Corpus Christi - B I believe and profess all that the Catholic Church teaches, believes, and proclaims to be revealed by God

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I had a short career as a wrestler in middle school. The coach at Miller Middle School in Marshalltown, Mr. Kearney, was known to help cultivate great wrestlers so, in sixth grade, I thought I’d give it a try. He taught us how to do single leg takedowns, half nelsons, cradles, wizzars, and other moves. We got to our first meet and I was a wrestling a guy who was a little heavier than I was with whom I would become good friends in high school. As the referee started the match, it was like everything Mr Kearney taught me went out of my head. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. My opponent wrapped his arms around my entire upper body and threw me to the ground in a bear hug. We’d studied all kinds of moves but I had no idea how to get out of this one. I was pinned within thirty seconds of the match starting. I remember walking away from that match and deciding that I was going to quit. It took me two days but I eventually walked into Mr. Kearney’s office in the gym and told him I was quitting the team. He didn’t try and talk me out of it and I suspect I know why. 

One of the aspects that impresses me about St. Mark’s description of the night of the Last Supper is that this has all been planned out. Jesus tells his disciples to go to someone who has a room for them to celebrate the Feast of Passover and they are to make preparations for everyone else. Then, Jesus takes a Seder meal, which has its own unique plan, and adds his own plan to change the blessing of the bread and wine into a re-enactable ritual in which they become his body, blood, soul, and divinity. I recently read a good description of what I mean by this in the journal Communio in an article entitled “Notes Toward the Definition of Memory”. It said that Jesus, by telling us to do this in memory of him, meant it was “…a re-presentation, which is possible because…the power of the living God does not fade away, but remains effective: ‘the chief function of (Old Testament religious practices) was to actualize the tradition. Israel celebrated in her seasonal festivals the great redemptive acts of the past both to renew the tradition and to participate in its power. God’s action is a permanent blessing. In this respect, the reenactment, by making the original event present again, is a renewal of God’s blessing, which was given in a way that is both definitive, ‘once-for-all,’ and remains infinitely fruitful and thus ever open to further fulfillments.” In other words, while the plan for that night was for Jesus to take the 12 apostles into the upper room and celebrate The Last Supper, the plan of the Last Supper was that it be something where it both happened in time and is, therefore, not repeatable, and to invite us into that once-for-all celebration whenever we gather for the Eucharist. Every Mass, therefore, is part of God’s plan for making us a part of the Body of Christ, the Church. 

A few weeks ago, at the Easter Vigil, I asked those who had already been baptized but were asking to be Confirmed and receive First Eucharist to repeat a Profession of Faith. It said, “I believe and profess all that the Catholic Church teaches, believes, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” I wonder if we all think about the fact that, when we are offered communion and the person says, “The Body of Christ” that this is really what is being asked of us. If we are receiving the Body of Christ, it means we want to be part of God’s plan, we want to be a part of the Body of Christ, the Church. It’s not just a question of believing in the real presence, though that is challenging enough. It’s a question of whether we believe that all life is sacred, from natural conception until natural death. Do we believe it’s important to forgive others, even those who aren’t particularly worthy of our forgiveness, because God has forgiven us? Do we believe that Mary was born without original sin and that she was taken up body and soul into heaven? 

My problem with wrestling was that my heart wasn’t in it and I didn’t think it ever would be. I didn’t believe I could ever care enough about it to really try. You may say I gave up too quickly and you may be right. But it wasn’t an important enough activity for me to figure out how to dive in head first and really try. I feel like this is how a lot of people treat Christianity. It’s something we do because it might get us into heaven. Or it’s something we do because we’ve always done it and we like the music. Or it’s something we do because we’re good people and the bad people are the ones who don’t go to church. At the risk of sounding unfairly judgmental, those seem like rather lukewarm reasons. It’s okay to struggle with church teachings because we find them challenging. In some ways, that’s better than giving up and pretending like we can dissent from church teachings but continue to be a part of the church. The challenge is, if part of coming to Mass has to do with being included into a plan that’s been unfolding since time began, what do we need to committ to believing so that we can, in good conscience, truly say, “Amen! I believe and profess all that the Catholic Church teaches, believes, and proclaims to be revealed by God.”

Trinity Sunday - B Having a relationship will all three persons of the one God

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

A few years ago, I was fascinated by the television show Lost. At the time, I was Associate Pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames and this undergrad named Jeff Dole, who’s now a priest, told me I needed to watch it because it had strong philosophical themes. There was some good and some not so good things about the show but what amazed me was that they waited until the middle of the second season to introduce a major character in the show. Since then, I’ve seen a few shows do this but this was the first time I watched a show that seemed to make the deliberate decision not to introduce all the major characters in the first few episodes. The Chosen is a more recent example of this. Each season we are introduced to more of Jesus’ followers including each of the 12 Apostles but that seems more natural to the way the Gospel tells the story. 

Today’s Gospel comes from the very end of St. Matthew’s Gospel in what is commonly referred to as the Great Commission. It’s a fascinating passage for several reasons. First, it says that the disciples went to Galilee, the northern part of Israel. We know that Jesus appeared to them in the central part of Israel, in Jerusalem, on Easter Sunday and the week after so, presumably, this happens after that. We also know that forty days after Easter, Jesus ascended into heaven and the apostles were, again, in Jerusalem for that. So this must have taken place sometime after the week after Easter but before the Ascension. That’s what makes the beginning so confusing. They clearly have gone to Galilee, to a particular mountain, maybe the Mount of the Beatitudes, where they had encountered Jesus before, to meet him. But, St. Matthew started this passage by saying that the eleven disciples “…worshiped but they doubted.” So it’s not just Thomas who is the doubter. Even after Jesus ate with them and showed them his hands and his side, they doubted. What would make them do this?

On Thursdays, for Coffee Klatch, we’re watching a show on Formed.org, the Catholic streaming service you can access for free, called the Wild Goose. This past Thursday, Fr. Dave Pivonka, the shows’ main presenter, said something that seemed rather…heretical. He said that Jesus isn’t enough. He acknowledged that it sounded bad but he said he talked to some theologians and they agreed with him after he explained what he meant. Think about the number of times Jesus says something like this to the apostles. On Easter Sunday, the eleven apostles are locked in the upper room out of fear and Jesus comes and gives them the power to forgive sins. A week later, they’re still locked in the upper room out of fear and Jesus proves he’s real. He appears several other times and sends them out but, forty days later, they’re still gathered together fearfully in the upper room. What’s stopping them from spreading the gospel? It’s not until the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost that they go forth, able to speak the language of the people around them. Even though they’re given the great commission here somewhere in Galilee before Pentecost, it won’t be activated until the Holy Spirit comes upon them at Pentecost. 

It’s not that there’s something insufficient in Jesus himself but in our relationship with God if we don’t have a relationship with all three persons of the Trinity. It’s true to say that Jesus alone died on the cross and rose from the dead but this was part of God the Father’s plan to rescue us from sin and invite us into the life of grace. And we live in the life of grace, not because of our merits or even our intention, but entirely because of the Holy Spirit given to us in the Sacraments and in our personal prayer. We need that relationship with all three people, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to activate our faith and make us able to spread the gospel. 

Do we have a relationship with Our heavenly Father who loved us into being and sent his Son to forgive us so we can forgive each other? Do we have a relationship to Jesus, his Son, who gave his life for us and sent us his Holy Spirit to give us grace? Do we have a relationship with the Holy Spirit who inspires us with his gifts for building up the Body of Christ, the Church and makes us sons and daughters of the Father? Which of these three do we most need to get to know?

Ascension B: Jesus went up, We go forth.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Have you ever watched the show Beat Bobby Flay? In case you don’t know, Bobby Flay is a celebrity chef trained at the French Culinary Institute and, prior to working on the Food Network, was a chef at some of the fanciest restaurants in New York City. If you’ve never seen this show, Wikipedia summarizes it by saying, “In the first round, two guests, often a celebrity chef and a friend of (Bobby) Flay, introduce two contestants who cook for 20 minutes against each other using an ingredient chosen by (Bobby) Flay. The guests then determine who cooked the better dish and will face Flay in the second round. The winning contestant then chooses a dish for both the contestant and (Bobby) Flay to cook in the second round which lasts for 45 minutes. The winner of the second round is determined by three judges in a blind taste test.” Bobby Flay has a 61% success rate in beating the contestant, which makes me wonder if that’s because he’s really that good or if there may be another factor. 

Today we celebrate the Ascension, which took place forty days after Easter. The problem is that this is supposed to take place this past Thursday and today is supposed to be the Seventh Sunday in Easter. A number of years ago, the bishops of the United States heard from priests that many people were skipping the Holy Day of Obligation that was Ascension Thursday so they decided to move it to Sunday permanently and, essentially, get rid of the Seventh Sunday of Easter. The dioceses in Nebraska and a few others in the United States have defied this change but, for the most part, parishes in the United States celebrate Ascension Thursday Sunday, as I like to call it with a smart alec smirk on my face. What makes this day so important that we had to move it to preempt another Sunday?

If you look into the first reading and gospel, you could get a sense that the event isn’t even all that important. Look at the descriptions we have of it. St. Luke, in the first reading, simply said “...he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight…” That’s it? What did it sound like? What did the cloud look like? Was Jesus excited or sad or melancholic to leave? There are so many details missing from this and St. Mark doesn’t really fill in any of them in the Gospel. He’s even more vague. “So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.” How does St. Mark know he went to heaven? Did he have a vision of this or was it from something Jesus told him at some point during his earthly life? 

I think the reason they’re so vague is because, even though the Ascension of Jesus was an important event, the really important thing isn’t actually how he went up to heaven but what he left behind. St. Paul, in the second reading, connected the Ascension to the Incarnation. In other words, Jesus was in heaven as the second person of the Trinity from eternity before he was conceived in the womb of Mary, meaning he is just returning to where he was before he became human in the Ascension. This is, obviously, different from us, human beings, who only have existed on this earth in a time-bound way. Saint Paul says, of Jesus, that his return happens so that he “might fill all things.” 

He does this by empowering the church for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ until we all attain three things: the unity of faith, knowledge of the Son of God, and maturity to the full stature of Jesus. You see, it’s hard to become the body of Christ when Jesus is still bodily present among us. It’s like those people trying to beat Bobby Flay. I’m sure they have great dishes that we’d all love to eat but they’re competing with a professionally trained, world renowned chef and they’re intimidated. Imagine trying to evangelize someone while Jesus was standing behind you. We’d just turn to him and say, “Why don’t you tell them about yourself.” He had to leave for us to be able to become his heart, hands, and voice in this world, to become his body.

How is Jesus calling you to build up the church to the unity of faith in Him?

6 E B: Remain...abide...life in God's love

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I would guess that if I were to ask how many of you live in the house in which you grew up, it would be a very small number of people if any at all. I’m, of course, not talking about my little friends who are still growing up. In a metropolitan area, it’s not normal for people to hang onto a house from generation to generation, unlike where I used to live in more rural areas of the State of Iowa where it is more common. My Mom moved three years ago to a smaller house and it still kind of feels weird going to her new house. When she lived in the old house in which I was raised, it felt very comfortable. I had memories of repairing the cracked mortar of the bricks of the garage or wrestling with my older brothers in the living room or watching our dog do the zoomies after being outside in the winter. This new house is a nice house but it doesn’t have those memories for me. It feels a little sterile, in fact. 

Our gospel for today’s Mass is a continuation of the gospel from last week. In last week’s gospel, Jesus encouraged the disciples  to remain in his love five times. We only heard it once this week before he goes on to talk about what it means to remain in his love. What I didn’t include in my homily last week was a comment by Dr. Peter Kreeft that the word remain is somewhat inadequate when it comes to the original Greek word that is being translated. He says that when he hears the word remain, it means not to leave. But the word that is being translated there has more of a sense of “abide” or “live.” If I were told to remain in the house, it sounds rather sterile to me. But if I was told to abide in the house or live in the house, it’s the difference between someone welcoming me to their home and telling me to make myself at home, someone walking to a cupboard to get me a cup for water versus telling me which cupboard the cups are in and inviting me to get some ice and water from their fridge. 

It’s important we understand this to really understand how radical this gospel is. First, Jesus says that he loves us with the same love the Father has for him. That’s amazing to ponder. Spend ten minutes in front of the Blessed Sacrament in adoration internally repeating to yourself “You love me as much as the Father loves you.” It’s humbling. It’s baffling. It would be enough to overwhelm us but he goes on. Then spend another ten minutes saying “You want me to live in that love.” It’s true to say that he doesn’t want us to leave his love, he wants us to remain in it. But this is really where I think Dr. Kreeft has a good point. Jesus knows we will only truly live, truly thrive, if we live in his love. Our life will be joyful because we connect it to the one who died for the salvation of the world. If we abide in his love, his joy will be ours and his joy will be complete. And this joy is what he most wants for us and wants us to pass onto others. 

If we abide in his love, we will also want to live as he lived. We’ll want to model our life on the life of Jesus. That was the whole purpose of the commandments, to put forth how we could live a life like God on earth. If we don’t abide in Jesus’ love, they can appear to be arbitrary rules, man made even, that are a tool of repression. But if they come from someone who loves us and wants us to live in his joy, someone telling us that this is what makes his life joyful and that it can make our life meaningful too, we’re more apt to do it. It’s the difference between hearing healthy living tips from a friend whose life is anything but healthy versus hearing healthy living tips from a friend who genuinely seems to be living a healthy life. Both of them may care for us and want the best life for us but the healthy person is actually living a life that is making them healthy so we’re probably going to listen to them. 

But, if we want to live in Christ’s love, that means we have to love one another. If the fact that Jesus loves me with the same love that the Father has for him is overwhelming to me, that means that, if I’m going to live a life like his, I need to love others with that same kind of love, especially those hardest to love. In a world that prizes self love and getting what we’re due above all things, how can we love others with the same love Jesus has for us?

5 E B: inviting the uncomfortable

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Have you ever made a friend that you were skeptical of how long your friendship would last? Sometimes, when I’m involved with training for the Police Department or Fire Department, they’ll match me up with someone who is deeply religious and possibly even deeply Christian because they think we’ll have things in common to talk about. Sometimes they’re right. But sometimes I can sort of tell the person comes from a anti-Catholic background and is immediately disappointed to have to work with a priest or I get uncomfortable wondering at what point the person is going to turn to me to ask me if I’ve ever been saved. 

I get the feeling that this was how the Apostles and disciples in Jerusalem felt when St. Paul showed up there in the first reading. We know there were at least two apostles, St. Peter and St. James, present in Jerusalem at that time. We also know they had many disciples to whom they were ministering. And we know that St. Paul had gone from holding cloaks at the stoning of St. Stephen to dragging out Christians from their homes to stand before tribunals. It says, right before his conversion, that St. Paul was breathing out murderous threats. He knows that by exposing Jews who had converted to Christianity to either the Jewish or Roman authorities, they will at least be beaten and could even be killed. That’s what makes St. Peter, St. James, and the Jerusalem disciples “afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple”. They thought he was a spy sent to infiltrate their organization. 

It makes perfect sense, then, that it takes Barnabbas, whose name means “son of consolation”, to console the fears of the church in Jerusalem that St. Paul’s conversion was legitimate and not a ruse to root them out. The other thing that happens, however, is that St. Paul bears fruit. He “spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord” to the point where some Greek speaking Jews “tried to kill him.” 

Notice that, despite this persecution and resistance they are getting from the world, the church is at peace. One commentary I read said, “The placement of the final summary that reports the condition of the church (as being at peace) is interesting. It suggests that there is a relationship between the peace the church enjoyed and the sense of security it must have felt knowing it no longer had to fear the passionate opposition of one of its chief persecutors.”

Another way of saying this, one that is closer to the parable in the gospel, is that the church is bearing the fruit of conversion and that brings it peace. A few weeks ago, we brought a bunch of people into the church; baptizing some, confirming some, and giving first Eucharist to all. It was a joyous time in so many ways, unless you start to think about all the people who have walked away from the church. It seems like a drop in a very leaky bucket. Many leave because they say all religions are human organizations. I appreciated what Dr. Peter Kreeft wrote about this. He said, “The church is not a human organization but a supernatural organism. It has two natures like Christ. It looks like a merely human organization, like a club or a state or a business, but that’s its disguise. Christ has many disguises. He hides both his divine nature and his human nature behind the appearance of bread and wine in the Eucharist.”

One thing that makes us very different than a human organization is that we were founded by Jesus. He is the vine that connects us to the father. That means we are organically connected to him like the arms and legs and torso are connected to the head of a body. We are called to bear fruit, especially among those who make us a little uncomfortable. We may too quickly write off the idea of inviting people to Mass with us because their personality makes us uncomfortable. We may think they wouldn’t fit in here or maybe even that they’d come off a little too strong of personality for our calm, quiet St. Patrick’s crowd. But, who knows, that could be the next St. Paul. Who is passionately searching for the truth in your life that Jesus is calling you to invite here to know the peace only Christ can give?

3 E B We are witnesses of God’s forgiveness

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

What do bunnies, chocolate, or eggs have to do with the resurrection of Jesus? It’s all wrapped up in the Easter celebration, right, but what is the connection between them? Several comedians have very joyously pointed out that there is none. We’ve really rammed together two celebrations that share the same time frame. One celebration is about spring and the new life that is associated with this time of year. Birds' eggs hatch in the spring and give us baby birds. Rabbits have bunnies in the spring. Chocolate is the international symbol of love and romance for couples. Love is in the air and, while I know Jesus’ death and resurrection are very much actions that show the Father’s love, Easter celebrates something more profound than fertility. 

In the first reading, Peter is speaking to his fellow Jews who were in the crowd on Good Friday shouting “crucify him” and freeing Barabbas. He has every right to be hurt, angry, and upset at his religious brothers and sisters who were instrumental in crucifying the Lord. Yet, he excuses them, saying they acted out of ignorance, and invites them to “Repent, therefore, and be converted that your sins may be wiped away.” Similarly, in the second reading from St. John’s first letter, the Beloved Disciple says that he is writing to his followers so that they will not sin. But, if they do sin, Jesus is sending another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who is the expiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world. What allows these two apostles to be able to preach about forgiveness of sins?

Undoubtedly, it was because they had experiences like the one recounted in the Gospel. After Jesus’s appearance to the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus, they ran back to Jerusalem to tell the twelve apostles all that had happened. Then Jesus appears to them. After he shows that he’s not merely a ghost, he tells them that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name. Then, he calls them witnesses to this. 

During lent, we emphasize the importance of repentance and forgiveness of sins. We encourage people to go to confession and we make extra time for it. There are some priests who get annoyed by last Sunday’s celebration, Divine Mercy Sunday, because of its emphasis on going to confession. They ask how much sinning someone can do in the two or three weeks since we had all that extra time for confession during lent. And I think they’re also concerned about living up to the criticism that is leveled against the church about it being entirely about making people feel guilty and telling people they’re bad. 

However, the truth is that I think a lot of people feel bad about themselves without having anything having to do with the church. Isn’t the point of makeovers, plastic surgery, and stapling your stomach because you feel bad about the way you look? Pope Francis has recently brought up concerns about surrogacy because it uses women as an instrument in an effort to purchase a life so that people will feel better about their lives. Even changing a person’s gender stems from a dissatisfaction with who they are and a feeling that they have to change the very genetics of who they are to not feel bad about themselves. 

The message of Easter, the message we are called to witness to, isn’t about making people feel guilty. Far from that. It’s that we don’t need to change anything about ourselves to be good. We can’t fix ourselves in fact. We can ask for forgiveness if we’ve done something bad but goodness is not contingent upon someone else’s recognition, not even our own. We are good because we have been created that way. We are created in God’s image likeness and nothing we can do can destroy that. We are called by Jesus to witness to the fact that people have dignity and that they can bring anything that makes them feel bad about themselves to God for healing and forgiveness. How do we give witness to this reality in our interactions with one another, especially the unchurched?

2 E B: Begotten by God

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

In 1967, television producer Sherwood Schwartz had an idea to create a show depicting a perfect socialist utopia. He envisioned a situation in which seven people from different walks of life were forced to exist with one another. They all just happened to be on a three hour tour that got involved in bad weather and blown onto a deserted island. I’m, of course, talking about the television show Gilligan’s Island. You’ve probably never considered that this silly show was an attempt to put forward a vision of socialism. But think about it. Despite coming from very different walks of life, the members of the group are forced to form a community that shares all things in common.  Pretty much everyone but the intellectual professor are kind of dimwitted individuals. In particular, the ultra rich millionaire and his wife don’t contribute anything to the community other than forcing the laborers to serve them. It’s kind of amazing they didn’t have a Bernie Sanders type of politician at some point lecturing them about how “the economy is rigged!”

In our first reading, we heard a passage that is often used by the more progressive side of the church to push a socialist agenda. They use it to say that the church in its origins was really socialist. And, if you read it, it certainly sounds like that. The believers shared all their property and there were no needy people among them. They sold all their property and put it at the feet of the apostles who would distribute to people according to their need. 

The stark difference, though, between socialism and what is happening in the first reading has to do with the rationale. Socialism is a form of government with the goal of organizing society. It’s utopian in nature because, just as the word utopian means “No land” or Nowhere, so there’s never been a functioning society organized along socialist principles. It would take perfect people leading a perfect life. Instead, socialism almost always leaves a vacuum in leadership that is filled by a dictator. 

In contrast to socialism, in the first reading, the people who have had a direct experience of Jesus Christ realize that nothing is more important than him. They willingly give up everything because Jesus is the only thing they cannot do without. They are even willing to give up their houses because it’s just another thing that will distract them from focusing entirely on Jesus. They deeply understood what St. John was talking about in the second reading for today’s Mass in that, by believing in Jesus, they are begotten of God. They want to be children of God so they are following his commandments. They see everything they have as coming from the Father and, therefore, belonging to him. 

As I said at the beginning, the more progressive members of the church will criticize capitalism using this passage. However, I’d like to suggest that 2000 years of experience and growth has taught us some important truths. First, we seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness not an earthly kingdom. We don’t have a preferred form of government, just some that are worse than others. Socialism tends to be worse because of the power vacuum that gets filled all too easily with dictators. There’s a reason that, just before Hitler’s form of socialism moved into Poland before being kicked out in favor of the Soviet Socialist Republics’ form of Socialism, St. Faustina gave the Church the celebration we have today, Divine Mercy Sunday, as a sign of hope. If we go to confession, receive communion, and pray the Chaplet, we get special graces that give us hope in difficult times.  

Another thing we learned in the last two thousand years is that Jesus is worth giving things up but we can also have personal property. The two aren’t necessarily contradictory. Lastly, while it’s important to be charitable to the poor and people struggling with brain health, rich people can be selfish or charitable just like poor people can be selfish or charitable. 

The real challenge that this passage should offer us is that they gave up all they had because they saw Jesus everywhere. We, instead, tend to miss him like St. Thomas did on Easter Sunday. The challenge to us is if we can see him and believe him in the Eucharist and in the neighbor we serve. 

Easter B - Go get dressed and get to work

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I am not a morning person. I marvel at people who enjoy waking up early. I wake up at 5:40 most days, not because of personal desire but because that’s the time they wake up at Conception Abbey in Missouri where I am an oblate. This way, I can start prayer with them at 6:00 and mirror their day until I enter the confessional at 7:45 am. During that entire time, there’s a subconscious part of me that would very much like to curl up and go back to bed. However, I know that, once I get my black clothes on, the time for sleep has passed and it’s time for work. I’m like a service dog with a vest on. 

Last week, during the reading of the passion according to St. Mark, you may have heard a rather interesting detail. It’s present only in that gospel and tends to be forgotten quickly after it is read, if you don’t remember this, don’t worry. The detail I’m specifically talking about comes from Chapter 14 verses 51 and 52. This happens as the temple guards are arresting Jesus. Judas comes and betrays him with a kiss. One of the bystanders cuts off the high priest servant’s ear and Jesus says they could have arrested him when he was teaching in the temple but, instead, they waited so that the scriptures could be fulfilled. All of Jesus’ followers flee and then it has the two verses I alluded to which say, “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking, that this is the origin of interrupting a sporting event by streaking. However, I think that more comes from a type of arrogance that can only be spawned from some form of liquid courage. Most commentators believe this young man is meant to symbolize the shame the disciples feel in deserting Jesus in his hour of need. Shortly after telling him they would never desert him, Jesus’ followers all do so and, just as the naked Adam and Eve felt shame after they ate from the Tree of Good and Evil, so this naked young man comes to symbolize the shame of the apostles. 

When Mary of Magdala and the other women go to the tomb, they are greeted by a man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side of the tomb who assures them that Jesus is not there because he has been raised. The commentary I read said, just as the young man in the garden symbolized the shame of the disciples, so this young man, perhaps the same young man, symbolizes the life of the baptized. Indeed, during the Easter Vigil in the early church, men and women would be led off separately to a separate room called the baptistry where they would remove all their clothes, enter the baptismal font to become fully immersed in the waters of baptism, and then exit to put on a white baptismal garment. We don’t do that here at St. Patrick’s but some other churches may do a variant on this. The Catholic Church has, nonetheless, retained the idea of putting on a white garment after you are baptized to symbolize the purity of being washed clean of our sins. Note, however, that we don’t return to the naked and unafraid state of original innocence that Adam and Eve alone experienced prior to The Fall. We have been forgiven of original sin n baptism and walk with the innocence and grace offered to us and sons and daughters of God. 

I think it’s also instructive that the young man tells Mary Magdalene and the other women to go and tell Simon and the disciples that he is going to Galilee and he will see them there. It’s like they’re all being told that it’s time to get to work. There’s no time to keep staring into an empty tomb. People need to know that Jesus has been raised and has conquered sin and death. That’s really the message that isn’t confined to this interaction with these women early on a Sunday around 29 AD. It’s time for us to put on our work vests and tell others that Jesus is risen, that he has forgiven us, and that he loves us. In this world where the gospel message seems to be increasingly relegated into people’s private lives, we must share the message of this young man: He has been raised!

Good Friday - 2024: Unite your sufferings with Jesus on the cross

The challenge of preaching on Good Friday is that the Passion contains too much content to do it adequately, let along completely. To employ a cliche, it’s like drinking from a firehose. Just to give one example, I could talk about how Jesus begins our salvation from sin in a garden. He enters a garden to undo the destruction wrought by Adam and Eve in the Garden. Jesus’ is, therefore, the new and more perfect Adam sent to reverse the punishment of death that was given to Adam and Eve through disobedience. That’s just one piece in a million pieces I could focus on.

Instead, I really felt God drawing me to the words of Fr. Etienne Huard, a monk of Conception Abbey in Missouri this morning. He wrote

“As we venerate the cross and meditate on Christ’s passion, let us also unite our own sufferings, struggles, and burdens with His. Just as Jesus embraced His cross with courage and love, may we learn to embrace our crosses with faith and trust in God’s providence.”

Some people criticize Christianity because they say it is an escape. They think we are praying to a higher power in the hopes that God will be nice to us and make our life easy. Indeed, that seems to be the message of some mega church pastors who believe in the so-called prosperity gospel.

Contrary to this message is the passion we read. Being a faithful follower of Jesus means accepting that there are sufferings and uniting them to His sufferings. It doesn’t mean we get to avoid them, as though he anesthetizes us from them. Or that he makes them enjoyable, as though we become masochists. Instead, we can find meaning in suffering. It unites us to him. Fear is from the evil one but suffering is different. We are tempted to react to suffering and sorrow with fear but that only makes us paralyzed. If we can unite our sufferings with Jesus on the cross and share them with him, we may find that he lightens the load because he always takes more than us. But, ultimately, we also get to see that there is a larger plan to this world and he trusts us and loves us so much that God even lets us share in it.

Holy Thursday 2024: Proclaim to remember

Friends

Peace be with you.

Have you ever been sitting with some friends and started telling stories about the past and had a flood of memories come to mind? I’m guessing we all have. Sometimes they’re positive and sometimes they’re negative. It tends to happen for me when I get together with college friends. We start to talk about a choir tour trip or a class we had together with a particularly enigmatic professor or a rooming situation and memories come flooding back.

I have a feeling, this is how the scriptures were written. With all due respect to the Chosen’s theory that St. Matthew and St. John were both writing down things as they happened in the field, the Gospels feel more to me like reflections on past events than they do a blow-by-blow description of an event as it is happening. Which is okay. In fact, contrary to our contemporary truth that the farther away you are from an event the less you remember details, I think that the disciples and we, their successors, needed some time to reflect on what just happened to understand it.

In the second reading, St. Paul twice quotes Jesus saying of the bread and wine that we are to “Do this in remembrance of me.” There have been entire books written about the word remembrance as it is used in these sentences. When we think of remembrance or remembering things, we tend to think of calling to mind a memory of something that happened in the past. The trouble with that understanding is that we have undoubtedly had an experience of remembering something completely different than someone else. This may in part have to do with the differences between a society that is bombarded with information from screens and a society that relied on telling stories for entertainment. It’s harder to remember details when we have a million of them being thrown at us all day long. However, another part is a difference in understanding what a memory is.

As I said before, we think of remembering as a calling to mind a memory that is restricted to our mind. However, for St. Paul and Jesus, a memory is a calling to the present of something that happened in the past. It’s closer to but not exactly like what I was talking about when I began my homily. Oftentimes, when I find myself talking to college friends about the past, it feels like I’m transported back to that time. I can remember the feelings I had at the time and even start to feel them. I cringe when I remember some dumb thing I said or did. I have to check myself if I am reminded of a time when I was arrogant or cocksure. I feel happy and ecstatic when I remember a really fun or exciting experience.

At the end of the Second Reading, St. Paul clarifies that “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” It’s not that we are expected to proclaim the death of the Lord after you receive communion, though that is undoubtedly true too. It’s that, by eating and drinking the Body and Blood of the Lord, you are proclaiming his death until he comes. Jesus called it giving us an example in the Gospel, using it in reference to his act of humbly washing his disciples’ feet. It’s like we’re setting aside the mundane world in which we live and entering into the world of Jesus, entering into the very life of Jesus. It’s all a gift to us, not something we could ever earn or deserve. This is really his body, blood, soul, and divinity offered to us to bring to mind and enter into his life. It is the same body and blood that was shed for us on the cross fulfilling the Old Testament sacrifice of the Lamb. And, whenever we gather here, we proclaim to the world its importance.

That’s the reminder for tonight, the importance of gathering in service to our local community. We have been doing that on Fridays in a special way at our fish fries, in loving service to this community. We can do it when we serve at St. Vincent De Paul or Metro Catholic Outreach or other places. But we primarilly do it when we gather for Mass. Is Mass a place for you to serve the Lord by proclaiming his death or is it more of performance meant to serve your pleasure?

Palm Sunday - 2024: Jesus planned it all

Friends

Peace be with you.

Should we be having a fish fry on Good Friday? I get this question from people outside and inside the parish each year. Yes, we should and here’s why. First, I understand that it is one of two days, along with Ash Wednesday, of both abstaining from meat and fasting from food in general. But, fasting means we get to eat one regular-sized meal along with two smaller meals that don’t equal the large meal. The fish fry meal is our regular-sized reward after a full-day of smaller meals that don’t equal it. How could anything equal the best fish in town anyway, right?

A connecting aspect of both the Gospel we read at the beginning of Mass and the Passion that really struck me was that Jesus had made plans for both. He planned on where his disciples would get the donkey he would humbly ride into Jerusalem. Unlike an invading king on a mighty warhorse, Jesus would have looked rather pathetic riding in on a donkey. But that was part of the plan. He planned where he would inaugurate the Eucharist during the Last Supper. He arranged for his disciples to meet a man there with the code words beginning with “The teacher says…” He even warned the 12 apostles that they would abandon him, despite their protests. Amidst the chaos of his arrest, he indicates that it is a fulfillment of scripture.

This isn’t a scenario of a failed coup, a plan that started well that gets out of hand. He knew what he would say and not say all the way through. Jesus invited Pilate to faith when he asked him if he was the King of Jews. “You say so”, he says to this powerful individual. Please say it, please believe it, he seems to plead with him. His final words come from a Psalm that begins in utter frustration but ends with “And my soul shall live for him, my descendants serve him. They shall tell of the LORD to generations yet to come, declare his saving justice to peoples yet unborn: “These are the things the LORD has done.” We are some of those descendants. We need to be able to gather to serve the Lord and be part of the plan that Jesus has to bring about salvation, yes, even at a Good Friday fish fry…if we’re open to it.

2 L B: Christianity is not a pithy pop song

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

As some of you know, the series The Chosen has been released in theaters. Last week, I had the opportunity to watch the first three episodes and this past Thursday I watched the next three. If you haven’t watched any of this season and intend to do so, don’t worry. I’m not going to give away any of the plot but I will talk about a couple of feelings I’ve had that I don’t think will have any effect when you watch it. One of the challenges they face is trying to integrate all four gospels into a singular story without needing to add details that are not present in the gospels. I feel like the director, Dallas Jenkins, balances this pretty well by delving deep into the meaning of words and asking himself what may have caused something down the road. One of the feelings I find myself constantly having throughout all four seasons of the show is a constant skepticism as to if this character said something because they will say something else later on or if this act is foreshadowing something else. Yet there is another challenging feeling that I feel like they take on very hard in episodes three, four, and five that is also present in the gospel and first reading. 

In the first reading, we hear a story that probably seems kind of confusing. If you’re like me, you may have tuned out the entire reading and only started paying attention during the gospel because, let’s face it, most of the time I only preach on the gospel. As a preamble, you need to know that it was a common practice to sacrifice your first born son for some of the tribal nations surrounding the Israelites. This was done, in part, as a thanksgiving offering for the gift of a son to carry on his father’s familial responsibilities and as a show of trust that more sons would be born to the couple to carry on those duties. Sons were valuable in tribal societies because they could hunt for food, build houses, as well as waging war so there were fewer of them, in general, when it came to propagating the species. Sacrificing a child probably seems rather barbaric and, I’ll admit, I’m trying to use language that some of my little friends may not understand for a reason. The Jews were the first not to offer this sacrifice but to offer an animal instead. It was the first reading by which they decided to do this. Had it ended differently, had the one true God called Abraham to offer his son Isaac, they would have followed all their neighbors in this barbaric practice. But, instead, at the last possible moment, God halted the hand of Abraham and told him to sacrifice a sheep instead. He even gave Abraham the sheep to slaughter. That’s why, on February Second of each year, the Feast of the Presentation, the Bible says in the Gospel of Luke that Mary and Joseph brought a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons to the Temple to be sacrificed, because Jesus was Mary and Joseph’s first born son. It also tells us that they were too poor to afford a sheep, by the way, since they could only afford some inexpensive birds. 

We, Christians, believe there is deeper symbolism to this as well. We believe the animal sacrifice that replaced child sacrifice was itself temporary and symbolic. At Mass, I say “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the World…” We believe the sacrifice of Jesus was the once-for-all sacrifice that ended the need for the Temple Mount sacrifice. The reason Jesus tells Peter, James, and John not to tell the others what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration is because it would only make sense when his own sacrifice was completed. Jesus’ transfigured glory could only make sense after his brutal death on the cross. It’s like Jesus is trying to show them the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel even before they’ve entered the tunnel. He’s trying to give them resurrected, glorified hope before they’re hopeless. I think it’s also why Peter didn’t get it, because he hadn’t experienced the death of his friend yet.

As I was watching the Chosen, there were a couple of really sad scenes. Again, I’m not going into detail but I found myself questioning if they needed to be that bleak or that dark. And it reminded me of how pedestrian we can make the crucifixion. A few years ago, when the Passion of the Christ came out, I talked to a few priests who weren’t going because they felt it was too dark. They wanted the upbeat crucifixion in Godspell, or Jesus Christ Superstar, or Jesus of Nazareth. 

The challenge is that Christianity isn’t always upbeat. Sacrifice isn’t always upbeat. I get concerned because I worry that we’ve made Christianity too much like a pithy pop song. We’ve become a church of the Middle Class or a church of comfort. I get concerned because we are a church born from a sacrifice that has more martyrs today than ever before in history and prioritizing comfort is hardly preparation for belonging to that kind of church. I get concerned because Christianity without sacrifice is not worth belonging to. It’s too boring. 

But I get it. I like comfort as much as the next guy. I don’t like to feel sad. Who would? I’m not saying we should look forward to the sadness of the crucifixion like a sadist. 

Nonetheless, lent is a time for us to put aside some comfort to get a small sense of what Jesus went through. If you’re like me, you’ve probably messed up on your acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving at this point. You may have eaten between meals or not had a quarter to put in the jar after you said a bad word or not set aside the hour for prayer. You may even have messed up a couple of times and are starting to wonder if you should just give up. Please don’t. Take the mulligan and start again. It’s okay. Start today. Who cares that you’re not going to get the gold star sticker for forty days of fasting? The only day that matters is today. That’s all we have anyway. That’s the point of the transfiguration. There may be sadness and suffering in our lives but Jesus is the light at the end of the tunnel, he is our transfiguration. We may have to sacrifice before we get to experience the glory of the resurrection but that’s why we sacrifice today, because Christianity isn’t always happy or pretty or easy or comfortable. But it is worth it because, in the end, we get to share in his transfigured glory. 

4 OT B: That’s not something to play with.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I became aware of a concerning trend for bachelorette parties happening in a previous assignment. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for people who want a more tame bachelorette party to invite in a psychic and have the person do a seance or read palms or do some other game that is essentially divination. If you ask a participant, they’re likely to say that it’s just for fun and they don’t really believe the psychic has any powers. The truth is, however, that we, as Catholics, need to be really cautious about this practice and need to avoid assuming nothing bad can happen. I don’t want people to attribute every bad thing that happens in the world to evil spirits or allow a person who makes bad decisions the ability to say “the devil made me do it.” But we likewise have to be cautious of flaunting the power of evil spirits. A commentary I read said, “The western tendency to rationalize the ancient understanding of spirits is rooted in the fact that westerners have much more power over their lives and circumstances than the ancients believed they had.”

The trouble with psychics and mediums and these types of people is they practice divination. Divination is different from prophecy because it presumes we can force the spiritual world to do our bidding and answer our questions. People take out a ouija board, for instance, and ask the spirits a question and think they are getting an answer because the piece moves around seemingly by itself. I was really impressed with Dr. Peter Kreeft again this week when he said, “God is pure spirit and He created angels who are pure spirit and He gave them free will and some chose evil rather than good and these are evil spirits.” Dr. Kreeft is pointing to the fact that, in terms of power, because they are purely spiritual beings, the evil spirits are more powerful than us. So that ouija board is more like the internet than it is an innocent game of Clue, you never know who you are talking to and, therefore, you need to be cautious. This was taken for granted in earlier ages before a guy named Fredrich Nietzche decided that, if we simply denied that anything more powerful than us exists, we make ourselves the most powerful thing. But Nietsche was wrong. The fact that evil is powerful is very evident in this world. You don’t have to ride along with the police department to see it, though I’ve seen there. It happened a little over a year ago in this very church, I believe, when a woman entered the back doors during Noon Mass and started debating with me during the Eucharistic prayer because she believed she was the incarnation of Jesus Christ. I would guess she had opened herself up, incrementally, through the use of hallucinogenic drugs and other acts, to some form of evil, even if mental illness was also present in her.

What can we do instead? If divination is evil because it operates under the impression we can have power over the spiritual realm, the first thing is to recognize we can’t and we should, therefore, avoid it. We should not go to mediums or palm readers or psychics. If we have, we should go to the sacrament of reconciliation and confess it. If we feel like there is a spiritual heaviness or darkness in our life, we should say out loud “You are not welcome here! I have been purchased by the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ and he and his servants are alone welcome here”. We can pray to our guardian angel to protect us from evil spirits. We can pray that great prayer of protection to St. Michael the Archangel to defend us in battle and be our protection from the devil. You can ask me for a blessing to protect you from evil spirits. We can wear the miraculous medal and be consecrated to our Blessed Mother and ask for her special protections. While we should be paralyzed in fear of evil spirits, we shouldn’t play with fire either. 

Secondly, the opposite of divination is prophecy. Prophecy is when God chooses to speak to us. It’s what made Jesus unique in that synagogue in Capernaum. He speaks with authority because he prophetically speaks the word of God. Jesus, in turn, continues to speak to us through the Bible and our Sacred Tradition. Pray daily with the Bible to listen to God’s voice, especially the Mass readings for the day especially at adoration. Read the Catechism and the lives of the saints to see how our predecessors were called by God to live holy lives. We can’t force God to answer our questions, nor get the answers from spirits that may or may not tell the truth. We must patiently seek the voice of truth only from the one who speaks with authority, Jesus Christ. 

2 OT B: People are disciples not tools

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I remember hearing a homily Archbishop Jackels gave a few years ago to a group of deacons he was ordaining about how their mission in the church was changing from being primarily doers to being orderers. It was a good reminder for me, who tends to be most comfortable doing things, that I have a larger mission of ordering. Part of the rationale for this has to do with the fact that there are big projects that need to get done and they can’t fall on one person’s shoulders. But there’s a larger, more important reality that also distinguishes the way the church should view ordering the holy versus the way the world tends to view collaboration when it uses phrases like, “many hands make light work”. 

Let’s begin with the second reading and work out from there. In it, St. Paul is deconstructing some of the more problematic phrases ordering life in Corinthian society. A person from Corinth was taught that all things are moral for the individual, that food is meant for the stomach and the stomach is meant for food, and that every sin a person commits is outside the body. Even though St. Paul identifies these phrases with the people of his time in this particular town, I think they are equally applicable to people in our own time in the United States of America. Corinth was a very advanced town with a diverse, wealthy population which may be why these phrases can resonate with us. For the people of Corinth, the most important thing is that they are free because freedom encourages spontaneity and rejects controlling laws and rules. The only rule was that the individual should be free to be happy and do whatever it takes to be happy. Isn’t this the point of the sexual revolution as well? It’s important to point out that the word that gets translated as “immorality” in today’s second reading is the Greek word “porneia” which is where we get the word “pornography”. It’s sexual immorality that St. Paul is addressing in particular here because it was as much of a problem in his time as it is today. He tells his listeners that we are going to live by a better rule than all things are moral for the individual. He says the body was made for the Lord and the Lord is for the body. God raised the Lord and will raise us by his passion. In other words, we shouldn’t think of the other person as simply a servant of our passions, as something meant to bring us pleasure but as the Lord himself, which should elevate that person and, in the process, elevate us. 

That’s why, in the gospel, when the followers of John the Baptist start to follow Jesus, his first question isn’t what they can do for him but what they are seeking. He isn’t interested in making sure that he can get work done but in showing them the way to the Father. Notice, too, that immediately John’s disciples go and find others and lead them to Jesus, in the case of Andrew it was his brother Simon. Again, they aren’t doing so because they need another fisherman but because Andrew knew the fisherman would only get to heaven by following Jesus and he wanted that for him. He knew that the best way to order the holy for Simon Peter was to get him to follow Jesus. 

In the back of church, we have sign-up sheets for adoration and the fish fry and I hope you’ll sign up. However, I’d also hope that you see, in both of these opportunities, not merely the church or myself looking at you as though you are a commodity to be used. If so, please don’t sign up. However, if you can see in them an opportunity to grow closer to the Lord with others in this parish and maybe even the possibility of inviting a person distant from the church to return, either by spending time with you and the Lord in adoration or by working with you at the fish fry to serve hungry people, please do sign up. 

Our daily actions must be marked by bringing our neighbor to the Lord who is, likewise, searching for us. How are we recognizing Jesus in others and helping them to see Jesus in us?

Epiphany: The magi asked the right question

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Last summer, I accompanied a group of students to Rochester, Minnesota for the Steubenville North conference. Some of these students will be raising funds after Mass tonight to attend again next summer. It was a great weekend of listening to speakers and watching our young people grow in their faith. On the last day of the conference, I was in the room that served as the sacristy with all the other priests waiting for Mass to begin when the celebrant, Bishop Robert Barron, came walking in. This name may not mean anything to you but he’s a bit of a Catholic celebrity. He is the founder of Word on Fire ministry and does a bunch of videos on YouTube explaining the Faith. He did the Catholicism series from a few years ago. As he entered the room, I felt a little awestruck. Some of the priests walked up and either said hello or introduced themselves. I stayed back, figuring he was too busy and important to worry about some guy from Iowa who just happened to bring kids to the conference. However, to his credit, after he spent some time with the guys who approached him, he walked around the room and met each of us. At the time, Archbishop Jackels had retired and Bishop Barron asked me if I knew how he was doing. I was impressed that he knew about what was happening in our little Archdiocese and that he cared about Archbishop Jackels enough to ask. I was also impressed that he felt it was important to make sure each of us knew we were welcome in his diocese. 

The struggle with the Solemnity of the Epiphany is that there are a lot of small t traditions that we think are capital T Traditions. A small t tradition is anything that isn’t mentioned in scripture or the official teachings of the church but doesn’t contradict it and helps to fill in the gaps. They may be true but may not be as well, we just don’t know. Some small t traditions that are a part of the Epiphany include that there were three men named Balthasar, Caspar, and Melchior. The Bible doesn’t actually state how many magi there were let alone their names, just that the Magi brought three gifts. 2 or 200 magi could bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Sometimes we call them kings because of the first reading and Responsorial Psalm which talks about Kings from foreign lands bringing gifts to worship God. The problem is that the magi weren’t kings or even wise men. We tend to identify them with astrologers but that’s even more of an interpretation than absolute fact. The root word of magi, magus, is used in the Acts of the Apostles to designate two bad guys, one named Simon and the other Bar-Jesus, who both misunderstood and tried to manipulate the evangelizing efforts of the apostles. Most of the time, in non biblical sources, people identified as magi areswindlers and manipulators. It’s kind of surprising that Matthew would document the visit of these types of people to Jesus as a child. 

One commentary I read said that the element that really defines the magi is that they are drawn to power. Another of those small t traditions is that the star led the magi from the east to Jerusalem while they followed along. If you reread the text, however, the magi simply say that they saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage. Remember that the Jews were and still are identified by the Star of David. It’s on the Israeli Flag to this day. Rather than it being initially a star that leads them like a laser pointer leads a cat, they may have simply seen a bright star shining in the sky that made them think of the people who were identified with stars, the people living in Judea who are sometimes called “The Jews”. When they arrive in Jerusalem, the capital of Judea, and locate Herod, who considers himself the king of the Jews, our translation says the magi asked “Where is the newborn king of the Jews”. A better translation would be “Where is the king born in Judea?” You see, the magi are asking where the native born king of the Jews is. King Herod was born south of Judea, in the province called Idumea, and this is why he becomes greatly troubled and everyone with him: because he fears being replaced by a native king related to King David. That’s why, when he finds out that the one who was anointed like King David was anointed, was to be born in Bethlehem, the town King David was from, he sends the Magi on their way with the only stipulation that they send him the location when they know it. You see, it’s all about Herod being worried about these publicity hounds who aren’t interested in him because someone else is more important

I think when we over romanticize who the magi were, we may miss the point that Matthew is trying to get across to us. They probably weren’t exotic wise astrologers diligently studying the stars with maps and charts being led by a cartoon star to a house in Bethlehem. They definitely aren’t kingly leaders commanding powerful armies that are bowing down in worship to the messiah. Instead, they are fallible people searching for a celebrity, the king born in Judea. But they do have one important thing right. They may not have all the answers but they ask the right question when they come searching for the king born in Judea. I think we’d be wise people to ask the question the magi did, “Where is the king born in Judea?” and allow the Eucharist to lead us to him.

Holy Family - B: Submission: Being under the mission

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I’m guessing some of you are, once again, surprised, maybe even a little disappointed, that I didn’t use the short version of the second reading. And, let me allay the fears of the women and, possibly the hopes of some of the men, that I’m not going to use St. Paul’s Letter to the Collosians to outline a misogynistic view of the world where women, as the philosopher Simone de Bouvier said, are considered the second sex. I’m sure most other priests did have the lector read the shorter form and/or are probably avoiding talking about the reading. But I think, if we do that, we not only contribute to any misunderstandings or abuse surrounding this passage but we miss out on what is really meant to be more of a challenge to the mindset of men, possibly even more so in today’s world than at the time of St. Paul. So, at the risk of neglecting the gospel and first reading, let’s look at that second reading for today’s Mass and let it teach us what a holy family should look like. 

First and foremost, St. Paul paints a general picture of what the life of virtue should look like for all who call themselves Christian. It’s worth taking a day to reflect on the whole paragraph but especially “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another”. We may want to ask ourselves what role each of these virtues play in our lives. He starts by being inclusive of everyone and then moves into some specific advice to families. 

It’s at this point that things get…controversial. Some people look at this second paragraph and say that it’s representative of an outmoded view of life, of a time when the man was in charge of the family and the woman was seen as little better than property. They say that it reminds them of when we used to use terms like “women’s work”. They point to the word submission and shake their heads picturing a woman barefoot and pregnant doing all the housework like cooking and cleaning and raising the children while the husband goes to work and mows the lawn and changes the light bulbs. I’d like to suggest we take another look at this reading starting with a better viewpoint, with the help of a theologian named Dr. Peter Kreeft. By the way, you can get the book that I’m basing this homily on in our bookstore and it’s called “Food for the Soul” by Dr. Peter Kreeft. 

First, even though St. Paul only says wives should be submissive to husbands in this passage, in Ephesians, he starts by saying that everyone should be submissive to everyone out of reverence for Christ. So, it’s meant to grow out of an overall sense of mutual submission to one another that marks the Christian community. Dr. Kreeft goes on to point out that a husband is meant to love his wife and avoid any bitterness toward her. Again, he points to the passage in Ephesians where it says that a husband must love his wife like Christ loved the Church. I’d like to suggest that this is actually more of a radical submission than the wife is called to do. Christ loved the Church by dying for her, by giving up his life, by submitting his will to her will. After all, as Dr. Kreeft points out, submission means being “under the mission of” so this submission isn’t a kind of fear of violence or a kind of blind obedience. Soldiers are submissive to their superiors when they charge into battle. Being submissive means having a mission in mind and following it. Dr. Kreeft had this great quote, “There are two possible motives for getting married: to get happiness or to give it. If the motive of either or both is to get it rather than to give it, the odds are that the marriage will fail. If the motive of both is to give it, it will almost certainly succeed”. 

You see, I think in both Ephesians and in today’s reading from Colossians, St. Paul wasn’t advocating husbands dominating their wives. Far from it! I think he was saying that a family has a mission and it’s important that both husbands and wives have that mission in mind. The mission can be easily stated as to get the other person and all their children to heaven. That is our ultimate happiness, after all, to be with God in heaven.

Do we live our life as though the only thing that matters is getting myself into heaven or do we see our mission to get our holy family in heaven?

Christmas 2023 - B Finding God where we don't expect him

 Friends

Peace be with you.

We have probably all had an experience of being somewhere and seeing someone we didn’t expect to be there. At Ed Gibbs funeral this past week, I walked down the steps of the rectory and saw a familiar face of a parishioner whose name I couldn’t quite place. I smiled and he smiled back and I walked toward the church to get things set up. After two steps it clicked that the reason I couldn’t quite place him was because he wasn’t a parishioner from St. Patrick’s but from Bellevue, my previous assignment. I turned around and suddenly his name popped in my head when I knew the right context. I taught his daughter at Marquette High School, for goodness sake, and it was great to catch up with John and Angie for a while. Considering the kindnesses I received in my previous assignment from several members of the Gibbs’ family, it should have clicked before then that Bellevue people would be here. 

I’m guessing many of you have never heard the gospel I/Deacon Dan read for tonight/today’s Mass. Most of the time we think about the birth of Jesus, we think of passages from the Gospel of Luke. That’s the Gospel that tells the story more from the viewpoint of Mary. It tells us that the birth took place in Bethlehem because of a census and that Jesus was born in a manger and that angels appeared to shepherds in the fields. We may also think about details from the Gospel of Matthew, which tells the story more from the viewpoint of Joseph. It’s in that Gospel that we find out about the Magi visiting Jesus and the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. I decided to focus on the Gospel of John, which has a decidedly different, more cosmic perspective. Rather than starting with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist, as the Gospel of Mark does, or with Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, as the Gospels of Matthew and Luke do; the Gospel of John begins from the creation of the world. It echoes the story of creation in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. “In the beginning” St. John says “was the word”. What is the word? In Genesis, God used words to create the universe . God said “Let there be light”. In the mind of the Gospel writer, Jesus was the word God the Father used to create the world. Yet, he is also careful to say he was with God and was God, meaning he is both distinct from the Father and the second person of the Holy Trinity. St. John continues by saying that nothing came to be without the Word and what came to be was life. So Jesus was not only the Word that started creation, he continued with the Father to make animals and humans and was even present at the fall when the light he bestowed got contrasted with the darkness of sin. Notice, however, the emphasis that St. John puts on the fact that, despite the presence of darkness, the darkness does not overcome Christ’s light. 

Instead, the Word, which was part creation, decided to enter into the very creation he made. St. John says not only that this wasn’t John the Baptist, which was apparently one of the beliefs of the followers of St. John the Baptist, but that St. John the Baptist himself pointed this out. In one of the most confusing sentences in Sacred Scripture, St. John the Evangelist quotes St. John the Baptist as saying, “The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’” Sounds more like a riddle than the ultimate statement of humility that it really is. What St. John the Baptist ultimately pointed out was that, with his successor, something new would happen for the entire world, something that was essential to salvation: namely the grace that makes us, who accept Jesus into our hearts and didn’t reject him or ignore him at his coming, sons and daughters of God. 

St. John’s Gospel is going to explain what it means to be sons and daughters of God but the surprising thing that we celebrate today is how it came about. For the Jewish people, salvation comes from obedience to the laws passed down to them from Moses in the first five books of the Bible and in the interpretation of those laws that have been made throughout the centuries. For Christians, because we accept Jesus into our hearts, we replace any graces that come from obedience to the law with the grace of Jesus Christ, who fulfilled that law. The shocking thing is this all happens here on earth. One would think that, to engage in spiritually beneficial things, we need get pulled out of this darkened earth into a kind of partially lit middle ground between heaven and earth because this world is so corrupt. That’s why St. John emphasized that, despite the darkness of sin in this world, Christ’s light defeats the power of darkness. Jesus Christ, the second person of the trinity, the word through whom creation was made, the light of the world, etc. etc. etc. entered into this world as a baby and, in a sense, showed us how to become sons and daughters of God just as he is the Son of God. 

I think, as a church, we’re pretty good about talking about the dangers of sin and making sure we do things like examining our conscience and approaching the sacrament of reconciliation at least once a year and whenever we’re conscious of committing a mortal sin. However, I don’t think we always emphasize enough that, if we are to be sons and daughters of God, the point of Christian living shouldn’t just be to avoid sin and confess it when we do. That’s like opening a restaurant and spending all your time making sure you don’t violate the health code or opening a bank and spending all your time making sure the security system is working. While we all want restaurants that don’t violate the health code and banks that keep our money safe, if that same restaurant never makes any food because they’re so fixated on the health code or that bank never takes any deposits because all the employees do is stare at the security system, we’re probably not going to use them. As Christians, we need to pray in a way that doesn’t just ask Jesus how disappointing we are to him, but how does Jesus live and how might we live that way too. I was recently reading a book by the Jesuit theologian Father Robert Spitzer who talked about the importance of what he called consciousness examen. This is not the examination of conscience, which we should do before we celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation, but a way of giving thanks to God for what he has done and praying with the beatitudes to move our hearts to be more like Jesus’ heart. It starts by being grateful for the small and big gifts that God has given us but then moves us to focus on asking God to change our hearts slowly to be more like his by using one of the beatitudes. The point of the second part, asking Jesus to make our hearts like his, isn’t to beat ourselves up for not being like Jesus but something closer to practicing for sports or music, with the way we love God and neighbor. For example, we may have a coworker or friend or family member that we don’t know how to love. In fact, we may find them frustrating to deal with and try to avoid them. We may use our time in prayer to ask Jesus to reveal to us how he would deal with that person. We may ask Jesus how he would act toward someone who says or does what that person says or does and then find Jesus challenging us to be meek and humble of heart like him, for instance, or to challenge that person lovingly like he would to be grateful for the gifts they have. 

We may be surprised to find Jesus in more places throughout our day, in more of the faces we see, and the voices we hear.