The Heart of the Matter

Homily for Sunday, August 7, 2011

Discouragement.  It is a tactic of the enemy of our souls; and it must be recognized quickly lest it take over our spirit and lead us down a wrong path in life.  

Discouragement is the opposite of courage; and it is loaded with fear, so much so that fear becomes the driver of our lives, not courage.

In our first reading we see Elijah at the lowest moment of his life.  The back story is that he had just had a fabulous victory over the prophets of Baal, a false god.  That story takes place just before he finds out that Queen Jezebel has put out a contract on his life.  He is scared to death and runs away into the Sinai desert in search of some consolation from God.  In the scene we heard in our first reading, Elijah has gone on retreat and is waiting for the Lord to show him what to do.  This is when we hear that the Lord was not in the strong heavy wind, not in the earthquake, and not in the fire that blazed on that mountain.  Instead God was to be found in the whispering of a gentle breeze.  

The story in 1 Kings goes on to show Elijah’s encounter with God who asks Elijah, “Why are you here?”  Elijah tells God that all the prophets of the Lord have been killed and now Jezebel is out to kill him.  He was afraid for his life. Elijah then complains, “I, I alone, am left”. God responds to Elijah by giving him courage and a mission and notes that there was some faulty thinking going on in Elijah when he said, “I, I alone am left.”  God tells him that, even though he feels quite alone in his fidelity to the one God, there are actually 7,000 who have not “knelt to Baal or kissed him.”

The lesson: when in a state of discouragement, faulty thinking makes even more afraid and makes us blind to the truth.  We make decisions based on surmises, suspicions, and deceptions.  Nothing good comes from discouragement.

In our second reading from Romans, we see Paul’s anguish at his kinsmen’s rejection of Jesus.  His conviction was that the Chosen People’s long-awaited Messiah finally came in Jesus Christ, and His own received Him not.  This anguish is akin to the anguish we might feel if our loved ones have stopped believing in Christ.  Paul says that if it would somehow ensure the conversion of his kinsmen, then he would willingly be sent to hell in their place.  The back story here is Paul’s discouragement over his fellow Jews’s refusal to believe in Christ.  He could have given up, which is another result that comes from the faulty thing that afflicts us when we are discouraged: a tendency to give up.  What does Paul do?  When we read the Acts of the Apostles we see that in the very many cities Paul went to, he always began with a Jewish community.  And despite his kinsmen’s rejection of the Gospel we was preaching, he did not give up.  Even if meant a beating, or being stoned almost to death and driven out of town, Paul would go to the next town and start all over by visiting the Jewish community in that new town.  The cycle would be repeated again, and again and again.  That’s the back story to Paul’s writing the Letter to the Romans.

The lesson: don’t give in to discouragement, no matter how wrenching are the encounters that could aggravate our discouragement.

In the Gospel we see that great story of Jesus walking on the water.   Aside from the fact that this incredible miracle actually happened, the story is also laden with symbolism:  The boat is symbolic of the Church, the storm is symbolic of the utter horrors the Church always lives through.  Jesus’ walking on the water is a call to trust that He is indeed with us in our worst experiences and calls us forth to do the impossible, in Peter’s case, walking on water.  In your and my case, doing whatever we have been given to do, even if it seems impossible.  

Peter actually did walk on the water until he lost his gaze on Jesus and became frightened again.  Then he began to sink into the deep waters.

The lesson:  don’t lose our fixed gaze on Jesus.  This is my greatest fear for my flock, that they may lose their fixed gaze on Jesus, especially those who absent themselves from the Sunday Eucharist.  But my giving in to that fear would be the exact opposite of what I am today preaching to you: do not give in to discouragement.  Becoming discouraged in the work of evangelization would be like Elijah’s saying, I, I alone, am left.  It’s just not true.  It would be like Paul’s giving up on his kinsmen.  It would be like Peter’s sinking into the deep.  

Elijah’s thinking was corrected by the Lord.  Paul’s anxiety was replaced by compassion and confidence that the Lord would bring about his will in His own good time.  And Peter had the wisdom to cry out, “Lord, save me!”  So, my friends, do not give in to discouragement.

Homily for Sunday, July 31, 2011

Did you know that in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the story of Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fishes is told 5 times?  John tells of the 5 loaves but Matthew, Mark and Luke each tell the story of the 5 loaves, and then later on in their gospels, tell another story of the multiplication of 7 loaves and 2 fishes.  And in Matthew, Mark and Luke, the recounting the the second time this miracle happens, the apostles react as if they had never seen Jesus perform this kind of miracle.  How can that be?  Why didn’t at least one apostle say, “Are you going to do again what you did before?”  How can they be so dense so as to act as if this had never happened before?

Don’t you find it true that at some Sunday Masses you really get it?  You have an exalted feeling as if you were touching heaven, or heaven were touching you?  And yet on other Sundays you’re distracted, or the singing is off, or the sermon didn’t connect, or you even went to Holy Communion unaware that you were receiving our Lord.

So, let me set your minds at ease by reminding us this fact: the apostles witnessed the miracle of Jesus’ feeding thousands of people with a meagre amount of loaves and fishes, and then a little later experience the same phenomenon as if it were for the very first time!

What is there about us that we get it and then don’t get it?

Well, for one thing we live in an age of the media who need to make each event more titillating, more searing, more spectacular so as the conquer the very human tendency to become bored by repetition.  

That’s why one of my relatives says about Mass, “Oh they just do the same thing every Sunday.  It’s boring.”  

Let me dig into that a little bit.  If we think of worship as entertainment, then we will easily fall into boredom - because we do do the very same thing every week.  If, on the other hand, we think of worship as entering into the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, then each celebration of the Mass is a mystical moment of diving more deeply into this mystery, while never being able to plumb the depths of it.  

Instead of thinking of the Mass as a theater with ever new entertainment lifting up our spirits with new and more exciting presentations, let us instead think of the Mass as a cave.  The cave looks the same every week, but each time we enter the cave we are invited to go more deeply into the treasure trove that exists in that cave.  Though the words and actions are nearly the same week after week, the one who is worshiping in spirit and in truth is doing something very different from being entertained.  The true worshiper is one who brings to the weekly Eucharist the depths of who one is as a disciple of the Lord, and brings to the Eucharist the experience of the cross that one has experienced during the past week.  The true worshiper is one who combines one’s own experience of suffering, loss, failure with the failure of the cross of Jesus.  The true worshiper is one who is taken up in the Lord’s arms and is given by Jesus to the Father as Christ’s idea of the best gift He can give to the Father, along with His own passion.

Entertainment is not what Catholics do at the Eucharist; what Catholics do at the Mass is a sacrifice because the Mass re-presents, or makes present, the sacrifice of the cross.  The official teaching of the Church is that “the sacrifice of the cross and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: the same Christ who offered Himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner” of the Mass.  

When we Catholics try to imitate those communities who put more resources in the entertainment factor, we fall on our face and even betray who we are Catholics.  For us, seeing worship as entertainment is to betray who we are and what we have been given as the gift Christ gave us.  This is to go way beyond entertainment and instead to worship in spirit and in truth, to allow ourselves to be taken by Christ and incorporated into His self-giving on the cross.  In the Eucharist we become participants in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As people who are fed with the bread of life, we are then invited to drink deeply of the blood of Christ and to know in the core of our being that nothing, absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  So, today, may you know to the core of your being that you are loved by God and that nothing in your past, your present or your future can keep God from loving you.  That is the meaning of the sacrifice of the cross; and that is the meaning of the sacrifice of the Mass.

 

The Age of the Collective Forgetting

“Every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.”

One of my hobbies is to read history, so much so that I am a devotee of the axiom, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  The lessons from history are among those old things we can bring from our storeroom to help us prepare for the Kingdom of Heaven and help guide us as we bring forth from our storeroom things that are new.

History can help us see our own time in context.  Will Durant, the historian, was able to describe different periods of history as, for instance, the Age of Faith, or the Age of Louis XVI, or the Age of Voltaire (pictured above) who ushered in an era of doubt.  So, lately I have been thinking about this period of history in which we are living and how would I describe this age.  I came up with the Age of the Collective Forgetting.

We are, as a society, in the process of forgetting our roots, forgetting our Western Civilization, forgetting the classics of literature, forgetting who Abraham was, and who Moses was, and all the other persons and stories of the Bible.  We are collectively forgetting the principles our founding fathers used in creating our country.  We are now well into a collective forgetting of how to make choices that are good and avoid choices that are bad.  

We are forgetting the lessons learned with such difficulty in past generations.  If the axiom is true, then we are bound to repeat the errors of other periods of history that forgot where they came from and where they were headed.  

In the Age of the Collective Forgetting we are collectively entering into a era of inventing a new way to be, without regard for those long established truths that are in our storeroom.  Without treasuring those pearls of great price we fail to be like the good scribe who pulls out from the storeroom things both new and old.  

So what are we seeing?  We are inventing a new, and untried understanding of what a marriage is, what a family is, and even what it means to be human.  We are now facing entirely new questions, like the mixing of human and animal genes, a process called the humanization of animals, with possibilities such as an ape that can think and talk. 

We need the wisdom of Solomon to ask God for an understanding heart that can distinguish what is right and what is wrong.

We have forgotten that the pearl of great price is Christ and His Gospel.  In our time this treasure is buried in the field, forgotten so that dramatic decisions are being made by the human family without the wisdom of Solomon, without the Spirit of Wisdom that is given to us when we receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.  This gift of Wisdom has to be a gift that is opened, and once it is opened, Wisdom has to be nurtured by prayer, by serious thinking and by grasping that decisions and actions can lead us either into folly or into heaven.  It is only with this unwrapped gift of Wisdom that we can take in and live by one of the most consoling lines in Scripture: “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” 

When this wisdom, this treasure, this pearl of great price is forgotten, however, then a line from Psalm 11 so aptly defines our age: when foundations are being destroyed, what can the upright do?

And what can the upright do in an age of Collective Forgetting?  Dare to be a leader!  Not just by what we say, but by the authenticity of how we live as disciples of Christ, as members of the Church, who dare to be different from the tides and fads and pressures from a society that is reinventing what it means to be human.  Dare to be a leader who does not fall silent in a conversation that embraces faulty thinking.  Dare to be a leader who is no longer afraid to speak the truth in the face of absurdities.  Dare to be a leader who has confidence steeped in a humility that comes from living an authentic life of complete consistency between our beliefs and our actions. Dare to be a leader who is steeped in the collective memory of the Church which has learned from earlier mistakes and earlier cultural revolutions.  Dare to be a leader who is stamped with the seal of approval from God Himself.

 

Homily for Sunday, July 17, 2011

What are we supposed to do with people who drive us crazy?  How are we to live with impossible people?  What guidance does the Lord give us?  Better yet, how does His grace move us to deal with situations like this, as He did?

Our Scriptures today will show us how to cope.  Before these Scriptures, let me recall some other Scriptures that help us see things in context.

The Acts of the Apostles tells us that the community of believers (in Antioch where they were first called Christians) could be recognized by the way they loved one another.  But what happens if unloving actions take place, and become anything but fulfilling the line, “See these Christians, how they love one another”?

Let’s look first of all, at how Jesus never allowed anyone to rob Him of His self-respect.  He never allowed anyone to destroy his own understanding of who He was.  People attacked Him verbally, and eventually physically, but no one harmed Him interiorly.  He knew who He was; and He defended His own honor or He remained silent and walked away from them, right through their midst.  So, we too should never allow anyone to demean us so that we feel diminished by our encounter with an offensive person.

How do we do this?

Matthew 18 shows us what to do: If you have a serious difficulty with someone, go and talk to that person directly.  If that doesn’t work, take along someone else who can bring some objectivity and talk to the offender, but keep it to yourselves; i.e. no gossip.  If that doesn’t work, then take it to the Church.  And if that doesn’t work, then treat the offender like a tax collector.  This means, have nothing more to do with them, not as a punishment, but as a dramatic way to call the offender to repent and return to the community.

How does this last piece of advice fit in with letting the weeds grow with the wheat?

The Greek word for weeds indicates a certain kind of weed, more accurately translated as darnel or tares.  This kind of weed looks very much like wheat as it starts to grow.  Only after a while and the wheat begins to bud forth it’s “fruit” does the darnel look different.  It’s “fruit” does not look at all like wheat, and in fact can be a poison to the wheat.

Oddly enough, in the parable Jesus tells us to let the two, the good wheat and the darnel, grow together until harvest when they will be separated, and the weeds (the darnel) will be thrown into the fire.

Jesus tells us to do this so as to demonstrate the patience of God and how His grace can wait, even a long time, for the weed to repent, as it were, and become good wheat.  If the repentance doesn’t happen, then woe betide the weed.

But what about treating offenders like tax collectors, after all steps have been taken to turn around the offenders?  The tax collector treatment is an extreme form of bringing the offenders to repentance.  It’s a dramatic way to say to the offender, you will always be loved, but your behavior will not be tolerated.  You are always welcome back, but your behavior is harming the family, the community, the church and cannot be tolerated.  And until you change your ways, stay clear of us.

When do we know if it’s time for the tax collector treatment?

The Book of Wisdom guides us: “But though you are Master of might, you judge with clemency, and with much lenience you govern us; for power, whenever you will, attends you.  And you taught your people, by these deeds, that those who are just must be kind; and you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.”

Those who are just must be kind.  Disagreements are part of being human.  Arguments over issues are normal.  But demeaning another person, verbal attacks, threatening gestures are all indicators that an evil spirit is guiding someone.  

Remember the guidance St. Paul gives us in Galatians, Chapter 5?

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.  Now those who belong to Christ (Jesus) have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit. Let us not be conceited, provoking one another, envious of one another.

When Jesus tells us to allow the weeds and wheat to grow together. His Word also tells up to be smart enough to recognize when fraternal correction needs to happen.

 

Why We Moved Confirmation to the 9th Grade

This week I want to write about the sacrament of Confirmation. Last year we did a review of our program, including a survey of those families that had just been confirmed. We determined that it was, and is, best to hold Confirmation during 9th grade.  Below is the rationale for this decision of last year.  

 

        It's true that Confirmation will always be a controversial topic for American parents. It is controversial because it has unfortunately become confused in our culture with stages of growing up, mostly moving from middle school/junior high to high school. Then there’s always that line, “But, Father, we’ve always done it that way.”  No, we haven’t.  The Church’s history of this sacrament has led to one theological confusion and conflation with culture after the other.

 

         To assist us in our planning we have a unique source of wisdom, Father Alan Hartway, who is a university departmental chair at Naropa University here in Boulder.  Part of what he does in that position is to carefully read a great deal of admissions and recruitment literature and data. He is part of the group of vested parties interested in students coming to the university level. He asks:  "Where does an orientation or recruitment for college begin?  You’re wrong if you think it begins in the junior year of high school.  It is far earlier than that."   

         Father Alan gives us the following advice: he tells us that our youth are being shaped and directed to college (or not) by a huge number of forces putting pressures and influences on their lives. Our youth are influenced by the media which shapes their identities, often more powerfully than their own parents and families. The media is rarely a positive influence; in fact it is disturbingly shallow and immoral and largely opposed to the formation of a well grounded, socialized, and critical thinking adult person. The media is deliberately anti-faith. Our youths’ educational experiences, parenting, family life, location, peers, self esteem and the esteem of others shapes their sense of identity and the values they begin to choose. Faith socialization and adoption of faith based values provide youths with the most solid foundation for life skills.

         Historically, because of our culture’s experience, we have learned how to make the middle school/junior high experience a stronger and safer container for our youth. The movement into teenage years has actually shifted and is becoming slightly later, so that rather than somehow starting magically when a youth turns 13, the real teen experience is now beginning with high school. It is in the high school social and psychological matrix that we are most concerned now with what happens to our youth. The critical year of this is the freshman/first year experience. This is the year when the most faith socialization and adoption of faith based values must be provided for our youth. The choices made during this year have now been proven in one professional article after the other in the NACADA journal (the refereed journal of the National Academic Advising Association) to most effect life decisions.

        When the Sacrament of Confirmation occurs in 8^th grade, it is viewed by parents and youth alike as a sort of “graduation” from religious formation, which means we are not going to be there for them at a critical time.  In other words the grace of the sacrament, like the parable of the sower, is seed that falls on the path, rocky ground, or among thorns and does not bear fruit, because it does not endure. For many it smacks of a “git ‘er done” mentality.

         Note that even the Catechism of the Catholic Church places its discussion of Confirmation before the Eucharist, where it actually originally belonged and was practiced in the New Testament. In fact for centuries these first three sacraments were actually given at once in the same ceremony at the same age, like the Eastern Rite churches do to this day.  In fact, even though the Latin Rite moved Confirmation to a later age, infants are still anointed with chrism during the baptism rites to this day. Please read the CCC #1307-1308 for this discussion. “Age of soul” is the determining factor of Christian maturity, not graduation from middle school. In #1309, the CCC states, “To this end catechesis for Confirmation should strive to awaken a sense of BELONGING to the Church of Jesus Christ…” and it is the parish community, not just the parents that “bears special responsibility for the preparation of confirmands.”  The CCC makes no age specific requirements.

        I want to especially high light the Church teaching about the importance of BELONGING. The Church doesn’t say a word in any of these passages about teaching and memorizing doctrinal statements. BELONGING is the most important part of our confirmation catechesis. This is what enables the seed of the Word to fall on rich soil and produce the fruits of the Holy Spirit. 

       So, my brothers and sisters, this is why we moved Confirmation to the 9th grade.  I look forward to rolling out our Confirmation program at the end of the summer.

Homily for Sunday, July 3, 2011

At the Mid-Night Christmas Mass the 1st reading is from Isaiah, Chapter 9, and includes these lines: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.  For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed . . . For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.”

If we forget that prophecy, we will only obliquely understand today’s Gospel when Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

What is it like in our time to be a people who walk in darkness?  Pope Benedict this week commented on his 60 years as a priest. He summed it up as friendship with the Lord, a friendship the Lord offers to all people.  And what is this friendship like?  “He knows me by name. I am not just some nameless being in the infinity of the universe. He knows me personally. Do I know him? The friendship that he bestows upon me can only mean that I too try to know him better; that in the Scriptures, in the Sacraments, in prayer, in the communion of saints, in the people who come to me, sent by him, I try to come to know the Lord himself more and more. Friendship is not just about knowing someone, it is above all a communion of the will. It means that my will grows into ever greater conformity with his will. For his will is not something external and foreign to me, something to which I more or less willingly submit or else refuse to submit. No, in friendship, my will grows together with his will, and his will becomes mine: this is how I become truly myself.” 

It is in this kind of relationship with God that we discover the light that conquers the darkness and in Him we who have walked in darkness have seen a great light; and we find our burdens very much lightened.

The darkness of our time is humanity’s leaving God out of the equation.  For many people today no longer harbor a terrible hostility to God.  It is rather that God and religion have become irrelevant.  In the zeitgeist of our time, the arbiter on what is true and good is solely what man is capable of.  If we can select the sex of a child, then well and good.  If we can eliminate any observable consequences for our living according to the flesh, satisfying our passions without restraint, then well and good.  Sin is left in the dust as a vestige of the past.  Why? Because a disconnect has happened between the way we live our lives and a relationship with God.  The Lord is no longer sought as the way, the truth and the life, because all that matters is my way, my truth, and the happiness I can find for my life.  And happiness is divorced from meaningfulness and is attached to material wellbeing.

This is the darkness of our time: God is left out of the equation and has been replaced by self-love.  God, for many people of our time, is not much of a consideration.  And a relationship with God is not even thought of.  That is the darkness of our time.  It is a yoke with a heavy burden because those things that lift us up and make us free are not the physical things of the material world, but the unseen things like nobility, integrity, authentic living, faith, hope and love, especially love.  The absence of emphasis on these immaterial realities produces an emptiness, even when surrounded by material wellbeing. 

The result is a heavy yoke that many are burdened with, even though they do not think of it as a burden. It is the absence ultimately of meaning, with no answer to the ultimate questions everyone sooner or later must come to terms with: who am I?  why do I exist?  what is the meaning of my life?  what is the meaning of suffering?  what happens at death?  When we do not think of God, we arrive at a point of realizing that we carry our yoke by ourselves, and we are left to sink into our alone-ness, our isolation. It is a state of turning within and living without meaning. This is the heaviest burden to bear: to be alone and to have no meaning.

Salvation, however is to be found in the relationship we can have with God in Christ.  But even the word, salvation, is a word that makes little sense in today’s world.  That too is part of the darkness of our time. 

Instead of that kind of burdened darkness, in the pope’s reflection on the past 60 years, he said, "The Lord challenges us to move beyond the boundaries of our own world and to bring the Gospel to the world of others, so that it pervades everything and hence the world is opened up for God’s kingdom. We are reminded that even God stepped outside himself, he set his glory aside in order to seek us, in order to bring us his light and his love. We want to follow the God who sets out in this way, we want to move beyond the inertia of self-centeredness, so that he himself can enter our world."

So my friends, take the yoke of human existence upon your shoulders with Jesus as your yoke-mate.  Let him be your light in the darkness.  And bring this good news to everyone you know.

 

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

What is there about being Catholic that makes us unique among all other religions?  And what is there that makes us different from all Protestant denominations?  What is there about us that draws us to Mass no matter what happens in the world around us?  What is that bedrock that makes our footing sure?  It’s the Eucharist!  It’s the conviction we have that not only has God become one of us, but also that He continues to be with us, especially during the Mass when Jesus Christ becomes physically present, so much so that we can take him and consume him.  We have believed, ever since the Last Supper, that the bread and wine do indeed become the very body and blood of Christ.  

Here’s how the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it:

[CCC 1376] The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: “Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood.  This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.

We may ask: When exactly in the Mass does the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ?  Again, the Catechism says:

[CCC 1377]  The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist.  Christ is present whole and entire in each of the species and whole and entire in each of their parts, in such a way that the breaking of the bread does not divide Christ.

We may wonder, how can this happen?  Let me explain it this way: if I have a thought to call someone on the phone, I can pull out my cell phone, scroll down to that person’s name, click ‘call’ and bingo.  You cannot see how that person’s cell phone suddenly begins ringing, but without any obvious connection, here we are talking away. I can even call someone on the other side of the world. Some of us know enough about cellular technology to actually understand how it works, but most of us have accepted on faith the intricacies of cellular technology, that without understanding it, we confidently use our phones all the time. 

So also with the mystery of transubstantiation.  We may not understand how the priest’s saying Jesus’ holy words of institution within the Eucharistic prayer can bring God down upon our altar and take over the bread and wine, but we have been doing this ever since the Last Supper; and we have always known that when this happens in the Mass, the bread and wine are no longer bread and wine but are indeed the very body and blood of our Savior.  

We also call the mystery of the consecrated bead and wine “the real presence.”  What do we mean when we refer to the real presence? Again the Catechism states in a section on the worship of the Eucharist: 

[CCC 1378]  In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord.  “The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession.”

The upcoming new translation of the Mass, which we will start implementing in September, is the Church’s attempt to recover something that was lost when the Second Vatican Council authorized the Church to have the Mass in local languages instead of in Latin.  The transition to English was more detrimental than to other languages.  Why?  Because the style of translation was too common, almost irreverent, too folksy; and one of the most common complaints of those who remember the days of the Latin is that a sense of the sacred seems to have been lost.  That is about to be rectified by the new translation, a loftier style of English, an English that could be called more poetic, more noble, more fitting when addressing God.

Along with the folksy language and the diminishment of the sense of the sacred came a less reverent manner of how to behave when coming into church.  The genuflection (or the deep bow for those who may not be able to genuflect) has given way to a casual manner of entering the church and sliding into a pew as if we were not in “the real presence.”  That loss of the sense of the sacred is what the Church is in the process of addressing.  

But language alone cannot make us more aware of realizing that we are in the presence of God.  It is our faith that makes us aware, our faith in the real presence, as so beautifully described in Annie Dillard’s book, “Teaching a Stone to Talk:” Even worship, which takes place in a “sanctuary,” a safe place, has a scary patina to it. Our services are crowded with cheerful tunes and inspiring sermons, with jokes from the platform and smiles everywhere—so much so that we forget sometimes that we are in the presence of God Almighty, our Maker and Judge and Redeemer. If we lose the sense that worship is a dangerous place, well, we’re probably not in the presence of the biblical God."

So, my friends, let’s remember to genuflect or bow.

 

"Brad" and "Brenda"

A godson of mine recently sent me a “Save the Date” card with a website to see about the details of his upcoming wedding.  As I read it, it became clear that he and his bride are being married out of the Catholic Church.  That distressed me so much that I knew I had to write, so I did.  Here's what I wrote.  I changed the names to protect the innocent.

Dear "Brad" and "Brenda,"

Brenda, permit me to introduce myself.  I am Brad's godfather.  You and I have never met because I live in Colorado and only get back east occasionally, not often enough to have met you.  Congratulations on your upcoming marriage with my very fine godson, Brad.

Brad, congratulations on your finding the love of your life!  I hope and pray that you and Brenda have a wonderful life together and that you will be blessed in very many ways.  

I notice by the website you sent me, on your “Save the Date” card, that you will not be entering into a sacramental marriage.  That concerns me - enough to write this e-mail.  

I really don't know what is happening in your spiritual lives, nor do I know, Brenda, what your religious background may be.  But since I am Brad's godfather, let me share with the both of you what a sacramental marriage is.  I do this as a way of making a proposal to the both of you, not by wanting to impose anything on you.

A sacramental marriage is not just a matter of a Church-sanctioned ceremony, but it does include that. A sacramental marriage is a doorway, a conscious opening to God's grace to fill your hearts and minds to the presence and action of God's grace in your lives as husband and wife.  It's a formal way of inviting God into your relationship so that your marriage becomes not only a partnership between the two of you, but also becomes a trinity, as it were, of Brad and Brenda and God.  

Will the Lord not assist you if you do not have a sacramental marriage?  Oh, God will always be with you unless you seek to rid Him from your lives entirely.  God's love is like the sun shining down on everyone. However, there are decisions we make that take us out of the sunshine and place us in the shadows. Marriage today is the most important area of sunlight and shadows because marriage is the most intimate relationship possible. Marriage is also the most important relationship under attack today.  In former times, there were societal reinforcements to helping marriage be something so beautiful that it could be called a taste of what heaven must be like.  Today, however, with the increase of secularization, the openness to the divine is being more and more reduced.  How then can a couple be so committed to each other that nothing could drive them apart?   If the couple relies on each other's love and commitment, then what happens when events throw that love into question?  How does a marriage survive in the bad times, as well as the good, in the times of sickness as well as in health?  Relying on mere human effort results in much suffering; and I would hope to spare you from needless suffering. Only God's grace, whether explicit or implicit, will see us through.

 I am sure you have issues with either religion as a whole, or with the Catholic Church in particular.  Who doesn't?  But this is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel.  The world needs the presence and action of Christ and his Gospel more than ever.  And as for His Church, it is the Bride of Christ, whom He loves and for whom He suffered and died. So don't limit yourselves to seeing the wrinkles of the Church, because all of us cause those wrinkles.  Never speak of the Church as if somehow outside of her.  If we look at particular sins of particular people in the Church, by what right do we stand in judgment of the whole Bride of Christ?  Do we think that we alone have the right to be sinners, so we can sit in judgment of others while giving ourselves a pass?  

The path of being a Catholic is difficult indeed.  That is because being a disciple is difficult indeed.  But being a disciple is an adventure like no other.

By sharing these thoughts with you I have no fear of seeming to be demanding of you, particularly you, Brad, my godson for whom I am always praying.  It is Christ Himself who is demanding.  The Gospel presents us with a very demanding Christ:  Turn the other cheek, give to those who ask of you, love your enemies, forgive those who offend you, sell what you have and give it to the poor, do not commit adultery - even in your heart, take up your cross daily and follow me.  And so much more.  Don't give in to the temptation to water down the Gospel.  Yes, you may have questions and doubts, but a million doubts do not add up to a failure of faith, unless we simply give up.  As my father used to say, "It's a great life, if you don't weaken."

I have dared to write all of this to the both of you out of love for you, and even more out of love for the Lord.  I would not have you lost to His love.  

Lastly, Brad, since you’re Irish as much as I am, our Catholic faith has been passed down to us from one generation to another ever since the time of St. Patrick, since the 400s AD.  Some of our ancestors died for the faith.  I invoke all of our saintly ancestors to pray for you and Brenda that you may in God's own time find the beauty of a sacramental marriage.  Even if it's not to happen with your September wedding, then maybe in your own good time and in God's timing, you may "open wide the doors to Christ."  And then some priest or deacon, somewhere, could help you with what we call a "convalidation" of your marriage, in other words, making your marriage a sacrament, a doorway to God's love and grace.

Your loving godfather

Homily for the Ascension of Our Lord

We have just witnessed another batch of graduations as students move through different levels of education.  Congratulations to everyone who recently graduated, especially from the university level.  If the goal was simply to graduate, then what must it be like to have reached your goal and then not have a clue as to what happens next?  Yes, there are many such graduates, and there are similar people who have graduated some time ago and still do not know what to do with their lives.  “Direction-less” might be a good word to use for folks who do not yet have a direction or a goal by which to makes one’s decisions on how to go about living.

This Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord does not leave us direction-less.  Think of the three years of Jesus’ public ministry as the apostles’s university program of the Kingdom of God studies with a focus on the Paschal Mystery, that is, the passion, death and resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ.  Today’s solemnity is like the graduation event.  Except that in this part of the conclusion of the training of the apostles, Jesus gives a very clear goal by which to live.  The goal is heaven to which Jesus ascends in order to prepare a place for us after our life’s work is completed.  

That’s the goal, heaven.  But he also gives the apostles, and us, what has come to be called “the Great Commission,”  

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

“Go, make disciples of all nations.”  Before the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s this effort of making disciples was seen by many to be the work of the clergy and the missionaries and members of religious orders.  The council, however, reminded us that this task is the calling of all of us, every member of the church.  

How on earth is it possible to live up to this calling?  Do we even want this for our calling in life?  Well, if one thinks that he or she must go to a foreign land to do this, then it would be indeed way too much for most people. But when we realize that heaven is our first goal, then we begin to realize how we must live our own lives: by not compromising on the truths that have been handed down to us through 20 centuries of turmoil, wars, and cultural revolutions.

The way to make disciples is one-to-one work.  It means taking advantage of every opportunity that comes along to help others see what motivates us.  Or, as we heard it said in last Sunday’s reading from 1st Peter: 

Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.
Always be ready to give an explanation
to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,
but do it with gentleness and reverence,
keeping your conscience clear,
so that, when you are maligned,
those who defame your good conduct in Christ
may themselves be put to shame.

 We are not meant to be direction-less, tossed about by every wind and new doctrine.  We are called to be grounded in our faith, anchored by our hope, and living a life of love.  We are called by the Lord to seek first his kingship over us, and then we will be given everything that we need to live meaningful and fruitful lives.  If God comes first, then he will show us what jobs to take, what spouse to choose, what virtues to work on, what sins to confess, what choices to make all along life’s path so that one day, when our life’s calling has come to an end, we may hear the Lord say to us: Well done, good and faithful servant, come and enter your Master’s joy.  

When heaven is our goal, the rest of life is focused, clear, and full of direction and meaning.  

A Graduation Homily

Scriptures readings: Jeremiah 29: 11-13; Psalm 91; 2 Thessalonians 2: 13-16 and Matthew 28: 16-20

Our Lord tells us in Jeremiah that He has in mind for us a future full of hope.  And Jesus tells us what the future looks like by giving us all a very clear mission: “go out, make disciples of all nations, baptize them . . . , and teach them to carry out all I have commanded you.”  That’s not just the mission for someone like me, but it is the mission for all of us.

On the occasion of your graduation I want to clarify what this mission means for us all and for you graduates particularly.

My dear young friends, this is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel.  You are growing up in an increasingly secular world, where things material matter a lot, but things invisible matter little, like virtue, grace, character, holiness and integrity.  It is for these invisible qualities that your parents have sacrificed to send you to a Catholic school.   

The very reason for our having a Catholic school is to help your parents to raise you up to realize that you are loved by your parents, by your church and by God.  In fact, as we heard in our 2nd reading, “God chose you as the firstfruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in truth.  To this end he has (also) called you through our gospel to possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Do you realize what a noble calling this is?

If we are to live up to this noble calling, then we have to be clear about who it is that we have as our standard by which to make all of our choices down through the years of our lives.  That standard is Jesus Christ what He teaches us, namely the Gospel.

My young friends, this is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel.  It is a time to be brave, strong and courageous.  I warn you that many people over the course of your life will entice you to choose a wrong path, a path of compromising what you know to be true, a path of choosing give in to one kind of temptation after another.  

Don’t give in to those temptations.  And if you should, then as soon as you return to your senses, come to confession.  Turn your life around and come back to the Lord.  

The path of following Jesus is difficult.  In fact, following Christ is very demanding.  You know already as 8th graders that life cannot be had on the cheap.  You know from your various sports that a coach who

 

doesn’t demand much doesn’t get the best performance from us.  Permissiveness, parents, never makes a person happy.  

Don’t believe anyone who speaks to you in a way that contradicts Jesus.  They are not worthy of your consideration.  Indeed they may poison your mind and lead to to hate the very thing that brings salvation down to our own age, the Church.

As for the Church, think of the Church as having loved you enough to educate you and give you the sacraments.  Never think about her as if you were someone outside of her looking at her wrinkles.  Yes, there are wrinkles, but don’t limit yourselves to seeing the wrinkles of the Church, because all of us, and each of us, cause those wrinkles.  

It’s absolutely amazing that Christ hasn’t given up on us so very long ago.  No, rather Jesus is patient with every age and every person.  But sooner or later in our lives we owe Him an accounting for what we do in this life.

You will have questions all your life long.  But remember that a million questions never add up to a failure in faith, unless we listen willingly to those voices that want to deceive us.  The voice of the world will attempt to trick you and deceive you on sex, on the way to use your freedom, on how to live, on what to value, and on how to spend your Sunday.  

When you have questions or doubts, bring them to Jesus.  He cares for you and knows well the plans He has for you, plans that are always full of a future of hope.

In doing all of this you will be living out your baptismal vocation and will bring many others to Christ.  Christ is alive!  He is alive in the Church.  And He is alive in you!  Congratulations on your graduation!