak with this authority today – in His Church, through His priests, in His Sacraments. Jesus shared this authority to teach, preach, forgive and heal with His Apostles and with us today.

Have you ever been confounded trying to understand how it can be that sins are really forgiven in Confession? That bread really becomes Body and wine really becomes Blood in the Eucharist? It is precisely because of the authority with which Jesus speaks that we know these things to be true.

We pray in the Creed that Jesus was “born of the Father before all ages” and that “through Him all things were made.” We hear at the beginning of John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be…And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

My friends, Jesus is this Word and when He says, “Those whose sins you forgive are forgiven,” it isn’t a suggestion. It happens; they are gone – through the power of those words and the ministry of the priesthood – as though they never existed. When He says, “This is my Body; this is my Blood” His word is so powerful that it not only created the Eucharist that night of the Last Supper but through the work of the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the priesthood, it created every Eucharist that would ever exist throughout all of time. Jesus Body and Blood are as truly present on this altar as they were in the upper room on the night of the Last Supper. Psalm 33 tells us that “By the Lord’s words, the heavens were made…He spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it sprang into being.”

And He speaks with that same authority to us and in our lives today. He tells each of us, “Your sins are forgiven”, “This is my Body”, “Behold I make all things new.” And so imagine what Jesus can do in our lives. What He can transform and heal and make whole in our hearts. The relationships He can restore, the sins He can overcome, the hearts He can mend – if only we ask Him to speak His Word – a Word of power and authority unlike any other to have ever been spoken – to speak that Word to our hearts. He will speak and we will be made new.

“The people were astonished at [Jesus] teaching, for He taught them as one having authority.”

May God give you peace.

On a mission

2012-01-21T10:51:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME, January 22, 2012:
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A Catholic Priest, an Episcopal minister and a Baptist preacher were standing near a river conversing when the subject of which church was closest to God arose. The Catholic priest said that of course there was no argument that the Roman Catholic Church was. They were descended directly from the Apostles, in fact Peter was their first Pope. Then he said, “In fact, we are so close that I can even walk on water like Jesus,” and he proceeded to walk on the water to the other side. Then the Episcopal minister said that his church was very similar in origin to the Catholics and he too demonstrated his ability to walk on water like Jesus Christ. The Baptist preacher said that it didn’t matter where Baptist origins were. He studied the Word and preached it purely. Since the other two could walk on water, he should be even better at it. He took one step forward and sunk knee deep into the river. Looking at the Baptist, the Catholic Priest whispered to the Episcopalian, "Do you think we should tell him where the rocks are?"

Our Scriptures today offer us two powerful examples of God calling people to ministry – first, Jonah and his mission to Nineveh and then, Jesus calling the Apostles. For Jonah in our first reading, the city of Nineveh represented the worst of everything – it was a place of godlessness, immorality and corruption. Nineveh, located in what is today northern Iraq, was the capital of the Assyrian empire that had conquered and colonized the kingdom of Judah. It had looted and destroyed the Temple, and carried many people into exile and slavery. It was a large city where the law of the survival-of-the-fittest reigned supreme. Materialism, expressing itself in all forms of immorality, corruption and crime was the order of the day. For pious Jews like Jonah, Nineveh was the godforsaken city, the highway to perdition where evil reigned without any hope of change. It was a hopeless city, populated by lost souls without the slightest hope of regaining God’s favor. No wonder Jonah objected to being sent there. As far as he was concerned the mission to Nineveh was nothing but an exercise in futility. The big surprise in the story is that as soon as the “godforsaken” people of Nineveh heard the Word of God, they received it with eagerness, repented with sincerity, and regained God’s mercy and forgiveness.

In the Gospel we see Jesus calling of the 12 who would become His Apostles and the first leaders of what would become the Church. Jesus called the most unlikely bunch to head up Church. Let’s remember that Peter will deny him, James and John will fight over what preferential position they might have in the Kingdom, Thomas doubts the resurrection, Judas betrays him, the rest run in fear. But, God chooses who He will to do His work. In both the story of Jonah and the calling of the 12, God reached down to earth and called upon finite, limited, sinful, even fallen people to follow him – and when they decided to cooperate with God’s plan, great things happened. The disciples too, struggled for a long time to understand who Jesus was and why he had such an effect on them. Yet in both situations, God formed those He had called into true servants, powerful witnesses of His love.

Today, the message for us is that what God asked of Jonah; what God asked of the Apostles – God asks of us. He wants each one of us to be His witnesses, His servants – to witness to and serve His Kingdom. It doesn’t matter what education we possess, or how dedicated we may be, or what we have to bring to the mix, or even what others think of our ability to be holy. God doesn’t look at what we have done, but rather God sees through us to our potential. God doesn’t worry about who or what we are; His concern is what we can become when we follow His will for us. If God calls us, it is only because He knows that we can accomplish what He asks.

Eventually God invites each of us to follow Him more closely and to participate in His mission. This might require major life changes – a change of career or lifestyle. It might require a smaller, but no less important change – perhaps a transformation of our present careers into a works of service. No matter the career path we have chosen to follow – whether teaching, medicine, the legal profession or business – we have a basic decision to make: do we pursue it solely as a means of livelihood and personal enhancement and material acquisition; or do we use it as a means of service to God and humanity. Remember, in and through God, the fishermen are transformed into fishers of souls. Their work is transformed from being self-centered to being God-centered, from being self-seeking to seeking the glory of God and the benefit of all people.

My brothers and sisters, God is still sending each of us on the mission to Nineveh today. He wants us to bring His Word to any and all of the places where godlessness, immorality and evil reign in our world. God invites us to bring the Good News – to be the Good News – to unimaginable places and “impossible” situations. The good news for us is that these “hopeless” cases are not hopeless after all. For if even Nineveh could turn back to God so can any situation we encounter in life. Nothing – no difficulty, no hurt or pain, no illness, no broken relationship – nothing, is beyond the power of God to heal, to change, to turn into glory.

God calls each of us to something unique in His Kingdom. All we have to do is be faithful to Him in the little things that He calls us to each day. We may or may not be called to shout the Gospel from the mountaintops, but we are all called to live that Gospel in our daily lives – with our spouses, children, parents, friends, co-workers. God forms us into His disciples capable of making a difference in the world, just like the Apostles and just like Jonah. All He’s looking for are humble, open and willing hearts.

And let us hope that God will say to each of us, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of souls.” And give us the courage to abandon what we were doing and follow Him.

May God give you peace.

Fully Pro-Life

2012-01-21T10:47:00.000-05:00

A Shepherd’s Voice

Fully Pro-Life As you read my column today, I am likely on a bus with scores of other Catholics from our parish and from the Cape headed to our nation’s Capitol for tomorrow’s annual March for Life. This is always such a powerful experience bringing often around a million Americans together to stand up for the cause of life and to be promoters of what Blessed John Paul the Great so famously coined the “Culture of Life.” So, please pray for all of us making this journey today.

We all know the church’s stand against abortion. We all know the statistics about this scourge that has been such a polarizing issue in our country for just shy of 30 years now. We all know that our hopes and prayers continue to be that every child is a wanted child and that all people can come to understand the inherent, God-given dignity of every created human life. But, where we continue to need to grow is on extending our understanding of that dignity outside of the womb. And perhaps that is our current and constant challenge.

It is perhaps highlighted every four years as we end up in a presidential election cycle. Right now, our airwaves are filled with candidates who claim to be Pro-Life, but even a casual glance at their websites or campaign materials show us that most often, this isn’t true. They may have a good record on the issue of abortion – and thank God for that. But, when it comes to the poor, when it comes to the sick, when it comes to the immigrant (both legal and illegal), when it comes to the prisoner on death row, too many of them – too many of us – fail to uphold the same worthy and holy standard on life.

The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of happy memory, famously coined the phrase “the seamless garment” when it comes to the pro-life teaching of the Catholic Church. It is a phrase that reminds us that there are no gaps, no loopholes, no exceptions when it comes to the dignity of all human life from natural conception to natural death and at all the moments in between.

The classic divide is that we often find people who are against abortion and in favor of the death penalty or vice versa. If we are one of these people then we have no real understanding of what the Church teaches and believes. Those who fall into these discordant categories are approaching the cause of life situationally and not theologically and without consistency. The logic goes like this – who could harm an innocent baby? So, no abortion. And, who couldn’t harm a guilty criminal? So, yes to the death penalty. The flaw is that this mindset assumes (perhaps unconsciously) that we somehow earn our human dignity. In other words, the baby hasn’t done anything to lose the dignity and the criminal has. But, God says something different – the dignity of the human person is not a reflection of our action (when you’re good it is strong, when you’re bad it is weak). The dignity of the human person is inherent in us and given to us, not earned by us, from God. It is His divine imprint on us. We can accept and embrace it or we can deny it, but it cannot be taken away from us – ever. When we disrespect even the dignity of the criminal, we disrespect God’s presence in them.

It is easy to stand up for the defenseless baby in the womb and thank God we do. It isn’t so easy to stand up for the criminal, the life-long poor, the illegal immigrant and so on – and yet it is our call. It is in the end what it means to be truly and to be fully pro-life. The key is in always understanding and embracing that human dignity wherever we find it. And, we find it whenever we find another human being. If we don’t see it in others, how can we ever expect others to respect the dignity God has placed in us?

Love,

Fr. Tom

Dublin archbishop says lapsed Catholics should admit their non-belief :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

2012-01-18T10:37:00.000-05:00

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin

Dublin, Ireland, Dec 14, 2011 / 06:05 am (CNA).- Non-practicing and non-believing Irish Catholics should be honest about their relation to the Church, Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told the makers of a TV documentary that aired Dec. 11.

“It requires maturity on two sides: maturity of those people who want their children to become members of the Church community, and maturity of those people who say, 'I don't believe in God, I really shouldn't be hanging on to the vestiges of faith when I don't really believe in it,'” he said.

Archbishop Martin's comments were featured in an episode of “Would You Believe,” RTE Television's investigative series on religion.

Its Dec. 11 episode looked at the issue of Irish parents who have ceased to practice their faith, but still want their children to receive the Catholic sacraments of Baptism, Eucharist and Confirmation.

Filmmaker Mick Peelo's interviews showed many self-identified Irish Catholics seeking sacramental preparation for their children, while lacking either the intention or the ability to pass on the principles and meaning of the faith.

People interviewed for the show gave various reasons for wanting their children to receive the sacraments, despite their own lack of belief and practical commitment.

One woman described the rites of initiation as a “platform from which (children) can question” in later life. Another noted that a child often “doesn't want to be left out” when their peers are making their First Communion.

While Archbishop Martin called for honesty among adults no longer committed to the Church's faith, he also acknowledged that the problem's roots run deep.

“Irish Catholics are very weak, and that's the fault of generations of the Church in their understanding of Scriptures,” he said, reflecting on teachings that “taught us things about religion” but “didn't really deepen our faith.”

He suggested that practices of the past may have inspired anxiety, in place of a personal commitment.

“For many people in Ireland, the God we were practicing and teaching wasn't necessarily the God of love at all. It was a God who inspired fear, it was a God who was sort of a 'somebody watching you,' rather than freeing and empowering you.”

The situation calls not only for honesty, but for a more substantial presentation of Catholicism.

“We have to do a radical new look at the way that religious education takes place,” Archbishop Martin said in his interview with Peelo.

“A religious education is not simply for the schools or for school-age. You can't be a mature Catholic in today's world just on the basis on what you learned in primary school or secondary school. But we're not offering an ongoing formation to people in the way that they needed and wanted.”

The makers of “Would You Believe” spoke with several Irish clergy who acknowledged the inter-generational problems surrounding Catholic identity and commitment.

One of them, Fr. John Hassett, is shown baptizing the child of two parents who appear hesitant toward Catholic practice and belief in several interview segments.

But the priest says he encourages parents to show integrity by living up to the obligations of their choice.

“At every Baptism, I finish the ritual, the couples come up behind the altar, and I say: 'This is a fake – this is a fraud, this is hypocrisy – if the next time your child touches this holy space is on the preparation of (first) Holy Communion,” Fr. Hassett explained.

Dublin archbishop says lapsed Catholics should admit their non-belief :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

"What are you looking for?"

2012-01-14T13:42:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME, January 15, 2012:
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After his car broke down, a man walked along until he came to monastery where he asked for a ride into town. Since it was dinner time, the monks insisted that he stay and the man was treated to the best fish and chips he's ever had. After dinner, he went into the kitchen to thank the cooks and was met by two of the monks, Brother Michael and Brother Francis. "I want to thank you for a wonderful dinner,” the man said. “The fish and chips were the best I've ever tasted. Out of curiosity, who cooked what?" Brother Michael replied, "Well, I'm the fish friar." And Brother Francis shook his head, sighed and said, “And I guess that makes me the chip monk."

In our Gospel passage today, Jesus asks a very poignant question to the disciples following Him, “What are you looking for?” Of all the things that Jesus says throughout the Gospels, this might be perhaps the most important of them all – at least in as much as it is the very foundational question that every follower of Jesus has got to ask at some point in their journey with the Lord. What are you looking for? It’s also an appropriate question as we bring to a close National Vocation Awareness Week – a week that asks us all to answer that question with possibility that God is calling us to a life of service in the Church as a priest, deacon or religious man or woman.

Our readings today are full of this theme of calling. Certainly true for the disciples in the Gospel, but also from our first reading as we hear of the calling of the prophet Samuel. Now, we’ve all gotten calls at different moments that can change our lives. Maybe it’s a call that tells us we got the job we had hoped to get. Maybe we received a call to say that we were accepted into the school we had applied to. Maybe we got a call to say we won the prize we bought a raffle for. There are also calls that can bring sadness with them letting us know that someone was ill or had passed away. I know growing up in an Irish household, we always believed that a phone call after 10 p.m. must mean that someone had died.

As we heard in our First Reading, Samuel received a call in the middle of the night. But, his call was not bad news. In fact, it would change the course of his life and the course of Israel for generations since it was through the prophetic mission of Samuel that God would establish a monarchy and Samuel would anoint Israel’s first two kings – Saul and then David. Andrew and another disciple heard Jesus call and they responded to His invitation to “come and see.” The next day Peter received his brother Andrew’s call to meet Jesus. Martin Luther King Jr., who we remember this weekend, also received a call to to lead a non-violent movement for justice and civil rights in our country. Most of these calls were not as dramatic as was Samuel’s.

In fact, it is seldom that God calls out our name in the middle of the night. More typically, He speaks to us through prayer and through others – through religious people in our lives, through relatives, friends, even strangers. But what is similar is that if we have the courage to answer when God calls; however God calls – our lives will never be the same. In my homily for Christmas, I shared a time in my own discernment of God’s call more than 20 years ago when I was praying about my vocation to the priesthood. I was trying to decide if God was really calling me. I would often hear other young men talk about how God had told them this, or how they received a sign for that, sort of like the drama of Samuel’s call. I went to church one day to pray and I was a little angry with God, demanding a sign. I prayed, “God, why can’t you give me a sign? Is that too much to ask for?” After leaving the Church, I was driving home when all of a sudden I passed a billboard that said, “Are you looking for a sign from God?” Now, the rest of that sign read, “Join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” I didn’t take that sign literally to mean I should become a Mormon, but rather to stop asking for such things from God because He’s already given to each of us the greatest sign possible – His Son. God’s call was all around me – if I allowed myself to be open to see it and hear it; and more importantly had the courage to follow it. And 20 years later, I am so glad that I did.

Jesus invites many, many to “come and see” but too often, when it comes to ministry in the Church, we are afraid of where He will lead. We have become so enamored of what the world offers – fame and fortune – that we can’t imagine the life that God is calling us to. We often talk about the “vocation crisis” in the Church, but I am a firm believer that there is no vocation crisis. To say there is one is to blame God – it is to say that God stopped calling enough men and women to serve Him in the Church. Of course, God always calls in abundance. So the crisis is on our part – it is a crisis of vocation awareness and acceptance.

So, I invite all of us to do a few things to help alleviate this crisis. For the young men and women in our midst, be open to what God has in store for you. It is often said that we plan, God laughs. God’s plan for our lives is always the best. Consider making a radical choice for Christ and His Church. Consider a life that makes a real difference in our world and in the lives of countless people as a priest, deacon or religious. Take the time to listen as Samuel did and have the courage to respond with the simplicity of his heart to “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

And for those of us who are older and have perhaps found our place in God’s great plan, pray for vocations, pray for these young people. Pray that God will send workers into His vineyard. Let me ask you, by a show of hands, have you ever had the thought about someone that they would make a good priest or religious? And how many of you told that person? My challenge to all of you is tell them. Simply say, “I think you’d make a good priest,” or “Have you ever thought about religious life?” And, let God do the rest.

As we gather today, Christ is with us. He is here in Word, in Sacrament and in His people gathered in His name. And He poses the same question to us today, “What are you looking for?” Let us all listen for His voice. Let us all discover His call. Let us all “come and see” what He wishes us to be. There can be nothing greater in this life. Speak Lord, your servants are listening!

May the Lord give you peace.

“See here, this boy was born and that changed everything.”

2011-12-24T12:35:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD, December 25, 2011:
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I don’t know how many of you read the comic strip, Family Circus, but I’m a big fan. Just a few years ago, there was a great Christmas scene. In it, the young girl, Dolly, was sharing with her two young brothers the story of Christmas. Here is how she recounted it, “Mary and Joseph were camping out under a star in the East…It was a Silent Night in Bethlehem until the angels began to sing…then Santa brought Baby Jesus in his sleight and laid Him in a manger… Chestnuts were roasting by an open fire and not a creature was stirring…so the Grinch stole some swaddling clothes from the Scrooge – who was one of the three wise men riding on eight tiny reindeer.” And then Dolly says to her brother, “Pay attention, Jeffy, or you’ll never learn the story of Christmas!”

Although Dolly got the details a bit mixed up, she’s right – if we don’t pay attention we might just miss the real story of Christmas. There is so much in this season that can distract us from what is real. We get caught up in holiday parties, last minute shopping, and all of the frenzy that seems to come with this time of year. Unless we truly pay attention – with our hearts and our minds – we may miss the importance of this day.

As I was preparing for today’s Christmas Mass, a movie scene came to mind. It is from Steven Speilberg movie of a number of years ago called, Amistad. This movie is about a group of slaves who were able to win their freedom from slavery in the Supreme Court long before slavery was abolished in this country. It is a powerful movie. But, there is one point in the movie when a slave is given a copy of the Bible by an Abolitionist. The slaves, though, speak no English and have never heard of Jesus Christ and so he doesn’t know what this book is. But, this version of the Bible had pictures in it. The man was fascinated looking at these pictures. At one point in the film, two of the slaves are sitting alone in their jail cell, waiting. One slave thinks that the other one carries the book everywhere simply to impress people and he says to the one looking at the Bible, “No one is watching you here, you can put the book down.” The other one responds saying, “No, I think I have figured out the story.” Pointing to the pictures he says, “See, here, things were very bad for these people, it was a dark time, and they were oppressed. Worse even than us.” He flips a page to the scene at the manger in Bethlehem, “But, see here, this boy was born and that changed everything.” Referring to the drawing which depicts Christ with a halo he said, “You can see that he was very important, even the sun followed him where ever he went.”

“See here, this boy was born and that changed everything.” My friends, this is the great message of the feast we gather here to celebrate today. With the birth of Jesus, everything is changed – for our world and for each of us. In the midst of all the hustle and bustle of this season, we can be like little Jeffy and fail to learn the true story of Christmas. Our world can tempt us to lose sight of what we gather here to celebrate – the incredible reality that our God became one of us; the Lord of the Universe so humbled Himself to be born a defenseless little child. We need to remember always that nothing can ever take away the wonder of that event.

We often find ourselves looking for signs. We want God to show us the way, to give us a sign that he loves us. In my own life, when I was praying about my vocation to the priesthood, I was trying to decide if God was really calling me. I would often hear other young men talk about how God had told them this, or how they received a sign for that. I went to church one day to pray and I was a little angry with God, demanding a sign. I prayed, “God, why can’t you give me a sign? Is that too much to ask for God?” After leaving the Church, I was driving home when all of a sudden I passed a billboard that said, “Are you looking for a sign from God?” Now, the rest of that sign read, “Join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” I didn’t take that sign literally to mean I should become a Mormon, but rather to stop asking for such things from God because He’s already given to each of us the greatest sign possible – His Son.

Today we celebrate this great sign – God Himself, in the form of a little baby born in a humble manger; the Light of the World that shone in the darkness; the Word become Flesh; the Savior of US ALL. We hear in John’s Gospel, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” No matter what trials we have in our personal lives, in our relationships, marriages, in our families, our work lives, this Son of God has come to triumph over them all. He can make everything right again in our lives. His Light can shine in our darkness – if we let him.

That is why we celebrate this day with such joy. We gather to hear this Good News of great joy that God showers on the world at Christmas. But, we still need to do something so that we can experience this joy in our lives, in our families, and in our world more personally.

How do we do that? The answer is in the word “JOY” itself. Just look at it. It’s a small word – just three letters: first J, then O, and lastly Y. Well, let me propose tonight that the J stands for Jesus, the O for Others, and the Y for You. So, to know joy in our lives is simple. Just live in such a way that Jesus and Others always come before You. Place Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem, first in everything. When we place Jesus first, He encourages us to place others before ourselves. And that is the recipe for true joy. That is how we can convert the Christmas “Joy to the world” into a personal “Joy in our lives” now and always.

So, even as we hear the great story of Christmas tonight, we see this principle in action - those who practice J-O-Y are the ones who enjoy peace and joy, and that those who practice “me first” are always the unhappy and miserable ones. Just look at the shepherds who leave everything they own and their flock in the fields to go adore Jesus first. Or the wise men from the East who leave the security of their homeland and make a long and dangerous journey to Bethlehem just to worship the new-born Jesus and bring him gifts. They are the one's who receive God's favor, they are the ones who experience in their hearts the true peace and the true JOY of Christmas.

My brothers and sisters, today – this Christmas – let us resolve to follow their good example by always being people of JOY – placing Jesus and others before ourselves and then the true joy of Christmas will always be ours. This is the Christmas story that we all must learn by heart, in our hearts.

“Behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

My friends, “See here, this boy was born and that changed everything.”

On behalf of Fr. Giles, Deacon Ernie, and our parish staff, let me wish you all a happy and holy Christmas!
Merry Christmas and may the Lord give you peace.

Have a Mary Christmas!

2011-12-17T11:08:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT, December 18, 2011:
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Three sons lived far from home and weren’t able to get home for Christmas. Instead, they arranged for their elderly mother to receive some special gifts. The first built a big house for his mother. The second sent her a brand new Mercedes Benz. But the third son smiled and said, “I’ve got them both beat. Mom is such a holy woman, she loves reading the Bible. But, now, her eyesight is so bad she can’t read it anymore. I sent her a remarkable parrot that recites the entire Bible. It took the monks 12 years to teach him. He’s one of a kind. Mom just has to name the chapter and verse, and the parrot recites it.” Soon after Christmas, the mother sent out her letter of thanks: “Dear Milton,” she wrote one son, “The house you built is too big. I live in only one room, but I have to keep the whole house clean!” “Dear Gerald,” she wrote the second, “I am too old to travel. I stay at home most of the time, so I rarely use the Mercedes.” “My Dearest Donald,” she wrote to her third son, “You have the good sense to know what your Mother likes. The chicken was delicious!”

Anyone who’s read a newspaper or watched a news broadcast knows that the annual Christmas Wars are upon us. Lots of commentary on whether or not to say “Merry Christmas” or what kind of tree stands in a town square. Even the comedians get in on this with their combination of all religious holidays into one generic greeting, “Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah.” Try and say that 10 times fast. Now, I generally don’t enter this battle mostly because I don’t look to politicians, secular settings or department stores to help me live my spiritual life – I look to the Church, of course, I’m going to wish people a Merry Christmas.

Not only that, but for me, I want our celebration to be not generic, but even more distinctly Catholic. A few years ago, someone had shown me some handmade Christmas cards that young people in my parish had made to send to military personnel overseas. One of the cards, made by a first grader read, “Have a ‘Mary’ Christmas.” Notice the difference, I didn’t say “Merry” m-e-r-r-y, but “Mary,” m-a-r-y. Now, I think this was actually just a spelling error, but the more I think of that card, especially with today’s Gospel passage, I thought, this is a good Catholic greeting for this season. Never mind the generic “Happy Holidays,” how about the extremely Catholic “Mary Christmas.”

Reflecting on today’s Gospel, we realize this season is really about Mary perhaps as much as it is about Jesus. First and foremost, Mary is the only woman in all of human history to be given the unique distinction - the almost incomprehensible distinction - of being the Mother of God. And by wishing a Mary Christmas we are being reminded that we are called to be just like Mary in the way that we welcome the Christ child into our lives and into our world.

Some children were preparing a Christmas play. Little Cynthia was assigned the part of Mary, but she wanted to change parts with her friend, who was playing an angel. When asked why, she said, “Because it is easier to be an angel than to be the Mother of Christ.” The little girl is certainly right. To be the mother of Christ is no small matter. Yet difficult as it sounds, that is exactly what we are all called to be. In fact, we could say that even though Jesus was born in Bethlehem, his real desire is to be born not once in a limited place and time, but to be born over and over again in the hearts of all believers.

“Mother of Christ” is a title we usually reserve for Mary. But Mary is mother of Christ in two senses. She is mother of Christ in the physical sense. She carried Jesus in her womb and gave birth to him. This is an unrepeatable event and an honor that no other human being could share with her. But she is also mother of Christ in a spiritual sense; and in this spiritual sense the role of being mother of Christ is available to all Christians. We all can and should become mothers of Christ. The idea of Christians called to be mothers of Christ is very common among Christian mystics. The mystic, Meister Eckhart, said that God made the human soul to bear the divine Son, and that when this birth happens it gives God greater pleasure than the creation of heaven and earth.

What is this spiritual motherhood of Christ and how does it happen? Well, in Matthew’s Gospel, we hear, “While [Jesus] was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’”

This passage shows us that Jesus expects His followers to be not only His brothers and sisters but His mothers as well, and the way to be the mother of Jesus is by doing the will of God. Spiritual motherhood of Christ is attained by saying “yes” to God, even when God appears to demand from us what is humanly impossible, like asking Mary to be a virgin mother. To become mothers of Christ we need to make the prayer of Mary our own prayer: “Let it be done to me according to your word.”

This prayer of Mary has been known as the world’s greatest prayer. It is the prayer that brought God down from heaven to dwell in the soul and body of a young woman. It is the prayer that brought about the greatest event in human history, God becoming human in Jesus. It is a prayer that changed forever the course of human history some 2,000 years ago. It is the prayer that can change forever the course of our own personal history today and everyday if only we say it, pray it and mean it.

Yes, little Cynthia was right. It is not easy to be the mother of Christ. But in today’s Gospel Mary shows us how. It is in hearing God’s word and saying yes to God even when His will seems to go against all our plans for the future. As Christmas draws so very near, Mary reminds us that the best Christmas, in fact the only true Christmas, is when Christ is born not in the little town of Bethlehem so long ago, but in the very depths of our hearts today and every day.

May God give you peace and may you all have a very Mary Christmas.

Christmas Cookie Recipe (Third Revised Edition)

2011-12-17T10:31:00.000-05:00

Note: Now that the Third Edition of the Roman Missal is in use, the International Commission on English in the Liturgy and Vox Clara have some time on their hands. They thought it might be useful to offer an updated translation of the classic Christmas Cookie recipe from the original Latin:

Serves: you and many

Cream these ingredients, that by their comingling you may begin to make the dough: 1 chalice butter, 2/3 chalice sugar

In a similar way, when the butter is consubstantial with the sugar, beat in: 1 egg

Gather these dry ingredients to yourself and combine them, so that you may add them to the dough which you have already begun to make: 2 1/2 chalices sifted all purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix the precious dough with your venerable hands.

Into the refrigerator graciously place the dough so that it may be chilled, for the duration of 3 or 4 hours, before the rolling and cutting of the cookies.

When, in the fullness of time, you are ready to bake these spotless cookies, these delicious cookies, these Christmas cookies, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Roll out the dough and taking up a cookie cutter or stencil of your choosing, fashion the cookies into pleasing forms.

Sprinkle colorful adornments over cookies like the dewfall.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the cookies have just begun to manifest the brownness that is vouchsafed to them by the oven's heat.

May these cookies be found acceptable in your sight, and be borne to a place of refreshment at your table, there to be served with milk or hot chocolate, or with your spirits.

(This originally appeared in Commonweal Magazine.)

The Messiah is among you!

2011-12-10T13:53:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT, Gaudete Sunday, December 11, 2011:
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Patrick went to the mall to do his shopping just two days before Christmas. He drove around the parking lot for an eternity, but there wasn’t a space to be found. Finally, he prayed, “Lord, you know that I haven’t really practiced my faith in many years, but if you find me a parking spot I promise I’ll stop swearing, give up whiskey and gambling and I’ll go to church every Sunday!” Suddenly, lightning flashed and a parking space opened up right in front of him! And Patrick looked up to heaven and said, “Never mind, Lord. I found one.”

There is a story about a certain monastery that was going through a time of crisis. Some of the monks had left the monastery; no new candidates joined them in years; and people were no longer coming for prayer and spiritual direction as they used to. The few monks that remained became old, depressed and bitter in their relationship with one another. But, the abbot heard about a holy man; a hermit living alone in the woods and decided to consult him. He told the hermit how bad things had become and that only seven old monks remained. Praying on this, the hermit told the abbot that he has a secret for him: one of the monks currently living in his monastery was actually the Messiah, but He was living in such a way that no one could recognize Him.

With this revelation the abbot returned to his monastery, and recounted what the holy hermit told him to the community. The aging monks looked at each other in disbelief, trying to discern who among them could be the Christ. Could it be Brother Mark who prays all the time? But he has a holier-than-thou attitude toward others. Could it be Bother Joseph who is always ready to help? But he is always eating and cannot fast. The abbot reminded them that the Messiah had adopted some bad habits as a way of disguising His true identity. This only made them more confused and they could not figure out who was Christ among them. At the end of the meeting what each one knew for sure was that any of the monks, excepting himself, could be Christ.

From that day the monks began to treat one another with greater respect and humility, knowing that the person they were speaking to could, in fact, be Christ. They began to show more love for one another, their common life became more brotherly and their common prayer more fervent. Slowly people began to take notice of the new spirit in the monastery and began coming back for retreats and spiritual direction. Word began to spread and, before you know it, candidates began to show up and the monastery began to grow again in number as the monks grew in zeal and holiness. All this because a man of God drew their attention to a simple truth: that Christ was living in their midst as one of them.

Advent is, of course, a time to prepare for the coming of the Lord: recalling His coming to us as a Baby at Christmas; and His coming to us collectively at the end of time. Now, suppose that we were told, like the monks in our story, that the Christ whom we are waiting for is already here in our midst as one of us, what difference would that make?

In today’s Gospel John the Baptist tries to announce the same powerful message to the Jews of his time who were anxiously awaiting the coming of the Messiah. John tells them: “There is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”

The reason the Jews of Jesus’ time could not recognize Him as the Messiah is that they had definite ideas on how the Messiah was going to come. The Messiah would suddenly descend from heaven in His divine power and majesty and establish His reign by physically destroying the enemies of Israel. No one would know where He came from, humanly speaking, because He came from God. So when finally Jesus came born of a woman like every other person, they could not recognize Him. He was too ordinary, too unimpressive, and so, for too many – they missed the very presence of God right in front of them.

The challenge remains to this day for us as well. We too have our definite expectations of what the presence of God in our midst should look like. This might be different for each one of us. And, it is good for us to anticipate God in our midst. But, not to the exclusion of seeing God as He is right in front of us in Word, in Sacrament, and perhaps where we miss Him most often - in ourselves and in every man, every woman we meet. After all, this is what our new translation of the Mass hopes we will see more clearly when we respond, “And with your spirit,” a recognition of God’s presence in those around us.

A group of young children were asked to answer the question: what is love? They gave many interesting answers, for example, 5 year-old Karl answered, “Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on cologne and they go out and smell each other.” But, my favorite answer came from 7 year-old Bobby who said, “Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

We all know that “love” is just another word for God. St. John reminds us that “God is love and all who dwell in love dwell in God and God in them.” So, as our Christmas preparations perhaps take on a more hectic pace in these next few weeks, I have a secret for you, one of the members of our community is actually the Messiah, but they are living in such a way that they aren’t quickly recognized. So, how will we recognize this Godly presence in our midst? Let me paraphrase young Bobby and say that God is in our midst when we stop the hustle-and-bustle and just listen expecting to find Him all around us.

“There is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” My friends, do you see what I see? Let us all pray that God will continue to open our eyes, our minds, our hearts, our very lives to see His presence in us and around us today, as we approach the Feast of Christmas, and always.

May the Lord give you peace.

Born free!

2011-12-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION of the BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, December 8, 2011:
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You may be familiar with the book or movie, The Song of Bernadette. It is the true story of 14 year old Bernadette Soubirous, who in 1858 reported having an apparition of the Blessed Virgin on a hillside outside of the village of Lourdes in France. At first, the authorities scoffed at her claims and even threatened to punish her if she did not stop speaking of the story. Then one day, the apparition told Bernadette to dig into the ground. She obeyed and a spring of water bubbled up. Soon miracles began to occur at this spring. A blind man washed in the waters and regained his sight. A mother washed her paralyzed baby in the waters and it became well within 24 hours. Years after Bernadette’s death, the same child, now an old man of 77, was an honored guest at her canonization in Rome. Today, literally thousands of cures are on file at the Medical Bureau in Lourdes.

One of the things that Mary said to Bernadette during an apparition was, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The 14 year old girl wasn’t too sure what these words meant, but every adult knew their meaning. Just four years earlier, on December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX, defined as Catholic doctrine the traditional teaching of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This teaching goes back to the early days of Christianity. It says simply that Mary was untouched by original sin from the very moment of her conception in the womb of her mother Ann, and she remained that way the rest of her life.

The teaching of the Immaculate Conception finds its support in Sacred Scripture. For example, in today’s second reading we heard , “he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.” And in today’s Gospel, the angels says to Mary, “Peace be with you! The Lord is with you and has greatly blessed you!” It is not surprising that God preserved Mary from sin. After all, she was to be the mother of His Son. What is more fitting than for the Son of God to be born of a sinless mother.

There is a story that may help us appreciate better how Mary could be born without sin while everyone else is born a slave to sin. At one point in history, many Christians were captured in battle and sold as slaves to non-Christian countries. These enslaved Christians had children and because they were slaves, their children were also doomed to live as slaves. In time it became a practice among Christians to purchase the freedom of these children born of slave parents. And sometimes that purchase was arranged before the child was born – or even conceived. In other words, even though the child was conceived and born of slave parents, it was free. Its freedom had been purchased in advance.

We may look upon Mary’s birth in a similar way. Even though Mary was born of parents enslaved by original sin, she was born free. God’s grace, of which Mary was full of, had purchased her freedom in advance – even before her conception.

This freedom is not reserved to Mary alone. Unfortunately for us, we were not so graced as to be born without original sin. But, instead for us, what God gave Mary through birth, is offered to us through Grace and faith in Jesus Christ. As we prayed in our Opening Prayer, “as you preserved her” so too may we “be cleansed and admitted to your presence.” Mary’s grace can be ours through the Sacrifice of her Son, through our membership in His Church availing ourselves of the saving Sacraments He bestowed upon us and our imitation of Mary’s life, saying our own personal yes to God at every moment.

We American Catholics have always had a special devotion to Mary under this title of the Immaculate Conception. It was to Mary, under this title, that we dedicated our country in the early days of our nation’s history. And so today we celebrate the Solemnity with special joy and gratitude as it is in a special way “our” feast. And so let us conclude with a special prayer to Mary today. It is the prayer that was prayed daily by the sailors on board the ships of Christopher Colombus during the voyage that resulted in the discovery of our great country. Each night at sunset the crew would gather on deck for evening prayers. These prayers would always end in the singing, in Latin, of the Salve Regina. Many of us are familiar with the English translation of this prayer. Please say it along with me if you know it:

Hail, Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, our hope.

To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.

To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Turn the, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us,

and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

O Clement, O Loving, O Sweet Virgin Mary.

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,

that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

May our Blessed Mother pray for us; and may the Lord give us peace.

Worth the wait!

2011-12-03T10:49:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT, December 4, 2011:
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A young man considering a vocation with the Franciscans was invited to dinner at the local friary one evening. As dinner went on, from time-to-time, one of the friars would stand up and say a number and the rest of the friars would laugh hysterically. One stood up and said, “72,” and everyone laughed. Later, another stood and said, “149,” and again everyone laughed. Another stood and said, “14,” and again, everyone laughed. Confused, the young man asked the friar beside him what was going on. He answered, “Well, you see, we’ve all lived together for a long time. By now, we know each other jokes by heart, so we numbered them all to save time. Someone says a number and we remember the joke and laugh,” then he said, “Why don’t you give it a try. We have 300 jokes, just stand and say any number you like.” The young man stood tentatively and said, “107,” but this time there was nothing but silence. The man sat down sheepishly and asked the friar what went wrong. He said, “What can I tell you? Some people can tell a joke, some can’t.” (Special thanks to Fr. James Martin for this joke. His new book Between Heaven and Mirth makes a great Christmas gift!)

We hear this familiar command in our Scriptures from both Isaiah and John the Baptist today, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” It’s certainly appropriate as this is, after all, a season of preparation. We are preparing ourselves for the celebration of Christmas, the great feast of God’s Incarnation as one of us; and we await His future return to us at the End of Time.

But, what kind of waiting do we do as we approach Christmas? Well, first and foremost, it must be a purposeful waiting. In life we are certainly used to waiting. Just think of the hours spent waiting in traffic, or time spent waiting in line at stores – especially at this time of year. These forms of waiting are not exactly purposeful. More often than not, they’re not worth the wait. Just think of department stores this time of year. I know for myself, I’ll inevitably end up waiting in a long line at the check out. While waiting I’ll usually take a look at what I plan on purchasing and ask a simple question of myself – is it worth the wait? Often enough, I’ll decide it isn’t worth the wait and put down what I have a leave the store.

During Advent, we ask the same question – is it worth the wait – but with a very different answer. It is in fact worth the wait because instead of a frustrating waiting with undefined benefit, our Scripture today call us to wait in an effective and purposeful way. They give us something to do in our waiting, we are to “Prepare the way of the Lord.” The readings put before us some examples of waiting purposefully. We have of course, Isaiah and John the Baptist who both offer us a waiting that involves reform of life, they call us to prepare for the arrival of Jesus by living a life of repentance. They call us to reflect on our own lives as ask “are we ready for Jesus return?” But, there is another Advent example that I find even more helpful in understanding how we are to wait – the example of Mary.

If we look at our Scriptures as a story, at this point in the story, Mary is pregnant. She has not yet given birth to the baby Jesus. We can learn a lot about purposeful waiting from pregnancy. Pregnancy is all about waiting. I remember a few years ago, I was visiting with a friend and his wife who shared the news that they were expecting their third child. I responded excitedly, “Congratulations! That’s great! You must be so excited!” But to my enthusiasm, my friend’s wife looked at me, rolled her eyes a bit, sighed and said, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m really excited about having another baby. I just wish I could do it without going through pregnancy.” We tend to romanticize pregnancy don’t we? Pregnancy is so beautiful. Women look so radiant. But, for my friend’s wife, and many women like her, pregnancies are difficult. With her two prior pregnancies, they were so difficult that she had to remain bed-ridden during the final months. She experienced serious medical issues during her last pregnancy. For this third child, she was also very closely monitored.

The simple point is that being pregnant is not easy and can even be quite difficult, but it is worth the wait. And it is I think the most helpful image for our time of Advent waiting and preparing. We, too, all of us, are in a sense pregnant and waiting – waiting to give birth once again to Jesus in our lives. And so, God calls us all to make real change in our lives; to acknowledge His Son and “make straight our paths.”

As God calls each of us to reform our lives, depending on what we need to change, this might be for us a difficult pregnancy. But, if we can wait and prepare, it will bring forth new and wonderful life – but just like any pregnancy, it takes time, it takes patience, it takes the will to be transformed into the image that God calls us to.

I would suggest three things that we can do this Advent to help us wait fruitfully and prepare the way for the Lord. First, pray. Advent is the perfect time of year to jumpstart our prayer life. So many times God is trying to give us guidance and light, but because we don't spend time in prayer, we haven't learned to recognize His voice, so we miss out. Pope Benedict said a few years ago, “Do you leave space to hear God's whisper, calling you forth into goodness? Let His word shape your journey." The second things we can do is make good use of the Sacraments. Sometimes in personal prayer we are unsure of God's presence, but in the sacraments Christ guarantees that He is truly present. During Advent we can spend time with Christ in the Eucharist, maybe going to daily Mass to receive Holy Communion more frequently, learning to listen and letting Him teach us to follow Him. During Advent, a trip to confession is the most direct way to clear all the debris that comes from life's storms off the roads of our souls. As I said last week, let’s not carry our sins all the way to Christmas Day. And the third things we can do is reach out to others, to those who don't know Christ, or those who are suffering. As we reach out to them, we too come closer to Christ.

Jesus is eagerly looking forward to Christmas, because He wants to make a fresh entrance into the Jerusalem of our souls, and fill us with His comfort. Let us pray through the intercession of Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Church, for the patience and the courage to allow God to create new life in us – as individuals, as a parish community, as a Church. Let us use this time of Advent to “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”

May God give you peace.

Finding Beauty in the Third Edition of the Roman Missal

2011-11-26T09:44:00.000-05:00

Today, throughout the English-speaking Catholic world, Catholics will begin to pray the new translation of the Holy Mass in the Third Edition of the Roman Missal. By now, you've probably heard about this (I hope!). Dioceses have been offering workshops, parishes have been talking about this; even the secular media have done stories on this "biggest change" in the Catholic Mass in the last 50 years.

Most of what has been written in the secular media focuses on the perceived problems with the new translation. The grammar can be awkward in places as it follows a Latin rather than English structure. Some words can be confusing and requiring additional catechesis (like "consubstantial). There are phrases which might not be immediately accessible like the oft-referred to response, "And with your spirit."

These things have been discussed exhaustively, and hopefully someone has taken good notes for the time with we are welcoming the Fourth Edition of the Roman Missal. In the meantime, what I think has gotten lost in these discussions is that there are also some real moments of profound beauty in the new translation. While imperfect, there really are moments when this new translation is successful in drawing us more profoundly into the reality of God and the reality of our worship. I have spent a lot of time over the last 8 months or so giving workshops, retreats and presentations to different groups of people on the new translation and I have been struck by some real moments of beauty in the prayers.

Let me give you a few examples. The first is one that we will hear immediately as it comes from the Opening Prayer (or Collect) for the First Sunday of Advent.

In the outgoing translation, we prayed:

All-powerful God,
increase our strength of will for doing good
that Christ may find an eager welcome at his coming
and call us to his side in the kingdom of heaven,
where he lives and reigns....

In the new translation, we will pray:

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,
the 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.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ...

There is a passivity in the old, "that Christ may find an eager welcome." It doesn't necessarily call anything forth from me individually. We could almost think, "I hope the welcome committee is well organized when He returns." The new translation seems to ask something of us individually, "the resolve" to not just welcome, but "to run forth to meet your Christ." We are called to more than mere eagerness, we are called to run to Christ who is coming to us.

Likewise, this passage from the new Preface I of Advent:

For he assumed at his first coming
the lowliness of human flesh,
and so fulfilled the design you formed long ago,
and opened for us the way to eternal salvation,
that, when he comes again in glory and majesty
and all is at last made manifest,
we who watch for that day
may inherit the great promise
in which we now dare to hope.

Or how about this from the Eucharistic Prayer for use in Masses for Various Needs I (okay, maybe the could shorten that title!):

You are indeed holy and to be glorified, O God,
who love the human race and who always walk with us on the journey of life.
Blessed indeed is your Son,
present in our midst when we are gathered by his love,
and when, as once for the disciples, so now for us,
he opens the Scriptures and breaks the bread.

And later in that same prayer:

Lord, renew your Church which is in Massachusetts
by the light of the Gospel.
Strengthen the bod of unity between the faithful and the pastors of your people,
together with Benedict our Pope, George our Bishop,
and the whole Order of Bishops,
that in a world torn by strife
your people may shine forth as a prophetic sign of unity and concord.

Another example from the Opening Prayer (Collect) for Midnight Mass of Christmas:

O God, who have made this most sacred night
radiant with the splendor of the true light,
grant, we pray, that we, who have known the mysteries of his light on earth,
may also delight in his gladness in heaven.
Who lives and reigns...

One final, I love the new dismissal texts, particularly these two:

God and announce the Gospel of the Lord.
and
Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.

The point is simply this: there is a lot to welcome here. There is a lot of beauty here. This is our new Mass translation. Will it be the last? Probably not, but we will be praying it for decades to come, so let us welcome and pray that new beauty as we welcome this new translation of the Mass.

An Elegy for the Sacramentary

2011-11-22T09:37:00.000-05:00

POSTED AT: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2011 12:46:32 PM

AUTHOR: JAMES MARTIN, S.J.

There has been a great deal of ink spilled (and pixels posted) over the new English translation of the Mass, that is, the new edition of the Roman Missal, which will be formally introduced into American parishes this coming Sunday. Even the secular media has gotten wind of the changes, with the result that by now most Massgoing Catholics are aware of the changeover, as well as the discussions surrounding the new translations and the process that led to their approval. (Surveys show that less active Catholics are much less aware.) In short--depending on who you read--it’s a beautiful translation that preserves the majesty of the original Latin; or it’s not much of a change at all; or it’s an overly literal translation that sounds clunky.

Which is it? It’s probably unfair to judge until a few months have passed, and the priests and people have had the chance to hear and speak and pray with the changes.

Yet while there have been an enormous amount of commentary on the initiation of the new Roman Missal, there has been relatively less about the loss of the Sacramentary (the book of the Mass prayers) and an appreciation for the riches it brought to the church for the last few decades.

Any significant change is like a death; and so any change brings about the need for some grieving. You sell a house and buy a new one; and you are sad about the loss of the old one--even if your new house is more spacious. You move from one job to another; and you shed a few tears saying goodbye to old colleagues--even if you’re looking forward to the new position. You graduate from high school to college, and even if it’s your top choice, you cry at your graduation.

It would be odd, therefore, not to acknowledge some sadness over the passing of something so central to Catholic life as what will soon be called the “old” Sacramentary. Even if you are eagerly anticipating the new translations, something significant is moving into the past, and is being lost.

So let me say something: I will miss the old prayers, even as I prepare for the new ones. I’m 50 years old, which means that by the time I was conscious of the Eucharist--say, around 1967--the Mass was being celebrated in English. I dimly remember saying things like “It is right and just” as a very young boy, which was most likely a holdover from the early Mass translations after the Second Vatican Council. But, for the most part, my entire Catholic life has been shaped by the familiar prayers of the Sacramentary, the book that we are leaving behind this coming Sunday.

Those prayers accompanied me as I marched up the aisle, hands folded tight, for my First Holy Communion and Confirmation in our suburban Philadelphia parish; they helped me to pray during some confusing high school years in that same church; they taught me about God during my college days in Philadelphia when I dragged myself (sometimes hungover) to Sunday Mass; they challenged me during my stint as a wannabe executive in New York City; and they startled me at times, and eventually helped prompt me to consider the priesthood, when I was working in Connecticut in my late twenties.

As a Jesuit novice in Boston in the late 1980s, I listened far more intently to those prayers and grew to love their simplicity. One virtue of the prayers of the Sacramentary was their clarity, their economy, their clean lines. They seemed, well, natural, and sounded like the prayers I said when I was alone with God. And in the novitiate, when I began to attend daily Mass (a first for me), it seemed as if I was hearing some of those old phrases for the first time: “You renew the church in every age.” “Each year you give us this joyful season.” “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you.” “Happy are those who are called to his supper.” How wonderful that these prayers, which I had said as an eight-year-old, could deepen in me. In this way my adult faith felt profoundly connected to that of my youth.

Over the next few years, during my Jesuit training, I would hear those prayers during philosophy studies in Chicago, when I prayed them with Jesuits from across the country; and in Nairobi, Kenya, where I would hear them said, and sung, with an East African accent. Later, during theology studies in Boston, I began to wonder what it would be like to say the priest’s prayers. But I certainly didn’t need to “learn” them any more than I needed to learn the Our Father; I had known them all my life. All I needed to do was grow in comfort at praying them in a new way. A few weeks before my diaconate ordination, my sister and brother-in-law gave me a great gift: the Sacramentary, and I began to study it in earnest. And on the day of my first Mass, I could barely believe that I had the privilege to say these words: “Father, you are holy indeed…”

As many priests will tell you, it takes a while to move from saying the prayers of the Mass topraying them. From feeling like you are performing to praying with the congregation. And at some point I know I will feel comfortable with the new English translation.

Last week I celebrated what was probably my last “public Mass” (that is, outside my Jesuit community) using the Sacramentary, and as I moved for the final time through the words that I’ve known since I was a boy, I became sad. Most likely I would never hear some of these phrases again. And as I stood at the altar, my mind went back to, oddly, my First Communion: I had heard these same words on that day. Other priests have shared with me their sadness as we set aside these familiar words, phrases and cadences.

As we move to the new, let's not forget the value of the old. After all, tradition is an important part of the church, and we would be remiss if there was not an elegy for the old Sacramentary, the prayers of our youth: simple, clean, clear, direct, unadorned, beautiful.

James Martin, SJ

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-22T09:28:00.000-05:00

NOTE: This is a wonderful holiday story from my good friend and brother, Fr. Joe Lorenzo. No one can tell holiday stories like Fr. Joe can. I share this with you to get us all into the spirit of this Thanksgiving week! Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving is one of the holidays that has national origins, and yet is very often treated with religious overtones. Although it is not a holy day in the church, and people do not feel the need to go to church on that day, it is still a day when families get together to celebrate around the dinner table, much like we would do on Christmas or Easter.

Growing up in an Italian family always presented a dilemma for us, especially around Thanksgiving time. After all, we asserted the fact that we were “Americans”, not Italians, and that we should be celebrating this holiday in American-style, like other Americans. (It’s funny how, as young people, we wanted to be Americans like everyone else- but as we grow older, we gravitate more and more toward our traditional ethnic origins). Today I would take a dish of mom’s ravioli over a turkey any day.

In those days, I think we were keenly aware that we were different- and didn’t want to be different. I remember the days after Thanksgiving especially, when our non-Italian friends would bring their turkey sandwiches to school for lunch- white meat turkey on white bread smothered with white mayonnaise. How we Italian kids envied them with our eggplant parmigiana, meatball, and sausage sandwiches on fresh Italian bread, oozing with gravy and oil. I remember one of the Irish Sisters that taught us remarking that she could always tell which homework was from the Italian children- it had grease stains on it! And we would gladly trade (with some candy bars thrown in) our greasy gravy-filled sandwiches for one of their turkey delights.

So we revolted. Us kids (cousins, etc) went to our parents, proclaiming, “We want a traditional turkey dinner this year for Thanksgiving. We’re tired of the same old Italian stuff.” And so, it was announced that this year we would have a traditional American turkey dinner for Thanksgiving. However, some concession would still be made to our Italian heritage, but, by far, it would be a turkey dinner.

We were delighted, thinking of the turkey sandwiches on wonder bread we would proudly display at school Monday morning.

Finally, the day arrived. We were all excited- it was like Christmas morning, opening our gifts. I remember going over Aunt Tessie Jr’s house in Park Slope. The table was set. We had so many people the table extended in through two rooms, using fold-up tables to extend the dining room table. There at each place was a half grapefruit, with the fruit cut in pieces, and a cherry on top. Yes, this was exciting.

We sat down for our Thanksgiving Day dinner, as Americans did all over the country. We started with a prayer, usually led by one of the younger cousins. Then we started. How delicious it was, that cold fruit sliding down our throats. After the grapefruit came out several large platters of antipasto- with Italian cold cuts, olives, peppers, artichoke hearts, cheeses, all smothered with olive oil. OK. This was still a turkey dinner, right? After the antipasto came a delicious bowl of hot turkey soup. Yes, we were back on track- Americans again. Then it started- our choice of lasagna, ravioli, or cavatelli, followed by sausage, meatballs, bracciola, pork ribs. What’s going on here? Don’t worry, we were reassured. Turkey’s on its way.

Then came what we were waiting for- a large turkey, sweet potatoes, turkey stuffing, turkey gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet corn. Our eyes bugged out of our heads. This was wonderful, until we realized that we were stuffed. We had filled up so much on the pasta and gravy meat, we couldn’t eat another thing. “You see?” my mother bellowed from the kitchen. “You wanted turkey and nobody ate it!”

Yeah no one ate it, not after all that other food. Our turkey was followed by Italian pastries, and pumpkin and apple pies, accompanied by black coffee (espresso, we say today).

Although the older folks got their way- we cleaned up on the Italian food and the turkey was untouched- we had tons of leftovers for the next few days- including a lot of turkey meat to proudly display at school the next Monday, on wonder bread, dripping with mayo.

Eventually, our American traditions won out- and now we have only our turkey with all the trimmings. But every Thanksgiving, when I sit down to give thanks to God for all his blessings, I remember them all- Mom and Dad, Aunt Tess, Aunt Tess Jr. and Uncle Happy, Aunt Rose and Uncle Nick, Uncle Joe and Aunt Marie- all the De Palo’s and Lorenzo’s, all gone on before us- and I wish I could trade in that big fat turkey for a nice bowl of ravioli with some wonderful meatballs.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Love
Fr. Joe

Heaven anyone?

2011-11-19T14:20:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST THE KING, November 20, 2011:
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One day, three men arrived at the Pearly Gates in Heaven. St. Peter was there to greet them and asked the first man, “What is your religion?” He replied, “I’m Episcopalian.” St. Peter looked on his list, found the man’s name and said, “Go to room 24. But be very quiet as you pass by room 8.” He asked the same question of the second man, “Sir, what is your religion.” The second man replied, “I’m a Methodist.” Again, St. Peter checked the list and found the man’s name and said, “Please, go to room 14. But be very quiet as you pass by room 8.” Finally the third man steps up and is asked the same question, to which he replies, “I’m a Baptist.” St. Peter said. “Go to room 21. But be very quiet as you pass by room 8.” The third man’s curiosity got the better of him so he asked, “St. Peter, I’m more than a bit curious. You told each of us to be quiet as we pass by room 8. What’s going on in room 8?” St. Peter responded, “Well the Catholics are in room 8, and they think they're the only ones up here.”

Can I ask by a show of hands, how many of you want to get to Heaven? I hope that every hand in this church would be raised in answer to that important question. Of course, we all want to get to Heaven. Heaven is our goal; our destination; our final reward. But how many of us have actually thought about what it takes to get there? What constitutes living a life worthy of Heaven? Does it simply mean being a Roman Catholic as our joke suggests? Does it mean going to Mass every Sunday and on Holy Days of Obligation? Does Heaven come when we’ve gone to Confession regularly or prayed our Rosary daily or fulfilled certain devotional practices? Are these the things that will help us to merit the reward of Heaven?

Well, on this last day of our Church year, as we celebrate this Solemnity of Jesus Christ our King, our Gospel passage puts before us the answer to this very question. In this passage from Matthew, Jesus is sitting on His Throne, judging all of creation. Our King is deciding who will be welcomed into the glory of Heaven and who will not. He gives us this image of the King separating people into two categories – sheep and goats. And guess what we want to be? We want to be sheep! The sheep are welcomed into “the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.” The goats are sent off to eternal punishment. And Jesus is not mysterious about what makes someone a sheep as opposed to a goat.

In this passage, Jesus essentially gives to us the criteria for gaining Heaven. So, for all of you who raised your hands today hoping for the glory of Heaven, here are the criteria: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me…whatever you did for one of the least brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” The criteria for entrance into Heaven will be the kind of life that we lived and the ways in which we strove to reach out to those most in need around us – those who are hungry or thirsty or strangers and alone or naked or sick or in prison.

The question for salvation is essentially this? Do we have hearts that have been converted, transformed, and changed to love as Jesus loves – to love always, to see everyone with hearts moved to compassion, to reach out even and especially to those that the rest of society has deemed unimportant or worse disposable. Do we have categories in our hearts where we have decided that some people are unworthy of our love and concern?

So what happened to going to Mass and going to Confession and praying our Rosary and saying our devotions? Why aren’t those in the criteria? Does this mean that these things are not important? Of course not. But what it means is that we need to understand them properly in this economy of salvation. An improper understanding of the spiritual life of the follower of Christ is to view these things as the goal or as an end in and of themselves. They are not the goal, they are the means to the goal. So, we do these things not as the culmination of our spiritual life, but we do these things as the way to cultivate our heart so that we can love like Christ our King.

It isn’t easy to love the way Christ loves. In fact, on our own accord, it is probably impossible. For whatever reason, we are born with an ingrained selfishness; a primary concern for our own welfare before that of others. The more we allow Christ to transform us, the more He changes the direction of our love – away from ourselves and always towards others. And that’s why He gave us all of these things to serve us on this journey to Heaven – He gave us the Sacraments, the Gospels; He gave us one another – the Church – all so that we can receive everything we need to get to Heaven. And so we should treasure and nurture these things as the essential elements that make us into the Christians we are called to be.

St. Augustine famously said of the Eucharist, “We become what we receive.” And so as Jesus satisfies our spiritual hunger and thirst through the great gift of His Body and Blood, He also teaches us to be like Him; to become what we receive. As we are nourished by Him, He asks us to go out from this place and offer nourishment to the hungry and thirsty around us – not because we deem them worthy or unworthy of our charity, but for no other reason than they are loved by God and so by us. We come to Church as spiritually naked people, but as St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians, “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” As He covers our nakedness with Himself, we are called to go out and cloth those who are naked, to cover up those who have no home.

As Jesus has offered us freedom from the sin that kept us in chains and in bondage, He invites us to visit those in prison and speak to them about the true freedom they too can find in Christ.

You know, we call what we gather here to do each Sunday the Mass. Did you know this word comes from the Latin verb mittere, which means “to send.” In other words, by the very title of what we are here to do, it tells us something. This Mass must be in direct relationship to what happens outside of these doors, outside of this church. We come here and are filled with God’s Holy Word and receive the Sacred Body and Blood of His Son for one reason – to be sent! We are sent into the world as the very presence of Christ to transform it. We are sent into the world to literally love it to holiness; love it to Heaven. And in the process we get ourselves there too! It is no coincidence that the very last words that the priest says at the end of every Mass are “Go!” Go in the peace of Christ! Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! Or my favorite change in the new translation of the Mass that we will begin to pray next week, “Go and glorify the Lord by your life!”

So, who wants to get to Heaven? It starts here. Let Jesus lift the sins that bind you. Let the Lord fill you and satisfy you with His Holy Word. Let the Lord transform you into Himself through the grace of His Body and Blood that we receive and then go and feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, cloth the naked, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned – LOVE as Jesus loves without restriction; without limit because “whatever you did for one of the least brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Do this and Heaven will surely be yours!

May the Lord give you peace.

Use it or lose it!

2011-11-12T22:13:00.000-05:00

HOMILY FOR THE 33rd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, November 13, 2011:
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A flood struck a local town and a man quickly found himself trapped in his home. Being a faithful man, he began to pray that God would rescue him. As the water continued to rise, his neighbor urged him to leave and offered him a ride in his pick-up truck to safety. The man thanked him but responded, “God will save me.” The water continued to rise and as it began to fill his house, he climbed up on the roof. A boat came by and the driver said "Come on board and we'll bring you to safety." Again the man thanked them but said, "God will save me." The flood waters continued to rise and now a helicopter flew over and offered to lower a ladder and bring the man to safety. Again, he thanked them, waived them off and said, "I know that God will save me." Eventually, the waters overtook the house and swept the man away and he drowned. When he reached heaven he asked, “God, I have such great faith in you. I'm a good Catholic; I go to Mass, I pay my tithe, I say my prayers. Why didn't you save me?" To which God replied, “Hey, I sent you a pick-up truck, a boat and a helicopter and you refused it all. What else could I do for you?!”

At one time or another, we’ve all heard the phrase “use it or lose it.” We hear this phrase in relation to things like freedom of speech, the use of our intellect, even weightlifting and general health and exercise. In these types of situations it is easy for us to see that if you don’t use it, you certainly will lose it.

Today’s Gospel offers us another example of “use it or lose it.” A man went on a journey and entrusted his servants with his money. Upon his return, he required an accounting of them. Now to put this in perspective, it is helpful to know that a talent was worth about 6,000 denarii, and one denarius was equivalent to a day’s wage. So, assuming a six-day work week, every talent was worth just shy of 20 years wages. No small sum. So, even the servant who received only one talent was entrusted with a sizable sum. Some are troubled by the harshness of the master’s treatment of this man. After all, he did not direct the servants to invest the money. So, why should one be penalized for not having done so? We can only conclude that investment was presumed. They had been told, in effect, “Use it or lose it.”

The readings of these last weeks of the church year prompt us to look at different aspects of the endtime. Last week we were exhorted to await the time of fulfillment in readiness. Today we are told that we cannot simply sit back and do nothing while we’re waiting. We must be industrious while we wait. Use it or lose it.

The man who buried the money in the ground knew that he would be held accountable. He said, “I knew that you were a demanding person.” Thus he is punished not because he is a poor manager of funds, but because he did not take his responsibility to be industrious seriously. The same is true for us. But, instead of a talent, God has given us something far more valuable – the gift of our faith; the treasure of the sacraments; the pearl of the Gospel - and He has asked us to be industrious in investing these, in using our faith in such a way that it will increase faith in the world – our investment should show a grow of faith in ourselves, in the members of our families, our friends, our workplaces and communities. The world should be an increasingly more Christian place because of the way each of us invest our faith in it.

Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote in a 1988 letter cautioning the faithful against, “the temptation of legitimizing the unwarranted separation of faith from life, that is, a separation of the Gospel's acceptance from the actual living of the Gospel in various situations in the world… How can one not notice the ever-growing existence of religious indifference?” This is the question of industriousness that our Gospel raises. It asks, how do we live our lives? Do we live a life that is witness to a separation of faith from life, of hearing the Gospel but not living the Gospel? We come to church, but do we share faith at home – do we read Scripture and pray with our families, do we teach our children the ways of faith and show them how wrong the prevailing culture around them is? Do we teach them to be kind and loving and compassionate in a world that seems to have less and less of these virtues? Do we hold strong to the teachings of the Church and support them in our daily lives or are we part of the ever-growing number of people who boldly speak out against the teachings of Jesus that call us to respect life, love our neighbor, reach out to the poor, the marginalized, the outcast, the immigrant; to be peacemakers? Is our faith multiplying? Is our faith showing a return on its investment?

The message of our readings calls us to a few things today. First, it is important to remember that we are accountable to God for living up to the responsibilities of our life in a faith-filled way. Parents must devote themselves wholeheartedly to parenting, teachers to teaching, politicians to lawmaking and so on. Do people look at the way you live and say it is obvious that you are a Christian, or is Christian something we are only at Church?

Our readings ask us to focus on the end of time, the eventual second coming of Jesus. But, they also encourage us to endtime living now. No more waiting to live as God would have us live. Live in the Kingdom, as members of the Kingdom now – right here, today.

“Use it or lose it.” We can either use and put into practice the gift of faith that God has given us, or we can lose our access to the Kingdom He promised us. Surely we want God to say also to us when our time has come, “Well done, my good and faithful servant … Come, share your master’s joy.”

May God give you peace.

Be prepared!

2011-11-05T12:16:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE 32nd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, November 6, 2011:
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John had fallen on some bad times. Things were so bad that he could barely support himself and his family. Desperate, he got an idea. He would go back to Church and ask for God’s help. He was a little nervous because he hadn’t stepped into a church in years, but he finally made it through the doors. He knelt down in the back and prayed: “God, if you’re up there, please help me win the lottery so I can support my family.” He returned to the same church day after day and made the same prayer. But nothing happened. Weeks passed, then months. Finally, one day, he was making his regular visit: “God, if you’re up there, please help me win the lottery.” And much to his astonishment, the ceiling opened, the choirs of angels appeared, a bright light shone down and a thunderous voice from heaven answered: “OK, fine John. But, can you help me out and at least go buy a ticket?!”

My friends, I think sometimes we can be like John too. We all want everything that God promises He will give us, but how often do we fail to do our part, afraid perhaps to take the risk of fully living the life God has called us to?

A few years ago, Steve McEveety, who produced such well known movies as “The Passion of the Christ” and “Braveheart” was giving a lecture to a group of college students who wanted to pursue a career in entertainment. During the question and answer period one of the students asked an interesting question. She asked, “Mr. McEveety, what is your goal in life?” This wealthy and successful Hollywood Producer paused and thought for a moment, then turned back to the audience and responded, “My goal in life? To get my kids into heaven. And I guess to get there myself, too.” It certainly wasn’t the answer the audience expected to hear. And yet, if you think about it, isn’t that how all of us should answer the same question? What else in life could possibly matter if it means being denied our glorious reward in the end?

As we approach the end of our Church year, our Scriptures look towards the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ. Jesus speaks to this “end times” theme today in a way that can be summed up in two words: be prepared! With the parable of the 10 virgins, Jesus gives us a lesson in watching and waiting, and reminds us that the fulfillment of the Kingdom is in God’s hands. We can neither hurry it or stop it. But we must be prepared for its coming. Today’s readings want to tell us something about that fulfillment and about our need to be ready.

The fulfillment of the Kingdom that Jesus speaks of is nothing other than the realization of all that God promises. The Bible tells us that God promises us a secure and prosperous future. That God promises peace. “Peace is my gift to you,” Jesus tells us and by that he means not merely a superficial peace; not merely the absence of war or conflict, but a true peace that includes these things plus everything that we need to be happy and to thrive, to be holy and destined for Heaven.

The challenge for us as Christians is that we cannot live in our world the way non-believers do. We must live in a different way. We must live in an extraordinary way in these ordinary times. We must live in a way that shows we know there is nothing ordinary about it, instead we know that the time of God’s fulfillment is at hand. We must live with our eyes, our hearts, our lives focused on Heaven.

In today’s parable, the virgins are part of a very large bridal party. And the point of the story is the necessity of always being prepared, “for you know neither the day nor the hour.” All of the virgins were ready for an immediate arrival of the bridegroom and his company, but only half of them were prepared for the long wait and the half that were not ready, were excluded from the feast.

Parables always ask us to identify with someone in the story and so which are we? Are we prepared? Or will we be among those left out because we failed to be ready for Jesus. The great Church theologian St. Augustine in his autobiography talks about the struggle he faced in fully accepting Christ in his life. Prior to his conversion he had a mistress and bore a child out of wedlock. When he writes about this time, he says, “I prayed, ‘Lord, grant me chastity, just not yet.’”

How often do we essentially pray in the same way? God, help me leave behind my sin, my anger, my need to gossip, my jealousy of others, my grudges that I hold, my failure to come to Mass every week or go to confession, help me to live a life fully committed to you in all that I say and do – just not yet!

The challenge placed before us today doesn’t need to be overwhelming. God isn’t calling us all to leave our lives and to quote Hamlet, “Get thee to a nunnery!” But, we are all being invited to live in the moment; to live each moment as though the fulfilled Kingdom of God were in our midst. You may have seen the bumper sticker which reads, “Jesus is coming! Look busy!”

So, what is God asking us do right now? He is asking us to take those first steps at being prepared. So, perhaps that means there’s a relationship in your life that you need to fix, or even end? Maybe there is someone you need to forgive or seek forgiveness from? Maybe you need to renew your commitment to the ABCs of being a Catholic: daily prayer, regular communion and confession, supporting the Church, making reasonable efforts to know what the Church teaches?

God doesn’t want our lamps to run out of oil. He wants His light to keep shining in our hearts, for our own benefit, and for the benefit of those around us, now and forever. But He won’t force us to fill up that lamp and keep it filled. Today, as He comes again to offer Himself to us and for us in the Eucharist, tell Him that you will do your part, whatever it may be. Let us all make that promise to God today.

When Pope John Paul II was dying, the doctors were treating him with pain killers and other procedures to keep him with us as long as they could. At one point, the Pope simply had enough, and he waved them away, knowing that his moment had come. And his last words were, “Let me go to the Father’s house.” To the Father’s house, where all his brothers and sisters in the faith were waiting for him, where all the saints he had canonized would be cheering his arrival, where he hoped to see again his mother who had died when he was so young, his older brother who passed away soon after, and his father, who had not even lived long enough to see his son ordained a priest. Let me go to the Father’s house.

Let us pray that we too may be counted among those who are ready; among those who will be welcomed into our Father’s house.

May God give you peace.

Common people, uncommon destiny

2011-11-01T15:56:00.001-04:00

HOMILY FOR ALL SAINTS DAY, November 1, 2011:
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If you read my column in Sunday’s bulletin, I quoted a story by the famous Trappist monk Thomas Merton in his book Seven Storey Mountain about a conversation he had with a friend about sainthood and how to attain it. Merton was uncertain of what it would take, but his friend Robert simply reminded him, “All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don't you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let Him do it? All you have to do is desire it.”

We find ourselves today in the midst of two of the most beautiful and intimately connected feasts in our Church year – All Saints Day which we celebrate today and All Souls Day which we will celebrate tomorrow. These days are not only intimately connected, but they also reveal a very natural progression that we all go through when we lose a loved one. At first we react with shock and sympathy and grief. We let our “Lord have mercys” fall gently upon the souls of our beloved dead. But, as the days, weeks and months progress, we tend to move on to the questions of why. Why did they have to leave now? Where is my loved one? Are they now merely the victims of death?

To all the questions of the hereafter, the Church responds with these feasts. The celebration of All Saints Day is a rapturous reminder that the path to glory leads beyond the grave. Today, on this day, our restored, forgiven and glorified humanity is on show. Today’s feast is not the gala performance of the canonized – all of those names saints we know so well, whether Blessed Mother Teresa or John Paul II, Saint Padre Pio, Saint Francis or St. Margaret – they have their days throughout the year. Today’s emphasis is on the rest of the saints in Heaven; perhaps even in particular the oh-so-many who will never be recognized by name.

The saints we celebrate throughout the year; whose lives are for us inspiration – perhaps because of their dramatic death for the faith, or the strength in which they lived their commitment to Christ – these saints are Heroes of the faith placed before us often in great drama. But, today we recall the every-man, the every-woman, the ordinary, the regular, the just-like-us saints who made it to the glory of heaven because they were - very simply, very profoundly - faithful to God in their lives.

Today’s feast is a celebration of the commonplace; the beatification of the ordinary; the vindication of the daisy rather than the rose. Today’s feast reminds us that common people – you and me – have an uncommon destiny. And the enduring title for these men and women who reach that Heavenly destiny is “saint.” They are not destined to become so much dust, but to see God as He truly is and be in His presence for ever. The people that you and I have loved in our lives, but have gone to their eternal reward, are now eternally loved by God in Heaven. His will is that they gather around His throne, the palm of victory in their hands. They are saints. And this we celebrate today.

But, this feast of All Saints is not just the feast of the blessed in Heaven. It is our feast day too. What the saints enjoy, what the holy souls anticipate, you and I are promised. Too often I hear people say that they could never be a saint. But, perhaps it is because they are only looking at the great heroes of faith and realizing that perhaps they would not have the courage to give their life for Christ. But we are, in fact, all called to be saints – most likely it will never be in a dramatic way; most likely it will be in the ordinariness of our every day lives continually being faithful to our God. Most likely, our names will not be enrolled in the calendar of saints celebrated by the Church. But, sainthood is ours if we only desire it and let God lead us to that heavenly destination.

And so, this promise on God’s part for our eternal happiness requires action on our part. The terms of this action are spelled out in today’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount. But some people hear this sermon and are dismayed. It can seem to imply that to get somewhere in the next life means getting nowhere in this life. It is the poor, the mournful, the meek, and the hungry who will succeed. But, this is a false interpretation. Christ’s sermon is not an endorsement of destitution. It does not suggest that a dollar in your pocket is less Christian than a hole in your pants. It does insist, though, that worldly success and the accumulation of wealth are not ends in themselves. We are not here on earth to build an empire that magnifies ourselves; we are here primarily to serve, as Jesus served.

A truly Christian society matures not in selfishness but in service. Happiness for the Christian lies not in having, but in giving. The poor in spirit accumulate wealth insofar as they give away, insofar as they love God and transform His world with gentleness, mercy, compassion, forgiveness and peace.

One final point – the most important perhaps. This is God’s feast day too. Saints don’t make it on their own. Ultimately God makes it for them. The saints living successful Christian lives and eventually moving joyously around His throne in Heaven is evidence of God’s heart and love for us. All Saints Day is God’s heart translated into happy people. It is proof of His compassionate purpose, confirmation of His universal love for us, a triumphant vindication of His will for our salvation.

“All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don't you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let Him do it? All you have to do is desire it.”

God has created each of us for Heaven; for sainthood. As we gather around His altar, let us, in union with the saints above, give thanks to our God for His saving Grace.

May God give you peace.

Taking off our masks

2011-10-29T20:01:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE 31st SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, October 30, 2011:
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A six-year-old was excited about his Halloween costume. “Mom, I want to be the Pope for Halloween!" he said. "Son, you can’t be the Pope," the mother said. "You’re not Catholic. You’re Lutheran." The boy thought about it a moment and considered his alternatives. After a few minutes, he asked, “Well, then is Dracula a Lutheran?”

Of course, tomorrow is Halloween, which for many is a dress-up day in which children run from house to house in their costumes begging sweet treats. I read in the newspaper that among the most popular costumes this year are Angry Birds, zombies, Captain America and Charlie Sheen (no comment). Halloween is a day of make-believe, a day of pretending to be someone, something that we are not.

I want to talk a little bit about pretending today, but first I need to begin with a brief Latin lesson. So, pay attention, there may be a quiz at the end. The Latin verb, teneo is translated to mean “I hold.” Many common English words contain versions of this Latin verb. For example, if you add the prefix “ex” meaning “out” to the verb teneo you get the word “extend” – which of course means to “hold out.” Or add the prefix “re” to our root and you get the word retain, or to hold back. You get the idea. Well if you add the prefix “pre” which means “in front” to our root, you get “pre-tend” or that which you hold in front of you so that you are not seen, but only the image. This is essentially what children do at Halloween – they pretend; they hold in front of them an image that is different from who they really are. In fact, very often, the image that they hold in front, or that they pretend to be, is so different that it is hard to recognize the true person.

Well, our readings today, are very apropos to this theme of pretending. In our first reading, the prophet Malachi has strong words for the priests of his time who pretend to conduct the ritual sacrifices properly, when, in fact, they were bringing substandard and blemished animals to be sacrificed at the altar of the Lord. They were bringing pretend offerings while “retaining” or “holding back” what was real and holy from the Lord. Malachi tells the religious leaders that if they continue misuse their God-given powers, then terrible things will happen.

And we heard in our Gospel passage today, “Do and observe all things whatsoever [the Pharisees] tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice.” Jesus is speaking about a group of pretenders, the Pharisees. Jesus tells His disciples and the crowd to adhere to the demands of the Law of Moses, but as for those who interpret the Law for their own benefit, do not follow what they do. They are pretenders, holding in front of themselves religious symbols. As Jesus said, “They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.” Phylacteries are containers affixed to arms and foreheads. Inside are written important verses of the Law. People who see them are impressed believing that those who wear them are as holy as the verses themselves.

Jesus reminds His listeners that it is not what one wears outside that makes a person a follower of God’s ways. It is not the name “teacher” or “father” or “master” which make a person a reflection of God’s holiness. Rather, it is what is written in your heart, shown forth by the way you live and what you do, that gives witness to a person’s holiness. Becoming a servant, a child, a humble person, are ways of revealing true Godliness, true holiness. Jesus, of course, is the true opposite of the Pharisees. He is no pretender, but rather Jesus is the real deal. He lives what He preaches and invites His followers – He invites each one of us – to let go of any pretending in our lives and to follow Him in what we say and in what we do.

So for each of us here today, the question is not “do I wear a cross,” but rather “do I bear the cross?” It is not only a matter of going to Mass every Sunday, but of going forth from Mass every Sunday to live what we have received. Too often, we hide the identity that God has placed within us; we hold back the holiness that God wants us to share with the world. We pretend to be someone we really are not.

The day after Halloween is All Saints Day. It is the day we celebrate all those who put aside their natural pretenses and witness to Christ living within them. Costumes are for fun; but being uncovered from the pretenses we wear in our daily lives is a true, Godly joy. In the ritual for the Ordination of a Deacon, the Bishop hands the Deacon a Book of the Gospels and says to him, “Receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ, whose herald you now are. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, practice what you teach.” This is also the call of all of us today. You can enjoy an evening of pretending on Monday, but after that and always, cast off all pretenses, throw aside whatever false image of yourself that stops you from being a herald of the Gospel.

Let us all take up the charge to be true heralds of Jesus Christ in every aspect, every moment of our lives. Let us believe what we read, teach what we believe and practice what we teach.

May the Lord give you peace.

Please won't you be my neighbor?

2011-10-22T15:19:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE 30th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, October 23, 2011:
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A few years ago there was a billboard advertising campaign that received some notice. You might have seen some of them. They were billboards offering messages from God. They said things like: "Don’t make me come down there again.” - God or, “We need to talk.” – God or “Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour even longer.” – God or “You think it’s hot here?” – God or “Have you read my #1 best seller? There will be a test.” – God or finally on that would fit today’s Gospel, “That `Love Thy Neighbor‘ thing? I meant it.” – God.

Let me give you an image that many of you will be familiar with. A plain sweater, white canvass sneakers, a warm smile and a simple song that welcomed us every day. Sing it with me: “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine?” Every day Fred Rogers welcomed us to his neighborhood. As a child I watched Mr. Rogers and still have such fond memories. Over the years not much changed with the show; it was the same house, the same trolley to take you to the world of make believe, and the same puppets like King Friday. In every episode Mr. Rogers always asked the same question: “Would you like to be my neighbor?”

Today’s Gospel follows after last week’s passage in which we had the Sadducees trying to trap Jesus with their question about paying taxes to Ceasar. This week, the Pharisees take a stab at trying it testing him again with a question about the greatest commandment. The textbook answer, of course is love of God. But, again like last week, Jesus does not stop there. He goes on to give a more practical answer, one that challenges His listeners. Just like last week, Jesus gives the other side of the coin, which, in this case is love of neighbor.

Jesus makes the point that anyone who truly loves God must necessarily also love their neighbor; and that these are virtually one in the same thing. You cannot truly love your God unless that loves shows forth in love of neighbor. As Jesus said: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind…You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” Or as we hear in the First Letter of John, “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.”

Jesus is reacting against the Pharisees one-dimensional understanding of love. For Jesus, true love must express itself in three dimensions: the love of God; the love of neighbor; and the love of oneself. The commandment to love your neighbor as yourself presumes that you first love yourself as a beautiful person created in the image and likeness of your God. That you see your dignity and beauty as a unique part of what God has created – as unique and beautiful as the oceans, the stars and the sky, the mountains or any other part of the created universe.

Last week, Jesus wasn’t so concerned with what was due to Ceasar, instead He was more concerned with what was due to God, something the people were forgetting. In the same way, the emphasis on today’s question about the greatest commandment is not on the obvious love of God but on the love of neighbor, which, again, was being ignored.

Just look at the treatment that Jesus received. He and His followers were persecuted by well-meaning religious people motivated by what they believed to be zeal and love for God. The same people asking about the most important commandment are the ones trying to trap and eventually kill Jesus. They are so conscious about love of God. Why then are they so insensitive when it comes to love of neighbor?

This is, of course, a concern that reaches our ears and our world today. The error of the Pharisees is still with us. We don’t have to look further than the ever growing divide between rich and poor, the continuing problem of homelessness, the ongoing scourge of prejudice, violence, war, death and destruction that are so much a part of our world to wonder where is our love of neighbor?

There are many Christians who try to separate the love of fellow human beings from their love of God. Their commitment to faith does not include commitment to issues of human rights; to economic and legal justice; to the call for peace; to equality and the ending of prejudice and persecution. We do well to heed Jesus in today's gospel: true love of God and true love of neighbor are two sides of the same coin. Any attempt to separate them is a falsification of the message of Christ.

Again, we hear in the First Letter of John, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” Or the reflection on faith and works from the Letter of James, “What good is it…if someone says he has faith but does not have works? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? Indeed someone might say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works…For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.”

Let us pray today that God will shake loose from us any indifference we may feel towards our brothers and sisters in need. We ask God to give us the same loving and compassionate relationship towards our neighbors that Jesus had. We pray, not only for the knowledge of how to love, but the wisdom to want to love in all circumstances.

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind…You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” Won't you be my neighbor?

May the Lord give you peace.

Revive our evangelical Franciscan spirit!

2011-10-22T15:16:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE FRATERNAL VISITATION OF OUR SECULAR FRANCISCAN FRATERNITY, October 22, 2011:
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What a wonderful way to begin your visitation today by coming together to celebrate this Holy Mass today. And, how perfect God’s timing always is for us. Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Blessed Pope John Paul II or John Paul the Great. This is the very first time that we, as Church, get to celebrate this memorial since his beatification this past Spring. So, this is a wonderful day and our beloved former Pope has so many words that can inspire us today.

In preparing for Mass this morning, I also took a moment to look at the SFO Constitutions to see what they had to say about a fraternal visitation. This is what I read, “The purpose of both the pastoral and fraternal visits is to revive the evangelical Franciscan spirit, to assure fidelity to the charism and to the Rule, to offer help to fraternity life, to reinforce the bond of the unity of the Order, and to promote its most effective insertion into the Franciscan family and the Church.”

What a lofty and wonderful goal for us today. A day in which we can “revive our Evangelical spirit.” And we need that from time to time. I am just returning from two weeks of different meetings – a week with the General Minister and all of the Franciscan Provincials of the English Speaking Conference, and then more recently a week with all of the brothers of my Province as we gathered for an All Province Assembly this past week – meetings that have left me today in exactly that space – revived in my evangelical Franciscan spirit; and so I want to share a few thoughts on that in the hopes of setting your day off in the right direction.

First, a word of revival from our Scriptures today – again, so well planned by our Lord! Just look at what we read in Paul’s letter to the Romans, “The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death.” Isn’t this the heart of the Gospel that our Holy Father Francis so dearly clung to and encourages us to do? You know the Rule of the First Order begins with this sentence: Francis wrote, “This is the rule and life of the Minor Brothers, namely, to observe the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by living in obedience, in poverty, and in chastity.” That is the Rule of 1223. There’s often a question about that Rule; what took so long? Francis received his approval for our way of life in 1209 and we don’t have an approved written rule until some 14 years later. Why? My belief has always been that Francis would have simply said, “We have a Rule and it was written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.” And, so when Francis writes that first sentence, I like to think that it was a bit tongue-in-cheek or perhaps another way of thinking about it is that it was written as commentary. “The rule and life of the Minor Brothers is to observe the Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” Period! End of sentence. I think if he could have, he would have ended there.

This is the heart of the statement in Romans, “The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death.” This is what we celebrate as baptized members of the faith. This is what we celebrate as members of this Franciscan way of life. Freedom. We celebrate freedom. We live in this incredible freedom to be children of God. We live in this incredibly freedom – enshrined in our life as we pursue poverty, chastity and obedience in ways that are appropriate to our different states of life married, single, religious, lay – we live in a freedom that allows us to not follow the way of the world and instead follow the way of the Gospel. This is evangelical! This is liberation!

As I met two weeks ago with the Provincials and our General Minister José Rodríguez Carballo, Br. José spoke to us about vocations. One of the things he said was, “We do have the strength to call young men to join us. The worst thing we can do is to think that we have reached a time when we cannot have vocations. Put all your strength into this. First of all, we must believe in our life and have the courage to propose our life to young people. If we don’t propose the Gospel life, many others will propose other values.”

While he was naturally speaking about the First Order, I think we can take his words and make them words for our Secular family as well and ask a few critical questions – do we live with the sense that we can still call other to join us in this way of life? Do we live with the courage that proposes as an option the Gospel life to others. We know there are many competing values in our world today; there are many options out there that are all asking people young and old to follow – the path to fame, the path to riches, the path to power; not to mention the many voices that clamor for violence and war and the subjugation of people (especially the poor, the marginalized, the immigrant, the sick); there are no shortage of voices out there. How loud is ours? How loud is our call to the Gospel – not by mere proclamation, but by example. We all know the quote, often attributed to Francis, “Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary use words.” Is your Franciscan life evident simply by the way you live? Do other see your love and advocacy of the poor, your love and call for peace, your love and protection of nature, your love and respect for all life from natural birth to natural death and every moment in between? Are these Franciscan values visible? I would echo the General Minister’s words and say, Yes! We do have the strength to call others to this Gospel way of life!

The best way to do this is to be united as a fraternity; to “reinforce the bond of unity” that the Secular constitutions call for. I mentioned my second meeting was an All Province Assembly this past week. It was held at our retreat house in Wappinger Falls, NY. As you can imagine, we had wonderful moments of prayer, we had profound moments of sharing and of course, we had way too much food! It was a spirit accentuated by the famous words from Psalm 133: Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum. "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity." During our week, we laughed, we fought, we cried, we discussed important things about our life and about our future. But we all left with the giddiness that comes from brothers being together in united. Let today be like that for you. Let this visitation strengthen the bonds of your fraternity in the same way.

And finally, a word from our beloved Blessed John Paul. There is so much that can be shared from his decades as the Chief Shepherd of our Flock. But, I’ll just share one of my favorite quotes. He said in 1993, “Jesus wants to enter into a dialogue with us and, through His body which is the Church, to propose the possibility of a choice which will require a commitment of our lives. As Jesus with the disciples of Emmaus, so the Church must become our travelling companion today.”

As with St. Francis, remain close to one another, close to your sisters and brothers in fraternity. As with St. Francis, remain close to the Church, in particular close to the Eucharist where “the Lord of the whole universe, God and the Son of God, should humble Himself like this under the form of a little bread, for our salvation.”

Let us preach with our lives, call forth with our example, dialogue with Christ and be renewed and revived in our commitment today.

May the Lord give you peace.

Give to God what is God's

2011-10-16T07:36:00.001-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE 29TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, October 16, 2011:
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A Faith Formation teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to "honor thy father and thy mother," she asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without missing a beat one little boy answered, "Thou shall not kill."

Today’s Gospel speaks to us about relationships and how we are to understand them. “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” What do you think that Jesus means when he utters this phrase in our Gospel passage today? Is this a tract on proper church-state relations? Does Jesus mean that there is only so much out there for Ceasar and so much for God? That it should be divided as a child divides candy – one for you and one for me; one for Ceasar and one for God? He can hardly mean that there are some things that belong to Ceasar and other things that belong to God because that would suggest that reality is divisible into the secular and the sacred, as if the things we do for the State have nothing to do with God. And that is surely not right. Life is unified, not divided. In the deepest sense, everything belongs to God. So what does Jesus mean?

First, we have to recognize that the question from the Pharisees is a trap: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” If Jesus responds “yes” then He is allying himself with the Roman occupation and domination of Israel and that would put Him in trouble with His fellow Jewish patriots. If He says “no” then He is in trouble with the Roman authorities and is liable to be arrested as encouraging rebellion and revolution. Does Jesus fall into the trap? No, instead He asks them for a denarius – the Roman coin used to pay the tax in question. Once they produce the coin, He is saying in effect to them, “I don’t have one – you do.” You have Ceasar’s coin. By using his coinage, his currency, you are the ones allying yourself to his system, accepting his rule, recognizing his empire, his authority. So, if you have taken his money, give him back his money. “Repay to Ceasar what belongs to Ceasar.” Jesus doesn’t give them a straight answer because it is not a straight question posed to Him. It is a trap which He avoids.

But, as always Jesus surprises the crowd with the challenge He adds, “Repay to God what belongs to God.” Jesus is saying that the obligation to Ceasar stands under and is judged by an immeasurably higher obligation – to recognize the sovereignty of the Supreme Sovereign, to give what is due to the greatest emperor of all; that if you think you feel an obligation to the state, it can’t compare to the obligation you should feel to the Almighty God. Jesus uses this unexpected opportunity to remind the people of the first and greatest commandment, “You must do homage to the Lord, your God, Him alone must you serve.” Forget about smart questions intended to trap Jesus, instead, worship your God – not with mere externals as the Pharisees do, but from deep, deep within your soul.

Jesus uses this chance to remind them of the importance of worshipping the one, true God. And, so, He reminds us today as well, that the Church we all belong to is above everything else a worshipping family. The Church reaches her full stature only when she falls on her knees in prayer. She stands straight and walks tall only when she bows her head in adoration. The care of the sick, the struggle for justice, the needs of the poor, the education of the young – all of these are essential to the mission of the Church, but they are meaningless unless they are connected to the highest function of the Church, which is the worship of the Almighty God. The Church is most supremely herself when she gathers in a building like this one to celebrate the most Holy Eucharist. The Mass is the very summit of her activity, the apex, the Everest of her life. The spirit of the Church certainly finds noble expression in the many works of service that we engage in, but it is to the Church building and the worship of God that takes place there that we must look to if we wish to discover her soul.

So, if we are a believing people, we must be a worshipping people as well. We cannot ignore the worship of God as a community. We have to look deep in our hearts and ask if we are all deeply and personally committed to that worship as individual members of this Church community. We see as the numbers of practicing Catholics drop, that worship is becoming less important in our lives. Many people rarely or never attend Mass, even more attend irregularly. Fewer and fewer are the number of people who understand their obligation to repay to God what is God’s and attend Mass every Sunday.

But, Jesus, the Son of God, came to remind us that we owe a special reverence and adoration to God, and always will. We owe Him that, as the one who brought us into being, who sustains us through every second of life, who is Lord of a universe of which we are only a tiny part and who loves us with such an overwhelming love that He sent His Son to save us. Jesus reminded us of that when he quoted Deuteronomy, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.” It is that same Son, who taught us that even when calling God “Our Father” praise should be uppermost on our minds as we acknowledge that “hallowed by Thy Name.” And no one took to these lessons to heart better than His mother Mary. She left us an ideal formula for adoring God and humbling ourselves when she said in her Magnificat, “For the Almighty has done great things for me. Holy is His Name.” We cannot give in to the tragedy of our times that sees God as ordinary. There can be no other gods in our lives other than the One, True and Almighty God. He that is mighty has done great things for us too. Let us never lose sight of that. Let us never stop saying it. Let us never stop living it. Let us never stop praying it. Let us be, as a Christian community, a worshipping people – a people reaching up to God and reaching out to one another.

Let us “repay to God what is God’s.”

May God give you peace.

"Have no anxiety at all"

2011-10-01T15:01:00.001-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE 27th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, October 2, 2011:
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Two young boys were staying overnight at their grandmother’s house and every night before they went to sleep they said their prayers. The older boy went first praying about the day he had, about everything he had done and for all his loved ones. Then it was the younger boy’s turn. He prayed much louder than his brother and he prayed for bikes and toys and candy. When he finished the older brother asked him “Why are you praying for bikes, toys and candy so loud? You know, God is not deaf." To which the younger boy responded, “I know, but Grandma is.”

We heard in our second reading, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything,by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” There is an interesting story about one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Generals, Massena, who, with his army of 18,000 soldiers besieged an Austrian town that was completely defenseless. Knowing they had no chance, the town leaders met to discuss how best to surrender. As they discussed giving up, a wise old man in the town stood up and reminded everyone that it was Easter Sunday. He suggested that they hold their usual Easter services and put the problem in God's hands. Everyone agreed and went to the church where they rang the bells to assemble the towns for worship. When Massena’s soldiers heard the joyful ringing of the bells they concluded that Austrian reinforcements had arrived to rescue the town. Immediately, they broke camp and ran off in retreat, and the town was saved.

I think this little story sheds some light on what St. Paul is saying in today's second reading from the Letter to the Philippians. Faith in Christ affects how we face the problems of life. Where people who have no faith typically respond to life's problems with worry, people of faith respond to life's problems with prayer. We all know that from time-to-time, worry gets the better of most of us. We worry about our jobs and the bills and our children and our world and our safety and so many other things – some big, some small. Worry and anxiety can take up a lot of space in our lives and sometimes even dominate our lives. But as we hear in our story of the Austrian town, worry only encourages surrender to the challenges facing us. In prayer, on the other hand, we raise our hands to our all-loving Father, who can draw us out of despair and into a new world of possibilities with Him. Have you ever noticed how similar the gesture of surrender is to that of prayer? In prayer, we are also surrendering, not to man and his ways, but to God and His ways. And that makes all the difference.

St. Paul encourages us, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” St. Paul is giving us today the antidote to the worry that can rule our lives. First, he reminds us that prayer is not simply reading a shopping list of our needs before God. It also includes thanking God for the blessing of life and faith that we enjoy already and lifting up before God through petition all other people and their needs. Sometimes our prayer can become too self-centered when all the while it is meant to be God-centered, just as Jesus taught us to pray in the “Our Father”.

From that prayer we learn four components that should be part of our prayer. Let me offer you an acronym that can help us remember how to pray. Our prayer is meant to be made up of A-C-T-S or ACTS. "A" is for Adoration, in which we praise God for His goodness in who He is. "C" is for Contrition, in which we ask forgiveness for our failures. "T" is for Thanksgiving, in which we thank God for the blessings we have received. And "S" is for Supplication, in which we ask God through petition to hear our needs and the needs of all of people – especially those most marginalized in our world.St. Paul tells us that when we pray in this way, “then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” This is what happens when we learn to take all our problems to the Lord in prayer. We trade our stress and worry for peace of mind. George Mueller famously said, “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”

But, St. Paul also wants to remind us that prayer is more than just the praying; it is also found in doing. Prayer is not just what we do on our knees or at church or with beads and novenas. It also includes what we think about all day long; and even in what we do. He writes, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” A person of prayer is always thinking about what is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise. Kierkegaard said, “Prayer does not change God. It changes to one who prays.” When we “think about these things,” we allow God through that prayer to change us to reflect Him more perfectly.

Finally, prayer involves action. Again, from St. Paul, “Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me. Then the God of peace will be with you.” A person of prayer should be a person of action, one who “keeps on doing”. St. Augustine said, “Pray as if everything depends on God, but work as if everything depends on you.”

The key to finding peace in a world of stress and anxiety is not worry but to pray. And not to pray only sometimes, but to pray always in how we think, in what we say and in how we act in the world around us. We start each and every week right here in church with the most profound prayer of the Holy Mass. And it must continue when we leave church being that prayerful influence among our families, friends, co-workers, strangers. And letting it lead us to action; to do the right thing. That way, the peace of God will be with us all.

Let us be people of prayer, people of ACTS and God will give us His peace.

A Catholic Call to Abolish the Death Penalty

2011-09-27T10:08:00.001-04:00

BY: TOBIAS WINRIGHT

There were two state-sanctioned executions in the United States on September 21, 2011. In Georgia, Troy Anthony Davis, an African American man, was put to death for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. In Texas, Lawrence Brewer, a white supremacist, was executed for his participation in the racist hate crime dragging murder of James Byrd in Jasper in 1998. As theologians, scholars, and social justice advocates who participate in the public discussion of Catholic theology, we protest the state-sanctioned killings of both of these men, and we call for the abolition of the death penalty in the US.

Davis’ execution is particularly troubling for it shines a stark light upon many longstanding concerns about capital punishment in the US. We mourn the death of Officer MacPhail and express our deepest sympathies to his family for their tragic loss. However, we believe that a grave miscarriage of justice took place with Davis’ execution. As many legal experts have pointed out, including former FBI Director and federal judge and prosecutor William S. Sessions, serious doubt remains about Davis’ guilt. Until his last breath he maintained his innocence. The failure of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, a Federal Appeals Judge, the Georgia Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court to grant Davis a new trial reveals a deeply flawed justice system. We therefore call upon lawmakers and President Obama to immediately repeal the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which created the legal conditions for executing a man whose guilt was not established beyond reasonable doubt.

Even those who do not share our faith convictions ought to recognize, as Justice William J. Brennan put it, “the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are innocent.” The horrific legacy of lynching in the US casts its evil shadow over current application of the death penalty. Studies have shown that black defendants are more likely to receive the death penalty. In many states with capital punishment, defendants are from 3 to 5 times more likely to be executed if their victim was white. In states that retain the death penalty, 98 percent of district attorneys are white and only 1 percent are black. Execution is also irrevocable, and innocent people have likely been victims of it. Since 1973, 138 persons have been exonerated from death row, most of whom were people of color and economically poor.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops stated that “the sanction of death, when it is not necessary to protect society, violates respect for human life and dignity…Its application is deeply flawed and can be irreversibly wrong, is prone to errors, and is biased by factors such as race, the quality of legal representation, and where the crime was committed. We have other ways to punish criminals and protect society.” In earlier eras, Roman Catholic tradition acknowledged the necessity of capital punishment, in rare cases, to protect citizens from threats to the common good. In recent times, with more secure prison facilities that give us the means to offer such protection without executions, our church leaders have affirmed the need to eradicate the death penalty.

There are, moreover, theological reasons for this stance, and here we speak especially to our sisters and brothers in faith. In calling for the abolition of the “cruel and unnecessary” death penalty, Blessed Pope John Paul II argued that “[t]he new evangelization calls for followers of Christ who are unconditionally pro-life: who will proclaim, celebrate, and serve the Gospel of life in every situation. A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.” Our theological tradition recalls that our Lord Jesus Christ was unjustly and brutally nailed to a cross to die. The great 20^th century theologian Karl Barth put the matter this way: “Now that Jesus Christ has been nailed to the cross for the sins of the world, how can we still use the thought of expiation to establish the death penalty?” The Eucharistic celebration calls Catholics to remember all crucified people, including the legacy of lynching, in light of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His Gospel message of forgiveness and love of enemies presents a difficult challenge, especially to those who have lost loved ones at the hands of a murderer. Yet, the Gospel teaches us how to become fully human: love, not hatred and revenge, liberates us. We need to forgive and love both in fidelity to the Gospel and for our own well-being. The experience of groups like Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, who advocate against the death penalty, attests to this.

Therefore, in concert with our recent popes and bishops, we oppose the death penalty, whether a person on death row is guilty or innocent, on both theological and practical grounds. While we especially deplore and lament the killing of Troy Davis, we also decry the death sentences of the more than 3,200 inmates on death row and the 1,268 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. We urge our nation to abolish capital punishment, and we also implore our churches to work unwaveringly to end it as well as all other threats to human life and dignity.

Signed:

1. Gerald J. Beyer, Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics, Saint Joseph’s University

2. Alexander Mikulich, Research Fellow, Jesuit Social Research Institute, Loyola University New Orleans

3. Emily Reimer-Barry, Assistant Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, University of San Diego

4. Tobias Winright, Associate Professor of Theological Ethics, Saint Louis University

5. Maria Pilar Aquino, Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, University of San Diego

6. Karen Teel, Assistant Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, University of San Diego

7. Gerard Mannion, Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, University of San Diego

8. Meghan Clark, Assistant Professor of Theology, Saint John’s University (NY)

9. Dana Dillon, Assistant Professor of Theology, Providence College

10. Charles Camosy, Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics, Fordham University

11. Julie Hanlon Rubio, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Saint Louis University

12. Stephen B. Wilson, Associate Professor of Theology, Spring Hill College

13. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., Associate Professor of Biology, Providence College

14. Kathryn Getek Soltis, Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics, Villanova University

15. Vincent J. Miller, Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology & Culture, University of Dayton

16. Jana Bennett, Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics, University of Dayton

17. Terrence W. Tilley, Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, Professor of Catholic Theology, Fordham University

18. M. Shawn Copeland, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Boston College

19. Todd David Whitmore, Associate Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame

20. John Sniegocki, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Xavier University

21. Nancy M. Rourke, Associate Professor of Moral Theology, Canisius College

22. James F. Keenan, SJ, Founders Professor in Theology, Boston College

23. Nancy Dallavalle, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Fairfield University

24. John Inglis, Professor of Philosophy, Cross-Appointed in Religious Studies, University of Dayton

25. Dennis Doyle, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Dayton

26. Nancy Pineda-Madrid, Assistant Professor of Theology, Boston College

27. Daniel C. Maguire, Professor of Moral Theology, Marquette University

28. Anthony J. Godzieba, Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, Villanova University

29. J. Milburn Thompson, Professor of Theology, Bellarmine University

30. Susan Paulik Babka, Assistant Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, University of San Diego

31. Holly Taylor Coolman, Assistant Professor of Theology, Providence College

32. Kelly Johnson, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Dayton

33. David O’Brien, University Professor of Faith & Culture, University of Dayton

34. Ronald Modras, Professor of Theology, Saint Louis University

35. Edwin L. Lisson, SJ, Associate Professor of Moral Theology, Saint Louis University

36. John F. Kavanaugh, SJ, Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University

37. June-Ann Greeley, Associate Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, Fairfield University

38. Jennifer Beste, Associate Professor of Theological Ethics, Xavier University

39. Elena Procario-Foley, Driscoll Professor of Jewish-Catholic Studies, Iona College

40. Carl Procario-Foley, Director, Center for Campus Ministries, Iona College

41. Daniel Finn, Professor of Theology and Professor of Economics, St. John’s University (MN)

42. Bryan N. Massingale, Associate Professor of Theological Ethics, Marquette University

43. Marie Dennis, Director, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Co-President, Pax Christi International

44. James T. Bretzke, SJ, Professor of Moral Theology, Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

45. Maura Ryan, John Cardinal O’Hara CSC Assoc Prof of Christian Ethics, University of Notre Dame

46. Francine Cardman, Assoc Prof of Historical Theology, Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

47. Dolores L. Christie, Independent Scholar

48. Daniel P. Horan, OFM, Franciscan Friar, Holy Name Province (New York)

49. MT Dávila, Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics, Andover Newton Theological School

50. John Renard, Professor of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University

51. Laurie Johnston, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Emmanuel College

52. Nicholas P. Cafardi, Dean Emeritus & Professor of Law, Duquesne University School of Law

53. Christopher Pramuk, Assistant Professor of Theology, Xavier University

54. Bruce T. Morrill, SJ, Edward A. Malloy Prof of Catholic Studies, Vanderbilt Univ Divinity School

55. Matthew A. Shadle, Assistant Professor of Moral Theology, Loras College

56. Michael E. Lee, Associate Professor of Theology, Fordham University

57. Kenneth Parker, Associate Professor of Historical Theology, Saint Louis University

58. Mary Dunn, Assistant Professor of Modern Christianity, Saint Louis University

59. James Caccamo, Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics, Saint Joseph’s University

60. Most Rev. John Michael Botean, DD, Bishop of the Eparchy of St. George, Canton, OH

61. Ronald Mercier, SJ, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Saint Louis University

62. Thomas J. Reese, SJ, Senior Fellow, Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University

63. David Cloutier, Associate Professor of Theology, Mount Saint Mary’s University

64. Thomas Massaro, SJ, Professor of Moral Theology, Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

65. M. Therese Lysaught, Associate Professor of Moral Theology, Marquette University

66. Randall S. Rosenberg, CSJ Endowed Chair in Catholic Thought, Fontbonne University

67. Vincent M. Smiles, Professor of Theology, College of St. Benedict & St. John’s University (MN)

68. David Meconi, SJ, Assistant Professor of Patristic Theology, Saint Louis University

69. Mark J. Allman, Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics, Merrimack College

70. Susan A. Ross, Professor of Theology, Loyola University Chicago

71. Christine Firer Hinze, Professor of Theology, Fordham University

72. Brian W. Hughes, Associate Professor of Theology, University of Saint Mary

73. Tim Muldoon, Assistant to the Vice President for University Mission & Ministry, Boston College

74. Carey Walsh, Associate Professor of Theology, Villanova University

75. Maureen O’Connell, Associate Professor of Theology, Fordham University

76. William T. Cavanaugh, Professor of Catholic Studies, DePaul University

77. Paul Lakeland, Alloysius P. Kelley SJ Professor of Catholic Studies, Fairfield University

78. Bradford Hinze, Professor of Theology, Fordham University

79. Mary Ann Hinsdale, IHM, Associate Professor of Theology, Boston College

80. John Langan, SJ, Cardinal Bernardin Chair in Catholic Social Thought, Georgetown University

81. William L. Portier, Mary Ann Spearin Chair of Catholic Theology, University of Dayton

82. Paulette Skiba, BVM, Professor of Religious Studies, Clarke University

83. John R. T. Berkman, Associate Professor of Moral Theology, Regis College, Univ. of Toronto

84. Michael Patella, OSB, Professor of Theology, Saint John’s School of Theology-Seminary

85. Una M. Cadegan, Associate Professor of History, University of Dayton

86. James B. Ball, Associate Professor of Theology, Saint Mary’s University (TX)

87. Mary Jo Iozzio, Professor of Moral Theology, Barry University

88. Christopher Steck, SJ, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Georgetown University

89. Beth Haile, Assistant Professor of Moral Theology, Carroll College

90. J. Matthew Ashley, Associate Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame

91. Franklin T. Harkins, Assistant Professor of Theology & Medieval Studies, Fordham University

92. Angela Kim Harkins, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Fairfield University

93. Joseph A. McCartin, Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University

94. Anthony B. Smith, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Dayton

95. Lisa Sowle Cahill, Monan Professor of Theology, Boston College

96. Joe Holland, Professor of Philosophy & Religion, St. Thomas University

97. Dorian Llywelyn, SJ, Associate Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University

98. G. Simon Harak, SJ, Director, Marquette University Center for Peacemaking

99. Mary Doak, Associate Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, University of San Diego

100. Stephen Schneck, Director, Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies, Catholic University of America

101. Stephen E. Lammers, Helen H.P. Manson Prof. of the English Bible, Lafayette College

102. Christopher P. Vogt, Assoc Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, St. John’s University (NY)

103. Teresa Delgado, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Iona College

104. Otto Hentz, SJ, Associate Professor of Theology, Georgetown University

105. B. Andrew Lustig, Holmes Rolston III Professor of Religion & Science, Davidson College

106. Gerald Schlabach, Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas (MN)

107. Anna Floerke Scheid, Assistant Professor of Theology, Duquesne University

108. Paul Niskanen, Associate Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas (MN)

109. Brian Robinette, Associate Professor of Theology, Saint Louis University

110. Thomas O’Brien, Center for Interreligious Engagement, DePaul University

111. Edward Sellner, Professor of Theology & Spirituality, Saint Catherine University

112. Paul J. Wojda, Associate Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas (MN)

113. William Trollinger, Professor of History, Cross-Appointed to Religious Studies, Univ. of Dayton

114. Mary Daly Twite, Senior Adjunct Instructor, University of St. Thomas (MN)

115. Colleen M. Carpenter, Assistant Professor of Theology, Saint Catherine University

116. Maura Donahue, Lecturer in Christian Ethics, University of Dayton

117. Kathy Lilla Cox, Assistant Professor of Theology, College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University

118. Amy Levad, Assistant Professor of Moral Theology, University of St. Thomas (MN)

119. Thomas Schubeck, SJ, Professor of Religious Ethics, John Carroll University

120. Kelly M. Wilson, Adjunct Theology Instructor, University of St. Thomas (MN)

121. Robert Koerpel, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology, Saint Catherine University

122. Elizabeth Groppe, Associate Professor of Theology, Xavier University

123. Sandra A. Yocum, Chair of Religious Studies, University of Dayton

124. Kathleen Maas Weigert, Carolyn Farrell, BVM, Prof of Women & Leadership, Loyola Univ. Chicago

125. Brian M. Doyle, Associate Professor of Theology, Marymount University

126. Patrick J. Hayes, Archivist, Baltimore Province of the Redemptorists (Brooklyn, NY)

127. Ronald A. Pachence, Chair, Dept of Theology & Religious Studies, University of San Diego

128. Thomas J. Bushlack, Assistant Professor of Moral Theology, University of St. Thomas (MN)

129. Lance Nelson, Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, University of San Diego

130. David Whitten Smith, Emeritus Prof. of Theology & Justice & Peace Studies, Univ. of St. Thomas (MN)

131. Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier, Assistant Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University

132. Thomas P. Rausch, SJ, T. Marie Chilton Prof. of Catholic Theology, Loyola Marymount University

133. Matthew Tapie, Teaching Fellow, The Catholic University of America

134. Tisha Rajendra, Assistant Professor of Theology, Loyola University Chicago

135. Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu, Assistant Professof of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University

136. David Hollenbach, SJ, University Chair in Human Rights & International Justice, Boston College

137. Stephen Pope, Professor of Theological Ethics, Boston College

138. Patricia Beattie Jung, Prof. of Christian Ethics/Oubri A. Poppele Prof. of Health/Welfare Ministries, St. Paul School of Theology

139. James Fredericks, Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University

140. Richard R. Gaillardetz, Joseph McCarthy Professor of Catholic Systematic Theology, Boston College

141. Amir Hussain, Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University

142. Mark Potter, Provincial Assistant for Social Ministries, California Province for the Society of Jesus

143. William Madges, Prof. of Theology & Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, St. Joseph’s University

144. Michael Baxter, Center for World Catholicism, DePaul University

145. William J. Collinge, Knott Professor of Theology, Mount St. Mary’s University

146. Jonathan Rothchild, Associate Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University

147. Brian Stiltner, Assoc. Prof. & Chairperson of Philosophy, Theology & Religious Studies, Sacred Heart University

148. Catherine M. Mooney, Associate Professor of Church History, Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

149. John F. Baldovin, SJ, Prof. of Historical & Liturgical Theology, Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

150. Ernesto Valiente, Assistant Professor, Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

151. Brett C. Hoover, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University

152. Mary R. D’Angelo, Associate Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame

153. Padraic O’Hare, Professor of Religious & Theological Studies, Merrimack College

154. Patrick T. McCormick, Professor of Christian Ethics, Gonzaga University

155. Johann M. Vento, Associate Professor of Religious Studies & Theology, Georgian Court University

156. Rev. Louis Arceneaux, CM, Peace & Justice, Western Province of the Congregation of the Mission, USA

157. Laurie Cassidy, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Marywood University

158. Margaret R. Pfeil, Assistant Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame

159. Edward T. Ulrich, Associate Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas (MN)

160. Christopher J. Viscardi, SJ, Professor of Theology & Spirituality, Spring Hill College

161. Kristin E. Heyer, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University

162. Joseph Miller, Campus Minster, Stonehill College

163. Shannon Berry, Teaching Fellow in Systematic Theology, The Catholic University of America

164. Sr. Jamie T. Phelps, O.P., Professor of Theology, Chicago, IL

165. Phyllis Zagano, Senior Research Associate-in-Residence, Religion Dept, Hofstra University

166. Kelle Lynch-Baldwin, Assistant Professor of Theology, Ohio Dominican University

167. Radoslav Lojan, PhD cand., Saint Paul University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

168. John W. Martens, Associate Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas (MN)

169. Mark DelCogliano, Adjunct Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas (MN)

170. Julie McDonald, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Saint Joseph’s University

171. Nicholas Albares, Parish Social Ministry Coordinator, Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of New Orleans

172. Patrick Lynch, SJ, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Canisius College

173. Gregory J. O’Meara, SJ, Associate Professor, Marquette University Law School

174. Dennis Hamm, SJ, Holder of the Graff Endowed Chair in Catholic Theology, Creighton University

175. David DeCosse, Director of Campus Ethics Programs, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University

176. Denise Starkey, Assistant Professor & Chair of Theology & Religious Studies Dept., The College of St. Scholastica

177. Jason King, Associate Professor & Chair of Theology Dept., Saint Vincent College

178. Amanda C. Osheim, Assistant Professor of Practical Theology, Loras College

179. Alan C. Mitchell, Associate Professor of New Testament & Christian Origins, Georgetown University

180. Julia Fleming, Professor of Moral Theology & Dept. Chair, Creighton University

181. Pam Rector, Director, Center for Service & Action, Loyola Marymount University

182. Philip Endean, SJ, Visiting Professor of Theology, Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

183. Kobi Ako Abayomi, Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology

184. Andrea Vicini, SJ, Associate Professor of Moral Theology, Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

185. Thomas Ryan, Director, Loyola Institute for Ministry, New Orleans

186. Thomas Kelly, Associate Professor of Theology, Creighton University

187. Fr. Thomas Washburn, OFM, Executive Secretary, English Speaking Provincials Conference of the Order of Friars Minor (The Franciscans)

To be added to this list, email Tobias Winright at twinrigh@slu.edu with your name, position, and institutional affiliation. Those wishing more information about this statement may contact the first four signatories, who co-authored it.

Read also: Pope Benedict XVI’s plea to commute Troy Davis’ sentence: http://savannahnow.com/troy-davis/2007-07-20/pope-makes-plea-spare-life-troy-davis

The Catholic Bishops’ of Georgia letter to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles:http://www.archatl.com/media/storage/troydavis09122011.pdf

Called to sincerity

2011-09-24T18:59:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, September 25, 2011:

A man was being tailgated by the car behind him on a busy street one day. As he approached the intersection, the light turned yellow. Being a responsible driver, he came to a stop before it turned red. The person in the car behind him went nuts, screaming in frustration, arms flailing, laying on the car’s horn. Still in mid-rant, the driver heard a tap on the window and looked to see a very serious police officer standing there. The officer ordered the driver out of the car with hands up, and took him to the police station where he was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a cell. After a couple of hours, the policeman approached the cell and let the now calmer driver out. The officer said, “I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn and yelling at the car in front of you. I noticed the ‘Choose Life’ license plate holder, and the bumper stickers that said, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ and ‘Follow Me to Church’, and the chrome plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, watching your behavior, I assumed you had stolen the car.”

The original meaning of the word “hypocrite” comes from the similar Greek word meaning: a stage actor; or one who pretends to be something he is not. Saying we are one thing and doing another – that is the straight forward theme that Jesus wants to bring out in our Gospel passage today. Or put another way, He is giving us a choice in our lives between hypocrisy and sincerity.

Jesus today tells this parable of two sons who say one thing and do another. Asked by the father to go and work in the vineyard the first son said no but later reconsidered his decision and did the work. The second son, on the other hand, courteously said yes to the father but failed to do the work. Who actually did what his father wanted? Clearly it is the first son, the same one who had initially said no.

Jesus had a very low tolerance for hypocrisy. In the Gospels it is one sin that He regularly condemns. Perhaps because it is one of the easiest sins to fall into. It's so easy to change our outward behavior in order to fit in with everyone around us. We know it isn’t easy to honestly witness to the truths of Christianity in a world that constantly calls us into sin. But falling into this type of hypocrisy is a losing strategy, because sooner or later every actor has to take off his mask.

A very concrete example of this type of hypocrisy or wearing of a mask comes from the Marquis de Condorset, a nobleman who lived during the French Revolution. The Revolution was tough on nobility. For years the aristocracy had exploited the common people, forcing many of them to suffer and starve while the nobles lived in luxury. With the revolution came payback and so many noblemen tried to escape punishment by disguising themselves to slip out of the country undetected. The Marquis de Condorset donned the ragged clothes of a peasant and attempted to make his way to the nearest border. His ploy worked until he stopped at an inn full of real peasants. The disguised nobleman walked into the inn, sat down at a table, and ordered an omelet made with a dozen eggs; a bad move in front of a group of people who could never afford such an extravagant meal. They immediately saw through his disguise; and off he was sent to prison.

Hypocrisy is like that: we put on different disguises or masks in order to be someone or something we are not. But, Jesus reminds us that when we lose sight of who we really are, we also lose sight of everyone else, including God.And this is where sincerity comes in; the only true antidote to hypocrisy. If hypocrisy makes us blind to God's presence in our lives; sincerity opens the eyes of our hearts to find Him everywhere, helping us to be more clearly and honestly the people He has called us to be. And so, we are called to embrace sincerity in three key areas of our lives.

First, to be sincere in our relationship with God. We must never try to impress God or put on a show for Him; or change Him into the God of our own making. We must simply open our hearts to Him like little children, so that he can touch our hearts with His transforming grace. After all, He knows our hearts and thoughts and minds thoroughly already. And He knows the fullness of what we are called to be.

Second, we must be sincere in our relationship with ourselves. We must never lie to ourselves about the reasons we do things, making false excuses or immaturely passing the buck. We must take responsibility for our actions, good and bad, confident that God can fix whatever we may break. As Christ said, the truth will set us free.

Third, we are called to be sincere in our words. It is so easy to distort the truth when we talk. We like to flatter people, or make them admire us, and so we say things that aren't really true. We don't have an obligation to tell everything to everyone, but we always have an obligation to be truthful in what we choose to say; especially when it comes to witnessing to our faith. Do people know we are followers of Christ by what we say and do?

In just a few moments Jesus will feed us once again with Holy Communion – His Sacred Body. You’ve heard the phrase before: If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Well, the Eucharist can serve to strengthen our resolve to be sincere Christians, with hearts open to God's grace, and not hypocrites who merely say one thing but do another. The pure, white, unleavened bread that will soon be transformed into Christ's body is also an image of sincerity. Its beauty is in its simplicity - no show, nothing fancy, just so much flour and water, just a humble host of eternal Truth.

That's exactly what every Christian is called to be.Let us all pledge to become what we receive. We receive that simple, humble, honest Presence of Christ in the Eucharist in the hopes that we will become the same in our world. Let us make the prayer we pray before receiving communion our motto today, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” Let Jesus heal any places of hypocrisy in our lives so that we may be sincere and true and convicted Christians.

May the Lord give you peace.

"Christ's peace must reign in your hearts"

2011-09-10T19:32:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, September 11, 2011:
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“Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. Forgive your neighbor's injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.” “Peter approached Jesus and asked him, ‘Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.’”

I am regularly amazed at how our liturgy and the readings at Mass have a way of speaking to our exact moments in history. I’m sure as we gather in Church this morning, there is really only one thing on our minds – we all are communally reflecting on the events that took place 10 years ago today; events that changed our world and changed our lives. And, even as we gather, God is speaking to us through His Holy Word reminding us that “wrath and anger are hateful things” and that each of us who follow Him are called to forgive “seventy-seven times” an analogy that really means that we are called to forgive infinitely.

The major question on television and in the media today seems to be simply this, “How have we changed?” From a faith perspective, as I have reflected on that question, I think that it perhaps isn’t the right question. For me, it isn’t about how we have changed. It is about who we’ve become; or rather who we realize we are called to be.

Let’s think about the way that God speaks to us through the Holy Mass. I’m sure that you, like me, have been recalling your own memories of that day 10 years ago – where you were when you heard, what you remember, how you reacted. But, my most poignant memories of the days immediately following the attacks are memories of the Mass. So, what did God have to say to us following the events of September 11, 2001? Two days later, this is what we read in the Gospel at Mass, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” We also heard that day from St. Paul who wrote, “Christ’s peace must reign in your hearts, since as members of the one body, you have been called to that peace.”

The day after that we would mark the Triumph of the Holy Cross and the next day was the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. These were not and are not coincidences, instead, I believe, they are what God always does for us – He reminds us of who He is and He reminds us of who we are.

So, who are we? Who did God reminds us that we are particularly in the aftermath of one of the worst days in our nation’s history? First, He said, “Love your enemies?” Those words may have never been harder to hear than on that day, but God wanted us to remember something very simple, “Do not hate them.” Why? Because hatred pushes the love and the peace of Christ out of our hearts and when that happens Evil prevails in us. And so, do not hate your enemies. C.S. Lewis put it this way, “To be a Christian is to forgive the inexcusable, because God has already forgiven it in us.”

During that first week after September 11th, we experienced the horror of the cross. We, like Mary, Our Lady of Sorrow, had our hearts pierced with pain as we watched what happened. But, our God also reminded us that for those who follow Christ, death is never the end, the cross doesn’t complete the story, it only begins it – this is a story that always ends with resurrection. It is always a story pregnant with new life just waiting to be born. And so, “Christ’s peace must reign in your hearts.”

And what did God remind us about Himself? Deacon Greg Kandra, a deacon in New York City, in his homily for this weekend shared this recollection. “Anyone who saw the 2002 Super Bowl saw something unforgettable. And it had nothing to do with sports. It was held in New Orleans, in the Super Dome. The half time entertainment was Bono and U-2. There must have been 100,000 people in the stadium, cheering wildly. Bono stepped onto the stage and the lights dimmed and the crowd roared and the band began to play. If you watch video of that performance, you can hear Bono, over the music and the cheering, speaking into his microphone: ‘Lord, open my lips that my mouth may sing forth your praise.’ The same words spoken at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Hours in the Catholic Church. And in fact, what followed turned out to be a kind of prayer.

“As the song began, and the music swelled, behind the stage a massive banner started to rise, coming up from the floor of the stage, rising toward the ceiling, hundreds of feet above. Around the world, I imagine, millions of viewers were transfixed – stunned and moved at what they were witnessing. On the banner were projected the names of all those who had died on 9/11, less than five months before. And the music continued, and it went on, Bono and U2 singing about a place ‘where the streets have no name.’ And the banner kept growing, and the list kept getting longer. It seemed like it would never end. Name after name after name, like a visual litany of the lost. Then the banner reached the roof of the Superdome. And it collapsed, rippling to the floor... And at the end of the song, with the crowd on its feet, screaming wildly, Bono opened his jacket and there, inside, was sewn an American flag. He stood there in defiance, and in pride, and in solidarity.

“There have been so many other tributes and memorials and remembrances since that day – but nothing like that. It was raw, and it was real. An Irishman stood on a stage in New Orleans and paid tribute to a tragedy that struck New York and Pennsylvania and Washington and he said, in effect, I’m with you. Inside, I’m one of you. This is my tribute, my remembrance, my prayer.”

My brothers and sisters, I think this is exactly what God reminded us about Himself. That He is with us; that He is one of us. The French poet Paul Claudel said, “Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or to remove it. He came to fill it with His presence.” In the face of evil, God reminded us that this is exactly who He is – one of us and with us. In the days, weeks and years that have followed, God has continually remained near to those who suffer, comforting those who are in pain, consoling those who grieve, speaking to the hearts of all, His message of love and peace and comfort and healing; offering to us, His children, another way – the way of peace, a way that rejects the hatred of one against the other, a way that opens our eyes to see each other as brother and sister and friend.

We need only look at our risen Lord and the wounds Thomas asked to touch. We don’t think about this too often, the fact that Jesus took His wounds with Him to eternity. He is a wounded God, sharing in our infirmities, carrying our brokenness with Him. He let Himself be injured through His love for us. His wounds are a sign for us that He understands and allows Himself to be wounded out of love for us. These wounds of His: how real they were on that day 10 years ago; and how real they are to us today.

So, have we changed? Are we different today? I don’t know. But, I can only hope and pray that we are more fully who God calls us to be; that we are more clearly a people who believe in justice and compassion; in love and kindness; in forgiveness and mercy and prayer. And, that we are more keenly aware than ever that our God is near to us, comforting us, sheltering our pain in His wounds and giving us the hope that tomorrow will be a better day; a day bursting forth with new life.

My friends let us remember that “Christ’s peace must reign in your hearts, since as members of the one body, you have been called to that peace.”

Let us now bow our heads for a brief moment of silence for all those who lost their lives 10 years ago and in the years since. And let us pray together through the intercession of Mary, Queen of Peace, that our world may come to know the fullness of God’s peace in our days. Hail Mary…

May God give to each of us His peace.

Religious as Prophets of Hope in Times of Crisis

2011-09-10T16:12:00.000-04:00

NOTE: I was honored to be asked to address the religious men and women of the Diocese today during the Annual Day of Recollection for Religious. My talk was entitled, "Religious as Prophets of Hope in Times of Crisis" and the text is below:
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A man was brought to Mercy Hospital, and taken quickly in for coronary surgery. The operation went well and, as the groggy man regained consciousness, he was reassured by a Sister of Mercy who was waiting by his bed. “Mr. Smith, you're going to be just fine,” said the nun, gently patting his hand. “We do need to know, however, how you intend to pay for your stay here. Are you covered by insurance?” “No, sorry, I don't have any insurance,” the man whispered. “Can you pay in cash?” persisted the nun. “I'm afraid I cannot, Sister.” “Well, do you have any close relatives?” the nun insisted. “Just my sister in New Mexico,” he volunteered. “But she's a humble spinster nun.” The Sister responded, “Oh no, I must correct you, Mr. Smith. Nuns are not spinsters; they are married to Jesus.” “Wonderful,” said Smith. “In that case, please send the bill to my brother-in-law.”

It is such a blessing and an honor to be here and address you today. By a show of hands do we have any Dominican Sisters of Hope here today? How about any Sacred Hearts Fathers? Any Sisters of Mercy? How about any other Franciscan Friars? I ask this question because I stand here before you today, 20 years after entering my life as a Franciscan, because of you. I was taught by the Dominican Sisters at St. Francis Xavier in Acushnet and brought to the Sacraments by the Sacred Heart Fathers there as well. I found my first images of happy and holy community from the Sisters of Mercy, through my Aunt, Sr. Maureen Mitchell. And, it was, of course, with the Friars that I found my home and my particular calling to religious life.

So, when I speak on the theme of religious life today and the power of the witness of consecrated life to the world around us, my thoughts are not theoretical, they are practical. It was the witness of so many religious women and men of the Diocese of Fall River that were first prophets of hope and holiness to me.

In many ways, our times are marked by crisis. Certainly this weekend we are all very conscious of the era of terrorism and war that we have lived with for the past decade. And, concurrent with the crisis in our world has been a crisis in our Church as we have struggled with an abuse scandal that has rocked us all and perhaps even made some of us question why we do what we do. So, what are we to do as women and men committed to living consecrated life in the Church and in the world? And how can our witness to the life we have been called to be the sign and symbol to others for the return to goodness and holiness and peace that we all desire?

We naturally focus upon the challenges present in our own times. I think of the challenges we’ve faced over the course of just my lifetime – the tumult and uncertainty both within the church and society during the 1960s – the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the war in Vietnam, the struggle for Civil Rights, all coupled with the most dramatic changes the Church had seen in centuries including a drastic and tremendous change in the form and focus of religious life; the disillusionment in government during the 1970s and the economic and political crises that ended that decade; the greed of the 1980s and the scourge of AIDS; a sexual abuse scandal in the Church that begin to slowly come to light through the 1990s reaching its peak just past the turn of the new millennium.

We can look at these things and be tempted to feel overwhelmed by them, depressed even by them. We can tend to think that things have never been as bad as they are today or that we are helpless and hopeless to do anything about it. We can look at our shrinking churches and shrinking communities and think the end is near.
Now, I don’t know about you, but for me – I reject those notions. In fact, I embrace the opposite. I think that it is particularly in these moments that the church and the world needs us; needs our public witness of a life lived fully for God in the context of community, with a love for the poor and in the context of the Church. I think the church and the world desperately needs the hope that our way of life has to offer.

In fact, last month, during World Youth Day in Madrid, our Holy Father Pope Benedict met with a group of religious women and made this very point. He said, “In a world of relativism and mediocrity we need that radicalism to which your consecration bears witness. Your lives must testify to the personal encounter with Christ which has nourished your consecration.” My sisters and brothers, the world needs our witness of religious life today perhaps more than ever. The world needs religious women and men to be signs and prophets of hope in a world that instead seems to have embraced violence and war and greed and suffering.

So what does this look like, this being a Prophet of Hope? What does it mean to be a sign to the world? Well, let me back up about 800 years and share with you some lessons in being Prophets of Hope from my own Franciscan Tradition.

We may think that the crises we face today are as bad as things have ever been. But, any student of the 13th century can tell you that is not the case. Let me paint a picture for you of the world and the Church that St. Francis of Assisi encountered in his times.

As important as the Second Vatican Council is to our time, the Fourth Lateran Council was to the times of Francis and Clare. The Fourth Lateran Council took place in the year 1215. It was a truly extraordinary Council in the history of the Church. It was one of the best attended Councils ever. There were 1,383 people there: 71 patriarchs and metropolitans, 412 bishops, and 900 abbots and priors together with representatives of several monarchs. St. Francis was among those there.

Pope Innocent III when calling the Council’s stated its purpose “to eradicate vices and to plant virtues, to correct faults and to reform morals, to remove heresies and to strengthen faith, to settle discords and to establish peace, to get rid of oppression and to foster liberty, to induce princes and Christian people to come to the aid of the holy Land...” So, they had their sites set high.

The Council issued 71 canons and some of the more famous ones were canons that defined Transubstantiation, established seminaries for the proper training of priests, gave us the Easter Duty, it also is the Council that mandates Tabernacles for the Blessed Sacrament and Ambries for the Holy Oils. But, if you want to get a sense of the state of affairs at the time, let me share with you just a few of the Canons from the Council:

Canon 15: All clerics shall carefully abstain from drunkenness. Wherefore, let them accommodate the wine to themselves, and themselves to the wine. Nor shall anyone be encouraged to drink, for drunkenness banishes reason and incites to lust. We decree, therefore, that that abuse be absolutely abolished by which in some localities the drinkers bind themselves suo modo to an equal portion of drink and he in their judgment is the hero of the day who out drinks the others.

Canon 16: Clerics shall not hold secular offices or engage in secular and, above all, dishonest pursuits. They shall not attend the performances of mimics and buffoons, or theatrical representations. They shall not visit taverns except in case of necessity, namely, when on a journey. They are forbidden to play games of chance or be present at them. They must have a becoming crown and tonsure and apply themselves diligently to the study of the divine offices and other useful subjects. Their garments must be worn clasped at the top and neither too short nor too long. They are not to use red or green garments or curiously sewed together gloves, or beak-shaped shoes or gilded bridles, saddles, pectoral ornaments (for horses), spurs, or anything else indicative of excess. Buckles may under no condition be worn, nor sashes having ornaments of gold or silver, nor rings, unless it be in keeping with the dignity of their office.

Canon 17: It is a matter for regret that there are some minor clerics and even prelates who spend half of the night in banqueting and in unlawful gossip, not to mention other abuses, and in giving the remainder to sleep. They are scarcely awakened by the diurnal concerts of the birds. Then they hasten through matins in a hurried and careless manner. There are others who say Mass scarcely four times a year and, what is worse, do not even attend Mass, and when they are present they are engaged outside in conversation with lay people to escape the silence of the choir; so that, while they readily lend their ears to unbecoming talk, they regard with utter indifference things that are divine.

Canon 18: No cleric may pronounce a sentence of death, or execute such a sentence, or be present at its execution. Nor may any cleric write or dictate letters destined for the execution of such a sentence.

Canon 27: Since the direction of souls is the art of arts, we strictly command that bishops, either themselves or through other qualified men, diligently prepare and instruct those to be elevated to the priesthood in the divine offices and in the proper administration of the sacraments of the Church. If in the future they presume to ordain ignorant and unformed men (a defect that can easily be discovered), we decree that both those ordaining and those ordained be subject to severe punishment. In the ordination of priests especially, it is better to have a few good ministers than many who are no good, for if the blind lead the blind both will fall into the pit (Matt. 15:14).

There are of course many more, but these I think sufficiently illustrate the point. Think about the image of the 13th Century Church that these canons paint. We have an out-of-control clergy with little or no care for their own spiritual life or the life of those they serve; untrained, dressing wildly, praying rarely, drunk frequently, renting out the Church buildings for profit, and potentially handing down and carrying out death sentences on the people in their towns.

And yet, when we think of the 13th Century, its scandals are not the first thing that come to mind. We think instead of great holiness and hope. This is the era, after all, that gives us so many saints like Francis, Clare and Agnes of Assisi, Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, Anthony of Padua and Elizabeth of Hungary. Believe it or not, there were also some who were not Franciscans – saints like Dominic, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Agnes of Prague, Ingrid of Sweden, and so many more.

In other words, this era of great scandal and crisis in the Church and the world becomes the impetus which inspires countless good women and men to not throw in the towel, but instead to pursue greater and greater holiness. Let’s look at St. Francis in particular and how he responded. I would contend that in the face of the darkness of his times, St. Francis became a Prophet of Hope to the church and to the world around him. How did he do it? By loving the Church and the world to holiness.

There is a famous story in the life of Francis when he had travelled to the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome in 1209 seeking the approval of Pope Innocent III for this new way of life; the life of the Gospel that he sought to live. The Pope was uncertain about allowing this, as others had tried this life of poverty and often ended in heresy. But, then, the Pope had a dream. In his life of St. Francis, St. Bonaventure writes about it saying, “In a dream the Roman Pontiff himself saw that the Lateran Basilica was almost ready to fall down, and a poor little, small and scorned man, was propping it up with his own bent back so that it would not fall…[The Pope] said, ‘Truly, this is he who will hold up Christ’s Church by what he does and what he preaches.’” That dream would be, itself, prophetic.

So, how did Francis respond to the state of affairs in his world? One of the things he did was to love. The biographies and legends of his life are full of stories that are ultimately stories of love – how Francis loved his brothers, how he loved the poor, how he loved the lepers, how he loved Muslims (let’s not forget even in a church bent on Crusade, Francis went and instead met with Sultan Malik al-Kamil in love sharing with him the Gospels in dialogue; an encounter that had the potential of ending the Crusades – how’s that for a model for us today?) and Francis so deeply loved the Church. He did this so profoundly simply by the way he lived and interacted with others. We’ve all heard the famous quote attributed to St. Francis, “Live the Gospel at all times, when necessary use words.” Now whether he actually said that is another question – but he definitely lived it. He might have even said, “Love at all times, when necessary use words.”

One of the other things he did was to write. The Council Fathers told all those present to spread the word of what they had done there. Francis takes this up with vigor. He writes to everyone – to his friars, to clerics, to rulers of the world, to Provincials, to all the faithful. He writes to everybody. And rather than curse the darkness, Francis encourages them to the light.

To a clergy mired in scandal, Francis encourages them in hope to holiness. First, he warns them in their sin. He writes, “Remember my brother priests, what has been written concerning the law of Moses, how one transgressing even in corporals things used to die without any pity by the sentence of the Lord. How much greater and more worse are the torments one merits to suffer, who has trampled upon the Son of God?” But, then he encourages them saying, “See your dignity, my brother priests, and be holy, because He himself is Holy. And just as above all others on account of this ministry the Lord God has honored you, in this manner also love, revere, and honor Him above all others…Let the whole man tremble with fear, let the whole world begin to completely quake, and let heaven exult, when upon the altar in the hand of the priest is Christ, the Son of the living God!...Therefore keep nothing of yourselves for yourselves, so that He may receive you whole, He who manifests Himself wholly to you.”

He writes similarly to all the faithful saying to them, “We also ought to frequently visit churches and [honor] clerics, not so much for their own sake, if they be sinners, but on account of their office and administration of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, which they sacrifice upon the altar and receive and administer to others.”

In virtually every one of his writings, Francis follows this same path – calling the sinful, especially those within the church, to holiness and reminding people what was important in their faith. Challenge and hope, backed up by the power of his personal witness to holiness and love and the life of the Gospel.

A century that began mired in heresy, crisis and scandal is a century that ended as one of the greatest periods of holiness in the history of the Church. It is a time that inspired others to become prophets of hope to a world in crisis.

And, I think this is what we are called to do too – in our world, in our communities, in our church. We are called to be Prophets of Hope to a world that needs that hope desperately. So, how do we do this today?

Let me offer a few suggestions. The first is to remember who we are as consecrated women and men. We know that at the heart of our call, we strive to live what every Christian is called to; in that our way of life is not unique. In his 1994 Apostolic Exhortation on Consecrated Life, Vita Consecrata, Blessed Pope John Paul II said, “In effect, the consecrated life is at the very heart of the church as a decisive element for her mission, since it ‘manifests the inner nature of the Christian calling.’ The Consecrated Life is a precious and necessary gift for the present and future of the People of God, since it is an intimate part of her life, her holiness and her mission.” What we live is what every Christian is called to – but we live it publicly, we live it for everyone to see, we live it on the outside as a witness. We remind the People of God, through our public witness, that there is still value in our world of making a complete and total gift of ourselves to God.

The second way that we are Prophets of Hope is that through our way of life, we remind the world that goodness is still possible; that holiness is still attainable. We remind the world that sin isn’t the only option; that vengeance isn’t the only answer; that greed and the accumulation of power and wealth are not the solution; that purity and dignity and a selfless commitment to others can still exist and can still, in fact, change our world. We remind the church and the world that there is another way; a better way.

And the third quality for Prophets of Hope is the most important one – love. When we break down what St. Francis and St. Clare did – as I’m sure we could for any of the founders and countless members of your communities and congregations – we find the same thing. They loved! They loved Jesus; they loved the Church; they loved the sinners; they loved the marginalized – they loved. And so must we. We are prophets of hope when we love others to goodness; when we love our world to peacefulness; when we love our neighbors to compassion and care, especially for the poor and marginalized; and, yes, when we love our church past even its own sin to holiness.

After all, St. Paul reminds us in First Corinthians, “If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

At the closing Mass of World Youth Day in Toronto back in 2002 – a Mass I was honored to concelebrate – Blessed Pope John Paul II said the following, “If you love Jesus, love the Church! The harm done by some priests and religious to the young and vulnerable fills us all with a deep sense of sadness and shame. But think of the vast majority of dedicated and generous priests and religious whose only wish is to serve and do good! At difficult moments in the Church's life, the pursuit of holiness becomes even more urgent.”

So, let us as Prophets of Hope, as public witnesses to the Gospel, as women and men of holiness and goodness and peace and compassion – let us challenge our world by the witness of our lives lived consecrated to Jesus Christ and His Church; and let us do that filled with an overwhelming and overflowing love.

Let me end with a reflection on hope that I came across recently:

• To have hope is to believe that history continues, open to the dream of God and to human creativity.
• To have hope is to continue affirming that it is possible to dream a different world, without hunger, without injustice, without discrimination.
• To have hope is to be a courier of God and courier of men and women of good will, tearing down walls, destroying borders, building bridges.
• To have hope is to believe in the revolutionary potential of faith, is to leave the door open so that the Spirit can enter and make all things anew.
• To have hope is to begin again as many times as necessary.
• To have hope is to believe that hope is not the last thing that dies.
• To have hope is to believe that hope cannot die that hope no longer dies.
• To have hope is to live.

The crises at the start of the 13th Century would usher in a renewal in holiness that swept over the Church and the world as the men and women of that day, especially those consecrated religious, became Prophets of Hope to the challenge of their times.

As we sit at the start of the second decade of both a new century and millennium, why should our time be any different? Why can’t our response be just the same? Perhaps our world and our religious communities are just waiting to give birth to the saints of this age; the holy and hopeful women and men who will lead this time back to the Gospel. Perhaps it is up to us to love the church and the world to holiness. All we need to is choose it.

I thank you for the opportunity to be with you today and to share some thoughts with you today. I thank you for your witness of hope and love to me.

May God give all of us His hope, His love and His peace.

Am I my brother's and sister's keeper?

2011-09-03T11:45:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, September 4, 2011:
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There were two young mischievous boys who were always getting into trouble. If any mischief occurred in town, these two were probably involved. At her wits end, their mother heard that the priest in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys. The priest agreed so the mother sent the younger boy in first. The priest, a huge man with a booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked him sternly, 'Do you know where God is, son?' The boy's eyes opened wide, but he made no response, sitting there with his mouth hanging open. So the priest repeated the question in an even sterner tone, 'Where is God?' Again, the boy made no attempt to answer. The priest raised his voice even more and shook his finger in the boy's face and bellowed, 'Where is God?' The boy screamed and bolted from the room, ran directly home and dove into his closet, slamming the door behind him.

When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, 'What happened?' The younger brother, catching his breath, replied, 'We are in BIG trouble this time…GOD is missing, and they think we did it!’

In our first reading from Ezekiel today, we heard God say, “If you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way I will hold you responsible.” All of today’s readings beg a very familiar and timeless question of us, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Our Scriptures answer that question with a definitive “yes” today. As Christians we are called to be noticeably different than the rest of the world. To a world bent on greed, we are to be signs of selfless giving; to a world bent on violence and war, we are to be signs and instruments of peace; to a world bent on deception and lies, we are to be a sign of honesty and truthfulness. Let us consider these three situations:

A salesman for an airport limo service said to a father, “Sir, you son looks young for his age. Take a half-price ticket. If the limousine driver questions you, just say that the boy is under 12. Save yourself a few bucks.” If you had been that father, what would you have said to the salesman?

Or, how about this: A mother caught her five-year-old daughter with a stolen candy bar just after they returned from the supermarket. If you were that mother what would you do?

Or finally: Suppose you heard your son’s best friend say to your son, “If you need any answer on the math test, just give me a signal.” If that had been your son, would you keep on reading your newspaper, or would you put it down and have a talk with the boys?

I have no way of knowing what you would do in those cases, but I do know what Jesus would do. The answer is found in today’s readings which focus on the mutual obligation that every Christian has towards one another. As followers of Christ, we have a moral obligation not only to do what is right, but also to help each other do what is right. Jesus told his followers, “You are the salt of the earth….You are the light of the world…Your light must shine brightly before others.”

Let us return to our three situations. What would a Christian response be to each of them? What should a follower of Jesus say to the limo salesman who encouraged the father to lie about his son’s age? Well this is a true story. The real father told the salesman, “I appreciate where you are coming from, but I want my son to be truthful, even if it works to his momentary disadvantage.”

And what about the mother whose daughter stole the candy bar? Also a true story. The real Christian mother had the child return the candy to the supermarket manager and apologize. But, to the mother’s dismay, the manager said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s such a small item. My employees steal much more than that from me every day.” What an unfortunate reply. The manager taught the child the lesson that stealing is no big deal if you only steal something small. God tells us that stealing is always wrong, no matter what. “Thou shalt not steal.”

And finally, what about the young boys encouraging each other to cheat? Well, this too is a true story. Jerome Weidman, author of Hand of the Hunter, had this experience as a boy. As a child in school in New York’s lower East Side, he had a third grade math teacher, Mrs. O’Neill, who gave her class a math test one day. When grading the tests, she noticed that 12 boys had given the same odd answer to one question. The next day she asked the 12 boys to remain after class. Then, without accusing any of them, she wrote a simple sentence on the board; a quote from Thomas Macaulay which read, “The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.” Weidman wrote, “I don’t know about the other 11 boys, but I can say only this: it was the single most important lesson of my life.”

And so we have three different cases where three different Christians spoke up. Three Christians heeded Jesus’ instruction to help their brothers and sisters live the Christian life. Three Christians took God’s word to Ezekiel today seriously, “If you do not you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way I will hold you responsible.” Three Christians took St. Paul’s words seriously, “Love does no evil to the neighbor.” And, finally, three Christians took Jesus’ words today seriously, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.”

Edmund Burke once wrote, “All that is needed for evil to prosper is for good people to remain silent.” The three Christians in these cases did not keep silent. They encouraged others to holiness and godliness; and they invite us good Christians to follow their example.

A zookeeper was looking high and low one day, unable to find the zoo’s orangutan. Finally he found the monkey sitting in the public library holding a Bible in one hand, and Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in the other. Looking up the monkey said to the zookeeper, “I’m confused. Am I my brother’s keeper – or my keeper’s brother?”

My friends, make no mistake about the importance of being our brother’s and sister’s keeper. It is part of the fabric from which we were woven by God. God’s plan for you and me, and for everyone, includes being our brother’s keeper. But the question is not whether or not we are our brother’s keeper. The question is whether or not we actually keep our brother or sister, whether or not we look out for them, whether or not their welfare is our concern, whether or not we reach out and share faith and help meet the needs we see around us every day.

Let us take St. Paul’s words today to heart, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

May God give you peace.

"Take up your cross and follow Me."

2011-08-27T20:00:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, August 28, 2011:
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“Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Eugene Orowitz was a skinny, 100-pound sophomore at Collingswood High School in New Jersey in the 1950s. One day in gym class, the coach was teaching everyone how to throw a javelin. One by one, the students threw the six-foot-long spear. The longest throw was 30 yards. Finally, the coach looked over to Eugene and said, “You want to try, Orowitz?” Eugene nodded, and the other kids laughed. Some said, “You think you can lift it?” or “Careful, you might stab yourself.” But as he stood there, a strange feeling came over Eugene. Holding the javelin, he imagined himself as a young warrior about to enter into a battle. He raised the javelin, took six quick steps and let it fly. It soared and soared and soared eventually crashing into the empty bleachers. His throw went twice as far as anyone else’s.

When Eugene retrieved the javelin, he saw that the tip had broken in the crash. The coach looked at it and said, “Well, Orowitz, you broke the thing. It’s no good to us now. You might as well take it home.” That summer Eugene began throwing the javelin in a vacant lot. Some days, he spent six hours throwing it. By the end of his senior year, Eugene threw the javelin 211 feet – farther than any other high schooler in the nation. He was given an academic scholarship to college and began to dream of the Olympics. Then one day, he didn’t warm up properly, and while throwing tore the ligaments in his shoulder. That put an end to his javelin throwing, his scholarship, and his dreams. All his hard work was down the drain. It was as if God had slapped him in the face after he had performed a minor miracle with his puny, 100-pound body. Eugene dropped out of college and took a job at a warehouse.

The story of Eugene Orowitz raises a vexing question, one that is echoed in our Scriptures today: Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Why does He let suffering touch the lives of good people who don’t deserve it? We heard this in our first reading from Jeremiah. Why did God let a good man, a prophet, like Jeremiah be ridiculed? We heard Jeremiah’s frustration, “You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed. All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me.” And, why did God let tragedy tear the prize from the hands of Eugene Orowitz after he had worked so hard to win it?

Jesus gives us a hint of the answer to that question in today’s Gospel when he says, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” What Jesus is saying is hard to believe, even a bit crazy, to someone who doesn’t have faith. “Whoever accepts suffering and misfortune for my sake will find a whole new life.” And it will not be only in the world to come. It will be right here in this world, as well. And Jesus suggests that it will be a far richer life than the one lost by tragedy.

Another way to understand this is to realize that God doesn’t cause tragedy; He doesn’t harm us; or cause harm in the world; He doesn’t give people cancer or cause drunk driving accidents; He doesn’t cause or condone the wars we engage in. These horrible things aren’t God’s will; in fact they are the opposite of what God wills for us. But, in the midst of tragedy, God can use even those challenging situations to guide us to newer and better lives.

Take the case of Eugene Orowitz. We left him working in a warehouse his dreams seemingly crushed. But, one day, Eugene met a struggling actor who asked him for some help with his lines. Eugene got interested in acting himself and enrolled in acting class. His big break came when he was cast as Little Joe in the popular TV western “Bonanza” which ran for 14 years. Later, he got the leading role in other long-running TV shows, “Little House on the Prairie,” and “Highway to Heaven.” You see, you might know Eugene Orowitz better by his stage name, Michael Landon. And in his success, he came to realize that the most important thing that happened in his life was the day he tore those ligaments in his shoulder, even if it seemed like his world had ended that day. What seemed like the worst tragedy of his life was in fact one that led to incredible blessings and fortune; a life that far surpassed the dreams he once held.

How do we apply this to our own lives? Jesus give us the answer: “Take up your cross and follow me.” Or to make it even simpler – not my will Lord, but Your will be done. And so, if we are a young person who dreamed of making the basketball team, but got cut, we should pick up our cross and follow Jesus. He promises He will lead us to a better life. If we are an older person who dreamed of being a success in business, or having the world’s greatest family, or greatest marriage, but ended up with none of these, we should pick up our cross and follow Jesus. He will mend our broken dreams and lead us to a renewed appreciation of life that we never dreamed possible.

All of this, however, still doesn’t explain the mystery of suffering and misfortune. In the end, all we may be able to do when it strikes is trust in Jesus who says, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” We may never understand the mystery, but we can find comfort and direction in its midst. There is an old poem by an unknown author called “The Folded Page.” Let me end with it:

Up in the attic of an old house,

As raindrops pattered down on the roof,

I sat paging through my old schoolbook.

I came to a page that was folded down.

Across it was written in my old childish hand:

‘The teacher says we should leave this for now.

It’s too hard to understand.’

I unfolded the page and read it.

Then I smiled and nodded my head and said,

‘The teacher was right; now I understand.’

There are many pages in the book of life

That are hard to understand.

All we can do is fold them down and write:

‘The Master says to leave this for now.

It’s too hard to understand.’

Then, someday in heaven,

We’ll unfold the pages, reread them and say,

‘The Master was right; now I understand.’

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Let us lose ourselves in the life that Jesus has planned for us. Let us desire only what He wants for us and embrace the mystery of a life lived in and for Christ.

May God give you peace.

“Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house"

2011-08-20T18:51:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, August 21, 2011:
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Blessed John 23rd was pope during the turbulent 1960s when it seemed that everything was falling apart. The priesthood was in crisis, religious life was in crisis, marriage was in crisis, faith was in crisis, the church was in crisis. The pope worked long and hard hours trying to address these problems. One evening, after an exhausting day in the office, he went to his private chapel to do his daily Holy Hour before retiring but he was too exhausted and too stressed out to focus or pray. After a few minutes of futile effort, he got up and said, "Lord, the church belongs to you. I am going to bed."

Difficulties might have driven the Pope to acknowledge that the church belongs to Christ. But, as we heard in today’s Gospel passage, Jesus himself said it 2000 years ago: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”

This is the most explicit statement that Jesus makes in the Gospels about the church and it is crucial for a proper understanding of what the church is, and of our role in the church.

Most importantly, it reminds us that Jesus is the owner of the church. Neither Peter nor the disciples owned the church then; nor do bishops and pastors today. The Church belongs to Christ. All God's people have been called together as co-workers in Christ's vineyard, each with a distinct and important role to perform. But we do not own the church. Instead, we belong to the church under the leadership of Christ.

The passage also tells us that Jesus is the one who builds His church. “Upon you I will build my church.” He is the Master Builder who has the building plan in His hands. We co-operate with Him to help Him with the building. Our role is to listen and follow His instructions, doing our own small part in the grand design of the Master. When we force our own ideas rather than following the directives given by the Master, we may find ourselves working at cross purposes.

If Jesus is the owner and builder of the church, where then do we come in? We come in precisely where Peter comes in. Together with Peter we are the building blocks of the church; we are what Jesus uses to build His Church – we are what it is made of. Peter is the foundation rock and we are the pieces of stones with which the church is built. Peter himself wrote in his first letter, “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

Notice he doesn’t say “build yourselves up,” he says "let yourselves be built" – the passive voice. It is God Himself who is the builder and not us. Our role is to allow God to use us. The question we could ask ourselves today is: "How is God using me to build up his church? Am I letting God use me to build up his church?" We must not forget that no matter how small a piece of stone may be, the Master Builder still uses it to do something beautiful.

A famous stained-glass artist was commissioned to make a huge portrait of Christ for the cathedral in Chartres, France. First he laid all of the pieces he was going to use out on the floor of the cathedral. Among these awesome pieces of glass was a small, clear piece about as big as a fingernail. As the stained-glass portrait was assembled, that little piece remained on the floor. Only the big colorful pieces were used. On the day of the window's completion the entire city gathered to witness the unveiling of the portrait. The artist pulled down the cloth cover and the crowd gasped at the beauty of the colorful window glowing in the sunlight. After a few seconds, however, the crowd grew silent. They sensed that something was missing, that the portrait was unfinished. The great artist then walked over to where the little clear piece of glass lay, picked it up, and placed it in the portrait, right in the center of Jesus' eye. As the sun hit that little piece, it gave off a dazzling sparkle. The work of art was now complete.

My friends, in the grand design of building the church of God, each one of us could consider ourselves to be that small but indispensable piece of glass. Blessed John 23rd said this about our role in the church, “We are not on earth to guard a museum but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life.” Let us allow God to build up His church with us and through us.

“And so I say to you…upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”

May God give you peace!

"Great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish."

2011-08-13T15:06:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE TWENTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, August 14, 2011:
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A neighborhood woman was well-known for her faith and for her boldness in talking about it. She would regularly stand on her front porch and shout “Praise the Lord!” Next door to her lived an atheist who would get so angry at her proclamations he would shout back, “There is no Lord!!” One day, the woman found herself on hard times and she prayed to God to send her some help. Standing on her porch she shouted, “Praise the Lord! God, I’m having a hard time and need food. Please send me some groceries.” The next morning the she went out on her porch and found a large bag of groceries and shouted, of course, “Praise the Lord.” Immediately, her atheist neighbor jumped from behind a bush and said, “Aha! I told you there was no Lord. I bought those groceries, God didn't.” This only excited the woman more. Clapping her hands she said, “Praise the Lord! God not only sent me groceries, but He made the devil pay for them. Praise the Lord!”

We heard in our Gospel, “Jesus said to [the woman] in reply, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And the woman's daughter was healed from that hour.” Our Gospel passage today is the flip side of the coin that we heard in last week’s Gospel – and both of them are a reflection on the nature of faith. Last week, of course, we heard the dramatic story of Jesus walking on water and inviting Peter to do the same. Peter, as we recall, was strong in his faith walking on water with Jesus – for a moment – but soon found himself letting doubt creep back in and sinking in the Sea of Galilee. It was the story of a disciple challenged through faith into a miraculous moment; but letting doubt and fear cancel out the power of his faith.

But this week, we are on the flipside. This week we hear a story about someone who was not a disciple. In fact, this woman was a Canaanite, a group hated by the people of Jesus time. Like Peter, she was also challenged. But she confronted that challenge with determination and perseverance; and she did not lose the miraculous precisely because of the courage of her conviction. Her daughter was healed.

One side of that coin is an example of what doubt can do to our faith; the other tells of the transformative power of a strong and courageous faith.

But, our Gospel today also challenges us in another way. It begs a simple question of us – who does God love? Is God’s love available to all; or is it the property of a select few people or groups or sects?

Mahatma Gandhi in his autobiography tells how, during his student days, he read the Gospels and saw in the teachings of Jesus the answer to the major problem facing the people of India, their caste system. He had seriously considered becoming a Christian and attended church one Sunday morning hoping to talk to the minister about converting. On entering the church, however, the usher refused to give him a seat and told him to go and worship with his own people. Gandhi left the church and never returned. “If Christians have their own caste system,” he said, “I might as well remain a Hindu.”

Have you ever felt excluded? I think it is a rather common thing for most people to have experienced exclusion at some point in their lives. Some of us have felt it more than others and many have felt it more strongly. Were you ever the last one picked for the baseball team and it seemed no-one wanted you? Did you feel snubbed by some group because they felt you weren’t good enough? Were you not invited to a party because you didn’t seem to fit in? Were you excluded by others because of your economic status; or the color of your skin; or your liberal or conservative politics? I think that many of us have experienced this feeling at some point in our lives for any number of reasons.

Well, this can happen in a faith context as well. The belief that God's blessings are limited only to certain people has been around for a very long time. Every people and culture has a handful of such prejudices and myths - from the myth of the Jews as the only beloved people of God to that of no salvation outside the Catholic Church, from the prejudice of the caste system in India to that of racial superiority in Nazi Germany, from the myth of the superiority of men over women to that of the superiority of Western culture over all others. Such a belief was alive in the society in which Jesus grew up.

But, through this intervention of a complete outsider, the Canaanite woman, we become aware that God’s love and mercy are available to everyone. That through perseverance and faith, God’s power can be active in everyone’s lives. It calls to mind the hymn, “There is a wideness in God’s mercy.”

A man arrived at the gates of heaven. St. Peter asked his religion and the man answered, "Episcopalian." St. Peter says, "Go to room 24. But be very quiet as you pass room 8." A woman arrives at the gates of heaven and answers the same question, “I’m a Baptist.” St. Peter says, "Go to room 18. But be very quiet as you pass room 8." Finally a third person, who is Jewish, arrives and hears the same thing, "Go to room 11. But be very quiet as you pass room 8." Curious, he asks, "St. Peter, you have said the same thing to each of us. Why must we be quiet when we pass room 8?" St. Peter says, "Well, the Catholics are in room 8, and they think they're the only ones here."

We can be tempted to think that we have cornered the market on God; that we are the only ones to be included in the Kingdom of Heaven. That God loves us and only us. But, God poses to everyone the same invitation He poses to us, “Come and draw near to Me and I will draw near to you.”

As we gather today for this Eucharist, let us all have hearts that hunger for the miracle that is Christ in our lives. Let us thank Him for the gift and grace of our Catholic faith and let us be persistent in asking God for what we need. There is a wideness in God’s mercy; in His love and in His invitation. Let us pray that all my discover the treasure of faith that God has given to us. And our persistence, our courage and our faith will pay off in the end as the Lord says to each of us, “Great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

May the Lord give you peace!

Things you never knew you wanted to know!

2011-08-07T17:32:00.002-04:00

Q: Why do men's clothes have buttons on the right while women's clothes have buttons on the left?
A: When buttons were invented, they were very expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Since most people are right-handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes on the left. Because wealthy women were dressed by maids, dressmakers put the buttons on the maid's right! And that's where women's buttons have remained since.

Q: Why do ships and aircraft use 'mayday' as their call for help?
A: This comes from the French word m'aidez - meaning 'help me' -- and is pronounced, approximately, 'mayday.'

Q: Why are zero scores in tennis called 'love'?
A: In France , where tennis became popular, round zero on the scoreboard looked like an egg and was called 'l'oeuf,' which is French for 'egg.' When tennis was introduced in the US , Americans (mis)pronounced it 'love.'

Q. Why do X's at the end of a letter signify kisses?
A: In the Middle Ages, when many people were unable to read or write, documents were often signed using an X. Kissing the X represented an oath to fulfill obligations specified in the document. The X and the kiss eventually became synonymous.

Q: Why is shifting responsibility to someone else called 'passing the buck'?
A: In card games, it was once customary to pass an item, called a buck, from player to player to indicate whose turn it was to deal. If a player did not wish to assume the responsibility of dealing,he would 'pass the buck' to the next player.

Q: Why do people clink their glasses before drinking a toast?
A: It used to be common for someone to try to kill an enemy by offering him a poisoned drink. To prove to a guest that a drink was safe, it became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his drink into the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously. When a guest trusted his host, he would only touch or clink the host's glass with his own..
Q: Why are people in the public eye said to be 'in the limelight'?
A: Invented in 1825, limelight was used in lighthouses and theatres by burning a cylinder of lime which produced a brilliant light. In the theatre, a performer 'in the limelight' was the centre of attention.
Q: Why is someone who is feeling great 'on cloud nine'?
A: Types of clouds are numbered according to the altitudes they attain, with nine being the highest cloud. If someone is said to be on cloud nine, that person is floating well above worldly cares.

Q: In golf, where did the term 'Caddie' come from?
A. When Mary Queen of Scots went to France as a young girl, Louis, King of France, learned that she loved the Scots game 'golf.' So he had the first course outside of Scotland built for her enjoyment. To make sure she was properly chaperoned (and guarded) while she played, Louis hired cadets from a military school to accompany her. Mary liked this a lot and when returned to Scotland (not a very good idea in the long run), she took the practice with her. In French, the word cadet is pronounced 'ca-day' and the Scots changed it into 'caddie'.
Q: Why are many coin banks shaped like pigs?
A: Long ago, dishes and cookware in Europe were made of a dense orange clay called 'pygg'. When people saved coins in jars made of this clay, the jars became known as 'pygg banks.' When an English potter misunderstood the word, he made a container that resembled a pig. And it caught on.

Q: Did you ever wonder why dimes, quarters and half dollars have notches (milling), while pennies and nickels do not?
A: The US Mint began putting notches on the edges of coins containing gold and silver to discourage holders from shaving off small quantities of theprecious metals. Dimes, quarters and half dollars are notched because they used to contain silver. Pennies and nickels aren't notched because the metals they contain are not valuable enough to shave.

"Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid"

2011-08-06T21:09:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, August 7, 2011:
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Most visitors to the Holy Land like to take a boat ride across the Sea of Galilee, the sea on which Jesus walked. One pilgrim wanted to take the ride, but soon found out it would cost $50. "Fifty dollars!" exclaimed the tourist, "No wonder Jesus walked across the water!"

The story of Jesus walking on water is both familiar to us, and a bit confusing. What does it all mean? This is a tremendously layered story; one that has a lot to teach us about who Jesus is, but also about the church in its journey through the world, and about the life of faith of the individual believer.

So what does it say about Jesus? The miracle story of Jesus walking on the sea, together with last week’s passage - the multiplication of loaves – is an epiphany, a manifestation showing us that Jesus is Lord and as Lord has authority over all forces natural and supernatural. In the worldview of the Jews, the sea was the domain of supernatural demonic forces. A rough and stormy sea was regarded as the work of hostile spirits. By walking on the raging waves and calming the stormy sea, Jesus shows himself to be one who has power and total control over these hostile forces. Today's gospel brings us the good news that these powers of darkness stand no chance at all when Jesus is present and active in our lives. Jesus says to us, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”

This passage also has a lot to say about the Church. The boat on the sea is one of the earliest Christian symbols for the church in its journey through the world. Just as the boat is tossed about by the waves, so is the church pounded from all sides by forces that are hostile to the kingdom of God. In the midst of crisis, Jesus comes to restore peace and harmony in His church. But He comes in a form and manner in which He is easily mistaken. He comes in a way that makes many well-meaning Christians cry out in fear "It is a ghost!" as they try to keep Him out. But if we listen carefully, we shall hear through the storm His soft, gentle voice whispering in the wind, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” If we believe in His word and take Him on board, the storms will always subside.

But, we must act in faith. We must stand on the promise of Christ that if we are busy going about the duty He has assigned us, just as the disciples were busy rowing their boat to the other side of the shore as Jesus had instructed them, then Jesus Himself will come to us riding on the very waves that threaten to swallow us up. As the church in the modern world, like Peter's boat, sails through the stormy seas of our time, we need to keep an eye on those very seas looking for Jesus who comes to bring deliverance and peace. We must strive to recognize Him even when He comes in an unexpected form.

And what does this say about you and me; the individual believer? From our point of view, the story of Jesus walking on the seas, especially the involvement of Peter in the story, is a lesson for disciples who are tempted to take their eyes off Jesus and to take more notice of the threatening circumstances around them. Peter had says to Jesus, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." Jesus gives Him that word of command, "Come." It would seem like Jesus is commanding the impossible. Yet whatever Jesus commands us to do, He also gives us the power to do. And in faith, the ordinary man, Peter, begins to walk on the seas to Jesus. “But when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’” As long as Peter kept his eye fixed upon Jesus, and upon His word and power, he walked upon the water; but when he took notice of the danger he was in, and focused on the waves, then he became afraid and began to sink. “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”

And so it will be for you and me in our own individual spiritual journeys. As long as we keep our eyes on Jesus, our ears attentive to His words, our will firm in following His command – we too can conquer the storms that might beset us.

In the midst of our own personal trials and storms of tribulation, let our hearts be calmed as the waters were. Let us be comforted by the words of Jesus each and every day of our lives. “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid” and He will not let us down.

May God give you peace.

Feeding the 5,000: A good start!

2011-07-30T14:40:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, July 31, 2011:
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An older woman walked into the local church. The friendly usher greeted her at the door and helped her up the flight of steps. “Where would you like to sit?” he asked politely. ”The front row please.” she answered. ”You really don't want to do that”, the usher said. “The pastor is really boring.” ”Do you happen to know who I am?” the woman asked. ”No.” said the usher. ”I'm the pastor's mother,” she replied indignantly. Embarrassed, the usher asked, ”Do you know who I am?” ”No.” said the woman. To which he sighed and said, ”Good.”

“Those who ate were about five thousand” people. This story of the feeding of the 5,000 is one of the most compelling stories that we hear in the life of Jesus. It ranks right up there with the healing of lepers and the raising of Lazarus as truly miraculous moments that show with authority the true nature and identity of Jesus. I often reflect on this story in my mind’s eye trying to picture myself in the scene; to experience what it must have been like to be one of the disciples distributing the loaves and the fishes – in wonder and awe and the seemingly endless supply of food coming from those baskets. Imagine witnessing such glory?

As I have reflected on this miracle over the years, however, I have come to understand that this great event is really small potatoes in terms of manifesting God’s great power. As we reflect on what it might have been like to be present for the feeding of the 5,000; what would you think if I told you that you have been present for the feeding of the 5 million; 5 billion; 5 trillion; maybe more? The feeding of the 5,000 is not the highpoint of Jesus nourishing His holy people; instead, it is just a foretaste; a mere beginning.

On that beautiful day, on that beautiful hillside, Jesus was only getting started. You see this miracle is a sign of something to come. The feeding of the 5,000 is an event that looks to the future as it prefigures the gift of the Holy Eucharist. Just listen to the very language that Jesus used in this miracle – it is clearly Eucharistic language. “Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds.” This language reminds us of the words that Jesus would later proclaim at the Last Supper; and they prefigure the words that Jesus will say again today, through the ministry of my priesthood, in this Eucharist.

The key difference is that on that glorious day 2,000 years ago, Jesus said the blessing prayer and gave to the people ordinary bread to eat; which sustained them for a day. Today, Jesus again says the blessing prayer, but will give to us the Eucharistic bread from Heaven. And, my brothers and sisters, this bread will not sustain us merely for a day; this bread – the Sacred Body and Blood of Jesus Himself – will keep us going for a lifetime and beyond into eternity. In the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus fed a very large crowd miraculously for a day. In the feeding of the Holy Eucharist Jesus has continually fed a crowd that after 2,000 years must number in the billions or trillions of believers – including each and every one of us; we are all present for this miracle feeding - and Jesus isn’t done yet. Jesus promises us that this miraculous feeding will continue as long as we are on earth; and will continue on even into eternity. As He said to the disciples at the Last Supper, “I tell you, I shall never again drink wine until the day that I drink the new wine with you in the Kingdom of my Father.” Jesus is essentially telling us, “This is not the Last Supper; there will be more in the eternal life to come – and you will be there!”

So today’s Gospel is not just about a miracle in the past that calls us into awe and wonder. It is also about the gift of the Eucharist that we celebrate today in the present and it is about the promise of the Heavenly banquet in the future. All of these are divine manifestations of the great love of God for us that we heard in our other two readings today. As we heard in Isaiah, “Heed me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare…Listen, that you may have life.” And the Letter to the Romans put it more directly, “What can separate us from the love of Christ?” Nothing! “In all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through Him who loved us.”

So, how do we respond to our participation in Christ’s love for us – especially his gift of Himself in the Holy Eucharist? First and foremost, we need to be well disposed whenever we receive His Sacred Body and Blood. We need to be aware of what’s actually happening. We are about to receive the real Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus; we are about to encounter Him sacramentally in the flesh, to be as close to Him as we can possibly get in this life. “This is the Lamb of God,” you will hear me say, “Happy are those who are called to His supper!” Happy are they! Happy are you, my brothers and sisters! The trouble is that we who are called to be happy, are often elsewhere – lost in a daze, in a daydream, perhaps on auto-pilot, receiving reflexively rather than reflectively. It happens to us all. The encounter is over before we know where we are – before we realize who He is right before us. When we get in line for communion, we are not following the person in front of us – we are following Jesus Christ! Since Jesus is good enough, kind enough, gracious enough to come to us; we must be totally present. The Real Presence isn’t just about Jesus being truly present in the Eucharist, it is also about each one of us being truly present when we receive Him.

There is a casualness in our age that can lead us to lose the sacredness of this miraculous moment. We must approach with reverence, bow in humility, put out our hands invitingly, take the Lord lovingly into our bodies and into our hearts and lives.

Jesus invites each one of us today to join Him on the hillside, on this beautiful day. We have gathered here today some simple bread and wine, but He invites us to partake in the miracle multiplication and transformation. The miracle goes on.

“Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds. They all ate and were satisfied.” May we too be satisfied at this and at every Eucharistic feast.

May God give you peace.

The Kingdom of Heaven: A personal relationship with God

2011-07-22T07:19:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, July 24, 2011:

A teacher, a garbage collector, and a lawyer wound up together at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter informed them that in order to get into Heaven, they would each have to answer one question. St. Peter addressed the teacher wanting to make it easy and asked, “What was the name of that ship that crashed into the iceberg? They made a big movie about it.” The teacher answered quickly, “That would be the Titanic.” St. Peter let her through the gate. St. Peter then looked at the garbage man who was stinking literally to high Heaven, and decided to make the question a little harder: “How many people died on the ship?” As fortune would have it, he was a big fan of the History Channel and answered, “1,228.” “That's right! You may enter,” St. Peter said. And then, giving the lawyer the once-over, St. Peter turned to him and said, “Name them.”

Our Gospel this week has a Heavenly focus. Jesus gives us these images of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. Praying with this Gospel this week, I couldn’t help but think of a time about 10 years ago when I had the opportunity to be at a Wednesday Audience with Blessed Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square. At that audience, the Holy Father reflected on the same passage we have before us today. The Pope spoke to the tens of thousands of people gathered there from around the world about the Kingdom of Heaven and reminded everyone to keep their minds and hearts on the things of God and not on the things of the world. The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, he said, but an intimate relationship with God that can be experienced partially on earth. Heaven “is not an abstraction, nor a physical place amid the clouds, but a living and personal relationship with God.”

The Pope’s comments mirror those that we hear from Jesus today. Jesus speaks, as He often does, in parables about the Kingdom. This is clearly one of His favorite topics, particularly in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus is regularly speaking of the Kingdom. In His very first sermon recorded in Matthew Jesus said simply, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” and “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Over and over again – a total of 51 times in Matthew – Jesus uses this favorite phrase of His: the Kingdom of Heaven. It should also be a favorite of ours.

So, what can we know about this Kingdom? Well, the Pope reminded us that it is not “a physical place among the clouds.” We can tend to think of Heaven as some far off place. We might imagine some sort of celestial castle nestled in the clouds, twinkling stars and bright rainbows. Angels everywhere, zooming around God’s throne; the air alive with the sound of magnificent music.

But, today’s Gospel tells us something different. Jesus compares the Kingdom to some very down-to-earth things. No castle, no clouds, no angels, stars or rainbows or music. Rather, Jesus presents us with a farmer sowing seeds, weeds growing in a wheat field, a tiny mustard seed, a piece of yeast and today – a buried treasure, a merchant’s find of a precious pearl and a fishnet thrown into the lake.

The point isn’t that the clouds, angels and music aren’t part of the reality, but that they are only part of the reality. The Kingdom that Jesus is talking about is both heavenly and earthly. Jesus makes this also when He gave us the Our Father, “Your Kingdom come…on earth as in heaven.”

So, our Gospel begs the question of each of us today - where is our treasure? And what might our treasure be? Is it in gold or riches, in power or fame? What is Jesus talking about, this buried treasure, this pearl of great price which we are supposed to have found? Where do we find this unique mix of heavenly and earthly reality?

The answer is right here in this Church. The closest we can ever come to this double dimension of heaven and earth is the Church and the sacraments. The Church itself is the sign of our intimate union with God in heaven and with all humanity on earth. The mission of the Church is to proclaim and establish the Kingdom of God among all people. The Second Vatican Council said that the Church “becomes on earth the initial budding forth of that Kingdom of God.”

So the question, again, today is: Where is your treasure? Do we really consider the Church, and our parish community in particular, to be our buried treasure and our pearl of great price? We are far luckier than the individuals in the Gospel today. They had to first sell all they had and buy the field where the treasure was buried and to buy the pearl. But for us, the Kingdom of Heaven is a free gift from God. Jesus is the one who found and bought the precious pearl and the buried treasure – and He paid for them with the price of His own life on the cross – all FOR US. But far from hiding and hoarding His treasures, He now and forever shares them with us freely. And, every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, we enjoy a taste of Heaven right here. The dividing lines between Heaven and Earth are erased; God comes downs and makes our gifts holy; we sing with angels and saints, “Holy, holy, holy.”

Our treasure, our precious pearl of membership in the Church as the chosen and beloved People of God is the gift that all the money in the world cannot even begin to buy. Our prize of the Sacraments is nothing less than God’s immense and intense love leading us to our ultimate prize - eternal life.

The pope said, “When this world has passed away, those who accepted God in their lives and were sincerely open to his love…will enjoy that fullness of communion with God which is the goal of human existence.” And it is possible to get a taste of heaven on earth through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist which is such a profound meeting place of Heaven and Earth, and through acts of self-giving charity which show us some of the happiness and peace which will reach its culmination in final, complete communion with God.

Where is your treasure? “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven.”

May God give you peace!

Judge not lest you be judged

2011-07-16T13:14:00.000-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, July 17, 2011:
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A business man was sailing for Europe on one of the great transatlantic ocean liners of the last century. When he boarded the vessel, he found out that another passenger was sharing his cabin with him. After checking out the accommodations and meeting his cabin-mate, he went the purser's desk and inquired if he could leave his gold watch and other valuables in the ship's safe. He explained that ordinarily he never felt a need to do that, but after meeting the man who was to occupy the other berth, he felt it was a wise move. Judging from his appearance, he was afraid that he might not be a very trustworthy person. The purser accepted the responsibility for the valuables and remarked, “No problem at all, sir. I'll be very glad to take care of them for you. In fact, the other man in your cabin has already been here and left his valuables with me for the same reason!'"

We heard in our Gospel passage today, “His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go and pull the weeds up?' He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest.”

Jesus gives us, through parable, these two images to consider: wheat and weeds. What is the Lord trying to tell us today about the nature of goodness and evil in our world? And, how does Jesus want us to respond to that evil? Jesus today is addressing the sometimes unfortunate side-effect of following Him. When we have been blessed enough to truly come to know God in our lives and at last give ourselves totally to Him; it also can make us aware of the sin that still surrounds us in our communities and in our world. The unfortunate side-effect comes in the form of the stereotypical “holier-than-thou” person who takes on, as a personal responsibility, to pull up the sinful weeds in the world.

History is filled with attempts by people to create the perfect society. We seem to have a natural human desire to root out and destroy all that is different. We seem to sense that those who are different pose some kind of threat to our way of life. Even those who have come to love and follow the Lord can fall prey to this mind set with the best of intentions. After all, don’t we all desire to be part of a society where sin is absent and everyone lives in unity of mind and heart and faith, dedicated to Jesus and His teachings? Isn’t this the promised Kingdom of God?

But, Jesus warns us today against just such behavior. When we become aware of all the weeds around us, we can be tempted to become warriors of the Lord intent on rooting out the evil in our midst. But, Jesus offers a different response. He says, “Let them grow together until the harvest.” Why does Jesus tell us to do this?

Jesus recognized – especially in the Pharisees – that even our holiness can become a temptation to sin. Our own experience of God’s goodness can become a temptation to judge others. We all know the type – we’ve all probably been like this at one point or another in our lives – we decide that we can condemn people to the eternal flames. Whether it is someone whose had an abortion, someone who committed adultery, someone who is just mean and hateful, someone who is gay or lesbian, someone who has stolen or even committed a horrible crime – we decide they’ve been consigned to Hell; we become the Judge and Jury; and that’s that. But, where is God’s mercy in that type of response? Where is God’s opportunity for reconciliation and forgiveness and healing in that type of response?

You see, we are not meant to be Warriors of the Sword, but just take away the “s” and you’ll know what we are called to – we are called to be Warriors of the Word; of God’s Word. It isn’t our task to cut down the weeds in our midst. Our job is to take that time until harvest to share God’s Word; to more importantly live God’s Word, giving good and holy example – all in the hopes that the weeds will want to become wheat too. Trust that God is in charge; that evil will not prevail. That in the end, only good will endure and it is God’s job, not ours, to take care of the weeds. Our job is to be holy and kind and loving and compassionate and giving.
Examples of overzealous servants trying to get rid of people they perceive as evil but who ended up doing more evil themselves abound. Just think of the young Saul. Before becoming St. Paul, he undertook a personal crusade to root out Christianity itself because he believed it was a bad idea and he committed many evil acts himself in the meantime in the name of this holy crusade.

The message of today's gospel is loud and clear: If we want to be faithful servants of God we must be ready to live alongside those we perceive as weeds and pray for them. Judge not lest you be judged. "Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”

God’s Kingdom will always bear the imprint of God’s patient desire that everyone repent and turn back to Him. God is both patient and lenient with all of us. He doesn’t seek to condemn anyone, but rather gives everyone the time to repent and be forgiven. And we should do the same.

Jesus reminds us that if we become too concerned with rooting out the weeds, in the end, we might just become one of them. Jesus reminds us that everyone - wheat or weed – has a chance at salvation; so let’s not short circuit that chance. Oh, there’s a deadline – you’ve only got until the harvest, but until then, there is always a chance for conversion, renewal and holiness - even for the biggest sinner among us.

Building up god’s Kingdom requires time and has a rhythm all its own, as human hearts transform under God’s love just as yeast turns dough into bread. What it requires of all of us – wheat and weeds alike – is that our hearts be open and receptive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. That is where the seed of God’s Word can grow, ripen and blossom.

“His disciples approached him and said, ‘Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.’ Jesus said, ‘The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. The Son of Man will send his angels to collect the harvest…Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears ought to hear.’”

May God give you peace.

Civil marriage is for Caesar to decide, not the church | National Catholic Reporter

2011-07-11T12:23:00.000-04:00

NOTE: I guess I'm on a Nicholas Cafardi kick today. Another good one from him that raises a lot of questions that I had myself. Thoughts?

Jul. 05, 2011

By Nicholas P. Cafardi

Supporters of traditional marriage demonstrate in Annapolis, Md., prior to a March 11 debate in the Maryland House of Delegates. A bill, which would have made it legal for couples of the same sex to marry, was returned to committee March 11, tabling the legislation in Maryland for the rest of this year's session. (CNS/Catholic Review/George P. Matysek Jr.)

VIEWPOINT
If you count the sayings of Jesus in the New Testament, a phrase he uses with some regularity is “Be not afraid.” He says it to the apostles in all four Gospels, and he even tells it to Paul twice in Acts, once in a personal vision, and once in the voice of an angel.

Yet, today, his church finds itself afraid: afraid of movements by state legislatures to define civil law marriage in such a way as to allow same-sex partners to marry civilly. Why are we afraid?

Civil legislatures cannot define for the church what sacramental marriage is, what matrimony is. The First Amendment protects us from that. No legislature can tell the church who to marry or who not to marry.

So if the state wants to say that a man can civilly marry a man, or that a woman can civilly marry a woman, why should the church care?

The church would respond that, by taking this action, the state is devaluing the natural union of man and woman in matrimony. But we have long since abdicated that argument. What arguably could devalue the natural union of man and woman more than the fact that, in all 50 states, through no-fault divorces, any heterosexual spouse can walk away from the other, basically by filing an affidavit alleging that the marital bond is “irretrievably broken”?

I recall a late-night comedian saying, “Let gays get married. Why shouldn’t they be as miserable as the rest of us?” Easy divorce is more destructive of marriage than anything else. And we have long since acquiesced in that, even rectifying its results in our annulment courts.

Obviously, in the same-sex marriage debate, the church feels a strong need to have the civil law reflect the church’s teachings. Confronted in the public forum with that attitude, many might cry, “Foul!” But the church would respond: The nature of marriage is not just our teaching. It is a matter of the natural law, and civil law should reflect the natural law. That is a very strong argument. Human positive law should reflect the natural law and not go contrary to it.

There are two vulnerabilities with this argument, however. The first is scriptural. There is a patently clear warrant for polygamy in the record of the original covenant. By New Testament times, though, that practice was abandoned. But the patriarchs of the Jewish scriptures very clearly had multiple wives; so how “natural” is the one man, one woman definition of marriage? Natural law, to qualify as natural law, must be true in all times and all places.

The second flaw is bio-political. In an ideal world, human positive law would reflect natural law. But, in a democracy, that can happen only to the extent that civil society can perceive or interpret that natural law to the limit of its scientifically demonstrable knowledge. Natural law, despite the church’s assertions, is not self-evident. The church, in a civil society, is free to say that, in its perception, the natural law requires that marriage can only be between one man and one woman. But it must also be ready to address the counter-arguments of our fellow citizens who would say that, in their perception of nature, some folks come out of the factory with sexual attraction to members of their own sex. That is their nature. Did the divine Creator make a mistake? And if it is assumed or accepted that this is their nature, why should civil society stand in the way of their civil marriage?

An unfortunate aspect of the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage in the civil forum is that it carries aspects of intolerance. Yes, I realize that the opposite is true. The church could say that those pushing same-sex civil marriage on those of us who, because of our faith, are unalterably opposed to it are also intolerant of our religious beliefs. But in the scales of intolerance, the weight will always go against those who would prevent rather than those who would permit.

We need to give it up. This is not defeatism. This is simply following Jesus in the Gospels, who besides telling us not to act on our fears, also told us to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Civil marriage is Caesar’s. If Caesar wants to say that you can only get married on Tuesdays, wearing a blue suit and a red tie, that is Caesar’s call. The sacrament of matrimony is God’s. It is valid only when invoked between a baptized man and a baptized woman, in the presence of two witnesses and the spouses’ proper ordinary or pastor or his delegate. Caesar has no say in this.

The church does have a legitimate claim here, namely that we should not be legally required to act contrary to our beliefs by being forced to recognize civil same-sex marriages in any way: not by sanctifying them; not by opening our parish halls to their celebration; not by opening our adoption agencies to same-sex partners; not by affording employment benefits to same-sex spouses; nor by any other accommodation that would make us act contrary to our beliefs. Those are our civil rights, which civil society must recognize, much as we recognize civil society’s right to define civil marriage as it wills. These rights of the church are worth fighting for. But how civil society defines civil marriage simply is not ours to dictate, whether from force or fear.

[Nicholas P. Cafardi is a civil and canon lawyer, and a professor at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh.]

Keep Holy Election Day | America Magazine

2011-07-11T12:14:00.000-04:00

NOTE: Very thought-provoking article on how we should approach voting.

NICHOLAS P. CAFARDI | JULY 18, 2011

When Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize, a reporter, cameras rolling, asked her if she was a holy person. She looked right at him and said, “It’s my job to be holy. It’s your job to be holy, too. Why do you think God put us on this earth?”

We were made to be holy. It is our job to be holy in everything that we do, including when we vote. How can we be holy when we vote? How can we transcend this world, which is what holiness calls for, and at the same time remain immanent, be a part of this world—which is what voting is all about? We know we can do it because our faith teaches that the Lord whom we worship is himself both a transcendent God and an incarnate human, and he asked us to follow him.

How Would Jesus Vote?

On a very basic level, we know that holiness requires the imitation of Christ, day in and day out. What is the mind and heart of Jesus, and what does it require me to do in these circumstances? That prayerful conversation with Jesus is essential to holiness.

What does it mean to be holy? We know Jesus’ answer: “Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul and your whole mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus defines holiness in terms of love. If you want to be holier still, “Sell all your goods, give the money to the poor and come follow me.” This is completely selfless love.

A first characteristic of holiness in the voting process is that it does not think that there are easy and readily apparent answers to complex political questions. This does not mean that complex issues should paralyze us or lead us to believe that every answer is equally correct. That is not the case. It does mean that we have to strive to be holy in discerning those answers.

Holiness requires us to inform our consciences in weighing complex political choices. As our bishops have said, “Conscience is the voice of God resounding in the human heart, revealing the truth to us and calling us to do what is good while shunning what is evil.” Or, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it: “Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right.”

So consciences must be informed. Untethered feelings are not conscience. Conscience is based on truth—the Scripture, the church’s traditions and teachings, the guidance of the Holy Spirit. All of these we are obliged to apply to moral choices like voting.

No Easy Answers

Because holiness is not a matter of readily apparent answers to complex political questions, we cannot use our church as a political question-and-answer machine. When the scribes and the Pharisees tried to trick Jesus into a political debate about Roman power, he, knowing there was no good answer, refused to offer a specific response. Instead, he said, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s; and to God what is God’s.”

It is a good lesson. When the church has made openly partisan political choices in the recent past—that is, when it has acted more like Caesar than Christ—it has been as often wrong as it has been right. The consequences have led us away from holiness, away from the imitation of Christ.

The church has to preach, even when that preaching has a political aspect to it, as many moral issues today do. But in holiness, when our sacred pastors speak to the morality of an issue, they should not choose political sides. The church must leave the political answer, the “how” of solving political problems, even when those political problems have a moral component, to the informed consciences of the laity. Political strategy is not a question of holiness or even of faith. It is a question of effective political means, not simply political ends. And here the church cannot speak in specifics.

It follows then that the church cannot legally or morally tell us which candidates to vote for. We may on occasion vote in a referendum on a specific issue: We want a new sales tax or not; we want to revise our state constitution to say something or not. Those are single-issue votes, and their moral value is perhaps more susceptible to discernment than when we are choosing among candidates for public office.

In the 2007 edition of Faithful Citizenship, the guide to Catholic participation in the political process the U.S. bishops publish every four years, the bishops write about the single-issue voter: “A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases, a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil” (No. 34).

If you accept the premise that a candidate takes a position in favor of outright evil and that the only reason the Catholic voter chooses that candidate is in order to advance that evil, then the bishops’ conclusion follows: the Catholic voter has done something terribly wrong. But how likely is the prospect that a voter chooses a candidate for one reason only, and that reason an evil one?

Normally the basis on which we choose one candidate over another is multifaceted, just as life is multifaceted. We weigh the candidates against each other, evaluating their character as well as their stances on particular issues, agreeing with some of the candidate’s positions, perhaps not agreeing on others, but preferring one candidate over another after weighing complex alternatives.

Watch Your Language

Holiness does not let us demonize the other, those candidates we do not like, those people on the other side of a political issue with whom we disagree. True, Jesus called some of his opponents “whitened sepulchres” and used some other choice phrases, but he had to be extremely agitated to do that. It was not typical of the Lord, who said more than once, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” who rarely demanded but almost always suggested and who forgave his murderers from his cross.

Holiness should lead us to question the tactic of condemnatory labels that are used in the political process. Many labels are particularly troubling, but let me use one as an example. I do not know anyone who belongs to the “party of death,” that is, someone who honestly as a matter of political choice prefers death to life, who joins a political party because that party sees death as a social good to be pursued. It is an ugly phrase and it should be used only in situations where it applies, which is almost never. This does not mean that a criticism of the “culture of death” is inappropriate, but on the list of “life issues,” like abortion, racial discrimination, contraception, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, capital punishment, unjust war, divorce, lack of chastity and lack of marital fidelity, no one political party has it all right or all wrong.

As believing Catholics, it may be difficult for us to accept that some people do not agree with our church’s teachings on life issues. But the people who disagree with us are not, simply because of that fact, supporters of death. And demonizing them is not holiness. The use of such inexact, deprecating terms coarsens the political dialogue and creates situations in which some people consider it acceptable to do things like carry guns to political rallies or even kill those who disagree with us because, after all, they belong to the party of death. Jesus would weep. He specifically said, “God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved.”

Faith, Not Coercion

Holiness does not seek to control others, to take away their free will, their rights of conscience. We can seek to persuade them, to convince them; but holiness does not disrespect the religious and civil liberties of others. Our church used to teach that error had no rights; and that may, as a philosophical proposition, still be true today in the abstract. But rights inhere in people, not in propositions, and people are never abstract. People in error have rights, rights that Catholics, especially Catholics seeking to be holy in the political process, cannot ignore. In doubt, we bring faith, not coercion. And we bring faith primarily by example, by our respect for those who disagree with us, who do not share our faith or our values or our conclusions. “Truth can be only proposed. It cannot be imposed without violating the sanctity of the individual person and subverting the truth itself,” as one of our bishops has said.

This is the classic dilemma for U.S. Catholics. We are committed to religious principles that we hold to be absolute truths. But we are also committed to our Constitution, which not only guarantees our freedom to hold and practice these beliefs but also guarantees to others the right to disagree with those beliefs.

Voting With Freedom and Holiness

In sum, holiness does not lead us to think that there are easy or readily apparent answers to complex political issues; it does not make our church into a political answer machine; it does not let us demonize the other; it does not let itself become a tool used to control others.

Where does that bring us? To a final proposition: This world is imperfect and imperfectable. The kingdom is here and not yet here. The transcendent interacts with the immanent, but the immanent endures. Holiness understands this and puts up with it. This is perhaps the devil’s greatest tool: He has brought us to a place in our politics where the only choice is a Hobson’s choice, where no matter what we do, there is a risk of being wrong. We either participate in a political process that allows wrong choices—some might even say immoral choices—or we withdraw from our democracy. Trying to control someone with a morality they do not perceive is not holiness. It certainly is not reflective of the Lord who calls but never compels, the Lord who said, “Take the log out of your eye before you tell your brother to remove the splinter from his.”

Human freedom, given us by our Creator, is the proper intermediary of holiness. In the political process holiness endures actions by political society that might be wrong, perhaps even evil, because to do otherwise requires that we violate the consciences and the God-given freedom of others.

Be wary of anyone who claims to know exactly what political choices God wants you to make. Our pastors can tell us the ethical and moral principles that should govern human behavior; they can tell us the values that should be defended; and we must learn from them on these matters in order to inform our own consciences. We also have an obligation to look at Scripture, the teachings and traditions of the church, the people of God, over the centuries. And we need to pray, to ask the Spirit for guidance. None of this can be dodged. You cannot be holy in voting if you fail to do these things.

But once your conscience is properly formed, then, to paraphrase St. Augustine’s saying, “Love and do what you will,” I would say, “Love” —which means to be holy—“and vote how you will.

Listen to an interview with Nicholas P. Cafardi.

Nicholas P. Cafardi is dean emeritus and professor of law at Duquesne University School of Law. This article is derived from a volume of essays by Catholic authors, Voting and Holiness: A Catholic Guide to Participation in the Political Process, which will be published later this year by Paulist Press.

Can you hear Me now?

2011-07-09T15:05:00.003-04:00

HOMILY FOR THE FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, July 10, 2011:
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A new pastor was assigned to a local Church. As it would happen, several members of the parish seemed to have waited for their new pastor arrive before they died. Consequently in his first four weeks he had eight funerals. He was so busy that he didn’t have time to write a new homily each Sunday so he used the homily from the Sunday before - 3 more times. A group of parishioners promptly went to the Bishop complaining that their new pastor had used the same homily 4 times in a row. The Bishop asked a simple question, “What was the homily about?” Stunned, they looked one to the other – not one of them could remember. So, the Bishop said, “Let him preach it one more time.”

There’s also the joke about the three things that St. Peter will ask you at the Pearly Gates to get into Heaven: What was Sunday’s First Reading? Second Reading? And Gospel Reading?

My friends, our readings today cause us to reflect on the Word of God itself. What place does Sacred Scripture hold in our lives? How important do we rate God’s Holy Word? And, how receptive are we to hearing what the Lord has to say to us?

Isaiah, in our first reading, places Scripture in the highest of terms: “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” And Jesus gives us the parable of the seed and the sower that are meant to be a reflection and a model of what our relationship to Scripture should be. “The seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”

In Jesus’ times fields were harvested in June and then left barren during the hot, dry summer. By the fall the ground was quite hard. However, the farmers knew that the rain would be coming soon, so in the fall the farmers would plant the crop for the next year’s harvest. The farmers then didn’t plant like modern farmers. Modern farmers plant in three steps: they plough, then sow the seed and then cover the seed with soil. Ancient farmers planted in two steps: the sower would go through the fields scattering the seed all the while he was followed by a ploughman who would plough the seed under the ground. That’s why the seed that fell on the footpaths was useless. The ploughman wasn’t about to plough the footpaths. And, the seed that fell on rocks couldn’t develop strong enough roots to survive. As far as the thorns were concerned, the Near East has world class thistles plants which grow over six feet tall. And so, the only seed that had a chance of surviving would be that which fell on good soil. This is the message today: an invitation from Jesus to be that good soil. And, of course, the Word of God is the seed.

And so this causes us to ask, when it comes to Sacred Scripture, what type of soil am I? When I hear God’s Word, am I like the pathway where the seed cannot even sprout, or like the rocky ground where the seed sprouts but has no roots, or like thorny ground where the word of God is choked to death by worldly cares, or am I like the good soil that bears much fruit?

One day Eric was sharing with a group of church people about the turnaround in his life since he started to love the Scriptures. “Two years ago,” he said, “I had no appetite for the Word of God. On Sundays, I would shop around going from church to church to find the priest that gave the shortest homily. My idea of a good Mass was one that took 40 minutes or less! The shorter, the better.” But, once Eric became open to hearing God’s Word; once he became good soil, all of that changed. He became like the writer of Psalm 119 who said, “Had your word, O Lord, not been my delight, I would have perished…I will never forget your words; through them you give me life.”

Jesus is calling us all to become people who do not merely respect God’s Word, or appreciate it; but who love the Word of God. A priest delivered a homily in 10 minutes one Sunday, which was about half his usual length. He explained to the parish, “I regret to inform you that my dog, who is very fond of eating paper, ate the portion of my homily which I was unable to deliver this morning.” After Mass, a visitor from another church shook hands with the priest and said, “Father, if that dog of yours has any pups, I want to get one to give to my priest.” My friends, if our favorite part of God’s Word is when it is over, then we are missing the point.

Loving God’s Word, being good soil, all begins with our openness. Can we surrender to God’s Word? Can we believe in our hearts that there is nothing more important than God’s Word? Can we be people who pledge to live as St. James calls us to, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only…The one who peers into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres, and is not a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, such a one shall be blessed in what they do.”

So, what type of soil will you be? The seed of God’s Word has been placed in each of us again today at this Holy Mass. Will it grow and be fruitful? Or will it wither and fade? My friends, the answer is in our hands.

May God give you peace.