1 L C Confess with your lips

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

There’s a saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, though Francis’ scholars cannot find it anywhere in his writings, that says “Preach the gospel always and when necessary use words.” It implies that we should live the gospel message and only use words when we absolutely have to, almost as though there’s something wrong with using words. On the one hand, I see the value. A person who preaches about Jesus but doesn’t live his or her own life in a way that exemplifies the gospel message is a hypocrite. On the other hand, I think it unnecessarily hamstrings Christians in a time that, more than ever, we can’t just expect that people will notice how we live our lives and, thereby, be attracted to salvation in the church of Jesus Christ, that is the Catholic Church. 

Each of our readings has a pretty clear example of this message and, I think, builds a challenge for us. Let’s start with the second reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. In the passage we read, St. Paul emphasizes two interconnected concepts that are integral to Christian living. He says, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.” Scripture scholars call this a chiastic structure, meaning that St. Paul states something and then repeats it in reverse in order to emphasize the middle point. So, belief is what St. Paul is trying to emphasize but confessing is the way the belief is lived out. In other words, we are called to have faith in the saving acts of Jesus Christ but we are also called to confess it to others. The way St. Paul is using the word confess is, obviously, not in the sense of what we do in the confessional but in the sense of speaking spiritual truths. St. Augustine wrote a great book called the Confessions which remains one of the greatest explanations of the Catholic Faith ever written. Part of having faith means confessing that faith to others. It’s not just about doing good deeds but also about reminding ourselves and telling others why we do them. 

Some will counter that, by telling others why we do good things, it’s a form of bragging. I see the point, however I would say there’s a way that we should confess our faith that is anything but bragging. The way we do that is by modeling our confession on the confession of Jesus. The desert for Jesus is not a place of escape. Jesus knows that he is going into the desert to be tempted by the devil. A national speaker and founder of the group Acts 23 named Fr. John Riccardo, recently presented to me at a conference that the reason Jesus went into the desert is to make sure his disguise is working. Had the second person of the trinity come in all his power and majesty to defeat the devil, the devil would have left him alone because he would have realized he’s out of his league. However, by becoming fully human while remaining fully God, the second person of the trinity is going into the desert to make sure the devil will treat him the same way the devil treats us, trying to get him to abandon his faith and become like a “small g” god. Jesus wants to make sure the devil hasn’t figured out that, by dying on the cross and fulfilling the punishment Adam deserved, that by eating from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil he would die, Jesus alone could remove death as a punishment and open the way for eternal life human beings. So Jesus goes into the desert to be tempted. I’d caution people that this isn’t Jesus’ way of saying that we need to set ourselves up to be deliberately tempted by the devil or to confront the devil. In fact, I’d say we need to do everything we can to avoid having experiences with ouija boards, seances, freemasonry, palm readers, mediums, psychics and other things and people that purport to expose us to the so-called spirit world but are really opening us up to a world that we and they are unprepared to deal with, the realm of the devil and evil spirits. So, don’t think Jesus is telling us to play with fire here. He is uniquely qualified to be tempted because he is the second person of the Holy Trinity and because he is filled with the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and because it’s all part of the loving plan of his heavenly Father, the first person of the Holy Trinity. 

I think one of the reasons we don’t confess our faith, is because we fear being called a hypocrite or we fear not knowing what to say. On the one hand, no one is perfect other than Jesus and, because of her unique role in duping the devil, his mother Mary. We are all striving to be perfect but, ultimately remain imperfect. That’s why confession means, not only telling someone what we believe but also telling a priest when we don’t live up to the standards God has for us. But, on the other hand, if we wait until we are perfect before we talk about Jesus, we’ll never do it. So, we have to talk about Him and, if we feel like we’re not ready to do so, we can model Jesus and ask the Holy Spirit to put the right words in our mouth. It’s not a replacement for studying the faith but we also can’t anticipate every question a person is going to ask so we have to rely on the Holy Spirit’s help. Come Holy Spirit! Teach us to pray. Teach us to confess our faith. 

Lastly, looking at the first reading, one of the things Moses teaches the Israelites in Deuteronomy, the second book of the Bible, a book that can be really challenging to read because it tends to get bogged down in legislation, is that they need to have something basic prepared about why they believe what they believe. In other words, if someone were to ask you why you were a Catholic, why you waste an hour of your free time on the weekend coming to some outdated religious service with priests who are so out of touch with society that they can’t get married and are always asking you for money, what would you say? Could you do it in a three minute response to a friend? A one minute response on the bus? A thirty second response to a Jehovah’s witness door knocker? A 15 second video on TikTok or Instagram or Youtube shorts? This is a skill that takes some prayer and practice and I hope lent is a good time to ask the Holy Spirit to inspire you with an answer. How is God calling us to confess our faith with our lips?

Ash Wednesday 2025: Just be authentic

Friends

Peace be with you.

Is salvation fundamentally an individualistic pursuit or a group endeavor? What about forgiveness of sins? What about penitential acts? These questions come to mind as I read our readings for Mass today. The first reading describes God calling everyone together for a communal penitential liturgy. The Prophet Joel encouraged God’s people to do communal acts of fasting, weeping, and mourning for their many sins. The priests are to blow the shofar, a hollowed out ram’s horn that our reading calls a trumpet, to gather all God’s people in prayer to beg God to forgive them so that the neighboring nations will know that the one true God exists.

In the second reading, St. Paul explains how evangelization works with human beings acting as ambassadors for God. He doesn’t go into detail about how reconciliation with God takes place but he recognizes that it is done through Christ because “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” That is the most confusing yet profound part of our faith and certainly one that I’ll return to in the coming weeks and months. I bring it up to highlight the fact that St. Paul says, because Jesus has made us the righteousness of God, we are supposed to work together to live out our life of holiness. So it seems like both the first reading and second reading say that salvation, forgiveness of sins, and penitential acts are all group acts, things that we, the members of the church, are to do together.

That’s what makes the gospel so confusing. It offers a kind of formula of how to handle prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In all three cases, we aren’t supposed to do them publicly so that others will see them, but keep them entirely private, so that your Father, who sees in secret, will repay you. Jesus even goes so far as to not allow your right hand to know what your left hand is doing. That’s super private, not letting your entire person know the good works you are performing!

Still, we have two readings that seem to favor a public performance of penitential acts and one reading that prefers strictly private acts. This is important to iron out. In the early church, if you made a break with the church by sinning and wanted to come back, you’d have to profess your sins at Mass and go through a process of standing by the door of church, possibly for as long as a year, without receiving Holy Communion. I’m guessing none of us want to return to that, if for no other reason than because I know I would be standing by the door and then who’s going to celebrate the Mass? But I worry that certain aspects of our faith have become so personal, so private, that we can forget about them. For instance, as Catholics, we are supposed to go to confession at least once a year and we are supposed to go when we are conscious of committing a mortal sin. Yet, given the number of confessions I hear every week, and that this is a rather typical experience in terms of numbers of confession I’ve heard in my twenty two years as a priest, I have a feeling some of us aren’t going once a year. Has the privacy of confession meant that we don’t feel any communal pressure to go?

I think one challenge is that I’ve conflated three different readings with three different agendas into one message. The first reading is a desperate act by a desperate people. The people feel punished because they have turned away from God and so they’re communally turning back to prove to their neighbors, not how great they are, but how great God is. In the Gospel, Jesus is encouraging his followers not to become like the Pharisees who make public spectacles of their penitential acts but don’t take the time to let it sink into their hearts. In both readings , the point is St. Paul talked about in the second reading, that penitential acts are meant to confect a personal conversion of heart above all else, whether they are done communally or privately. They can’t just be done for show. They have to be done to draw us away from sin and closer to God.

Now let’s think about whatever we’re doing for lent. Are we really doing it for self improvement, to lose weight, or to get other people’s attention at how prayerful or generous we are? Or are we trying to draw closer to God? If it’s not entirely to draw closer to God, we should take some time today to rethink what we’re doing.

7 OT C: Love who? Pray for who?

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

There are three instinctual reactions to violence: fight, flight, and freeze. If someone jumps out from a dark room, what is your reaction? I remember, a few years ago, watching a video of a person hiding in a trash can who popped out and scared people as they were being interviewed by an accomplice. Most people screamed and ran away. Some people put their hands up and screamed frozen in place. The experiment ended, however, when one person punched the guy as he popped out and knocked the guy out cold. I’m guessing most people watching the video cheered internally with the last guy because the man in the trash can got his comeuppance. However, as Christians, we believe there is actually a fourth option we are called to cultivate. If fight, flight, and freeze are animalistic, instinctual responses, natural responses as St. Paul might call them, there’s a spiritual, or supernatural response that is a charism that we need to ask for from the Holy Spirit if we are to live out our Christians lives. 

We can see an example of this in the first reading and an explanation of it in the gospel. In the First reading, there are essentially two kings of Judah, one currently on the throne and one that has already been chosen as his successor by God. The king that’s already on the throne is named Saul. King Saul has consistently disobeyed God and has allowed the power to go to his head. Even when things go right, if they don’t go right in a way that makes King Saul look good, he gets upset and seeks revenge on the person who does look good. And it’s always King David who looks good so Kind Saul keeps trying to kill him. There are three instances in the First Book of Samuel where, while trying to kill David, Saul actually ends up putting his own life in danger. In this passage, King Saul and his men have been walking all day and are sleeping. The Hebrew word for sleep that they use is also used when God puts Adam to sleep to create Eve, so there’s a sense of divine anesthesia going on here. King David and his second in command, whose name is Abishai, walk among the three hundred soldiers of King Saul’s men. They see King Saul’s ceremonial spear stuck next to his head and it’s Abishai who has the reaction most of us would probably want to have had. This guy has been trying to kill us so, if we get rid of him, we get rid of the problem. They’ve tried flight and freeze to no avail. Maybe it’s time to fight. But David refuses because he will not hurt God’s anointed. Saul may be a terrible king but he’s still God’s choice to be a king so, by killing King Saul, he would really be killing God’s choice for king. For King David, he had to show mercy. 

This same notion of mercy is littered throughout the Gospel. It’s founded on something that the Lord has made very clear to me that I must emphasize today: Love your enemies and pray for those who mistreat you. Remember love is willing what is best for the other person, not just a feeling or some kind of bland tolerance. Love is the basis of mercy; you show love to the person by not reacting in our animal instinctive way but by showing mercy instead. But it’s a distinctive kind of mercy, one that marks Christians as being different than the rest of the world. There’s a defiance to it. When someone smacks you on one cheek, turn and offer the left. That’s not a fight or flight or freeze response. It says that a person will not be embarrassed or hurt by someone smacking their cheek. The same is true when someone takes your cloak so you offer them your tunic as well. Think about the tunic like a sweatshirt or hoodie under a winter coat on a cold day. Giving a tunic on top of a cloak is a response of mercy and kindness to an act that doesn’t deserve it. Both of these show a willingness to suffer for someone else. Why suffer for someone else? Think of the scene from Les Miserables involving Jean Vajean and the Bishop. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, early into this play or movie, a man recently released from prison is given a place to stay at the local bishop’s house and the man responds by stealing the bishop’s plates and silverware. When the police take the man back to the bishop to return what he has stolen, the bishop thanks them and then hands the man two silver candlesticks, claiming he not only gave the man the plates and silverware but those as well. Instead of putting the man in jail, he tells the thief he has saved his soul for God. 

This is the kind of mercy Jesus wants us to have in our interactions with one another. It’s one that lives constantly in hope that an entitled person will recognize his or her need for God. It’s the kind of thing that made a pagan author named Aristides of Athens comment in the second century that Chrstians are amazing because we love one another. But we don’t just love those closest to us, those easiest to love, we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. We want them to be converted and we’ll do whatever it takes, even to the point of embarrassing, inconveniencing, and even possibly hurting ourselves to make that happen. We want them to be saved.

Who do we find it difficult to be patient with or merciful toward? How is God calling us to be merciful in a way that saves their soul for Him?

3 OT C: We need a Jubilee

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

On May 9, 2024, Pope Francis declared this year, 2025, a jubilee year. In his address, entitled “Spes Non Confundit” or “Hope does not disappoint” the Pope highlighted a few acts that we should do as a church, which are all connected to the theological virtue of hope. Lest we believe, however, that Pope Francis invented the idea of a Jubilee year, we should heed the origin he defines in the document itself. The Pope says it goes back to 1300 with the proclamation of the Jubilee done by Pope Boniface VIII. With all due respect to Pope Francis, even though this is the first expression of a Christian Jubilee year, the tradition actually goes back much farther. 

The first reading for today’s Mass describes an earlier jubilee year from the Book of Nehemiah, though at one point it was united with another Old Testament Book called Ezra. Both books describe a time when the Jewish people had just returned from being exiled, some people for as long as seventy years. They were allowed to return to Israel by a pagan Persian king named Cyrus. King Cyrus not only allowed them to return but he gave them money to rebuild the temple and allowed them to appoint a Jewish leader named Nehemiah. So Ezra is a priest and Nehemiah is sort of a politician. Ezra calls all the people who have not been allowed to practice their religion for seventy years to gather at the Temple and he reads the first five Books of the Old Testament to them and their reaction is to start crying. They cry so much that Nehemiah and Ezra have to remind them that this is meant to be a good time, that they are supposed to be rejoicing. There’s a feast going on. Why are they crying, you might ask. Partly because the people are being reminded of some of the things in the Torah that they were supposed to be doing to be in right relationship with God that they haven’t been doing. One of these would have been living out a jubilee year every 50 years. A Jubilee year demanded the release of debts, allowing your farmland to sit farrow, and observing a year-long sabbath rest. The people are mourning, therefore, because they can see that one of the reasons they went into exile in the first place was because they had neglected being in right relationship with God whenever it became inconvenient for them, especially when it was time to live out a jubilee year. They neglected their relationship with God until they didn’t know him anymore. And, even though Nehemiah is encouraging them to celebrate because now that they know this they can do something about it, this will be the last book written in the Old Testament that describes God working with and in his people. Other books will be written after Ezra and Nehemiah, like Maccabees and Tobit, but these books are almost entirely about the faithful actions of holy people and not about God working in the lives of those people. One idea as to why that is true is because the people, after being reminded to keep the jubilee year, promptly forget and allowed excuses to get in the way of living it out. 

That is until a certain carpenter decided to walk into a synagogue in Nazareth around the year 33AD and opened a scroll containing the Book of Isaiah that declared that it was going to be a jubilee year. The problem is that carpenters can’t declare jubilee years, only priests like Ezra can do that. But they have someone better than Ezra here. Jesus knew that that year, in which his death and resurrection would take place, is truly a year of forgiveness for the debt of sin and a year worthy of ridding ourselves of anything that distracts from being in right relationship with God. 

I think we need a jubilee year now more than ever because, in this time of immediate gratification, we need to work on our patience. In Paragraph Four from Pope Francis' document, he says…

“…In our fast-paced world, we are used to wanting everything now. We no longer have time simply to be with others; even families find it hard to get together and enjoy one another’s company. Patience has been put to flight by frenetic haste, and this has proved detrimental, since it leads to impatience, anxiety and even gratuitous violence, resulting in more unhappiness and self-centeredness. Nor is there much place for patience in this age of the Internet, as space and time yield to an ever-present “now”. Were we still able to contemplate creation with a sense of awe, we might better understand the importance of patience. We could appreciate the changes of the seasons and their harvests, observe the life of animals and their cycles of growth, and enjoy the clarity of vision of Saint Francis.”

Do you find yourself constantly worrying about what comes next? Do you find that you spend all day Sunday getting prepared for Monday, that every moment that isn’t occupied is spent staring at your phone or tablet? How can we use the jubilee year to refocus our lives to be more focused on God and God’s people and less focused on things and tasks?

2 OT C: Charity begins in serving others

 Friends

Peace be with you

The British playwright John Marston wrote in 1610

True charity beginneth first at home,

Heere in your bosomes dwell your deere-lov’d hearts,

Feed them with joy; first crowne their appetites,

And then cast water on the care-scroch’d face,

Let your own longings first be satisfied,

All other pitty is but foolish pryde.

This appears to be the origin of the phrase “Charity begins at home. This phrase is meant to say that we need to be sure that we are looking after the people around us as much as we’re caring for those far away. We can’t ignore the poor, homeless and jobless people in Cedar Rapids and, instead, only care for the people of Ukraine. We shouldn’t ignore the annoying neighbor who is struggling to rebuild a house after a house fire while sending money to the poor people in California to help them rebuild their homes. In some ways, helping the neighbor is the bigger priority both because it’s easier to ignore them and because it would be rather selfish to not help an annoying neighbor because maybe someone not so annoying would move in if they moved out. 

While hearing the story of the wedding feast of Cana, I’m struck by the strength of Mary. When she, Jesus, and some of his disciples were invited to a wedding, she went out of her way, when the wine ran out, to convince Jesus to perform his first miracle. How did Mary know that her son could do this? I suppose the easy answer is that a mother always knows. Parents know the hidden talents and potential of their children before anyone else. There are many men and women who have accomplished great things because their mothers and fathers believed in them even when the children didn’t believe in themselves.

Yet, this puts forth a second, related question for me: Do you think Mary always knew that Jesus was a miracle worker and yet never asked him to, say, multiply her loaves or turn her water into wine at the dinner table, or double her money to make ends meet? There’s no scriptural evidence to support that idea and the reluctance that Jesus shows at the wedding at Cana would seem to indicate that he didn’t. Yet, after the death of St. Joseph, how could a powerless widow have never asked her son to use his miraculous power to help her out when she was so quick to ask him to help others? Instead of believing that charity begins at home, for Jesus and Mary, charity begins at someone else’s wedding.

Think about Mary’s reaction to hearing that her cousin, Elizabeth, was pregnant. Despite being pregnant herself, Mary’s first thought is to travel in haste to the hill country to see her cousin. And we can see this in the example of Jesus in the desert too. After forty days of fasting, anyone would be hungry. Yet, when the devil suggested he turn some stones into bread for himself, Jesus declines. We know that later in the gospel Jesus will multiply five loaves and two fish for five thousand people, why not a half loaf for himself after such a long fast? What are Mary and Jesus telling us through these selfless charitable choices? That God’s gifts to individuals are not primarily for their or their families’ benefit but for the service of others.

For many people, the phrase charity begins at home means we take care of ourselves before we take care of others, that the money we give to the poor is what is above and beyond what we use to purchase what we want and need. First make sure you have the latest iphone and that really nice sweater and a visit to that really nice restaurant before making sure your neighbor has food and clothes and lodging. I think that’s why charity begins and ends in serving others in the mind and heart of Jesus and Mary. 

How is the Holy Family encouraging you to forsake something you want or need in order to help someone in need?

Epiphany 2025: are we attentive to the little daily epiphanies?

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

This past Wednesday night, I was looking for a video to describe the history of Medjugorje. In case you don’t know, it’s the sight of an alleged ongoing appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary since 1981. There’s some controversy surrounding the truth of the appearances, though. In general, the Vatican says that it is a good place for pilgrimage but it takes no official opinion on the truth or falsity of the visions. It cannot deny that there appear to have been miraculous healings for visitors going to the shrine but it is more cautious of the visions from the people who started having visions when they were children but who are now in their fifties. 

I would guess most of the people going there, including a local group who recently went, have no interest in entering into the controversy surrounding the visions. In that way, they are like the Magi from today’s Gospel. These astrologers, probably from modern day Iraq, could have had no idea that they were fulfilling Old Testament prophecy when they walked into Jerusalem in search of the newborn King of the Jews. They were just interpreting the movements of a star and it led them there. They couldn’t have known that the star was simply light being drawn to the child who would one day identify himself as the light of the world. They didn’t have the Old Testament, after all, so they couldn’t include it among what they considered their holy writings. Instead, they had to rely completely on the instinct built into human beings to search for things larger than themselves and the Holy Spirit guiding and directing them along the way. Thankfully, their instincts told them something wasn’t right with Herod, though, and they trusted the Holy Spirit when he told them not to go back and tell the false king where the true king had been born. They went home, like the shepherds on the day of Jesus’ birth, a little wiser and a little more faithful. 

I want to admit something that I’m not proud of at this point. It’s only been recently that I’ve prioritized spending a Holy Hour each day. You’d think, as a priest, I would have done it every day from the time of my ordination. Unfortunately, when I was ordained, it wasn’t stressed how important that was. I did spend time in prayer each day reading and reflecting on what’s called the Liturgy of the Hours. But, spending time reading Sacred Scripture and then being quiet and listening is really something I’ve only been doing since last June, when I decided to start classes to officially be a spiritual director. I struggled for a good six months not to fill the time reading something or looking up prayers on my phone. In fact, I’ve only recently got to a point where I put a moratorium on my phone in the chapel because it is only a distraction for me. That hour is singularly my time with my friend, just being with Jesus and expecting nothing. One question that I keep bringing to Jesus is what He wants from St. Patrick’s. As I shared in this week’s bulletin, Jesus shares with me that something great is going to happen here. However, when I ask for greater clarity what that means, I hear “wait and see”. I ask if it will be a celebration or an opportunity for growth and he tells me that I should wait and see. Now, I’ll admit, I’m not claiming to be the recipient of special revelations, anything more than what anyone else would hear. And, even though I use the example of the flood in the gospel, I’m not saying that it’s going to have the same emotional impact that the flood did. I’m just saying that, regardless of what happens, some will think it is a positive and some will think it’s a negative. God could make us the premiere ice cream dealer in the world and some would think that’s great while others would be depressed because they’re lactose intolerant or because the ice cream is just too cold. 

In the meantime, I’ve appreciated waiting and seeing because it has opened my eyes to all the small revelations Jesus puts into my daily life. I noticed the white purity of the snow on Thursday. I gave thanks for the questions of a person struggling with their faith. God’s making epiphanies dailys in our lives. Do we notice them?

Mary, Mother of God: Making sure we ponder the authentic words Mary pondered.

Friends

Peace be with you.

I hate the phrase toxic masculinity. It’s become very popular among academics to demonize anything that’s stereotypically masculine. However, having said that, I was listening to a podcast yesterday morning called The Counsel of Trent by a Catholic Answers presenter named Trent Horn. He was talking about how there is this toxic group of apologists who are male and claim they can be crass or crude. They even claim a permission in scripture to be able to do this. They’ll take a passage from St. Paul where harsh words seem to be said to justify this, even though Trent Horn was quick to point out that what they’re interpreting as a harsh word is better translated as refuse or manure or fertilizer rather than a harsher equivalent, if you catch my drift. He says these men will say that this passage gives them the right to speak bluntly as men ought to do. For instance, when talking to a former “adult” movie star who has reformed her life and is trying to work within that community to get others out of the slavery they’re stuck in, one of these men, in a debate, referred to her using a toxic word to describe her current, post confession, post conversion life as though it were stuck in her past life. Trent took exception to these men asking, saying that they’ve doubled the scandal they caused by not only refusing to accept the veracity of her repentance but by using harshly offensive language in doing so.

That type of toxic masculinity is rooted in an inability to fully grasp the Gospel. I set that in stark contrast to what happened in the Gospel today. If you haven’t heard the full explanation of the Birth of the Lord from the Gospel of Luke this year, I’d suggest watching A Charlie Brown Christmas in which the character Linus finally drops his blanket to relate the story of how the shepherds have this tremendous encounter with angelic forces in a field. Contrary to some depictions you may get from some Christian art, shepherds are not a group of philosophical guys sitting around a field hoping angels would come to enlighten them about the workings of the world. They were the toughest, dirtiest, most hardscrabble guys alive at the time. They had to defend their sheep from wolves and thieves. They had to know where the best fields were to get their sheep food and water and how to deal with other shepherds who knew where those fields were to get there ahead of them. The last thing they were going to do was take a break to go see someone else’s baby. These guys aren’t like me. When I see a baby coming into church, I say “Oh a baby, I want to hold her”. These guys see sheep born all the time, what do they care about a baby? The fact that these guys go running to Bethlehem goes to show how untoxic their masculinity is. They have had an encounter that just has to be explored. This fact alone should tell those who believe Jesus was just a great man and not fully God and fully human that they got it wrong. The fact that shepherds were the ones who ran off to see this baby points to the fact that something special has happened here and that’s the fact that God himself has come among us as a baby. As they arrive in Bethlehem to where the Holy Family is staying, they tell the story of what happened in the field and, as they go back to their flocks, the Bible says that these hardscrabble guys continue glorifying and praising God. It goes to show the quality of the encounter these men had. They had to have an encounter with the one true God. 

       There’s a movie out there, which I’m not going to say where you can find it because I don’t want to give it any undue publicity, but it purports to be about the life of Mary. I think that, because of the success of a series like The Chosen, mainstream Hollywood thought there may be money in trying to get into telling the story of Mary. However, as they tend to do, this movie really misses the mark. One of the most glaring examples happens when Mary is asked by the Angel Gabriel to be the mother of God and her response is “Let it be me”. NO! Mary’s response was “May it be done to me according to your word” It’s the difference between someone saying “I trust you God so I will do it the way your way” versus “I’ll do it my way”. Over and over again in this movie, they get Mary wrong because it is not rooted in Sacred Scripture interpreted through the lens of Sacred Tradition but rooted in false notions of ecumenism and female empowerment. 

We are called to be like Mary, meditating in our hearts on the experiences she had with Jesus and having the joy of the shepherds, praising and glorifying God. One of our challenges is to make sure we are following the right message when we do so. We have to make sure we are, like Mary, meditating on what the Bible actually says and what our faith professes and not simply what someone with a toxic agenda wants us to believe. If, in the end, in our prayer we must echo Mary’s fiat, “May it be done to be according to your word.”