The Heart of the Matter

Homily for Sunday, August 1, 2010

“The love of money is the root of all evil,” says Scripture.  "You cannot serve both God and mammon,” says the Lord Jesus.  He also says in today’s Gospel, "Beware of greed in all its forms." 

But isn’t the world’s economy built on greed?  Doesn’t it seem clear that self-interest is the driver of the world's economy?  And isn’t it the desire for wealth that motivates what courses of study we recommend to high school graduates as they go off to college?  Who of us encourages a graduate to follow his or her passion for learning for the sheer love of learning?  Don’t we all encourage our young people to get the kind of education that will produce a great paying job?

            So, what is the wisdom of the Lord when He tells us again and again such things as: “One’s life does not consist of possessions;” and, “Put to death the greed that is idolatry.”

            Is being wealthy a bad thing?  No!  But being greedy is a very bad thing!  Think of all the energy that is expended in our lives as we maneuver and concentrate on our physical well-being compared with the lesser amount of energy and ingenuity we use when it comes to our spiritual well being.

St. John Chrysostom, one of the greatest Fathers of the early Church, taught this: “All the evils you may find, whether in the house or in the market-place, or in the courts of law, or in the senate, or in the king’s palace, or in any other place whatsoever, it is from [the love of money] that you will find they all spring.”

            The social teachings of the Catholic Church have much to say about this state of affairs. So, let me briefly mention some dangers for the wealthy and for those who want to be wealthy.

• It is not wrong to be wealthy, whether we gain that wealth by hard work or by inheritance.  But wealth does not make us a better person than the person who is poor.  To think so is a deception and leads to hubris.
• It is dangerous to see our wealth as our own doing instead of seeing it as a gift from God.  If we see it as our own, instead of seeing it as an undeserved gift from God, then we will think we can use it as we please, without any social conscience telling us to do what we can to share with the have-nots.  How robust, then, is our charitable giving?  This is why Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet and Bono are such striking prophets for our time.
• Another danger is our not paying attention to the ethics involved in how we are making our money. For instance:   Do we have stock in pharmaceuticals?  Do we know, or even care, that almost every pharmaceutical company is complicit in the abortion business?  Do we care that our investments are funding other immoral endeavors, like companies that pollute our atmosphere, rivers and oceans?  Are we principled about how we invest our money; or are we greedy by wanting the best yield from our investments and don’t want any complicating moral issues to interfere? 
• What is very dangerous is such an emphasis on our physical riches and the love of capital gain that our desire for spiritual riches cannot hold a candle to our consumerism.  Has the accumulation of possessions become a more consuming concern than the works of justice and mercy?
• Greed corrupts us rather than redeems us, divides us rather than unites us, enslaves us rather than frees us, scatters us rather than reconciles us, and takes a terrible toll on our relationships, especially by refusing to help those who cry out for help.

How are we healed of our greed?  By being grateful!  Everything is a gift, all that we have, all that we are, all that we own, and all those to whom we belong: everything is gift.  From the very beginning God created man and woman in a Garden of Paradise where they were called to cultivate the land and be stewards of the goods of the earth.  Greed is the poison that removes us from the Garden and places us in the rat race.  Gratitude, and the resulting generosity that flows from gratitude, place us back in the Garden and makes us good stewards of all of God’s manifold blessings.

Colossians 1:24 - On suffering

There was a line in last Sunday's second reading at Mass that has always captured my attention.  The verse begins last Sunday's second reading from Paul's Letter to the Colossians: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church."  This one verse of Scripture (Col. 1:24) has the power to transform one's interpretation of the woes that come upon us in life.

 

Some of our woes are caused by others; and when this is the case, we can easily get caught into a cycle of blame and resentment of the one (or the many) who caused our suffering.  In the end blame and resentment are a dead end; and the only obvious exit from blame and resentment for many people is vengeance; but this is an even greater dead end, because vengeance does great harm, including to one's own soul.

 

Other woes are caused by ourselves: our foolishness, our immaturity, our small way of thinking, our misguided adherence to ideas that are contrary to the Gospel, and so on.  The only way out of this dead end seems to be for many people self-recrimination, poor self image, or a different effort of seeking someone else to blame for our problems.

 

Still other woes are caused by some defect: a genetic blip, a broken piece of machinery, a defective car, an accident, and so on.  Different people deal with these kinds of sufferings in different ways, like depression, or whining and complaining, or stoicism, or telling oneself that the suffering is not real, or a fatalistic attitude like: "This must be my lot in life, woe is me."

 

St. Paul's insight captured in this one verse of Scripture has the power to set us free from all of these unproductive attitudes.

 

It takes a huge leap to "rejoice in my sufferings", doesn't it?  But consider this: if you are an athlete and put yourself through the greatest rigors so as to compete in your sport and do it very well, do you not rejoice in your discipline, your regular exercise, painful though it may be?

 

The key to the athlete's successfully coping with the pain of exercise is the meaning attached to it.  By exercise I am healthier, happier and more likely to do very well in my sport.

 

Now let's translate that concept of "rejoicing in my sufferings" to other aspects of life.  What liberating meaning can we attach to the woes that are caused by others, or to the woes we bring upon ourselves, or to the woes that inexplicably come our way?  St. Paul has the answer: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church."

 

It means this: When I suffer, I am participating in the sufferings of Christ because I see myself as part and parcel of the human experience which Jesus completely lived.  Jesus is no stranger to human suffering.  Indeed he shares in every person's suffering by carrying the suffering with the one who suffers.  "Take my yoke and learn from me. . . for my yoke is easy and my burden is light."  When we see ourselves as sharing in the sufferings of Christ, or when we see Him as sharing in our sufferings, carrying the burden with us, then we know that we are not alone in our suffering.  Together He and I can do all things. 

 

And beyond this, by my sufferings I slowly come to realize my own solidarity with other suffering people on this planet.  I no longer see myself as apart from other suffering human beings, but as sharing in their suffering.  Why?  because in sharing their sufferings, I am sharing in the sufferings of Christ who cares about every person.

 

The worst way to go about suffering is to have no meaning attached to it.  When I was growing up, the nuns taught us to "offer our sufferings up for the poor souls in Purgatory."   That is the same dynamic at work.  It attached meaning to the inevitable crosses we all have to face.

Homily for Sunday, July 18, 2010

One of the more beautiful aspects about being Catholic is how fully we appreciate the Incarnation: we really mean it when we say that God became a human being.  This is called "an incarnational  interpretation of life."  Many other Christian denominations emphasize the one on one relationship Christians are called to have with the Lord.  While we also hold that aspect dear to our hearts, especially in Holy Communion, we have an equal emphasis on how we meet Christ in human relationships.

            Our unique Catholic take on things is that we meet Christ in our encounters with other human beings.  God became one of us; and though His gift of the Spirit, we continue to encounter Him in every human encounter we have.   “I see God in you” - is a thoroughly Catholic interpretation of our relationships.  Seeing Christ in others is how we look upon all the people in our lives, and for those growing in the Holy Spirit, we are especially to see God in the disadvantaged, poor and needy people who come across our path.

            Remember the Last Judgment scene in the 25^th Chapter of Matthew: when it’s all said and done, the issue will be the authenticity of how well we tended to Him when He was in need, in the persons we met in our lives who were hungry, thirsty, naked, sick or imprisoned.  It will be the Lord saying to us either, “you tended to Me," or "you didn’t tend to Me in My need.”

In our Genesis reading, it was God whom Abraham and Sarah encountered in their acts of hospitality to strangers who came by their tent by the oak tree at Mamre.  The Letter to the Hebrews, when encouraging everyone to have a sense of hospitality, reminds the readers: “Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.”

In today’s Gospel, we see an especially rich experience of encountering Christ in friendship. Martha and Mary were what we might call the best friends of Jesus.  He knew them through and through; and He felt so comfortable in their company that he would visit with them whenever in Jerusalem.  Remember that the night before Palm Sunday, He was at their home when Martha did all the preparing and Mary did a very beautiful thing for Jesus, using the costly aromatic nard to anoint the feet of Jesus and fill the house with the fragrance of the perfumed oil.  That story is in John, Chapter 12.  The text in John 12 actually says, “Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.  They gave a dinner for him there, and Martha served, while Lazarus was one of those reclining at table with him. Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.”

Those are important lines that help us understand today’s account about Martha and Mary, because it seems in today’s Gospel that Jesus is giving a rebuke to the hardworking Martha.

Jesus is not disrespecting the hard work of Martha, but He is tweaking her as He shows her (and us) that sometimes our efforts and chores and duties can make us so busy that we miss the very Lord in the midst of our lives, yes - in our relationships.

            Martha could have taken umbrage at Jesus’ words, but the text from John 12 shows us that something different happened to her.  The text says that, “they gave a dinner for them there.”   That means that it was put on by both Martha and Mary.  This helps us see that, instead of Martha’s being insulted and hurt and offended, Martha had undergone a conversion so that by the Saturday night before Good Friday, she was so free that she served the meal without complaint. 

And being the organizer she was, she probably told Mary to think up something very out of the ordinary to show Jesus how well loved He was.   

            So our lesson today is that whenever a relationship in our lives seems off kilter, look for God.  What might the Lord be showing us how we can change to live more fully?  And the very person who seems to be insulting us may be an incarnation of the Lord showing us where we can change, so as to become the beautiful work of art He is making us to be.

Homily for Sunday, July 11, 2010

Back at the end of May I went to Mississippi to go on an 8 day directed retreat.  A retreat like this is a silent retreat.  No lectures, no reading of books, no TV, no radio, no catching up on the news or sports, no conversations, except one hour a day when the retreatant meets one-on-one with the retreat director.  This is 8 days of sheer waiting and listening for God. During the daily one-on-one time, the director listens to what is going on in the life of the retreatant and then gives selected passages of Scripture to pray over.  Then, each day thereafter, the director helps the retreatant discern what is from God and what is not.

            I had yearned for this time away with God because I wanted to sort out things with God on what had happened throughout the Spring.  For the sake of visitors, it was a very difficult time because I had to make a decision that was considered by many to be the exact opposite of what I should have done.  It was a decision that was considered to be unloving, intolerant and discriminatory.

            So, I began the retreat by saying to the Lord: Go ahead, Lord, and tell me what I did wrong.  Challenge me, correct me, show me what I did that was contrary to Your will for me and for my parish.

            I figured that since so many people had reacted so violently, that surely the Lord would show me a better way to have addressed the problem. I was very open to learning from the Lord a new way of seeing things.  In fact, I expected to be corrected.  I said to the Lord, “All I want is to be a loving, gentle and kind pastor; and what happened seemed to be unloving, unkind, and hardly gentle.”

            Instead, the Lord confirmed what I did and told me that I must lay out more clearly for my flock that the road to eternal life is a straight path and the gate into eternal life is a narrow gate.  Too many are choosing the wide path that leads to spiritual destruction, oblivious to the dangers all of us are facing as the world become more secularized, more divorced from God.  

            Now for an application to the Good Samaritan story.  The Fathers of the early Church understood this Gospel not only as a description of the Gospel-call to be loving towards everyone, but it was also seen to be a description of what happens in life. Jerusalem symbolized Paradise; and the journey to Jericho symbolized the descent into sin.  The being half-dead, the nakedness and the wounds are a description of what sin does to us.  The Good Samaritan symbolizes Jesus who rescues us from our stricken condition and brings us to the inn, which symbolized the Church.  

            My brothers and sisters, secularization is presenting itself now in more and more cultures and is imposing a world and a humanity without reference to God.  God and religion are being driven away from the public square; and this increasing secularization is invading every aspect of daily life.  More and more people are developing a mentality in which God is simply not a part of their lives.  It’s a wide scale descent of humanity from Jerusalem to Jericho, from Paradise to sin.

            We are called to be compassionate not only towards all people who are suffering physically; we are also called to be compassionate toward people who are making that descent into sin.  We need to walk with sinners as Jesus did, eat with them, embrace them, but also help them know right from wrong.  The way we can lead them to the forgiveness of a loving God, is to feel the pain and chaos of our own sin and their sin, and increasingly we are to be more and more like Jesus and not enter into sin ourselves.  We need to walk amidst the temptations, distractions, and comforts offered by the world without either selling out our Christian message, or unhealthily withdrawing into some shell of not wanting to say what needs to be said.  And we need to do this all without denigrating other people.

            This is a tall order.  We risk sounding like know-it-alls.  We risk posturing as someone who is holier than thou.  There can be no hint of that kind of arrogance.  But we cannot walk by like the priest and the Levite and do nothing.  Doing nothing is not the loving thing to do!

Homily for Sunday, July 4, 2010

Why do you suppose Jesus told His disciples to rush when He sent them on mission to spread the Good News of the Gospel?  He told them: “Go on your way; behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals; and greet no one along the way.”  This is a message of urgency.  There was to be no dilly-dallying.  Time is short.  There are souls to save, so do not drag your feet or get derailed from the most important mission: to announce that the Kingdom of God is at hand for you.

            Today’s liturgy invites us to recapture the urgency of helping other people come to an awareness of the love God has for them.  Too many of our fellow human beings are lost, unaware of the love of God, and driven even further from God’s love by the enticements of what St. Paul calls the flesh.  In my letter in this weekend’s bulletin I define St. Paul’s use of the phrase, to live "according to the flesh", or "in the flesh", as living as though God does not matter.

            On the very day of the Confirmation of our teens, May 12^th, Pope Benedict was at Fatima in Portugal; and he described the tenor of our times this way:

            "In our time, in which the faith in many places seems like a light in danger of being snuffed out for ever, the highest priority is to make God visible in the world and to open to humanity a way to God. And not to any god, but to the God who had spoken on Sinai, the God whose face we recognize in the love borne [to] the very end in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen."

            My brothers and sisters, all around us people do not yet know the love of God.  How many people even within our own families are not yet aware of the importance of living life in a manner that works toward their salvation?  How often do our friends, co-workers, and even relatives, feel free to point out the sins of the Church as if to say that such sins are only committed by the Church?  And how often does such talk become an easy way to avoid coming to terms with one’s own need for working out their salvation?

            And worst of all, how often do we fall silent, having nothing to say, or wanting to change the subject?  Remember the line from the First Letter of Peter: “In your hearts, reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you'" (1 Peter 3:15).”

My brothers and sisters, the time is short.  The need is urgent.  Too many souls are in danger of being lost from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  Too many people live without hope.  We have got to care more.  And that care has to lead us to get over our aversion to speaking up and defending our Faith.

St. Francis Xavier lived at the height of the Reformation and within the short 46 years of his life, he traveled from Europe to the end of the earth teaching the faith we share and baptizing, get this, 100,000 people from India to Japan.  Those years in which St. Francis Xavier worked were the years in which 40% of Catholics left the Church to seek other forms of religion, or no religion.

You and I are not another St. Francis Xavier, but we can glean from his example the insistent urgency of helping people come to know that the Kingdom of God is at hand for you, and if you don’t respond, you may lose it.  

When Jesus commissioned the 72 and gave them their instructions, He meant that they were to have no aim or activity apart from proclaiming the Good News in a spirit of brotherly love.

We can at least make a decision here and now that we will defend our Faith and our Church, come what may.  It’s easy.  When faced with a snide comment about our Faith, we can simply say, “I don’t give you permission to talk that way about something I love so much!”

            Lastly, I want to thank you for your faithfulness.  These are difficult times; and yet here you are, faithfully loving the Lord, hungering for His Word, and yearning to be fed with the Bread of Life and the Cup that satisfies our deepest thirsts.  We know the satisfaction of this closeness to our Lord in the Eucharist, so beautifully described in Isaiah as a babe nursing at its mother’s breast.  Come now to the Table and be fed.

Homily for Sunday, June 20, 2010

Do you realize how often our Scripture readings tell us about the utter importance of faith?  “It is your faith that has saved you.”  Or: “We are saved by faith, not by works.” Or: Jesus, looking at the 4 men carrying the paralytic on a pallet, “saw their faith and said to the man, your sins are forgiven.”  Today we heard, “Through faith all of you are children of God in Christ Jesus.” And we heard Peter’s solemn profession of faith when he answers Jesus’ question, Who do you say that I am? Peter’s profession of faith is, “You are the Christ of God.”

    Faith.  What is it?  What does the Church teach about faith? 

First of all, let’s look at what faith is not.  Faith in Catholic teaching is not my opinion, or your opinion, on any particular topic.  Faith in Catholic teaching is not one idea among a marketplace of ideas.  Faith in Catholic teaching is not an ideology competing among other ideologies. 

    So, what is faith?  Faith in Catholic teaching is a response to God’s invitation in Jesus to know that God addresses us as friends and wants us to be in His own company, to abide in Him, to know Him and to know His love.

Faith in Catholic teaching is being in such a relationship with God that we want to submit our intellect and our will to God.  God will never force this relationship on anyone; that’s why every person must come to the point of decision about where they stand with God.  Once that decision is made in the affirmative, then the believer freely submits to the Word of God and the teachings of His Church in what is called “the obedience of faith.”  The pivotal turning point for freely submitting one’s intellect and will is the decision one makes that the Word that has been heard is the truth, guaranteed by God Himself to be the truth, because God is Truth itself.  This relationship with God that we call faith cannot be separated from believing in the One He has sent, His Beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased, and who won for us our salvation, and who defined Himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life.

This decision to believe, to truly and deeply believe is a most authentic human act. It is not contrary to reason and human freedom to trust in God and to cling to the truths He has revealed, no more than a husband and wife will believe in each other and trust each other.  But our submission in faith of necessity seeks understanding.  Humbly we stand before God and submit to the Truth He reveals in Jesus Christ, but it is intrinsic to faith that believers will desire to know better the One in whom they have put their trust.  Faith in Catholic teaching necessarily includes the desire to understand better what God has revealed in Christ so that a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love.

Aye-ya-yai!  Here’s where people either never mature in their faith or even lose their faith: by not responding to the invitation.  Other things occupy the mind and heart and soul so they put off entering into such a relationship with God so that they cannot submit their intellect and will to God.  Remember the parable of Jesus about the sower and the seed.  Some of the seed falls on hard ground.  Some falls on rocky soil and has no depth.  And some falls among thorns and gets choked off as it grows.  And some seed falls into good soil and produces quite the harvest. 

    I want to close with a most important, essential fact about faith in Catholic teaching:  it’s this, and I quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that “believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent Him for our salvation, is necessary for obtaining that salvation.” We all know people, and maybe sometimes even we ourselves, who are tested in faith, weak in faith; but it is a priceless gift; and we can lose this priceless gift.  It causes me great grief, even to the point of tears, to hear of how lightly some take this gift of faith, or rarely practice it, or sometimes even seem to despise it.  To live and grow and persevere in the faith until our last breath, we must nourish it with the Word of God, by a lively prayer life, and by the weekly sustenance of the Holy Eucharist. 

To lose our faith would be our worst nightmare; but to persevere in our faith to our last breath is . . . heaven!

Homily for Sunday, June 14, 2010 - A study of compunction

How could it be that King David, who had just arranged for the murder of the husband of Bathsheba, would be forgiven so quickly by God?  David had thought he got away with his scheme of adultery and orchestrated murder so he could have the woman of his lustful passion as his wife.  Then on the scene comes Nathan the prophet who calls him out, as we heard in today’s first reading.  Immediately after Nathan's reading the king the harsh judgment of God, David, the text says, uttered a most brief act of contrition: “I have sinned against the Lord.”  And immediately Nathan pronounces the forgiveness of God: “The LORD on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die.” 

     How could that forgiveness be so forthcoming? 

 It’s because David’s contrition was far more grave than what this text shows.  We know this from the psalms that he wrote, like Psalm 51 which was written shortly after this encounter with the prophet Nathan.  “Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness; in your abundant compassion blot out my offense.  Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me. For I know my offense; my sin is always before me."  Once we're forgiven, especially through the sacrament of Penance, how can we say with David, "My sin is always before me"?  The answer to that is compunction which we are now going to look at in more depth. 

There is also today’s responsorial psalm which David also wrote showing the depth of his compunction.  'I acknowledged my sin to you, my guilt I covered not.  I said, “I confess my faults to the LORD,” and you took away the guilt of my sin.'

    In the Gospel story of the penitent woman what is so stunning is the depth of her love and gratitude for the Lord’s forgiving her sins.  What her dramatic action shows is not only tremendous love, but also tremendous compunction.  Compunction is the virtue of awareness.  Compunction is the virtue of honesty.  Compunction is the virtue of seeing clearly what our deeds have done to our relationship with God.

    Simon the Pharisee was a stranger to compunction.  He had no compunction at not giving his guest the usual signs of hospitality that a host offered to guests coming to a home for dinner.  A little pool of water to step in to get the dust and dirt off the sandaled feet, a kiss of greeting and a little sweet smelling oil to give the guest a sense of delight and honor.

    Compunction is a rare virtue today.  Today people are emboldened by their sins and encourage others to do whatever sins they do.  It’s as if we have lost our sense of sin.  Not too long ago I asked some parents of newly confirmed teens where they were the following Sunday because I didn’t see them at any Mass.  One mom said, “They were doing what teens do.”  “What’s that?” I asked.  “Skate boarding, having fun.”

    That’s a lack of compunction.

    Now, we don’t need to being going around feeling as guilty as all heck.  The majesty of the virtue of compunction is that it is closely tied to the sacrament of penance.  Compunction drives one to confession; and once one has confessed, compunction drives one to avoid the same kinds of sins and recognize other sins when they could happen.

Compunction never looks at another as a sinner.  However, compunction does indeed recognize sin, first of all in the self and also in the choices made by others.  But compunction is non-judgmental, meaning that it knows the difference between the sin, which is to be rejected, and the sinner, who is to be reverenced and loved.  It is a compassionate recognition of what causes such woe in the world.  Compunction is not blind to the reality of evil, but has seen evil’s distortion in one’s own life and knows that Jesus is the only way out of that distortion.

    Compunction is both the doorway to forgiveness and the expression of heartfelt gratitude for the grace of being forgiven.  Compunction comes from knowing the Lord and intimately knowing His mercy, love, and compassion.  

Pentecost, 2010

My brothers and sisters, Pentecost is the annual celebration of the birthday of the Church.  So, happy birthday, Church!  This is the day the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles who were gathered in fear in the upper room, after 9 days of intense prayer. 

Jesus had for 3 years taught about the Kingdom of God, worked miracles, and selected followers who would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who would change the world.  But then Jesus seemed like a failure as he was tried, found guilty and executed by the most humiliating form of capital punishment: crucifixion. 

Failure, however, was only the prelude to the victory of the cross.  He rose from the dead, assuring the apostles that all that he said and did and promised was true.  Then after 40 days of this reassurance, he ascended to the right hand of the Father “from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.”  He told the apostles to go to Jerusalem and await the gift of God, soon to come upon them.  Nine days they waited and prayed and then came the Holy Spirit, empowering them and transforming them.  They had been fearful, doubtful, unsure of what was happening, distrustful, and insecure.  They were transformed by the power of the Spirit to be courageous, firm in faith, trusting in God, and boldly proclaiming Jesus as Lord – eventually even to the point, in the end, of dying themselves as martyrs, ie.e witnesses to this Lord.

Courage, fidelity, and willingness to boldly profess the faith, while totally trusting in Divine Providence, do not seem to be hallmarks of the Church today, do they? 

This is not a time in the Church’s history when we feel strong.  It’s more like the time in the Upper Room, a time of fear and feeling lost.  Secular forces are increasingly making us feel that we have lost our way.  We seem weak and unable to articulate the Gospel message in a way that can be heard in the world today.  We feel marginalized.  We read headline news of scandals that thrill the culture, humiliating us in the process.  In these days it is fashionable to ridicule the Church even to the point of hating the Church, finding countless examples, it seems, to invalidate our vocation to be holy and to call others to holiness.  As a result, there are times when even we feel that everything is collapsing.

It is time, better late than never, to implore the Holy Spirit to come upon us once again to enliven us, strengthen us, embolden us to be what we are called to be: the Church of Jesus Christ whose Holy Spirit animates us as the soul of the Church.

Enough then of timidity!  We have caved under the pressure of political correctness.  We have silently watched and stood by as vice and sin have made steady progress in winning souls while virtue is not even allowed to be whispered.  Who today is espousing chastity?  Who is encouraging fidelity to the Commandments?  Who today is encouraging our children to grow into bearing witness to Christ by a holy life?  Who even sees holiness as something to be desired? 

Instead of living up to what the Second Vatican Council called “the universal call to holiness”, we have slowly watched all that we value and espouse as a life of holiness slowly slide off a cliff and out of mind and sight for those who are coming after us.

Today licentiousness is the religion of the day.  The entitled attitude of “it’s all about me” has degraded any sense of self-restraint, simplicity and consciousness of understanding how one’s own moral choices impact the rest of society.

But there is hope!  The Spirit is alive and well, evident in the Church and outside of the Church.  In the world we see the beginnings of a widespread sense of how each person’s choices are impacting the environment.  And in the Church, we see a period of purification that is helping us all come to terms with realizing how each person’s sins or scandals can impact the entire Church.

As Jesus told St. Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."   So, Church, on this our birthday, let us ask the Lord Jesus to intercede with our Father in Heaven to send the Holy Spirit upon us in a new outpouring of grace, that we may be strong and live up to our calling, the universal call to holiness.

O Mary, Queen of the Apostles, you were present at the first Pentecost, pray for us today that we, in our nothingness, may be empowered by the Holy Spirit to be Christ's presence in the world today.

Homily for Sunday, April 25, 2010 - Good Shepherd Sunday

Every year the 4^th Sunday of the Easter season is Good Shepherd Sunday.  Obviously the focus is on Jesus as the Good Shepherd, so let’s look at the life and times of a shepherd so as to better understand how Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  

    Most of us have not spent a lot of time with sheep and goats, so what are these animals are like?  Sheep are gentle and, after their wool has been shorn, they are especially cute.  Every year they produce an abundance of wool; and just think of all that can be made from wool.  So they are valuable animals as well as cute.  Sheep are also not the brightest of animals.  They are easily led and whichever sheep is in a leadership position can actually lead them all to go off a cliff, simply because they are following the leader.  The shepherd usually uses a sheep herding dog to keep the sheep close together and going in the direction the shepherd wants them to go, towards new pastures so they can feed on the grass and be kept safe from wolves and thieves.  They need careful watching because they are valuable and because they are not smart enough to steer clear of danger.

    Sometimes the shepherd, who gets to know each and every sheep’s unique personality, will deal in a very unique way with a young lamb who tends to keep wandering away from the other sheep.  This unique way is, when the shepherd finds the lost lamb, he will pick it up, snap its foot and carry it about the shepherd’s shoulders.  He’ll carry the lamb until its foot is healed; and when he lets the lamb join the flock it will never again wander away from the shepherd because of that unique closeness it enjoyed while it was healing from the broken foot.

    Goats are not as cute.  They produce hair, not wool; but the females produce goat’s milk which is very good and very usable.  The males on the other hand have no sense of propriety and will force themselves on any female; and so they have a reputation for being a bit randy.  The shepherd is usually in charge of goats as well as sheep.

    So, when Jesus calls himself the Good shepherd, what is He telling us?  A few things:

• He cares for us; He protects us; and He holds us and no one can take us out of His hand.  
• When we suffer pain or sorrow, we need to see that this suffering can make us even closer to Him; and He will carry us through until we are fully healed.
• Like sheep we can be followers even unto great danger; and if it were not for His ongoing care, we could follow another voice than His and wander -- even off a cliff.
• The Good Shepherd knows each of us by name and He keeps speaking to us so we can grow into knowing His voice, able to distinguish other voices as not His voice, so that we follow only Him.
• He speaks to us not by the zeitgeist prevailing at any given time, but He speaks to us through the Scriptures, through the teachings of the Church, and through the inner workings of our souls, especially as they are nourished by the regular reception of the sacraments.

The most important gift the Good Shepherd gives us is eternal life.  If we lose sight of our goal, if we think that the pleasures of this life are all that we have, then we will not come to that verdant pasture where he will give us repose.  If on the other hand, we keep our goal firmly in mind, heeding His voice, we can begin to see heaven, even in this life, just as St. John the Divine did in describing heaven in today’s second reading:

I, John, had a vision of a great multitude,
which no one could count,
from every nation, race, people, and tongue.
They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,
wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands...
The one who sits on the throne will shelter them.
They will not hunger or thirst anymore,
nor will the sun or any heat strike them.
For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne
will shepherd them
and lead them to springs of life-giving water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Homily for Sunday, April 18, 2010

When I was in my first assignment, probably 2 years after I was ordained, an 8^th grader from our parish school came to find me at the end of the school day.  He told me with great sobs that his mother had told him that morning that it was a mistake that he had ever been born.  He asked me to walk home with him, about 3 blocks away, and help him talk with his mom.

    So, I walked home with him and met his mom.  As we talked the boy’s mother said that she had gone through several operations in order to have another child; but then she repeated that it was a mistake that he had ever been born.  She then expressed her bitterness on how difficult the 14 years of this boy’s life were on her.  At this, the boy began sobbing again; and I suggested that he go to his room so that his mom and I could talk.  And talk we did.

    I imagine all of us have some story of something happening in life that ruined our plans, or made for life becoming very difficult because of some event, or made us feel like trash.  

    After all, we like to be in control; and when events come along that destroy our sense of control, we tend to fight with those events, or allow ourselves to be tormented by the unexpected results that could not be foreseen.

    We much prefer our sense of control than being thrown into chaos.  We prefer the season of Peter’s life described by Jesus, “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted.”

    We all like to be in control.  Isn’t that what birth control is all about?  Isn’t that what death with dignity is all about?  Isn’t that what abortion is all about?  Insisting in being in control, however, is the first line of defense against the grace of God.  You’ve heard of the saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him what your plans are for the day!”

    Sooner or later some event will come along in all of our lives that will toss our sense of control way up into the air.  We will go from having things under control, to being thrown into chaos.  We tend to see such moments as a disaster.  For there’s nothing quite so unsettling as the feeling of being adrift in chaos.  But in fact, such moments are a time of grace, as well as a time of testing.

    It could be an experience of failure, or having made a huge mistake, or having to face a serious illness or the death of a loved one.  In everyone’s life, ultimately some huge interruption comes along and turns our lives upside down.

    Like when Jesus warns Peter: “But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.  And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”

    What looks like an interruption, what feels like a ruination of our plans, is exactly the moment when we can glorify God.  This is the meaning of the cross of Christ.  It looked like a catastrophe, but it was the source of our salvation.  It looked like absolute failure, but was the grandest moment of God’s success: to be crucified yet to be able to say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

    The arrest of the apostles in our first reading looked to be a terrible interruption in their plan to evangelize, and what’s worse is that they were flogged.  That interruption, however, became such that they rejoiced “that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.”

    How did the apostles get that way?  How could they interpret hardship as a way of giving God the glory?  How could that mother of the 8^th grade boy have seen her predicament as something to rejoice over instead of something to be bitter about?

    It’s all in our attitude, isn’t it?  For Peter, his attitude came from being built on the love of Jesus, "Do you love me?"  May the Lord bless us with such a strong love for the Lord that we will trust Him in whatever He calls us to experience in life.