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I promised to keep you up to date on our former principal, Jan Altevogt.
She is in a mixed moment: relief over her surgery and the fact that the tumor was benign; but also grief over the death of her mother, Charlotte Barber, who died this morning (Sunday), just a few weeks short of her turning 91.
Please keep Jan and her family in your prayers.
For the sake of visitors, my homiletic intention, during this jubilee year of Paul, the apostle, is to dig into the riches of the letters of the apostle Paul.
Today’s epistle is from Philippians. One of the reasons Paul wrote to the young Philippian church was to help them face hostility from their neighbors who did not understand the Gospel, and to encourage them to remain steadfast in the face of this hostility. Paul wanted to calm their feelings of being intimidated by the non-believers among whom they lived.
Doesn’t that sound like what we face for our Catholic faith as we live it out in our own time? How many of us have heard someone in our life ridicule our Catholic faith, or dismissed Jesus as irrelevant, or even mocked what we hold to be true and sure? Well, my friends, as today’s reading shows us, opposition to the Gospel has been faced by every generation going all the way back to our Church’s beginnings.
Notice the approach Paul takes in order to help the Philippians be strong in the face of opposition. He assumes the Philippians want to encourage him to stay strong and not be discouraged. Why were they encouraging him? Because he was in jail! Why was he is jail? For preaching the Gospel. For daring to say out loud things that challenged the popular way of seeing reality and for calling people to place their faith in Jesus Christ.
So, Paul says to the Philippians and to us: I’ll be fine but if you want to really encourage me, complete my joy by your staying close to one another: Be of the same mind; have the same love; be united in heart; and think along the lines of the truth of who Jesus is and what he calls us to. Don’t bail out and think like the pagans do. Don’t weaken in your faith; and certainly don’t weaken in the foundational mandate of the Lord: to have the same mind as Christ. Think of others as more important than yourselves. This is how we will win souls for Christ. By our humility and our service of others. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory.
Now, for a moment, let’s look at who we have as our friends. Let’s think of who our friends are. With whom do we socialize? With believers or non-believers? If we have non-believers as our best friends, are we bold and strong in our faith, or are we weak and not wanting to get into discussions about religion?
Who has been brought to faith in Christ by silence and a sense of embarrassment on the part of a believer? If our best friends are non-believers, do we love them enough to invite them to know God who is love?
Do we let negative comments about God, Jesus, or the Church go by without response? Would we let negative comments about a spouse or our children go by without comment? Why are we shy about our faith? Yes, we don’t want to get into a religious fight, but we can be strong and bold and humble at the same time. Arrogance is never the will of the Lord, but silence allows other people to be unkind and to spread untruths.
Other believers, who hear silence from us when our faith is mocked, can be weakened, and a spirit of silent compliance with blasphemy can become the order of the day.
When we become afraid, we are inclined by our common fallen nature to become very protective of self. Paul’s Philippian friends were afraid because of the climate of hostility they were facing. So Paul provided an antidote for fear: he focused their attention on Christ crucified, he reminded them of Christ’s humility, and on having more interest in others than having interest in oneself.
The application for us today is twofold: First, let us not weaken in the face of opposition to our faith. Such opposition has been there since the beginning. And, secondly, let’s not allow fear to move us into silence when issues of faith come along. We always need to be humble, not acting out of self-interest; but when something is said that attacks our deepest beliefs, we can simply say, “Oh, my friend, you’re crossing a line there. Be careful.”
I have already mentioned in this space that a man from our neighborhood was killed last Friday evening in a bicycle-car collision. I have been very impressed with how the neighborhood has responded by creating a shrine area at the corner: a bicycle painted in white, signs, cards, photos, a bird feeder (the deceased loved birds and music), a jug of water to be used to keep the flowers alive, and more bird seed for when the birds (or squirrels) finish off the bird seed in the feeder. It's really quite fascinating. People are stopping by all the time to look and ponder and converse with complete strangers.
Every now and then a volatile person comes by, expressing anger at people who drive cars and making assumptions about the person who was driving the car that killed the cyclist, such as, "She must have been using a cell phone," or conveying an idea that people who drive cars must always yield to cyclists who are somehow more pure as human beings.
Ah, such is Boulder!
A man was killed last night on our corner, just steps away from our front door. He was a cyclist cruising downhill on
All of this drama impacted how I decided to address today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Continuing our focus on Paul’s letters in this jubilee year of the apostle’s birth, let me put this epistle in context.
Philippi was Paul’s first foray into Europe. Paul had been doing missionary work throughout Anatolia, that is, modern day Turkey. He was an Asian, ministering to Asians; and Asians have a different way of thinking than Europeans. We can see this even today by the European Union’s sluggish delay of Turkey’s application to be a part of the EU.
Asians’ approach to life can be summed up in the word, “we.” Europeans’ approach can be summed up by the word, “I.” So, you’ll notice in Paul’s letter to the Philippians a new degree of intimacy in this letter compared with his letters to the other churches in that part of Asia that included the the Ephesians, the Galatians, and the Colossians.
Today’s selection from this letter, even in the first chapter of Philippians, shows us right away that Paul adjusted to the European way of thinking. He shares his thoughts about his own impending death: “I do not know which I shall choose (or prefer) [life or death]. I am caught between the two. I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better. Yet that I remain in the flesh is more necessary for your benefit.”
You see, Paul had become so united with Christ that being with the Lord unceasingly made his death not something to be dreaded, but something even to be preferred.
How many of us think this way? Do we not dread the prospect of dying? Do we not tend to put off thinking about our death, even delaying the writing our last will and testament, doing everything we can be look younger than we are, stay healthy even to the point of obsessing about our health? Do we not tend to think of aging as the downhill slope which we do everything we can to avoid? Do we not slip into living a fantasy, or into a state of denial, acting as if I will not die? And then when sickness, or tragedy, or physical or mental diminishment destroys our fantasy, we fill our minds with such thoughts as “Why me?” or “This can’t be happening to me!” or “This is just not fair!” or “I am being cheated!”
How much better, then, is Paul’s approach, which we all would do well to imitate: to be so filled with Christ, to be so in love with Christ, to be so focused on Christ, to be so hungry for Christ, to be so yearning, even pining, for Christ, that death is no longer to be dreaded. Paul says it this way: “Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.”
To me life is Christ, and death is so much gain. This is the theme for life that, if we embrace it, will transform our interpretation of all of life’s joys and all of life’s hardships: one way or another, Christ will be magnified in whatever condition I find myself in. Because for me everything in life is connected with my love of Christ and His love for me. Jesus Christ is the meaning of my life, the goal of my life, the substance of my life.
Which brings us back to the man who was killed last night in the middle of our intersection. Let’s allow his death to trigger a new desire to be even closer to the Lord, for we do not know when such a thing could happen to us. And let this man’s death prompt within us a desire so such a closeness to our Lord that we begin to see our death as the climax of our lives and not as the end. Let us see death the way we see the autumn leaves: beautiful, even more so than in the springtime of life. Why, because we are getting closer and closer to being with Christ, “for that is far better,” even as we remain in the flesh so as to serve those whom the Lord puts in our lives.
Tonight we had our initial session with parents whose want our help in preparing their children for First Holy Communion. Here's what I said to them:
Welcome to all of our parents who want us to help you prepare your children for First Holy Communion. You are embarking on one of the things you will be most grateful for when you reach the Pearlie Gates: that you gave Jesus to your children!
Let me put First Holy Communion (and every Holy Communion thereafter) into the right theological context of how we move into spiritual maturity.
Our first step of Christian maturity is to know God as love. This means that God is a personal encounter with us, a relationship that make the child (and then the adult) secure in the unconditional love God has for us. This divine love is even far more significant than parental love.
When a child is raised in a consciousness of the love of God, then that child will grow into a secure adult, a virtuous adult, a fearless adult, and an adult who is not self-absorbed but is someone who will make a great contribution to others all through life.
Our next step in Christian maturity is developing a good conscience so we can tell when we are putting up a hand against the Lord, telling Him to come no closer. This is the step of recognizing we are sinners in need of conversion of heart, and a change in our ways of doing things. This step leads us into realizing how I, specifically I, need a Savior. It’s an honest recognition that without the grace of God I cannot live up to my potential, and that without the grace of God I can make a real mess of things. This is the stage of my being the sinner, and Jesus being the Savior.
Since I am now entering into a deeper relationship with the Savior, I now want to know everything I possibly can about Him. I want to read about Him in the Gospels, I want to spend time with Him in prayer, I want Him so much that I hunger for Him, I yearn for Him, I desire Him, and I cannot keep myself away from Him. It is in this stage that the sacraments take n a power that can only be described as divine. In this stage there is no guesswork in whether or not I attend Sunday Mass because my love for Jesus has grown so much that I cannot live without the Sunday Eucharist. This is the stage of my being the disciple and Jesus being the Master.
The next stage in Christian maturity is my realizing the depth of my relationship with the Lord so that I know Him as my friend and I am His friend. This is a huge leap forward is Christian maturity. This is very different from some syrupy sentimentality where I think “Jesus is my friend” and therefore I can do anything I want. No, this degree of intimacy with the Lord happens only when we see Jesus go to His cross and suffer the Passion for me and for all of us. This is where I begin to think like Jesus, to see things as He sees them, to do what He would do, and to bear others’ burdens as He does. This is where I see Jesus in the poor, the disenfranchised, the rejected people, the sick, the lonely, the addicted people, the very least of my brethren.” This is where I know the cross of Christ so well that I become crucified to the world and the world becomes crucified to me. This is where I become like my Friend.
And there is yet another stage of intimacy with the Lord. This is where I know the Lord as Lover to me the Beloved. This is the stage of my developing such a desire for the Lord that “I do not know which I prefer, to be with the Lord unceasingly, or to be with you for your sake.” This stage has me walking in this life with one foot in heaven. This is when I see things from the perspective of the Lover so well that no pain, no sorrow, nothing can distract me from my goal of life on high with Christ Jesus. This is called the stage of Mystical Union or Mystical Marriage. It is the stage of being utterly in love with the Lord. It is the beginning of heaven, even here on earth. In this stage of Christian maturity Holy Communion is exactly that: union with “the Holy”.
So, dear parents, here you are, starting to prepare your children for entering into the greatest romance they will ever have – if they are carefully nurtured into grasping the meaning of the Eucharist, more and more as the years come by.
Just think of what Holy Communion is: the God of all creation, the Word of God through whom was made everything that was made, became a human being and gave himself utterly for us on the cross. This very same loving Lord of all, comes upon our altar and gives himself into our hands so we may take Him in and begin to taste that Mystical Union we are all called to possess.
Dear parents, nothing else that you do for your children is as important as giving them the Lord, for if I possess everything and have not the Lord, I have nothing at all.
This French shrine, dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, sits in the mountainous region near the border between France and Spain. When I visited there many years ago I was amazed to find out that the experience is focused on the Lord Jesus, with the apparitions of the Virgin Mary (that happened there in 1858) serving only to bring people to a greater union with her Son.
An example of that focus on Jesus is Pope Benedict's presence there this weekend and his leading a procession of the Blessed Sacrament around the grounds of the shrine. Here is the prayer he prayed:
Lord Jesus, You are here!
And you, my brothers, my sisters, my friends,
You are here, with me, in his presence!
Lord, two thousand years ago, you willingly mounted the infamous Cross in order then to rise again and to remain for ever with us, your brothers and sisters.
And you, my brothers, my sisters, my friends,
You willingly allow him to embrace you.
We contemplate him.
We adore him.
We love him. We seek to grow in love for him.
We contemplate him who, in the course of his Passover meal, gave his body and blood to his disciples, so as to be with them “always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20).
We adore him who is the origin and goal of our faith, him without whom we would not be here this evening, without whom we would not be at all, without whom there would be nothing, absolutely nothing! Him through whom “all things were made” (Jn 1:3), him in whom we were created, for all eternity, him who gave us his own body and blood – he is here, this evening, in our midst, for us to gaze upon.
We love, and we seek to grow in love for him who is here, in our presence, for us to gaze upon, for us perhaps to question, for us to love.
Whether we are walking or nailed to a bed of suffering; whether we are walking in joy or languishing in the wilderness of the soul (cf. Num 21:4): Lord, take us all into your Love; the infinite Love which is eternally the Love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father, the Love of the Father and the Son for the Spirit, and the Love of the Spirit for the Father and the Son. The sacred host exposed to our view speaks of this infinite power of Love manifested on the glorious Cross. The sacred host speaks to us of the incredible abasement of the One who made himself poor so as to make us rich in him, the One who accepted the loss of everything so as to win us for his Father. The sacred host is the living, efficacious and real sacrament of the eternal presence of the saviour of mankind to his Church. . . .
This was the last prayer of our Master, our Beloved … May it also be our own prayer, and not only at our last moment, but at every moment in our lives:
Father, I commit myself into your hands; Father, I trust in you; Father, I abandon myself to you; Father, do with me what you will; whatever you may do, I thank you; thank you for everything; I am ready for all, I accept all; I thank you for all. Let only your will be done in me, Lord, let only your will be done in all your creatures, in all your children, in all those whom your heart loves, I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my soul; I offer it to you, Lord, with all the love of my heart, for I love you, and so need to give myself in love, to surrender myself into your hands, without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father.”
Today’s feast replaces the usual lectionary readings with specific readings for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Keeping in mind my desire to celebrate the jubilee year of the apostle Paul by focusing on his writings, we hit a jackpot in today’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.
Scholars tell us that this canticle, this piece of poetry in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, had already been used widely as a hymn or as a reading at the Eucharist for years before Paul included it in this letter. In other words, it is one of the earliest of New Testament writings. It is as powerful today as it was in those earliest of days of Christian history. What is its impact for us today?
When I ask young people what they want to do with their lives, they don’t know – even as late as in their college years. It’s as if there were an epidemic of indecision and aimlessness happening. However, when pushed to take classes for a career, the direction they seem to be headed in is based on ideals that are directly opposite of this reading from Philippians.
When young people are fed a diet of power, riches and prestige as the supreme values they should be readying themselves for, they are setting themselves up for a life of a profound spiritual thirst that will not be satisfied when they achieve power, riches and prestige. I believe that our young people are smart enough to know, even subconsciously, that they are readying themselves for the wrong something. I believe that’s why so many college and beyond-college aged people feel so adrift.
Today’s hymn from Philippians gives us a different diet, a different set of values on which to build our lives. The brief way to describe the difference is: self-emptying instead self-fulfilling; or surrender instead of power; or poverty of spirit instead of riches; or humility instead of prestige.
Think of it: The Word of God, the Almighty One, through Whom was made all that exists, divested Himself of divine glory to take on the lowly form of being a mere human being. Not only that, but he shunned all the perquisites of being God and lowered himself even to the level of a slave, a servant to other human beings. Not only that, but he allowed himself to be treated disgracefully – not only to the point of death but to the point of an ignominious, appalling death – nailed naked to a cross!
Who of us here encourages our young people to give of themselves, to pour out themselves for the sake of others? Who of us tells our young people that making money should be a lower priority for us than doing good for others - without counting the cost? Who of us challenges ourselves as well as our young people to turn away from our tendency to have an attitude of entitlement?
Can we not see that emphasizing what our rights are, while dismissing what our obligations and responsibilities are, is contrary to what being a Christian is all about? Who of us encourages a sense of obedience to the will of God as the first priority? Do we not instead say: be all you can be? Reach for the stars! Do whatever you want. Follow your heart’s desire! If it feels right, do it.
The way to true life is the way of Jesus: opening our hearts to the Father, seeking the Father’s will in all things, carrying with Jesus the burdens that other people carry; and opening ourselves in trust to Our Heavenly Father with a sense of obedience to His will, knowing that by such obedience to the Father we will be free, free to be fully alive and to live with meaning and purpose and joy.
My brothers and sisters, we need to rethink what messages we are passing on to our younger generation. Are we passing on to them the way of the Lord, or are we passing on to them the values of a secularized world that leaves people rich but sad, self-centered instead of self-emptying, and searching after a prestige that leaves them still unsatisfied when they have it all? I think of Saint Augustine's short synopsis of the meaning of human life: “Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
Back in May our school's principal, Jan Altevogt, learned that she had cancer in her one remaining kidney and that a very delicate operation was in order to remove the mass. Months of planning happened between May and now by a very highly skilled team of surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. The doctors at that clinic speicalize in this very dicey surgery. The task before them was to remove the cancer without harming the kidney or the artery running through the kidney next to the mass.
Today the surgery took place and the removal of the cancer was successful! We are all happy indeed and send her our thoughts and prayers. In fact, we have people today before the Blessed Sacrament for a 24 hour period praying for her, and now praying in gratitude that these prayers were answered.
Seven years ago our world changed. And we changed. But have we changed for the better?
Perhaps now is like the time of the prophet Jeremiah. A line comes to mind from the Book of Jeremiah.
Jeremiah quotes the people of his time who were accustomed to saying, "The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!" (Jer. 7:4) In other words, Jeremiah's contemporaries were not heeding Jeremiah's calls to change their ways but were resting in a false sense of security because they had the temple of the Lord in their back yard. This was the sin of presumption, the sin of refusing to be converted and presuming that God will not hold us to account.
We do not say today that our security is in "the temple of the Lord." However, do we not today tend to think our security is in our nation's firepower? What kind of conversion have we as a nation undergone?
On this anniversary of 9/11 let's take a look to see if our security is in the Lord or if it is a misplaced false sense of security in being violent to those who are violent. And let us challenge ourselves to ask if we are avoiding the conversion of heart that both the Lord and the times are calling for us to undergo.
Our own Archbishop Charles Chaput and his auxiliary, Bishop James Conley, have responded to this weekend's interview with Senator Joe Biden on NBC's newsprogram, Meet the Press. Here's the text of their comments, pointing out that, "although NBC probably didn't intend it,". . . "Meet the Press has become a national window on the flawed moral reasoning of some Catholic public servants":
Sen. Biden is a man of distinguished public service. That doesn't excuse poor logic or bad facts. Asked when life begins, Sen. Biden said that, "it's a personal and private issue." But in reality, modern biology knows exactly when human life begins: at the moment of conception. Religion has nothing to do with it. People might argue when human "personhood" begins - though that leads public policy in very dangerous directions - but no one can any longer claim that the beginning of life is a matter of religious opinion.
Sen. Biden also confused the nature of pluralism. Real pluralism thrives on healthy, non-violent disagreement; it requires an environment where people of conviction will struggle respectfully but vigorously to advance their beliefs. In his interview, the senator observed that other people with strong religious views disagree with the Catholic approach to abortion. It's certainly true that we need to acknowledge the views of other people and compromise whenever possible - but not at the expense of a developing child's right to life. Abortion is a foundational issue; it is not an issue like housing policy or the price of foreign oil. It always involves the intentional killing of an innocent life, and it is always, grievously wrong. If, as Sen. Biden said, "I'm prepared as a matter of faith [emphasis added] to accept that life begins at the moment of conception," then he is not merely wrong about the science of new life; he also fails to defend the innocent life he already knows is there.
As the senator said in his interview, he has opposed public funding for abortions. To his great credit, he also backed a successful ban on partial-birth abortions. But his strong support for the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade and the false "right" to abortion it enshrines, can't be excused by any serious Catholic. Support for Roe and the "right to choose" an abortion simply masks what abortion is, and what abortion does. Roe is bad law. As long as it stands, it prevents returning the abortion issue to the states where it belongs, so that the American people can decide its future through fair debate and legislation.
In his Meet the Press interview, Sen. Biden used a morally exhausted argument that American Catholics have been hearing for 40 years: i.e., that Catholics can't "impose" their religiously based views on the rest of the country. But resistance to abortion is a matter of human rights, not religious opinion. And the senator knows very well as a lawmaker that all law involves the imposition of some people's convictions on everyone else. That is the nature of the law. American Catholics have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting the destruction of more than a million developing unborn children a year. Other people have imposed their "pro-choice" beliefs on American society without any remorse for decades.
If we claim to be Catholic, then American Catholics, including public officials who describe themselves as Catholic, need to act accordingly. We need to put an end to Roe and the industry of permissive abortion it enables. Otherwise all of us - from senators and members of Congress, to Catholic laypeople in the pews - fail not only as believers and disciples, but also as citizens.
