Holy Thursday 2025:Eucharist, Priesthood, and Service

Friends

Peace be with you. 

What’s the point of Mass for you? I have a friend who I’m pretty sure would say that the point of Mass is to be as brief as possible. When he comes to a Mass I celebrate, he tells me I could have had a shorter homily, used a shorter form of the readings, used a shorter Eucharistic Prayer, had more Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion so it would go faster. He tells me all about how fast his home parish celebrates Mass. Most weekends, our Masses at St. Patrick’s last fifty minutes to an hour. When I talk to my friend, his Mass is always shorter. 

On this night, this night that is unlike any other, we celebrate the Institution of the Eucharist and Institution of the Priesthood. We remember that Passover Liturgy that Jesus celebrated with his followers in which he changed two elements, the bread and wine, from being merely symbols of past oppression into being his body, blood, soul, and divinity. This is the tradition that St. Paul hands on to us in our second reading today. Jesus uses a specific term to describe the significance of this altered Passover Liturgy. He says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” The word that is translated “remembrance” is the Greek word Anamnesis or the Hebrew word Zikaron and it means more than just simply a calling to mind or a memory. We, moderns, suffer here because of televisions and smartphones and even the availability of books when it comes to this concept of memory. At the time of Jesus, obviously, there was no technology for recording what happened at an incident, let alone an easy way to transcribe them for posterity. You had to remember it in your mind and then share it with others verbally. They prioritized precision in their remembrance because the retelling of a story was the way the people who were not present not only learned about what happened, but participated in what happened. If you witnessed your mother or father die and other members of your family did not, it was your obligation to tell the story accurately and descriptively so that they can feel a part of what happened. The Mass becomes a way to remember, to bring the members together to be part of a past celebration. 

But it’s different from other memorial celebrations, too, because Jesus left himself, his real presence, in the Eucharist. When we share past stories in order for people to be included in a significant event, we normally don’t have something that physically connects us to that past event but; in the Eucharist, we do. That’s why we need a priesthood, not just to confect the Eucharist, but to connect us to Jesus himself. The way we do this is that the priests all have a bishop, to whom we owe our allegiance. That bishop is connected to the 12 apostles through a succession of giving authority in the laying on of hands. Those 12 apostles were, in turn, given authority by Jesus to “do this in memory of me”. That’s why it’s so important that we don’t speak for ourselves in Mass, we don’t just do things intended to make Mass overly personal. It’s not our Mass. It’s Jesus' way of inserting himself into our modern lives by bringing us back to his time through this powerful tool of memory. 

That’s why we have to be of service to the Mass and not expect the Mass to be in service to us. In other words, we should never ask what we got out of Mass but what we put into it. For some people, they put in a lot of time and effort as ushers, readers, Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, servers, musicians. They are great and, tonight, we celebrate that service as well and encourage more of you to help in these ministries. But, even as great as that kind of service is, the most important service we can give is to take off our watch or turn off our smartphones so we’re not preoccupied with how long Mass is. Then we can listen to the prayers, perhaps even follow along with them in the Missal if we tend to be more visual learners, and let God speak to us through them. We can sing the antiphons and hymns and truly give thanks to the Lord, our God through them. We can relish in the silences of Mass and not just wish Father would hurry up so we can get back to our lives so often lived in order to get something out of them 

Remember my time-conscious friend I talked about at the beginning of this homily? The truth is that it’s really a little voice in the back of my head that worries about how many people are coming to Mass and what people are saying about me or this parish. It’s the voice that worries when I hear about people no longer attending Mass here but attending in another Catholic Church and celebrates when I hear about someone attending Mass here who used to attend Mass elsewhere. I’m not proud of it, just letting you know that, if you struggle to pay attention or struggle to get motivated to come to Mass because you don’t get anything out of it or wish something was different, you’re not alone. The guy in the front with the funny looking robe on is with you. How can we make sure we’re not so worried about how we or others feel at Mass that we miss out on the opportunity to be of loving service to the shared memory by which we are truly present to Christ at his Last Supper? 

3 L C Take off your shoes and stay a while

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

What situations make you take your shoes off? For most people, it’s the end of  a work day, arriving at home and finally being relaxed. I listen to a podcast by a guy who thinks shoes are protection from dirt and disease, so he wears them whenever he’s outside of his house but immediately takes them off when he gets home and insists on his family and friends doing the same. I’ve never associated shoes with dirt and disease so I tend to wear them in my house and I’m not always cognizant when I visit other people’s homes of this norm. My guess is that, if the host of that podcast came to my house, he would be horrified and never take his shoes off. 

In the first reading, when Moses approached the burning bush, the first thing he heard was the order to take off his shoes. Moses wasn’t worried about germs or dirt, however. He was in the desert so sand would already be everywhere. He was curious as to how a bush that’s on fire doesn’t just quickly burn up. Apparently, in the heat of the desert, spontaneous combustion is fairly common. It gets hot and the heat of the sun gets magnified somewhere causing a dry plant to just start on fire. So, the first image of this theophony, this experience of God revealing himself to a human being, is with the powerful symbol of fire. It’s powerful because it can be used for good or evil. Jesus called the abode of the evil one Gehenna, which was the name of a garbage dump on the outskirts of Jerusalem that was always on fire. I think burning garbage is a pretty good scent to describe a place I never want to visit. But fire can be good too, as in the tongues of fire that come to rest on the disciples at Pentecost. This image from our first reading, a bush on fire but not consumed, has been used to illustrate how the Holy Spirit wants us to empower us to energetically use the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love in a way that will not exhaust us. That was also a clue to Moses that something divine is happening. As I said before, Moses approached the Burning Bush and heard a voice ordering him to take off his shoes. Imagine being in a place where things are spontaneously starting on fire and being asked to remove your shoes. You can’t run away. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s like someone is asking you to walk on hot coals. It takes a lot of trust. God revealed to Moses that he needed him to return to Egypt in order to save all the Israelites from slavery. Remember that Egypt was a place Moses had recently left because he killed someone who was mistreating a fellow Israelite. God was telling Moses to go back to Egypt and do, on a grander scale, what had just caused him to flee from the country; to stand up against, not some unknown Egyptian, but the leader of the Egyptians to defend, not one beat-up Israelite, but all God’s enslaved people. 

In my mind, that’s what makes Moses’ trust so remarkable. He merely asked for God’s name. Of course, that’s not as simple as it sounds. Part of this has to do with control. If you know a deity’s name, you can summon him. However, the other really tragic thing is what needing to know God’s name implies. Moses has lived among God’s people and he knows them. They have been living for four hundred years in Egypt because Joseph brought them there to escape a drought. For four hundred years, they’ve been living among people who have multiple “gods” with names and Moses feels like they have forgotten their own God. So, he needs to know his name to tell it to them. God’s response is really a non-response because he won’t be categorized as one God among many. It’s like when people say they don’t believe in God because they can’t see him. I think to myself, “Do you not believe in the author of your favorite book because you can’t find her anywhere in it? Do you not believe a building has a designer because you can’t find him anywhere in it? God isn’t just another thing that exists in this world, he is existence itself. His essence is existence, to use philosophical language. Still, God sort of gives Moses an out because also said that he was the God of their Fathers, the patriarchs. 

I would describe God as being frighteningly gentle in this encounter. In other words, a bush on fire that isn’t being consumed could be a scare tactic, but it becomes an object that draws Moses into conversation. Asking Moses to take off his shoes could seem like God’s cornering you, putting you into a situation that you can’t leave. But instead he’s asking you to relax around him and put your trust in him. He was, in both ways, inviting Moses to show his vulnerability by showing that he trusted God was merciful and that God doesn't delight in punishment or dirty tricks. Most religions with multiple gods believe they could play tricks on human beings. In contrast, the one true God is all powerful but also all trustworthy and all merciful for those who seek his mercy. 

That’s how the gospel intersects with the first reading. In it, we hear about people delighting in other people’s suffering. Most scholars believe that the blood Pilate mingled with the Temple sacrifices would have been his political rival's blood and that he probably dropped a tower on a group of other dissidents. It’s easy to celebrate other people’s suffering. On the internet, they call it instant karma. If God operated this way, he would wipe us all out and create a world made up entirely of golden retrievers. But, instead, using the fig tree as symbolic of God’s people, Jesus recommends giving some extra time. Perhaps, with fertilizer, the tree of humanity will produce good fruit. 

The good fruit God wants from us is repentance. He knows we make mistakes and, while he doesn’t delight in our mistakes, he does delight when we seek to be forgiven. God loves us most when we recognize our own imperfections and ask for forgiveness. It can be frightening to do this, to take off our shoes metaphorically and come into the confessional to admit our imperfections. But remember that God is frighteningly gentle. We may think he should yell at us or slap us around but that’s not how God works and that’s certainly not how he wants me to work either. Instead, he wants to reveal himself when we are vulnerable. I hope you will experience the frighteningly gentleness of God in the sacrament of reconciliation this Lenten season. 

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.”

Holy Family - C: We keep Mary’s memories in our hearts

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Did you get a glimpse into other people’s family life that made you feel a little uncomfortable at Christmas? It often happens that, when we get together with people outside our nuclear family, we see parents struggling to discipline children and children testing their parents' patience. Maybe your parents or aunts or uncles are getting to an age where they are struggling to hear or are having memory issues and they aren’t quite the person you remember from your childhood which can cause some uncomfortable family dynamics and frustrations. Maybe it was your own family that had a mini explosion while family members were around. 

Regardless, doesn’t it feel good to know you’re not alone? Even the Holy Family struggled to understand family dynamics when they went up to the Temple for the Feast of Passover. Now, it’s important to point out a few details. First, Luke is using this experience of going to the Temple, which would have been a common one for the Holy Family, as a framing device. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus would have gone to Jerusalem at least three times a year for the Feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Luke highlights this visit on the feast of Passover because that will also be the celebration taking place at the end of his gospel when Jesus is crucified. Notice, also, that it was a total of three days of separation from Jesus that Mary and Joseph endured. Three days without Jesus parallels with three days Mary will endure without Jesus at the crucifixion. Some people suggest that the source of the tension has to do with the fact that Jesus is Bar Mitzvah, he is now responsible for his own choices. Bar Mitzvah, however, is a status bestowed on a boy at his 13th birthday, not his 12th, and it tends to be sometime more modern than something that happened at the time of Jesus. The idea of children not having adult responsibilities is a very modern one, after all. 

       The tension definitely has to do with whom Jesus is going to consider his Father. Mary asks “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” Jesus responds “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” The tension is obvious, who Jesus considers his real Father. It should be pointed out that, by all accounts, Joseph was a good Dad. He worked hard as a laborer and provided a meager home for his wife and child. Jesus isn’t rebelling from an abusive relationship here. It’s just that he’s in his heavenly father’s house and that is a place he wants to stay in order to be close to one he loves.

      It may feel like there’s a lack of resolution to this tension because all it says in the Gospel of St. Luke is that Jesus went home with Mary and Joseph and was obedient to them. That may sound like he just put up with the situation until he could go off to college but remember the root of the word obedient is to listen, just as he listened to his heavenly Father in the temple so he listens to his Mother and Foster Father in Nazareth. Further, it says that Mary kept these things in her heart. This is one of those passages that makes people wonder if St. Luke knew Mary personally and heard it from her. But, more importantly, there will come a time when Jesus is back in this same temple, as I alluded to, and his fidelity to the will of his heavenly Father will be tested. We’ll hear about that in a few weeks at the end of our Lenten journey. But, for now, we are invited to be like Mary and ponder the experiences she had of Jesus in our hearts. That’s something we can do as a family. We can find a time in the week and start with prayer, then read the gospel for the upcoming week, and spend time together talking about it, asking questions and sharing similar experiences. In the process, we may find we are developing a Holy Family of our own. 

Christmas 2025: Come You Unfaithful

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

A couple of weeks ago, a friend who was visiting from out of town told me about a new song by a singer named Michael Boggs called Come You Unfaithful. I was immediately turned off by the title but I trust this friend so I decided to give it a chance. It starts to the tune of O Come All Ye Faithful but goes in a very different direction than the original. Actually, it pointed out what I would consider to be some flaws with the original song. In this version, the unfaithful, the unworthy, those with nothing to offer him, the unrighteous, and the undeserving are invited to Christ the Lord because He came for them. I started to tear up a little thinking about all the people who have left the church because they felt that they simply weren’t holy enough, weren’t worthy, to come here. I thought of my relatives who feel unrighteous and undeserving of God’s love. I thought of my friends who struggle to know and be loved by God, who feel unfaithful and, thus, unwelcome in God’s house. And I prayed for them and wished I could invite them here right then and there.  

But it was the second verse that really got me emotionally. In that verse, he invites the anxious, the waiting and wanting, those whose burdens are all they can bring, those weary from silence and questions without answers to rejoice because Christ came for them. I started thinking about people who really needed to hear this message and never will because they’re not here with us any longer. I started thinking about the people struggling with brain health in our streets walking past the church at all hours of the night in search of some safe place they may not find or some drug that will numb it all. I thought about families missing a child who died in a school shooting or from some disease struggling to celebrate the birth of the Christ child without a child of their own.

There’s simply too much suffering happening around here this Christmas, maybe not for you or your family but for a lot of people there is. For some people who came to this country illegally, they’re worried about being deported and being separated from a spouse and children or, worse, having a legal spouse and children be forced to be deported with them. For some people, they’re worried they won’t be able to afford their house or their car because their salary dropped when they lost their job and had to take one with less pay. For some people, they’re wondering how they’re going to keep their business open when everyone is buying everything online. And, for a lot of people they’ve come to church hoping God would send an angel like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life only to go back home and have nothing get better. 

For our Christmas Masses, there are four separate sets of readings with four different gospels. There’s Jesus’ genealogy from the gospel of Matthew, the traditional story of no room at the inn from the Gospel of Luke, there’s the visit of the shepherds from the Gospel of Luke, and there’s what’s referred to as the prologue of the St. John. What’s striking about these sets of readings, however, is the promise of the messiah in the first reading versus what actually happens in the gospel. If you read the first readings, you may get a sense that, when Jesus came, it should have been like a superhero movie or like a scene from the Lord of the Rings. The bad guys should be just about ready to destroy all the faithful followers of the Lord when, out of the East, Jesus appears riding a white horse with a sword wiping out all the bad guys and saving the day. But, instead, we hear about a baby lying in an animal’s food trough being visited by a bunch of dirty shepherds who should be looking after their flocks. We hear all about his relatives, some of whom are not particularly great by the way. And St. John, in all his philosophical nuance, puts Jesus as the incarnation of the words used to create the universe at the beginning of time. That’s hardly going to drive off a warring army, let alone deal with all the problems we have. 

The hardest part of today is that Jesus didn’t come to make our life prosperous or even to make it easy. If, for the most part, your life is going okay, that’s great. Even Michael Boggs, in the third verse of Come You Unfaithful, says Jesus came for the prideful, the self-sufficient, and you with all the answers, which is true. He loves you too and walks with you. But for those of us who are maybe struggling to find the Christmas spirit, It’s okay. Jesus may not have come to take away our suffering, but he came to walk with us in our misery. It may not always feel like he’s there, but he’s closest to us in our suffering, not just in an impassive voyeuristic way, but in a way in which He suffers with us. He doesn’t take away our pain but he shares it with us. He took on our sins and redeemed us all on his own on the cross but he doesn’t leave us here to suffer on our own. Do you feel lonely, abandoned, or isolated? Do you feel like no one can help or no one cares? I hope not. But, if so, please know that you’re not alone. Christmas reminds us that Jesus came in a real human way to walk with us in our suffering and he sends us, the members of his church, to walk with each other. You’re welcome here to experience Him, and us, walking with you. 

3 A C - Being On Fire

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

In my mind, there’s nothing better than sitting next to a fire on a cold winter’s day like yesterday. It reminds me of when I was a kid and we’d go camping as a family. We’d always have a campfire at night and share stories and eat campfire food right before bedtime. Nowadays, I have a small electric fireplace that safely mimics a campfire with less of a chance of starting my house on fire. One of the few things I can look forward to in winter is one of those snowy days where I can’t go anywhere or do anything so I sit next to that fireplace and read between naps. 

For some reason, the theme of fire has regularly appeared in my spiritual life this Fall. It started when I showed a video from the priest-physicist Fr. Robert Spitzer about the Shroud of Turin for one of my Thursday morning Koffee Klatsches. In the video, he said two things of which I was unaware. First, to make the shroud, it would “require billions of watts of light energy, far exceeding the capabilities of any known UV source today”. He attributed this to the kind of energy it took to provide the resurrection. I thought about the descriptions the four evangelists use to describe Jesus at the Transfiguration. St. Matthew and St. Luke both say, “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white..” St. Mark says “his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” Fr. Spitzer also reported about something called  "’zinc sparks,’ where a fertilized egg releases a burst of zinc ions, creating a tiny, visible flash of light when a sperm meets an egg, essentially marking the moment of conception…” So, there’s a kind of fire in creation and recreation. Shortly thereafter as part of my daily prayer, I re-read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the three men from the Book of Daniel who refused to worship the King of Babylon as though he were God. Their punishment, you may remember, was to be burned alive. However, despite heating the furnace warmer than usual, not only did they survive but the text says that the King and his advisors saw “one like a son of man” protecting them in the fire, a reality Christians have attributed to Jesus’ presence. Lastly, on this past Friday, the church celebrated the memorial of the martyrdom of St. Lucy. She was betrothed to be married to a man but had secretly consecrated herself to remain a life-long virgin, sort of an early church Nun. When she refused to break her vows of virginity they decided to put her to death by fire. However, like those three young men in the Old Testament, she was protected from the flames by her savior. 

All of this has made me pause and think about the two ways St. John the Baptist talks about fire in today’s gospel. First, he says that Jesus will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and fire. Then, toward the end of the passage, he says that the chaff will burn in unquenchable fire. It seems like St. John isn’t sure if fire is a good thing or a bad thing. If we’re being baptized into it, it seems like the warm comfort of a fireplace, whereas when he says that the wheat will go into the barn but he will burn up the chaff in fire, that appears that the fire is divine punishment, thus not something we’d want to mess with. However, I think that’s the advantage of using fire. It’s something we can sit around to keep warm but it’s also something that can start a field on fire. If you let wheat drop upwind from a hot fire, the wheat itself will fall unharmed on the ground or into a basket because it is heavy enough to do so but the garbage or chaff, which is much lighter, will be caught by the wind and blow into the flames to be burnt up. 

That’s the image St. Luke wants us to have today. It’s what we do to our sins when we go to confession, we keep the good deeds we have done but allow the fire of God’s love to burn up our sins. That’s also what happens, in the Mass, when we offer our less serious sins to God. We have that fire inside of us from baptism and can burn up our sins before they burn us up. Is our faith life on fire burning up our sins and drawing into a life of resurrected faith or do we need to ask God to take out his winnowing fan to fan it back into flame?

2 A C: God uses the lowly to humble the proud

 Friends

Peace be with you.

Tomorrow/today is a very important day for the church in Mexico and all of Latin America really. It is the feast day of St. Juan Diego who was a simple peasant under Spanish rule and who, in 1531 while walking to Mass, found himself visited by a woman dressed like an Aztec princess who identified herself as “ever-perfect holy Mary, who has the honor to be the mother of the true God." When St. Juan Diego recounted this story to his local bishop, the prelate was understandably skeptical. He told St. Juan Diego he needed to ponder over what he was telling him to decide if he thought it was legitimate or not. The next day, Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego again and sent him back to the Bishop with a gift that knocked the cleric to his knees: fresh roses that wouldn’t have grown this time of year in their climate and her image fixed on Juan’s cactus-based coat in such that way that does not seem to have been painted and has lasted five hundred years despite being made with materials that typically last 10-15. Why would Mary appear to Juan Diego? Why appear in Mexico? Why not come slightly farther north to a country that would eventually be a world superpower and convert the colonies from the beginning? Imagine how much different things would be if she had just waited a little while longer, say 1774 or 1777, and been Our Lady of Philadelphia or New York or even our Lady of Cedar Rapids. Yet, that is often not the way God works. 

It is within this context that we hear of Jesus’ cousin, St. John the Baptist. St. Luke, situates the beginning of John’s ministry both in time and in contrast. In other words, he lists the names of a group of leaders so that the hearer will know in what year it takes place and will have a reminder of the corruption of those leaders as well. Luke is using these names to remind people of the murder and corruption these men did. He does this so he can contrast St. John the Baptist, a man of unparalleled holiness who spoke truth to power. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that St. John the Baptist was a political revolutionary or a competitor with Caesar and Pilate and all those folks. I’m saying the exact opposite of that. The truth he spoke was about the fulfillment of the Old Testament Prophecy spoken in our first reading about God leveling mountains and filling valleys to prepare for his coming. St. John the Baptist called on people to be prepared for the coming of the Lord

At the time of St. Juan Diego, Spanish Franciscan missionaries had been working to convert the people of Mexico for 20 years with very little success. Because of this revelation of our Lady, approximately 90 million Latin American people would be converted in the next 10 years, a feat only possible through the action of God. And that happened, not through the most powerful of subjects or to the most powerful country in the world but to a peasant, considered less in dignity by most of the Europeans trying to colonize Mexico. And, as I said before, Mexico itself is a country that has always struggled to provide adequate resources for its citizenry. Why would God there to this man, this peasant saint?

To remind us that human power pales in comparison to the power of God, that human wisdom seems like foolishness compared to the wisdom of God, and the good things we prize on earth seem pathetic compared to the great things God wants for us. In this world where powerful people seem to constantly want all of our attention in order to have a greater control of our lives, we remind ourselves that God’s plan is always better than human plans. We just need to be humbly open to the way God appears in our lives.